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  • From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] Book reference: The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia by Bill Gammage
  • Date: Mon, 05 Dec 2011 11:20:03 -0500


http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/the-first-farmers-20110930-1l1gv.html
Joseph Lycett's painting, Aborigines Using Fire to Hunt Kangaroos
(c.1817), depicts fire burning away from trees to a grassy area,
driving kangaroos to the hunters' spears. By shaping the land carefully
for grazing animals, the Aborigines paved the way for pastoral
occupation. ''The more carefully they made the land, the more likely
settlers were to take it,'' he writes. ''The Dreaming taught why the
world must be maintained; the land taught how. One made land care
compulsory, the other made it rewarding.'' Charles Darwin called indigenous Australians ''harmless savages wandering about without knowing where they shall sleep at night and gaining their livelihood by hunting in the woods''. Gammage believes we have not learned enough from them: ''Europeans defined civilisation as being like them. They thought Aborigines didn't know anything.'' He writes: ''We have a continent to learn … we must begin to understand our country. If we succeed, one day we might become Australian.'' The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia by Bill Gammage (Allen & Unwin, $49.99). Read more:
http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/the-first-farmers-20110930-1l1gv.html#ixzz1ffXmnbkT



  • [permaculture] Book reference: The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia by Bill Gammage, Lawrence F. London, Jr., 12/05/2011

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