You are required to complete five short answer critical reviews of the news items provided from
week 2 to week 7. An example for week 3 has been provided as a guide.
Each short answer critical review should relate to the news item and required reading for the appropriate week and should consist of around 200 words. The total words for the completed task should not exceed 1000 words.
The recommended structure is:
· The main topic - what is this news article about?
· The speaker’s thesis - what is the public figure’s position on the main topic?
· The author’s argument - what is the author of this week’s required reading’s main point on this topic?
· Evidence and examples provided to support the author’s argument
· Author’s conclusion on the topic.
You are required to include a reference list and cite in the text of the short answer critical reviews the author, year and page number/s where your information and ideas come from using the APA (in-text) referencing system.
Week five reading is a link provided in the task 2 sheet, the videos need to be searched up manually, copy past into google and they appear.
Assessment Task 2 Short Answer Critical Reviews You are required to complete five short answer critical reviews of the news items provided from week 2 to week 7. An example for week 3 has been provided as a guide. Each short answer critical review should relate to the news item and required reading for the appropriate week and should consist of around 200 words. The total words for the completed task should not exceed 1000 words. The recommended structure is: · The main topic - what is this news article about? · The speaker’s thesis - what is the public figure’s position on the main topic? · The author’s argument - what is the author of this week’s required reading’s main point on this topic? · Evidence and examples provided to support the author’s argument · Author’s conclusion on the topic. You are required to include a reference list and cite in the text of the short answer critical reviews the author, year and page number/s where your information and ideas come from using the APA (in-text) referencing system Week 2 Critical Review Video: Abbott, T. (2014) Address to the Sydney Institute, 14 November 2014. Reading: Gammage, B. (2011). Fire in 1788: The closest ally. Australian Historical Studies 42(2), 277-288. Week 4 Critical Review Video: Morrison, S. (2018) On The Australia Day Debate, Sunrise, Channel 7, 24 September 2018. Reading: Grehan, H. (2018) First Nations Politics in a Climate of Refusal, Performance Research, 23:3, pp. 7-12. Week 5 Critical Review Video: Morrison, S. (2018) Response to Richard Di Natale question without notice, Question Time, Parliament of Australia, 26 November 2018. Reading: Carson, L. (2011) Dilemmas, disasters and deliberative democracy, Griffith Review Edition 32: Wicked Problems, Exquisite Dilemmas, May 2011 Link to reading for week 5: https://griffithreview.com/articles/dilemmas-disasters-and-deliberative-democracy/ Week 6 Critical Review Video: Turnbull, M and May, T. (2017) Turnbull and May confident of free trade deal, The Guardian, 11 July 2017. Reading: Derek McDougall (2016) Australia and Brexit: Déjà Vu All Over Again? The Round Table, 105:5, 557-572. Week 7 Critical Review Video: Gillard, J. (2012) In Conversation: Australia in Asian Century White Paper, The Lowy Institute. 21 November 2012. Reading: Johnson, C. et.al. (2010) Australia's Ambivalent Re-imagining of Asia, Australian Journal of Political Science, 45:1, 59-74. References doi:10.1080/1031461X.2011.566273 Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rahs20 Australian Historical Studies ISSN: 1031-461X (Print) 1940-5049 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rahs20 Fire in 1788: The Closest Ally Bill Gammage To cite this article: Bill Gammage (2011) Fire in 1788: The Closest Ally, Australian Historical Studies, 42:2, 277-288, DOI: 10.1080/1031461X.2011.566273 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/1031461X.2011.566273 Published online: 08 Jun 2011. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 32281 http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rahs20 http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rahs20 http://www.tandfonline.com/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1080/1031461X.2011.566273 https://doi.org/10.1080/1031461X.2011.566273 http://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=rahs20&show=instructions http://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=rahs20&show=instructions COMMENTARY Fire in 1788: The Closest Al ly BILL GAMMAGE THIS ARTICLE is a transcript of the first Eric Rolls Memorial Lecture, lightly edited and annotated in response to referee’s comments. This biennial lecture series to commemorate Eric’s work is sponsored by the National Library of Australia (NLA) and the Watermark Literary Society. This inaugural lecture was given at the Library on 20 October 2010. I spoke to honour the people of 1788, including the unknown family whose ground the Library is on, and to salute a man who began to walk in their track. All his life Eric studied how the bush worked. He was among the first to say how it was changing under European occupation, and which plants, animals, birds and insects gained or lost as a result. He linked local detail to national patterns, illuminating the past and future of our country. His head was alert, his eye clear, his concern for Australia abiding; his ability to portray it was rare, memorable, priceless. He was a great Australian. In this talk, ‘‘1788’’ is shorthand for the times of first contact between Aborigines and others across Australia. How did Aborigines survive big bushfires in 1788? I argue that they prevented them, by arranging Australia’s vegetation with fire. From this they made fire an ally in shaping the land. This argument develops the now-familiar concept of fire-stick farming1 in two main ways. Aborigines maintained: . A two-tier fire system, using fire first to lay out long-term plant templates which located plants and therefore animals precisely and systematically in the landscape, then to activate templates in rotation for day-to-day use; and . A continuum of templates across Australia, using locally-different fire regimes, but for similar purposes. **** In a precise way Australia’s plant distribution in 1788 was made, not natural. 