AustLit

'In this important and amazing book, Gammage contends that Australia was ‘governed by a single religious philosophy…the Dreaming made the continent a single estate’ (p.xix and repeatedly) and that the original Australian people did this through their ‘knowledge of how to sustain Australia’ (p.323). Thus they ‘put the mark of humanity firmly on every place’ (p.323). He brings forward a mass of evidence to support his contention that Europeans entering and exploring the mainland and Tasmania observed and described those altered landscapes, without realising, or being unwilling to admit, that these rich landscapes of open forest, beautiful grassland and sheltering bush were other than natural. He uses a vast build-up of evidence to show that ‘even in arid country [around Ayers Rock] 1788’s unnatural patterns recur’. But although the bulk of the book is concerned to validate and exemplify the technology and results of land management, largely through burning, we should not lose sight of Gammage’s primary aim, which is to persuade us of the spiritual stature and technological skills of Aboriginal people. We should see them as masters of their terrain, managing the entire continent with detailed local and regional knowledge and skill, to yield an abundance of resources and leisure. This enables them to focus on the social, ritual and artistic aspects of life; participating in ceremony, dance, song, storytelling, decoration of the body, the ground, the rock; gathering to exchange knowledge of the myths impressed on the landscape and the mathematical intricacies of finding marriage partners correctly placed in kinship patterns. They could live life to the full, rather than merely struggle to stay alive.' (Introduction)