How Aborigines made Australia

At the time of European settlement in 1788, Australia’s landscape was not natural, but made. Aborigines made it, argues Adjunct Professor Bill Gammage.

In an Australian Academy of Science public lecture entitled The biggest estate on earth: Aboriginal land management, Professor Gammage asserts that Australia was a single estate and not an untamed wilderness as newcomers thought.

He describes how Aborigines used fire to affect the distribution of plants, and plant distribution to lure animals.

“Giving plants and animals ideal conditions made them abundant and carefully distributing their habitats made them convenient and predictable,” explains Professor Gammage.

“This was possible because most Australian plants tolerate fire, and because in Australia the only large predators to disturb prey are people.”

Tomorrow’s lecture will kick off the Academy’s 2012 public lecture series on Caring for the Australian countryside: lessons from the past and present. The series will examine sustainable communities, mining, agriculture, culture and environment in country Australia.