Week Five Response

The following is a response to the Question 4. According to Mitchell, what impact were settlers having upon the environment.

Writing in 1848, Thomas Livingston Mitchell gives the aborigines great credit for surviving and adapting to their environment in order to survive, and argues that the intrusion of the white man will cause the extirpation of the aborigine. Mitchell points out the many success and positive affects aboriginals have had on their environment through having and active role in its care. He states that the white man has no regard or care for how things have been done successfully in the past and that this together with the way in which they now treat the environment will lead to the destruction of the aboriginal race.  The techniques and in particular the raising of European animals such as cattle are cited as major disruptions to their way of life.

Mitchell is extremely complementary of the way the aboriginals can survive conditions that to the European eye seem harsh and challenging. He disagrees with them being the lowliest in scale instead describing them as being “superior in penetration and judgement”. Mitchell highlights their ability to adjust to life with few resources as the key to their survival.  Explaining how the resources of the natives are economised can only be learned by “an extensive acquaintance” with the land. The technique that he particularly notes is that of deliberate burning of land in order to take an active role the shaping of the landscape. This is done he notices in order for the aboriginal to have ready access to a thriving kangaroo population for food. By managing the clearing of forest known as fire stick farming the aboriginals ensure the growth of good young grass on which the kangaroos rely on primarily for food, thus ensuring a healthy population that can then be hunted.

Mitchell is also highly critical of the way that white men have come into this pre existing way of life and completely disregarded it. The white men Mitchell argues have no concept of the way the fire stick farming helps to maintain the clear planes that they have so readily exploited for the use of their own cattle. It is this failure to recognise the importance of this treatment that he attributes to the cause of the regrowth of young saplings. “thick forests of young trees, where, formerly a man might gallop without impediment, and see whole miles before him.” Mitchell also believes that fire is no longer utilised due to its undesirability in the fenced climate of cattle farming. Mitchell dams this lack of vision and prophesises that the lack of understanding on this issue as well as the push for greater profits in cattle farming, will inevitability lead to the devastation of aborigines and there way of life. “ silently, but surely, that extirpation of aborigines is going forward in grazing districts, even where protectors of aborigines have been most active”.  Mitchell concludes with the ominous warning and lament that protection policies are failing and that forces far more sinister are already causing the extinction the aboriginals of Van Diemen’s land.



A drawing by Henry Brinton depicting An Aboriginal hunting kangaroos. kangaroo was a primary source of food for the aboriginal people. The method of fire stick farming was used as a means to encourage the growth of this essential food source. http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/pictures/gid/slv-pic-aaa08095/1/pi005361