Article ID: CBB515062393

Fire in the Forests? Exploring the Human-Ecological History of Australia's First Frontier (2019)

unapi

In his landmark book The Biggest Estate on Earth, historian Bill Gammage argues that before the arrival of white settlers, the whole Australian continent was a manicured cultural landscape, shaped and maintained by precise, deliberate and repeated fires. In Aboriginal hands, fire made the entire country 'beautiful and comfortable', and so Australia was one vast 'estate', a giant 'park', a series of 'farms without fences'. These words imply that Aboriginal rights to land are closely tied to universal fire regimes. Gammage's book has been well-received and celebrated. But it has also polarised debates on fire regimes, especially the extent to which fire really did shape every corner of the continent, and the related assertion that contemporary ecologies are the result of the cessation of fire since 1788.This paper integrates ethnographic history and archaeology with geography, soil science and ecology in order to set Gammage's model against a particular ecological zone - the dense River-flat Forests that once lined Dyarubbin, the Hawkesbury-Nepean River in New South Wales, Australia. Dyarubbin was occupied by Aboriginal people for perhaps 50,000 years, and from 1794 it became the site of the first major settler farming frontier. Paying attention to the local and the particular, this paper asks: was this fiercely contested country a tidy mosaic of open forests, water and grasslands created by cultural fire? Was Aboriginal burning here extensive or limited? What aspects of human and ecological history might be obscured by the universalising model in which cultural fire dominates above all other factors? Did the Aboriginal landscape in turn shape the settler one, and what were the consequences for land and people?

...More
Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB515062393/

Similar Citations

Article Freschet, Grégoire T.; östlund, Lars; Kichenin, Emilie; Wardle, David A.; (2014)
Aboveground and Belowground Legacies of Native Sami Land Use on Boreal Forest in Northern Sweden 100 Years after Abandonment (/isis/citation/CBB001421440/)

Book Johnson, Christopher; Govatski, David; (2013)
Forests for the People: The Story of America's Eastern National Forests (/isis/citation/CBB001420292/)

Article Geetashree Singh; (2023)
Science in the forest management in colonial Assam (1826–1947) (/isis/citation/CBB942938942/)

Article Simon Pooley; (January 2018)
Fire, Smoke, and Expertise in South Africa’s Grasslands (/isis/citation/CBB842265110/)

Article Duane W. Hamacher; Robert S. Fuller; Trevor M. Leaman; David Bosun; (2020)
Solstice and solar position observations in Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander traditions (/isis/citation/CBB816013968/)

Article Trevor M. Leaman; Duane W. Hamacher; (2018)
A Methodology for Testing Horizon Astronomy in Australian Aboriginal Cultural Sites: A Case Study (/isis/citation/CBB683468213/)

Book Cary, Geoffrey; Dovers, Stephen; Lindenmayer, David; (2003)
Australia Burning: Fire Ecology, Policy and Management Issues (/isis/citation/CBB000502370/)

Book Bennett, Judith A.; (2000)
Pacific Forests: A History of Resource Control and Contest in Solomon Islands, c. 1800-1997 (/isis/citation/CBB000100355/)

Book Mathews, Andrew S.; (2011)
Instituting Nature: Authority, Expertise, and Power in Mexican Forests (/isis/citation/CBB001221111/)

Book Ryan C. Edwards; (2021)
A Carceral Ecology: Ushuaia and the History of Landscape and Punishment in Argentina (/isis/citation/CBB265022827/)

Book Myllyntaus, Timo; Saikku, Mikko; (2001)
Encountering the Past in Nature, Essays in Environmental History (/isis/citation/CBB000100629/)

Book MacDowell, Laurel Sefton; (2012)
An Environmental History of Canada (/isis/citation/CBB001422385/)

Book Thomas Miller Klubock; (2014)
La Frontera: Forests and Ecological Conflict in Chile's Frontier Territory (/isis/citation/CBB323338093/)

Article Libby Robin; Jon C. Day; (2020)
Maxwell Frank Cooper Day 1915–2017 (/isis/citation/CBB742627209/)

Article Stambaugh, Michael C.; Guyette, Richard P.; Marschall, Joseph; (2013)
Fire History in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma (/isis/citation/CBB001421934/)

Article Hercock, Marion; (2003)
Masters and Servants: The Contrasting Roles of Scientists in Island Management (/isis/citation/CBB000651027/)

Book Bruce Pascoe; Bill Gammage; Margo Neale; (2021)
First Knowledges Country: Future Fire, Future Farming (/isis/citation/CBB684770253/)

Book Matthew Colloff; (2014)
Flooded Forest and Desert Creek: Ecology and History of the River Red Gum (/isis/citation/CBB535221272/)

Authors & Contributors
Leaman, Trevor M.
Hamacher, Duane W.
Margo Neale
Edwards, Ryan Christopher
Day, Jon C.
Matthew Colloff
Concepts
Forests and forestry
Ecology
Natural resource management
Indigenous peoples; indigeneity
Environmental history
Land settlement
Time Periods
20th century
19th century
18th century
21st century
20th century, late
20th century, early
Places
Australia
United States
Ushuaia (Argentina)
Torres Strait
Ohio (U.S.)
Oklahoma (U.S.)
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment