by Bill Gammage
it has always been the custom of the Natives to fire the country during the summer season for a variety of purposes, first to assist them in hunting, it also clears the country of underwood, which if not occasionally burnt, would become an impenetrable jungle, infested with snakes and reptiles . . . I consider it an advantage that portions of the country should be burnt every year, provided it is not done till late in the summer, the feed is always better where the dead grass has been previously burnt off.101102
In half of Tasmania fire replaced rainforest with other plant communities. To do this Tasmanians probably burnt against the country more than anywhere in mainland Australia. They burnt grass every 1–3 years, open forest every 3–5 years, wet forest rarely. They needed hot fire to burn back wet forests and cut roads and clearings through them, which may be why Buttongrass is common. Cool fire maintained grass and heath patches and plains (pictures 46–8), which even in the wet southwest, between Mt King William and Frenchman’s Cap, commanded ‘an extensive prospect, the large expanse of bare hills to the right, left and front, affording by the absence of wood a great relief to eyes so much habituated to seemingly interminable forests’, and further southwest, ‘charming plains . . . Broken into countless varieties of hill and dale, of floral mead and grassy knoll, of verdant copse or sunny bank . . . description fails me.’103 Grass patches were probably smaller in the southwest, even on the coast (picture 39). The east had less rainforest: typically, grass or woodland valleys and low hills ran between eucalypt ranges (picture 16).104
A rain loop governed 1788 fire programs, high and seasonal in the north, falling to low and uncertain in the Centre, rising in the south to high and seasonal in western Tasmania. Local adjustment was normal, but everywhere fire was a constant duty. Managers regulated fuel, burnt somewhere every season, burnt mostly in summer, burnt early cool fires to protect places and plants, ran later fires into controls, and calibrated fire frequency, timing and intensity to plant and animal cycles. What Dean Yibarbuk says of north-central Arnhem Land was generally true: most fires were small, local and cool, shielding sensitive species but promoting plant foods and perennials, and greatly reducing the risk and impact of uncontrolled fires.105 This preserved a complex biodiversity, and made and maintained similar landscape patterns in vastly different terrains and climates from the Top to Tasmania.
Controlled fire gave people almost limitless burn options. They could burn freely for transient purposes—to smoke out possums, hollow out trees to camp in, fragment bushfires, keep warm on the march, pick up tracks in ash and so on.106 Europeans believed, sometimes correctly, that warriors lit fires to cover retreats or target crops or huts,107 and Eyre stated that people
appear to dread evil spirits . . . They fly about at nights through the air, break down branches of trees, pass simultaneously from one place to another, and attack all natives that come in their way, dragging such as they can after them. Fire appears to have considerable effect in keeping these monsters away, and a native will rarely stir a yard by night, except in moonlight, without carrying a fire-stick.108
Most fire was to make grass. Grassland is pleasant and bountiful, and visibility matters to hunters and gatherers, so people cleared trees and scrub, and burnt old grass to make new (ch 1). In Victoria Hovell reported, ‘The general appearance of the country, together with that of the soil, is rich and beautiful. The grass having apparently been burnt early in the [summer] season, and being now in full seed, is fresh and luxuriant, frequently as high as their heads, and seldom lower than their waists.’109 On Cooper’s Creek in a drought year, Sturt noted, people ‘had fired the grass, and it was now springing up in a bed of the most beautiful green’.110 In New England,
The great heat is sometimes increased by the burning grass, which is generally lighted by the aborigines carrying fire about with them; these fires, when there is a wind, will sometimes burn for days, but if there is no wind, there is almost always a dew at night, which often puts them out. The sight of fires at night is sometimes magnificent, as whole ranges are lighted up by them. They have a great effect on the character of the country, as they burn many of the young trees, and thus prevent the forest from being too thick. All the country, except when very heavily stocked with sheep, is sure to be burnt every two or three years . . . young acacias spring up luxuriantly where the fires have been under the old trees.111112
People burnt grass mainly to promote, protect or restrict plants, or to lure game. Correct fire was ‘a horticultural tool’.113 Latz observed,
