M5- Learner Manual
3. Relationship with the Land
Aboriginal Land Management Practices
Aboriginal peoples consciously and deliberately managed and modified the land for their own means. Fire was well understood and skilfully used. They knew how it would burn, how hot, in which direction and when it would peter out. Through this intricate understanding of the use of fire and its effects, they created a variety of environments. These include areas of grass lands, scrublands, treed areas (managing different types of forests – Mallee, low open woodland, tall forests) some with and some without understorey (low growing plants) depending on the plants that grew there and their intended purposes. This created a mosaic patterning. This gave them control over where, when and how particular animals would shelter, feed, breed, etc. and when and how particular plants would grow, bear fruit and be harvested.
These fires were mostly cool burn, trickle fires. Cool fires are essentially small patches of fire carried out in mild conditions such as cool mornings or late afternoons in late autumn and/or early winter when there is little breeze. This made the likelihood of wild uncontrollable bushfires less likely and therefore less frequent. It also enabled ease of movement through country.
It has been understood by science for some time, that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples altered the composition of the flora in Australia (the rise of Eucalyptus spp. over the previous dominant species; Casuarina spp.), by their use of fire. This evidence suggests that there was a period, tens of thousands of years ago, when some fires did burn as hotter fires and wildfires. It is not known whether this was deliberate or not.
Weather events were closely followed. Attention had to be focused on elements such as wind speed and direction, clouds and rain types, as each event is linked to different behaviours of plants and animals. This attention to the weather gave important indications for the best time for hunting and collecting different plants for food, medicine and for making useful items from plant and animal-based sources such as clothing, baskets, tools and weapons.
The four seasons that we refer to today, are a European description of the annual change in conditions that coincide with the position of the sun. These being the summer and winter solstice marking the sun’s highest and lowest point in the sky and the midpoint between each solstice; the spring and autumn equinox. We all know that these descriptions are often out of sync with what actually occurs in this land. The four seasons are metered out evenly, with the calendar dates announcing the start and end of each of these seasons:
Summer 1st December
Autumn 1st March
Winter 1st June
Spring 1st September
Traditionally, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s understanding of the seasons often identifies more than four seasons, including nested mini seasons within a season. This varies with the different climatic regions of the country. These seasons are not necessarily of the same length and ebb and flow from year to year. Often the nature and length of these seasons would also indicate how the following season might unfold.
The Gooniyandi seasons calendar represents a wealth of Indigenous ecological knowledge. The development of the calendar was driven by a community desire to document seasonal-specific knowledge of the Margaret and Fitzroy Rivers in the Kimberley region, including the environmental indicators that act as cues for bush tucker collection.
Aboriginal calendar examples may be viewed in the Supplementary Resources for this Block.
In recent years there have been some people writing about the land management practices of Australia’s first peoples.
Interpretations of early colonial artists were thought to be idealised images that were made to look more like England. Reviewing early accounts of observations has suggested that those artists (the photojournalists of the time), painted quite accurate scenes.
Some of these accounts are amongst the arguments put forward in publications such as Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe (2018) and The Biggest Estate on Earth by Bill Gammage (2011), which propose a very different picture. These authors have revisited early writings and paintings and argue that the information in these had been interpreted to fit in with official histories, rather than taken as accurate observations, such as in works by John Lycett, John Glover, Eugene von Guérard and many others.
You can view some examples of these early landscape paintings at the following sites:
https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/essay/joseph-lycett-the-pastoral-landscape-in-early-colonial-australia/
In his book Dark Emu, Bruce Pascoe (a senior Aboriginal historian and storyteller) argues that Aboriginal people right across the continent were raising crops and domesticating plants through practices such as sowing, harvesting, irrigating and then storing their harvest. These are not the practices of hunter-gatherers. Pascoe challenges the use of the ‘hunter-gatherer’ tag in relation to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
A great deal of evidence comes from the early records and diaries of the settlers and explorers, telling it as they saw and experienced it. When Major Thomas Mitchell first came to the Port Phillip district in Victoria (1836) he was struck by how Australia’s Indigenous peoples had shaped the land and that how much some of the landscape resembled Europe.
The world of the Australians was as moulded by conscious human action as were the hedgerow fields of England. If one used the plough and the iron axe to shape their world, the other used fire and the stone axe.
Recent archaeological assessments have uncovered basic farming practices of some Indigenous groups in Victoria. The Gunditjmara people, engineered and constructed a sophisticated system in the Lake Condah region. This system was used to farm huge quantities of eel, enough to feed up to 10,000 people. According to archaeologist, Heather Builth:
The Gunditjmara weren’t just catching eels, their whole society was based around eels…The villages associated with the Lake Condah fish farm…were actually more like company towns, with dwellings built to house the people who worked the farms. It’s like you have your council houses for the factory. That’s what was going on here.
There is also evidence of small-scale damming of rivers, waterways management, creating fish traps.
The colonial belief was that Aboriginal peoples did not ever build dwellings but wandered through the landscape as nomads. James Dawson, a Victorian pastoralist from the 1800’s reported:
the residences were formed with a frame of stouts limbs, tall enough for a person to stand upright in and that this dome-shaped frame was clad in grass and covered over with turf, “like slates on a roof”. He is at pains to demonstrate that these were strong and comfortable abodes...
These early accounts describe what they saw as ‘carefully managed parklands’ and like a ‘gentleman's estate’ with ‘obviously managed pathways’. It was clear to them that the way the vegetation was tended was purposeful and displayed a sophisticated understanding.
