Introduction
The book The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia by Bill Gammage represents the work on the history of the Australian Aborigines and answers the question of how they managed to survive under the extreme conditions. The author tries to explain the traditions of agriculture of the Native Australians and to link them to their way of survival. The natural conditions in Australia are described in the book in order to provide a clear insight into the environment, in which the Australian Aborigines lived. The aim of this article is to summarize and analyze the content of the book by Bill Gammage.
Review
The main theme of the book The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia is the history of the Australian Aborigines and their way of life. According to Tony Stephens, the aim of the author was to refute the statement that the Australian Aborigines were simple hunter-gathers (Stephens 2011). Gammage tried to prove that the Native Australians were rather skillful in the farming and achieved the substantial level of development of the agriculture. They used the fire for the purposes of land management substantially.
Bill Gammage gave his own arguments supporting the Aborigines’ skills and knowledge in farming. One of the conclusions made by him was that the Australian Aborigines had the invaluable knowledge of managing the fire. They applied their skills in the prevention of the bushfires and, thus, they managed to survive in 1788 when their land was at risk of devastation (Stephens 2011). In addition, the author said that the Aborigines’ way of life was not based on farming as it was rather their activity and not the lifeway. Nevertheless, they managed to cultivate a number of valuable crops and to provide the food supply to their communities. In particular, the Aborigines were skillful in growing the yams, fruits, and berries (Stephens 2011). Besides, it is important to note that the tribes reared the animals. It was found that the Aborigines reared dingoes, emus, and other representatives of the Australian fauna (Stephens 2011). Finally, the author concluded that the Native Australians were skillful in the creation of the land templates. They set them to suit the plants or animals (Stephens 2011).
Tony Stephens, the author of the book review, considers that Gammage achieved the goal of his research (Stephens 2011). Although the critics said that the author aimed at breaking the grounds in the understanding of the Australian history, it was obvious that he presented the alternative view on it. And his contribution boiled down to the striking conclusions, which he made regarding the level of development of the Aborigines’ communities and their skills in agriculture. Undoubtedly, his ideas made us rethink the Australian history.
The book added a lot to the body of knowledge. Its value can be defined in terms of its scientific novelty. The author claimed that the problem of studying the history of Australia and other colonized nations was the unwillingness of the Europeans to comprehend the civilizations different from their own one. Gammage said that we needed to look deeper in the history of the indigenous population, their traditions and culture (Mulvaney 2012). He explained that only the thorough and unbiased study of the Aborigines’ history would allow the modern Australians to become the real nation.
The author used the substantial scientific background to support his analysis. The text of his book relied on the descriptions by the explorers and settlers (Hallam 2011). Such kind of data made the arguments presented in his research even more persuasive as they were based on the real life evidence. “Gammage goes beyond the documentary sources and themes usually on the agenda of Australian historians to unfamiliar topics and methodology” (Hallam 2011, p. 124). Roger Underwood in his book review emphasizes the value of Gammage’s analysis. Underwood says that the author’s work is “astonishing and breadth of the supporting evidence” as his analysis is based on the myriad of different sources and the bibliography of 1500 books, in particular (Underwood 2012, n.pag.).
It goes without saying that the book by Bill Gammage presented the ideas essentially different from those expressed by other authors previously. Although the problem of the relationship between the Aborigines and the land was studied by the historians long before the publication of Gammage’s work, his ideas represented the new way of thinking about the Australian history. “The role of fire in Aboriginal lifeways has been stressed in recent decades by Rhys Jones, Sylvia Hallam and Duncan Merrilees, among others” (Mulvaney 2012, p.108).
The author of The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia claimed that the Aborigines achieved the substantial level of development and that they survived under the extreme conditions not simply by chance but rather that their survival was explained by their skills and knowledge. Gammage analyzed the natural and historic conditions of the XVIII century in Australia and concluded that the Native Australians used the fire intentionally to manage their land. According to his findings, they were the real managers of the Australian state at that period (Mulvaney 2012). They learned how to rule the external environment and to provide the supply of food to their communities. The Aborigines used fire to transform the landscapes and to make the availability of resources predictable. Furthermore, their farming techniques were highly productive and they not only labored hardly, they used the efficient methods of farming (Hallam 2011).
Conclusion
In order to sum up all above mentioned, it should be said that the book The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia by Bill Gammage represents the invaluable source of knowledge of the Australian history and, especially, the Aborigines’ way of life. The author made the striking conclusion that the Native Australians achieved the high level of development indicating to the existence of the civilization in Australia before its colonization. They had the skills and knowledge of managing the land and natural resources, which they effectively used to provide themselves with the means of survival.
References
Hallam, S. 2011, Review of the book The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines made Australia, Gammage B., Australian Aboriginal Studies, vol. 2011, no.2, pp. 123-126.
Mulvaney, J. 2012, Review of the book The Biggest Estate On Earth: How Aborigines made Australia, Gammage B., Australian Aboriginal Studies, vol. 2012, no. 1, pp. 108-110.
Stephens, T. 2011, ‘Australia’s First Farmers’, The Brisbane Times.
Underwood, R. 2012, Books Review: The Biggest Estate on Earth and Burning Issues, Web.