the judicious use of fire was, in the past, the single most important aspect of the desert economy. Not only can burning increase the total quantity of plant foods, but it can also reduce the effort required to harvest their products. Fire can also be used to influence the distribution of the food plants and it certainly increases the chance of finding them . . . Although many of the important food plants are encouraged by fire others are not, and the Aborigines’ burning system results in optimum food production from both these plant groups by producing a mosaic of vegetation in different stages of fire recovery.114
Fire or no fire protected flowers and fruit, refreshed and flavoured reed rhizomes, cleared land for ground-feeding birds, and stimulated or exposed grassland plants (ch 10). At Sydney in the winter of 1788, Hunter saw
not less than three or four acres of ground all in a blaze; we then conjectured that these were made for the purpose of clearing the ground of the shrubs and underwood, by which means they might with greater ease get at those roots which appear to be a great part of their subsistence during winter. We had observed that they generally took advantage of windy weather for making such fires, which would of course occasion their spreading over a greater extent of ground.115116
All grazers chase pick. Mitchell recognised that grass to lure game was ‘worked from infancy’.117 West of the Macquarie Sturt found ‘the grass, which had been burnt down, was then springing up most beautifully green, and was relished exceedingly by [our] animals’.118 Kangaroos, George Bennett advised in 1832, ‘like the cattle, frequent those places where the grass, having been recently burnt, they meet with the sweet young herbage’.119 Allan Cunningham found it
a common practice of the Aborigines to fire the country in Dry Seasons particularly where it is wooded & bushy, in order to oblige such Game of the Kang’o Kind to quit their Couch & subject themselves to be spear’d, and the object these people have in View in firing the herbage of clear open tracts is, that as the young Grass grows immediately after such an Ignition, especially should rain succeed these Conflagrations, which often times are very extensive, Kangaroos & Emus are tempted to leave the forest brushes to feed on the undershoots, and thus are likewise exposed to their missile weapons.120
So obvious was the value of burning grass for grazers that settlers imitated it. In Western Australia one wrote, ‘I consider it an advantage that portions of the country should be burnt every year, provided it is not done till late in the summer [because of crops], the feed is always better where the dead grass has been previously burnt off.’121 In New South Wales,
The old withered grasses are usually burnt off in the spring, and often at other periods of the year if you have an extensive run for your stock; and it is astonishing to see how quickly and how luxuriantly the new grasses will push up after these burnings, if a shower of rain should happen to follow them. When judiciously accomplished, they certainly produce most beneficial effects, by destroying all the old grass which the sheep and cattle refuse to eat . . . while they destroy, too, the various broods of insects that nestle about the roots of the grasses.122
Northern graziers still burn off annually, though more for cattle than diversity as in 1788.123
Burning to drive game, rather than lure it, was much less common. People hunted because they were burning, not the reverse (picture 29). JD Lang, Grey, Eyre and Collett Barker all agreed that a hunting fire was organised only when an owner wanted to burn anyway.124 It let loose a dangerous ally;
it had to be timed properly. A Pintupi man said, ‘We would burn areas and hunt while the fire was burning; then we would move on and return to these areas later to collect food from plants that had regenerated and to hunt animals that had moved in to feed.’125 Near Albany (WA) at the end of summer,
the natives burned great tracts to make sure the grass would come up green and sweet with the first rains and to drive out the game for hunting purposes. All the young of the birds that build their nests on the ground were hatched and the young ground rats old enough to run about before these fires were made. When the time was held ripe for the bush fires (man carl) the man carl ceremony was held. This dance was done at night.126
The ‘ripe’ time was the fire season. A Bunbury (WA) settler wrote:
In December, but more particularly in January and February, the natives burn large tracts of country to catch wallabee, or bush kangaroo. For this purpose they generally go in considerable numbers and select a fine and warm day, and . . . fire a portion of thick scrub or grass where they know the animals to live . . . The fires when thus lighted generally proceed spreading and consuming every thing in their progress, and before the coldness and dew of the night repress their fury or intervening barren spots stop their rage, overrun some square miles of surface, and exhibit a splendidly bright spectacle amid the gloom and darkness of the night.127
