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Across Australia, early Europeans commented again and again that the land looked like a park. With extensive grassy patches and pathways, open woodlands and abundant wildlife, it evoked a country estate in England.
Bill Gammage has discovered this was because Aboriginal people managed the land in a far more systematic and scientific fashion than we have ever realised. For over a decade, Gammage has examined written and visual records of the Australian landscape. He has uncovered an extraordinarily complex system of land management using fire and the life cycles of native plants to ensure plentiful wildlife and plant foods throughout the year. We know Aboriginal people spent far less time and effort than Europeans in securing food and shelter, and now we know how they did it.
With details of land-management strategies from around Australia, The Biggest Estate on Earth rewrites the history of this continent, with huge implications for us today. Once Aboriginal people were no longer able to tend their country, it became overgrown and vulnerable to the hugely damaging bushfires we now experience. And what we think of as virgin bush in a national park is nothing of the kind.
Introduction: The Australian estate
1. Curious landscapes
2. Canvas of a continent. Why was Aboriginal land management possible?
3. The nature of Australia
4. Heaven on earth
5. Country. How was land managed?
6. The closest ally
7. Associations
8. Templates
9. A capital tour
10. Farms without fences Invasion
11. Becoming Australian
Appendix 1: Science, history and landscape
Appendix 2: Current botanical names for plants named with capitals in the text
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Bill Gammage is the author of The Broken Years: Australian Soldiers in the Great War.
