People & destruction

by Robbo Bennetts

In the rush to embrace indigenous culture, some commentators seem to disregard important evidence by giving the impression that - since their arrival in Australia - the aboriginal people lived in harmony with the natural environment.

According to this view, the aborigines were custodians of the natural environment, and nurtured the land in accordance with spiritually-reinforced principles of land management. Admittedly,

- aboriginal hunting may have contributed to the decline of the megafauna
- aboriginal firestick farming directly assisted the retreat of fire-sensitive rainforest species and their replacement with fire-resistant species like eucalypts, and
- aboriginal introduction of the dingo had a detrimental impact on other fauna.

But overall aboriginal land practices are seen as conserving the natural order through the millenia.

This all seems very reasonable, and has in fact become the new orthodoxy.

Although the spiritual connection of traditional aboriginal culture with the land cannot be denied, there is persuasive evidence that the aborigines changed the Australian landscape almost beyond recognition.

To begin with, just what were the megafuana? They were one of the most incredible array of creatures that has been assembled anywhere on Earth. Diprotodon optatum, the largest marsupial ever, was the size of a rhinoceros. There was the "marsupial lion," a ferocious predator, the size of a big cat. There was the carnivorous giant rat-kangaroo. An echidna as big as a sheep. The ginormous genyornis, a flightless bird, bigger than an emu. A goanna-like carnivore, 8 metres long and weighing 600kg. A snake, 8 metres long and 900mm (3 feet) in diameter. A tortoise, the size of a Volkswagen.

Perish the thought that humans had anything to do with their extinction!

In fact, humans had everything to do with it if, like me, you accept Tim Flannery's view in The future eaters. Flannery argues a case that that the aborigines were actually key agents in this, one of the world's great mass extinctions. Let me quote him at length:

What can be said in summary then, about the timing of the extinction of Australia's megafauna? I must admit that we have little idea of precisely when it happened, but there is growing evidence that it occurred before 35 000 years ago, at least in southern Australia. Furthermore, at present we have no clear evidence about the nature of interaction between humans and megafauna, for we have no kill sites and very few sites where there is possible evidence for humans and megafauna coexisting. This might indicate, as some researchers suggest, that humans and megafauna avoided each other. But it is just as likely to have resulted from a human-caused extinction event like that of the moa in New Zealand, which was so rapid that it has left virtually no trace, more than 35 000 years after the event …… All of this suggests that a predator, rather than a change in climate, was responsible for the extinctions …

I feel that the weight of evidence is now clearly in favour of a very rapid, human-caused extinction for the Australian megafauna. Furthermore, the pattern of extinction seen in New Zealand and on other Pacific islands in the past few millenia are good models for the events that occurred in Australia more than 35 000 years before (Flannery pp206-7).

It is clear that dingoes had nothing to do with the extinction of species that disappeared thousands of years before the arrival of dingoes. Dingoes may have inspired wombats to invent burrows, but they were only responsible for the disappearance of 3 species on the mainland (Flannery p276), and that was at least 30,000 years after the extinction of up to 85% of our larger fauna.

Because all things are connected, the disappearance of the herbivorous megafauna appears to have had other impacts. Again, according to Flannery, one such impact was indeed the "ravages of gigantic uncontrolled bushfire." This is what he says:

Without herbivores to consume dead plant matter, fire can play an enlarged role as a consumer of plants … (Flannery p231).

The situation can be summarised thus. Large herbivores return nutrients to the soil quickly and with a bonus. Fire returns nutrients to the soil only after a long period — and then at a considerable loss. As a result, fire and poor soils act to promote each other. Together, they can produce an ecosystem which is spiralling ever downwards as nutrients become fewer while fires become more important (Flannery p233).

No doubt, fire stick farming was a management tool which was needed partly to reduce the danger of wildfire, but it would appear that fire stick farming gradually depleted the soil in the same way that wildfire did.