On the Kimberley coast JRB Love reported:
A month or so after the end of the wet season, which lasts from December till April, the country is smothered beneath a rank growth of grass, up to eight feet high, which dries fast. It is very difficult to walk through it, almost impossible in dense parts. So the men welcome the time when the grass is dry enough to burn. They will decide, from May till July, indeed as long as there is any country left with grass to burn, what spot they will choose for the next burning party. These are exciting expeditions, in which all the men take part. Early on the morning of the burning the men will be seen rubbing and painting their bodies with white clay. Soon after sunrise they will muster, carrying their weapons, and go through a performance that might be called a dance. Then they went off, some to burn, some to hunt.128
In east Arnhem Land in 1946–7, Donald Thomson observed, ‘As soon as the grass begins to dry, the people start to burn it systematically in conjunction with organized hunting drives. The grass is not fired at random but in limited areas always held under control.’129 In March 1788 Hunter stated, ‘they also, when in considerable numbers, set the country on fire for several miles extent; this, we have generally understood, is for the purpose of disturbing such animals as may be within reach of the conflagration; and thereby they have an opportunity of killing many’.130 For all these fires people gathered and danced, so they were planned. Weeks before, people enclosed a chosen location with cool fires, burnt refuges for vulnerable species, set pick fires to bring game into the target area, then kept away to quieten game. While waiting they watched for bushfires, for if one took hold guests and neighbours might ridicule them, and ancestors would take offence.
Francis Barrallier’s description of a hunt in November 1802 conveys how much preparation preceded it:
When the natives assemble together to hunt the kangaroo, they form a circle which contains an area of 1 or 2 miles . . . They usually stand about 30 paces apart . . . holding a handful of lighted bark, they at a given signal set fire to the grass and brush in front of them . . . as the fire progresses they advance forward with their spears in readiness, narrowing the circle and making as much noise as possible . . . The kangaroos, which are thus shut into that circle, burn their feet in jumping on every side to get away, and are compelled to retire within the circle until the fire attacks them.131
In open country fire circles might initially enclose 40–50 kilometres. In 1932 people purposely avoided burning a large area, waited for the right wind, then two lines slowly walked apart, firing Spinifex until they had a wide horseshoe of flame burning into the wind. The flames closed in slowly, allowing plenty of time to capture fleeing animals and reptiles.132 That timing the fire rather than hunting was central is also evidenced by the great efforts people across Australia made to hunt in the off-fire season with nets of hundreds of metres and brush fences kilometres long.133134
People also burnt to make walking easier (pictures 34–5, 42, 55). This ranged from clearing grass ahead to making roads or tracks through forest, scrub, mangroves or reeds.135 Especially in wet country, clearways took sustained skill to make and maintain, yet they braided the land, criss-crossing rainforest, following ridges and water, marking boundaries. In southern Australia, around most of Tasmania, and probably elsewhere, was ‘a belt of open country without large timber, running parallel with the coast and varying in width from a quarter to one, or one and a half, miles’.136 Hunter saw fires ‘intended to clear that part of the country through which they have frequent occasion to travel, of the brush or underwood, from which they, being naked, suffer very great inconvenience’.137 Tasmanians reached their ochre mines by well-defined roads and chains of plains.138 Charles Hall recalled miles of roads he saw through the Grampians to the Wannon and on to the Glenelg (Vic).139 In north Queensland tracks ‘on the coastal side of the main range are lit from the bottom and move up the slope, undoubtedly burning the rainforest margins; on the inland side of the coastal range they are lit from the top of the hill and move down’.140 John Blay has mapped in detail a road from the coast south of Twofold Bay (NSW) to the Snowy Mountains, with branches to Gippsland and the western plains.141 Mountain people often went to the coast in winter and coastal people to the mountains in summer (ch 5), except perhaps in Mountain Ash country.
