Thursday, February 25, 2010
A different country
Fire has cleared out this section of scrub, but also opened native seeds lying on the ground.
I’m reading Mulvaney and Kaminga’s Prehistory of Australia (1999) and getting a really vivid image of how the country would have looked before European settlement, and in particular how vegetated the countryside and deserts were before being wiped out by livestock. This country of grasslands and forests, managed by Aboriginal people with fire. Much easier to walk around in than the scrub blocks of my childhood, travel corridors were burned, ports and landings were burned out of dense bush, open woodland was the norm. Fire kept the land clean, fulfilled ancestral obligations and encouraged the regrowth of edible plants (as well as the flushing out of moveable food). It was (and still is) fun to play with. Small fires protected people from devastating ones. The native vegetation has adjusted to it.
It was a different country. It was a cultural landscape. It must have been beautiful. I can almost see it out of the corner of my eye as I ride around the city…
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