On balance, it seems plausible that hunting, human use of fire, soil depletion, climate change and vegetation change were all part of the same matrix which both:

- contributed to the rapid disappearance of the megafauna after the arrival of the first humans, and/or
- increased aridity within the continent.

Of course not everyone agrees with Flannery, inside or outside the scientific community. Just check the ABC website. The view that the aborigines lived in harmony with the environment has, in fact, become accepted dogma. The belief persists that there is little evidence to suggest that Aboriginal people fundamentally altered the environment or disturbed the natural ability of ecological systems to flourish.

However, the evidence is mounting. A group of researchers recently employed amino acid racemization, accelerator mass spectometry and other dating techniques to generate data which supports their postulation that genyornis (and in all probability the rest of Australian megafauna) disappeared suddenly 50,000 years ago - about the same time that humans arrived in Australia - as a result of human impact and not climate (Miller et al. p205).

Back to top

There is persuasive evidence that the aboriginal people significantly contributed to fundamental alteration of the environment. Consequently, it would appear both naive and simplistic to make generalisations which give the opposite impression.

At best, I think it is reasonable to argue that - at specific times during their occupation of Australia (e.g. between the introduction of the dingo and European settlement) - the aborigines lived in relative stability with the environment that they co-adapted with. The slow rate of social and technological change within aboriginal society reinforces this sense of stasis.

But what is the total picture?

Firstly, humans have a frightening capacity for destruction. Humans everywhere have dramatically impacted on natural environments from the moment of their arrival. We are the future eaters. Europeans in Australia have raped and pillaged the natural environment. We are still doing it. Almost 20 billion trees, to take just one example, have been removed from our continent in the last 211 years, and trees are still being removed in greater numbers than they are being planted (The Age 7/8/99).

Even worse, the "right" to rape and pillage our environment was won by violent dispossession of the aborigines, not only of their land but also of their culture. This is graphically illustrated by the history of European settlement in Tasmania, which was possibly the world’s most successful attempt at genocide. There were massacres on a scale greater and more horrendous than Martin Bryant's rampage. Melbourne's "founding father," John Batman, led a massacre of 30 aboriginal men, women and children. Aborigines were allegedly shot for dog meat. An aboriginal woman was shot during childbirth (Robinson and York, pp22-3). (This incident was recalled in the Richard Flanagan’s novel Death of a River Guide.)

The pattern was repeated around Australia. The extent to which aboriginal communities survived and remained connected to the land is a testimony to both the depth of their spirituality and their human endurance.

For far too long, aborigines were merely a footnote in official history. For far too long, far too many Anglo-Australians have not properly appreciated aboriginal culture. However, redressing the balance should not entail idealising aboriginal culture in the same woolly way that old hippies like me idealised Eastern culture in the 70s. Nor should it be subject to a new self-promoting evangelism evident elsewhere. The interests of genuine reconciliation are not served by perpetuating half-truths, no matter how innocently or well-intentioned.

As the Hindus say, reality has many sides. Let’s recognise the brilliance and baggage in all cultures, and accept our individual and collective responsibility to repair the damage to our land, from our backyards in Fitzroy to the back paddocks of Fitzroy Crossing. Let's search native perspectives on nature with Knudtson and Suzuki "to find a morally responsible ‘sacred ecology’ to complement our conveniently human-centered, ‘value-free’ secular and scientific one" (Knudtson and Suzuki p161).

References

Flannery, T. 1994 The Future Eaters, Reed Books, Victoria

Knudtson, P. & Suzuki, D. 1992 Wisdom of the Elders, Allen & Unwin, NSW

Miller, C. 7/8/99 "Sisters going for green in the Olympic Landcare push", The Age, Melbourne

Miller, G.H. et al. 8/1/1999 "Pleistocene extinction of Genyornis newtoni: Human impact on Australian megafauna", Science Vol. 283, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington DC

Robinson, F. & York, B. (ed.) 1977 The Black Resistance, Widescope, Victoria

This article is based on an article of the same title that was first published in the November 1999 edition of Journeys.

Back to top