'The 2019–20 bushfires which ravaged Australia have intensified interest in Indigenous burning practices and their contribution to contemporary Australian land management. This recent interest builds upon a base established by Indigenous activism and well-circulated academic works which propose ‘Grand Unified Theories’ to explain the pre-European impact of Indigenous peoples upon environments. In this paper, I critique these theories as reliant upon binaries which either underemphasise or overemphasise impact. Just over a decade since its publication, it is timely to re-examine Bill Gammage’s The Biggest Estate on Earth and its influence upon policy and environments. Gammage’s model shares significant features with earlier popular works depicting Indigenous environmental impacts. Numerous theories incorporating ideas of overhunting have been proposed to explain the rough correlation of human arrival and the extinction of Pleistocene megafauna in Australia and North America. These Grand Unified Theories were shaped by similar tropes; they were all proposed with an eye to the present, and they have all influenced contemporary politics. I present an alternative model for conceptualising Indigenous environmental relationships that will work to advance understandings while minimising harmful repercussions and avoiding undermining Indigenous aspirations.' (Publication abstract)
'American farmer and poet Wendell Berry said of the first Europeans in North America that they came with vision, but not with sight. They came with vision of former places but not the sight to see what was before them. Instead of adapting their vision to suit the place, they changed the landscape to fit their vision.' (Introduction)
'What if Australia were to stop farming? At approximately 3% of gross domestic product, the removal of agriculture from the economy would be a significant hit. It would affect our balance of payments — 60% of agricultural produce is exported and it contributes 13% of Australia’s export revenue.' (Introduction)
'This article examines the ethnological writing about the Wadi Wadi people undertaken by squatter Peter Beveridge in the 1850s and 1860s. In the north of the colony of Victoria, both Beveridge and the Wadi Wadi laid claim to the land upon which they lived. In this ambiguous space, lengthy and close relationships developed between Beveridge and Wadi Wadi people with information and experiences shared. Valuing the knowledge of Wadi Wadi people, Beveridge was able to adapt and challenge aspects of the British ethnological ideas through which he framed his analysis of Wadi Wadi life. The article explores specifically Beveridge's response to the 1841 Queries Respecting the Human Race. It appears that Beveridge purposefully ignored the questions on Physical Characters and recognised spiritual belief as an integral part of Wadi Wadi daily life.' (Publication abstract)
'Bill Gammage has done Indigenous Australians a great service and other Australians should ponder his thesis. This book is a great read and an intellectual and moral achievement. Well written, insightful, scholarly and continental in scope, it is a landmark in our historical appreciation of Australia’s landscape in (Gammage’s omnibus chronological term) ‘1788’.' (Introduction)
'In this important and amazing book, Gammage contends that Australia was ‘governed by a single religious philosophy…the Dreaming made the continent a single estate’ (p.xix and repeatedly) and that the original Australian people did this through their ‘knowledge of how to sustain Australia’ (p.323). Thus they ‘put the mark of humanity firmly on every place’ (p.323). He brings forward a mass of evidence to support his contention that Europeans entering and exploring the mainland and Tasmania observed and described those altered landscapes, without realising, or being unwilling to admit, that these rich landscapes of open forest, beautiful grassland and sheltering bush were other than natural. He uses a vast build-up of evidence to show that ‘even in arid country [around Ayers Rock] 1788’s unnatural patterns recur’. But although the bulk of the book is concerned to validate and exemplify the technology and results of land management, largely through burning, we should not lose sight of Gammage’s primary aim, which is to persuade us of the spiritual stature and technological skills of Aboriginal people. We should see them as masters of their terrain, managing the entire continent with detailed local and regional knowledge and skill, to yield an abundance of resources and leisure. This enables them to focus on the social, ritual and artistic aspects of life; participating in ceremony, dance, song, storytelling, decoration of the body, the ground, the rock; gathering to exchange knowledge of the myths impressed on the landscape and the mathematical intricacies of finding marriage partners correctly placed in kinship patterns. They could live life to the full, rather than merely struggle to stay alive.' (Introduction)
'This article examines the ethnological writing about the Wadi Wadi people undertaken by squatter Peter Beveridge in the 1850s and 1860s. In the north of the colony of Victoria, both Beveridge and the Wadi Wadi laid claim to the land upon which they lived. In this ambiguous space, lengthy and close relationships developed between Beveridge and Wadi Wadi people with information and experiences shared. Valuing the knowledge of Wadi Wadi people, Beveridge was able to adapt and challenge aspects of the British ethnological ideas through which he framed his analysis of Wadi Wadi life. The article explores specifically Beveridge's response to the 1841 Queries Respecting the Human Race. It appears that Beveridge purposefully ignored the questions on Physical Characters and recognised spiritual belief as an integral part of Wadi Wadi daily life.' (Publication abstract)
'What if Australia were to stop farming? At approximately 3% of gross domestic product, the removal of agriculture from the economy would be a significant hit. It would affect our balance of payments — 60% of agricultural produce is exported and it contributes 13% of Australia’s export revenue.' (Introduction)
