[James Parker reflects on Pete Hay’s article, entitled “Finding history in the land”, published on April 8, 2021, which discusses the ways that the Tasmania of today is defined by its past. Should you wish to get context for what follows, Pete Hay’s article can be found here.]

Pete Hay, in another thought-provoking contribution to the discussion about Tasmania and place, suggests that there is usually a determination to establish a single official story through the viewing of a land or a landscape. That may be so, but, in my opinion, a land doesn’t have an official story. The cultural landscape which constitutes a place, particularly in Tasmania, may be interpreted in a way which supports, say, the colonialist story, but the land itself is, to me, genuinely (as Pete suggests, then queries) a palimpsest on which the layered story of human occupation has been written – and that of animals and plants. Scrape layers away, and you may be able to see what has gone before.

I was sitting on a bank above a bay on the Tasman Peninsula, watching a friend compete in a triathlon on Australia Day – maybe 20 years ago – when, finding the ground a bit uncomfortable, I realised that I was sitting on soil largely composed of broken shells, hence my discomfort. Then I realised that the broken shells were part of an Aboriginal midden. I was sitting on an Aboriginal midden, and, on cursory examination, the midden was huge, at least a hundred, if not several hundreds of cubic metres in volume and possibly thousands of years old; and it was just sitting there above this bay with no-one knowing – it still is.

That day, the past – the deep past – came up to bite me on the arse.

Pete Hay quotes Faulkner that the past is not dead – not even past – and I agree. That day, the past – the deep past – came up to bite me on the arse: physically and metaphorically. I was well aware of the Aboriginal occupation of the Tasman Peninsula, and had investigated it to some extent. But that rather mundane discovery through my uncomfortable bum was quite a moment, a moment when the prior occupation, and the deep past, of the land where I lived was really brought home to me.

And that deep past can be revealed in the landscape. Researching an Aboriginal-related topic a few years ago, I was looking at a vegetation atlas of Tasmania, and I was struck by a particular vegetation regime: rainforest with big eucalypts poking through the canopy. I thought it a bit strange, but did not understand how that peculiar regime came about until I read Bill Gammage’s The Biggest Estate on Earth. In it, Bill explains how this came about through Aboriginal burning practices. The rainforest had been burned back, and eucalypts had become established, but when the Aboriginal people were no longer in occupation, the rainforest returned, surrounding the enormous climax trees, and leaving a vegetation pattern distinct –and extensive enough – to warrant classification as a regional type. A vegetation pattern, I would suggest, unique to Tasmania and one, largely, culturally produced. The burning back of the rainforest took, probably, many hundreds of years from about 5,000 years ago when the rainforest would have established itself after the icecaps receded. In his writing, Gammage is revealing to us deep time, but also human behaviour.

Landscape can reveal culture, society and even human yearning. The Aboriginal people did not value the temperate rainforest. It was unproductive of food plants, contained little game, and was difficult to hunt in. Far from valuing the rainforest, the Aboriginal people worked assiduously to burn it down so that they could have more grassland on which wallabies could graze, and be harvested. The vast button-grass plains of the west and south-west of this island, which we see as “wilderness”, are almost certainly a cultural landscape created by Aboriginal fire-stick farming for this purpose.

An ornithologist very recently stated that although the orange-bellied parrot breeding program was doing well, the species probably will not thrive unless burning practices are re-established on those button-grass plains. This would enable the understory plants of the plains – the ones beneath and between the button-grass – to flourish, and it is these that the parrots actually feed on. The button-grass itself does not provide the parrots’ sustenance.

On the colonial side of the ledger, when you find old, ruined, convict sites (and even ones not ruined), the buildings do not, necessarily, yield much information about their original inhabitants: government buildings were often built to a standard plan with no reference to local conditions. But the exotic plants which have gone feral do give you information: the lupins, the roses, the foxgloves and the aloe vera. You see the need for kitchen and medicinal herbs, the need to domesticate the landscape and even the need for simple comfort and familiarity. This is the information that examination of land can give, both about Aboriginal and of colonial usage.

I completely understand Pete Hay’s nostalgia for the old Midlands Highway. The modern road is a very efficient and a completely boring drive. I well remember interesting features on the way when we Hobart people ventured north, such as the topiary around St Peter’s Pass which we admired, but also speculated on. Who did it? And I, too, remember the half-way house. There was also a “disappearing house”, somewhere near Oatlands but I can’t remember the details. The highway is now just a drive, not something that speaks to history, despite many attempts (including some I was involved in) to make it a “tourist route”.

As for Denne’s Point, as Hay points out, this is a hugely important place in Tasmania’s history. In addition to what Pete Hay has explained, may I add another chapter. When first appointed storekeeper to the Aboriginal mission to Bruny Island in 1829, G A Robinson’s first “establishment” was about 8km from Denne’s Point, and that is where he brought Truganini after retrieving her from the men at James Kelly’s shore-based whaling station on the other side of the island. Kelly’s farm was on Denne’s Point where Robinson was also granted land, and he and Robinson seem to have been adversaries. Truganini’s new, and much older, husband, Woorady, had been distraught at her abandoning him, and when Robinson brought her back from the whalers, Woorady was overjoyed. Having restored the, rather reluctant, Truganini to her husband, Woorady became indebted to Robinson, and Truganini seems to have become, eventually, resigned to her role. They then accompanied Robinson on his “friendly mission” and it could not have succeeded without the couple’s translation and negotiating skills.

So, the site of Robinson’s camp, not far from Denne’s Point, is a hugely important place in the history of Tasmania – pivotal, even, in the history of the Tasmanian Aboriginal people. I can find it on an old map, so I went looking for it, but I can’t find it in the landscape. No trace is left, either, of Kelly’s farm. So, as Pete Hay asserts, landscape is not a complete record. However, it can help.

I can arrive at a piece of the south-east Tasmanian coast, and see immediately the “fishing rocks” where Aboriginal women would have dived for crays and abalone. I can also see the places where the bay whalers would have set up their try-pots and their look-out station, and in the simple act of “reading” the landscape I am accessing, to an extent, the lives of those people. History is, in one way, an act of imagination, of trying to get inside the skins of people who lived in the past. Reading the landscape can aid that process enormously.

Thank you, Pete Hay, for a great article.

James Parker is a Tasmanian historian (but with deep connections to Sydney), who writes and talks on mainly colonial subjects – especially convicts, women and the Tasmanian Aboriginal people.