posted on 2017-03-19, 21:44authored byKathleen Raulings
This thesis is an
environmental history of the Mitta Valley in north-east Victoria from pre-colonial
times through to 1914. It covers the period when squatters, miners and settlers
transformed the landscape that had been created by Aboriginal people. As a
detailed study of a narrow mountain valley, it challenges conventional
narratives of colonial land settlement that have few references to landscape
change across time. Drawing on social history, historical geography,
archaeology, botany, art history, family history and fieldwork, as well as
newspapers, land selection records and official documentary sources, this study
employs a multi-disciplinary approach to provide an alternative methodology for
local history. By combining and analysing these sources, the thesis uses
changes in the landscape to uncover how different groups of settlers, many of
whom were illiterate or left few documentary records, have responded to and
shaped their surroundings.
With a central focus on landscape, people and environment of
the nineteenth century, this study of the Mitta Valley demonstrates how the
incursion of Europeans with herds of livestock dispossessed the Aboriginal
occupants and brought an end to Aboriginal land management practices. Economic
and social imperatives of the squatters are shown to have further changed the
landscape with new ideas about ownership of land. However there was not the
devastating destruction of native vegetation reported in other studies,
although ecological changes to fauna occurred, due to the propensity of
nineteenth century settlers’ love of hunting and shooting. The discovery of gold
in the 1850s resulted in less environmental destruction during early alluvial
phases of mining than elsewhere. However, hydraulic sluicing and dredging,
which continued into the twentieth century, left significant landscape scars.
The extended period of gold mining brought permanent village settlement as well
as tracks and roads that opened up the mountainous country.
The thesis goes on to show that more profound changes to the
valley landscape occurred during the period of land selection from 1865 onwards.
The persistence of the yeoman ideal resulted in the partition of the valley
landscape into small farming allotments, although some resident squatters
managed to maintain large landholdings. Nineteenth century ideas of bringing
civilisation to the land by clearing and cultivation resulted in environmental
changes as settlers successfully adapted and changed their agricultural
practices over time with fewer dramatic struggles than had been depicted in the
literature. By the turn of the century, technological advances and the
development of transport networks brought a transition to dairying as the
preferred landscape use that was supplemented by the raising of fat cattle and
pigs. While much of the land was cleared of native timber and cultivated, other
exotic species were planted and settlers established gardens and orchards
around their properties to create a landscape that is still familiar today.
Finally this thesis argues that the use of such a multi-disciplinary approach
to the study of a local area has wider implications for colonial settlement
history offering scope for a richer, more diverse interpretation and different
understandings of the colonial settler experience.