1 Pioneer writing includes Sylvia J. Hallam, Fire and Hearth (Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1975); W. D. Jackson, ‘Fire, Air, Water and Earth � an elemental ecology of Tasmania’, Proceedings of the Ecological Society of Australia 3 (1968): 9�16; Rhys Jones, ‘Fire-stick Farming’, Australian Natural History 16 (1969): 224�48. ISSN 1031-461X print/ISSN 1940-5049 online # 2011 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/1031461X.2011.566273 277 Fire is part of being Australian. In the last decade alone bushfires have devastated every southern state: outer Sydney 2001, Canberra 2003, Eyre Peninsula 2005, Brisbane 2007, north of Melbourne 2009, near Perth 2010. Most of these fires killed people. Killer fires, unstoppable, typify modern Australia. How did Aborigines survive such fires? How did they survive the flames, and how did they survive the aftermath, the black, foodless wastelands? Killer fires would annihilate local groups, while a day’s fire might eat a year’s food: what then? Traditions and genealogies, incomplete as they are, should show proofs of fiery death. They do not. No widespread fire catastrophe is known before 1788. This is extraordinary. People had to prevent killer fires, or die. They worked hard to make fire malleable. Their survival proves their success. An elder stated, ‘before the arrival of white people Anungu did not know about really large bushfires, but now they do . . . the country had been properly looked after and it was not possible for such things as large scale bushfires to occur’.2 A Darling and Paroo pioneer, Simpson Newland, observed: ‘a remarkable characteristic of the aborigine . . . the care taken by them to prevent bushfires. In my long experience I have never known any serious bushfire caused by the blacks’.3 Dick Kimber concluded, ‘large Aboriginal fires were not accidental, random or otherwise uncontrolled’.4 The path to fire control began in an ancient alliance between fire and plants. Over seventy per cent of Australia’s plant species tolerate fire, many need it to seed or germinate, and eucalypts, acacias and spinifex use it to dominate the continent. This had attractive consequences in 1788. For example, dominant perennial grasses re-sprout green after fire, which attracts animals, whereas if you burn Europe’s annuals they die. Eucalypts and acacias regenerate, and with the right fire, cycads all fruit at the same time so people could gather and feast. People joined this alliance, and used it first to make fire a friend not an enemy; then to arrange the land: to burn to suit plants, animals and themselves. These purposes led them to make fire central to how they lived. To master it, they became its servants. The gains were immense. Challenge became opportunity. Controlled fire averted uncontrolled fire, and fire or no fire distributed plants with the precision of a flame edge. This attracted or deterred grazing animals, locating each in preferred and known habitats, and making them abundant, convenient and predictable. All was where fire or no fire put it. Australia was not natural, but made. This was the greatest achievement in our history. Fire was a life study. Seasons vary, rain is erratic, plants have life cycles, fire has long- and short-term effects, people differ on what to favour. So fire was work for senior people. They were responsible for any fire, even a campfire, lit 2 J. R. W. Reid et al., Kowari 4: Uluru Fauna (Canberra: National Parks & Wildlife Service, 1993), 95. 3 Simpson Newland, ‘Annual address’, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of Australia, SA Branch, 22 (1921): 3�4. 4 Richard G. Kimber, ‘Black lightning: Aborigines and Fire in Central Australia and the Western Desert’, Archaeology in Oceania 18 (1983): 38. 278 Australian Historical Studies, 42, 2011 on land in their care. They decided what to burn, when, and how, but in deciding obeyed strict protocols with ancestors, neighbours and specialist managers. ‘What must be made absolutely clear, is that the rules for fire and fire use are many and varied, and are dependent upon an intimate knowledge of the physical and spiritual nature of each portion of the land. Without this knowledge, it is impossible to care for country in the appropriate way’.5 ‘You sing the country before you burn it. In your mind you see the fire, you know where it is going, and you know where it will stop. Only then do you light the fire’.6 As Ludwig Leichhardt put it in 1845, fire was part of the ‘systematic management’ of country.7 The essence of fire control was fuel control. This meant neither today’s ‘No fuel no fire’, nor yesterday’s ‘Prevent bush fires’. Fuel was a resource: it was rationed, not eliminated. People burnt more ground more often than today, but less fuel. Even at the wrong time, country needing fire was burnt. ‘You gotta burn’, an Arnhem Land elder said, ‘[if] you don’t burn then country will get poor, it will shut itself up . . .no good for anybody then’.8 A bad fire was better than no fire, for no fire let fuel build up, making a bad fire worse. Seeing country in terms of its fuel was a life saving habit. There was thus no remote bush, no wilderness. Someone was responsible for every part. People burnt useful land most and sterile or sensitive land least, but sooner or later they burnt everywhere: in ‘every part . . . though the most inaccessible and rocky’, John White noted in April 1788; on ‘the highest mountains, and in places the most remote and desolate . . . [in] every place’, Thomas Mitchell wrote; in ‘every portion’, Ernest Giles stated.9 This allowed controls