Book Review

The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made AustraliaThe Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia by Bill Gammage
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was an interesting book that demonstrated pretty convincing evidence that a lot of Australian bushland was quite open before white settlement. A great number of references to the park like land that the early white people documented along with the numerous fires that the aborigines lit is in the book. In fact this theme is a common thread through the book, partly because Bill Gammage wanted to provide a strong case for his assessment what the land was like as some academics do not want to believe that aborigines were capable of sophisticated land management.

That aborigines had a close connection to the land is beyond dispute, but the evidence in this book was enough to convince me that they believed that looking after the land was of the utmost importance, and that they managed it by taking into account the type of country and the flora and other conditions present.

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