Bill Gammage discusses his book ‘The biggest Estate on Earth’ in the following Youtube video:
Observation over millennia gave Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander peoples vital information. Aboriginal peoples’ land management practices show us that Country is ‘read’ to indicate when and how things will occur. The way that birds behave, the timing and abundance (or lack) of flowering of certain plants, the way the stars appear etc. are all used to predict other events that indicate timing, abundance and enabling planning and management working in sympathy with the seasons and cycles of wet/ dry, flowering and fruiting, breeding cycles of fauna. This all ensured that populations for future hunting/ harvest etc. were understood to sustain the human population. These practices were also linked to spiritual and kinship obligations.
This gentle relationship with Country is being taken up by some modern ecologists through joint management projects and other caring for country initiatives. Modern day advantages include a reduction of out-of-control bushfires and the ‘reading’ of the elements and other signals from the land itself.
Non-Indigenous Land Management Practices
Early settlers did not necessarily understand what they saw when arriving in Australia. As the land management practices were so very different to those in Europe, they were mostly overlooked.
Australia has not seen volcanic activity in recent times and missed major glaciations in the last ice age (only the mountains of Tasmania, some of south-eastern Australia and New Guinea were covered in ice). These are two most important mechanisms for forming soil.
This limited formation of new soil is why Australia is referred to as an ‘old continent’. The most recent soil forming processes were about 15,000 years ago (ice age) but other areas have not had any of these soil forming processes for up to 600 million years.
In 18th century Europe fire was to be feared, though it was also used to clear the land for grazing animals with hard hooves for wool and meat production and to ‘tame’ and ‘conquer’ the wild. They also cleared the land by mechanical means, felling old growth, ripping smaller trees and shrubs wholly out – roots and all. This left the soil open to erosion by wind and water.
They then stocked the land with hooved animals that were previously unseen in this country. These herds and flocks have compacted soils, destroying soil structure, and increasing run-off and nutrient levels in the waterways. Many of these practices continue today and have a negative environmental impact. This of course, also obliterated the subtle land management practices of the Indigenous peoples. Thankfully, modern farming displays a greater awareness of impacts on the land and practices are increasingly more environmentally sustainable.
European settlers came from a very different environment. Their soils were deep, formed by volcanic and glacial activity (processes which are still occurring in many places around the world) They carried on with what they knew and found that it often didn’t work, so they moved on to further areas to see if they could make it work there.
In a sense, managing the land was, and is, about progress, economic growth and production for maintaining a population that is ever increasing. This extends to global economic advancement, with practices such as exporting produce and mining.
Both underground and open cut mines devastate landscapes leaving behind, toxic by-products (gasses, mineral rich slag heaps, waste ponds) that frequently seep into waterways and other adjacent lands. Fracking practices have drained water bodies and creeks due to fractured riverbeds. The water often turns up downstream with toxic levels of minerals that cannot sustain life. Governments and mining companies still seek unlimited access to these natural resources.
Water courses have had their flows redirected to fit with planning for the built environment. Hard surfaces (roads etc.) have increased runoff and increased nutrient levels.
These environmentally damaging practices are supported by us through our daily use of roads, transport, foods that are produced and trucked in, water that instantly flows every time we turn a tap, gas and electricity to power our homes and cook our food, etc. It’s impossible to scale it back to the sustainable practices in use before 1788 due to much larger human populations.
Consider the following question in preparation for your weekly Q&A with your trainer:
With the devastating bush fires of 2019/2020 that ravaged so much country there has been more attention focussing on environmental land management practices of Australia’s First Nation’s people.
What are some examples of those traditional land management practices?
Conflicting Values
These very different cultures with sets of land values obviously clash. To those of 18th century European value set, Australia was an untapped resource that was not being used. They saw no ‘progress’ as they understood it. There were dangerous creatures that needed to be eradicated or controlled and pest animals that ate their crops (e.g., kangaroos) The land needed to be owned and managed for economic purposes and fenced to define boundaries and keep stock in, while keeping people and nature out.
For Aboriginal groups, this ‘progress’ restricted their movement through country and created barriers to other related nation groups with whom they previously traded and interacted. It halted or hindered their ability to tend country and honour cultural obligation. Some areas were left to overgrow and become a fire hazard while other areas were utterly overtaken.
Native Title
Native Title comes with conflicts and limitations as it does not grant legal ownership of lands and waters. It instead recognises the pre-existing rights of First Nations peoples. This has created difficulties when making Native Title claims, as claimant groups are expected to show evidence of continued connection to country, cultural or traditional practices that are relatively unbroken. This process can take many years and cost a substantial amount of money to complete. When Native Title is determined not all rights are automatically granted.
Under Native Title, commercial rights are generally not recognised. There are no rights to minerals, gas, etc. that might be found on their lands. Native Title also does not grant the ability to veto mining projects. Instead, they must advocate and negotiate with mining companies to protect their lands, especially sites of cultural significance such as sacred sites. The rights of pastoralists, federal government, areas of public works like roads, schools or hospitals and private owners also override Native Title.
Native Title rights can be extinguished, where rights are no longer able to be exercised in the claimed area. Once extinguished, these rights are very seldom reinstated.
There is no protection for Native Title holders if governments make amendments to legislation. However, the Native Title Legislation Amendment Act 2021 (the Amendment Act) extends the areas in which historical extinguishment may be disregarded to include areas of national, state or territory parks where there is agreement with the relevant government party. This will expand the areas where native title can be recognised.