In the Kimberley men wrote of country abounding 'in every description of game' – fish, birds, animals and reptiles – and in 1921 an upper Darling and Paroo pioneer recalled with admiration
the condition of the country, the growth of the trees and bushes, such as sheoaks, pines, and acacias and a score of other kinds of trees that bushfires always destroy were, when the white man arrived, flourishing in the perfection of beauty and health . . . Encounter Bay [SA] and neighbourhood was a striking example of the care exercised by the original inhabitants to preserve the plant life, and incidentally the animal life. The country was clothed with beauty to the very margin of the sea. The numerous ti-tree swamps were a very aviary of bird life. Much of this is gone now by the white man's destroying hand in the march of civilisation . . . I think it may be stated to the credit of the Australian savage that such [management] was the case over most of the continent when the white man assumed possession.⁴
4. Simpson Newland, 'Annual Address', Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia, South Australian Branch, 22, 1921, p. 3.
"Country: Future Fire, Future Farming" - Bill Gammage and Bruce Pascoe