Explorers and Settlers continued

Giant tree gate posts in a Gippsland farmer's garden Source - National Library of Australia

It was hard work to clear the land, and many settlers fought a losing battle with bracken, saplings and other scrub. They often wrongly assumed that tall trees guaranteed rich and fertile soil. The farmer had to overcome wild pigs, horses, cockatoos, kangaroos, wombats and wallabies, and many blocks were abandoned, sometimes after a generation's work. It was quickly understood that not all the forest was suitable for agriculture or pastoral activities, so areas were reserved for timber.

Later settlers utilised new and developing technologies to harvest the resources of the forest. They took pride in their ingenuity as they found new uses for the land; they rejoiced in the increasing level of technical and engineering development; and they saw the changes in the landscape as evidence of the abilities of British settlers to turn a wilderness into a profitable land.

Plate from Giant Trees of Victoria 1888 Photographer - N Caire Source - Department of Natural Resources and Environment

Nineteenth century colonists perceived their settlement of the land as 'improving' it; they used words like 'tame' and 'subdue' to describe what they were doing to the land. Their work in clearing the land was praised as a public good: in 1855 Howitt wrote that '...the axe, the plough and the fire of settlers will gradually and eventually remove' what he termed 'the evils' of the dense forest undergrowth.

Yet the pride in progress was tempered often by a sense of regret. Attitudes to the tall trees were ambivalent. After the 1939 bushfire, the Royal Commission was told that 'After the gold rush was over, the white man had to make use of the land and he had to get rid of the timber. He slaved, toiled and burned to get rid of it. ... the children and grand children of these men have grown up with minds opposed to timber.' However, pastoralists and settlers, even while they were busy trying to clear the trees from the land, were challenged and awed by the forest's secrecy, and sometimes felt a sense of loss as it was being destroyed.

Acknowledgement

Material in these pages is largely drawn from the book by Tom Griffiths and Museum Victoria: Forests of Ash: An environmental history. Melbourne, Cambridge University Press, 2001

This publication is for sale from Museum Victoria.