Newcomers commonly ‘discovered’ by following roads, but rarely noted them. Oxley wrote of dense mallee south of the Lachlan,
these scrubs we avoided, by keeping close along the base of Peel’s range, where the country had been lately burnt. It is somewhat singular that those scrubs and brushes seldom if ever extend to the immediate base of the hills: [even though] the washings from them rendered the soil somewhat better for two or three hundred yards.142
In the vast, flammable Murray reedbeds Mitchell puzzled at ‘one remarkable difference between this river and the Murrumbidgee . . . in the latter, even where reeds most prevailed, a certain space near the bank remained tolerably clear: whereas, on this river, the reeds grew most thickly and closely on its immediate banks’.143 He missed the precision burning Sturt saw on the Murray: ‘narrow lanes, or openings which the Natives had burnt, the reeds forming an arch over our heads and growing to the heighth of eighteen or twenty feet’, and ‘reeds, through which we could not have pushed but for the narrow lanes made in them by the Natives’.144 On the Gordon (Tas) Sharland
entered a very thick scrub . . . cut through this to an open point, which had been burnt; and then followed a small marsh [Painters Plain], where there was only low scrub; but on each side the same impervious scrub continued . . . We followed the said Marsh and some burnt ground until it brought us out to a bare hill where a fire had been made by the blacks; and I am inclined to suppose that the track I have followed is that which they pursue.145
Scrub has now locked up this country, and fit walkers take days longer than early Europeans to walk it. How much grass and how little undergrowth there was in 1788 manifests persistent and purposeful burning. The spread of scrub since is among Australia’s most visible but least recognised landscape changes.146
Fire could signal. In open country it could alert watchers 100 miles away.147 People lit fires to announce something of interest or to declare their lawful intrusion. Sometimes they burnt large areas, but ideally they lit small, carefully placed patches.148 A line of smokes showed their direction and so their destination, purpose and identity. Less or more precise fires and light or dark smoke sent different messages. Smoke was like a party phone: everyone knew what the neighbours were doing. Barrallier wrote in 1802, ‘I perceived fires in several places, and Bungin told me that it was a chief calle
d Canambaigle with his tribe, who were hunting, and had on that very day set the country on fire’, and a month later, ‘I saw the country a mass of flames towards the north-east, at about 5 miles from us, near the mountains. Gogy told me it was Goondel, who with his party was hunting bandicoots, lizards, snakes, kangaroo rats etc.’149 In the 1940s three desert men
held urgent conferences and pointed excitedly to the smokes . . . ‘That one—might belong to half-caste feller—maybe—go out with one camella to get puppy-dawg scalp. ’Nother one—thataway.’ He pointed directly south. ‘Maybe Ernabella men go back across desert, and walkabout little while in rocky country, spear kangaroo-euro.’ He then indicated a line of smokes extending for several miles. ‘Maybe someone come up tonight from Petermann country—maybe we see ’em.’150
Fire killed insects. In 1802 Peron thought it worth remark if he met insects in number, and several times went into forests at Parramatta
into which the English had not yet gone with either implement or fire, and we observed that the insects are much less common there than in the areas already cleared by Europeans. This odd situation seemed to us to arise from the natives’ practice of setting fire to the forests, thereby destroying a vast number of insect eggs and larvae and even fully developed insects.151
In Jervis Bay (NSW) Dumont D’Urville concluded, ‘the plants and insects hardly came up to the expectations raised by the first sight of these beautiful places. I would say that the scarcity of both must be due in great part to the frequent burning off carried out by the natives.’152 At Albany (WA) Quoy noted regretfully, ‘Either the season was not sufficiently advanced for insects, or this place contains very few; we added almost none to our collections.’153 ‘The annual burnings by the natives for their hunting purposes have destroyed not merely the impeding brushwood, but also every kind of annoying insects and injurious reptiles,’ Menge observed near Adelaide.154 ‘Reptiles and insects . . . are scarce, on account of the continual fires the natives use in their perpetual hunt for food,’ Giles stated in the west MacDonnells.155 Curr noted that few locusts, caterpillars, ants and moths meant a ‘comparative scarcity of insectivorous birds and birds of prey’.156