General News
27 July, 2024
Barry's corner
The earliest days of this colony and our history do not show us in a good light.
Many of the decisions made by the administrations based in London and Sydney were either wrong or ignored by the people searching for land across Australia or trying to make a lot of money from ill-advised enterprises.
Nothing was known about the capability of the soil and water requirements and the only way to survive was by trial and error.
Generally, the squatters were the first to arrive with flocks of sheep and cattle. Various adjustments were made to ideas about managing the land with not always informed success.
Surveyors tasked with laying out the titles were often well behind the demands for liveable farms. Squatters had to run a lot of livestock to make ends meet, and with no improved pastures they relied on what was available, and so the choicer vegetation was eaten off.
To survive the first priority was to stop the First Nations people from eating their stock and burning the areas as they had been doing for thousands of years. There was a lot of empathy by some squatters, who provided rations and some jobs, but other squatters took a superior view and clashed with violence.
This is not a pretty story because it is now documented from records kept by courts, police and government and even squatters, of the killings as payback for murder of white people.
In many ways the interactions set the country back into the dark ages. There was murder on both sides, but the behaviour of the rulers was shocking and now well understood.
Even with the knowledge of those times, I think it is appropriate we recognise the involvement of the First Nations people in those wars and later conflicts.
If the two sides had got together all those years ago we might have a different country management system.
And for the land, too, it is late, as we continue our efforts to stop the loss of soil, the pollution of the waterways and eradicating the weeds and pests and introduced animals like the fox and cat.