John Burch

Supervisors: Professor Ian Clark and Associate Professor Fred Cahir
Federation Business School
johnburch@students.federation.edu.au
Doctor of Philosophy

“Seasonal visitors or sophisticated land managers? Aboriginal people in the Northern Mallee”

This research looks at new sources and new methodologies for establishing the nature of Aboriginal land-use in the Mallee back country. With few contemporary accounts of Aboriginal land-use at, and before, the point of colonial settlement, a nineteenth century judgement was made that Aboriginal people had historically been merely brief, seasonal visitors to the area. The harsh climatic conditions of the area and its reputation as a ‘howling wilderness’ discouraged any later investigation that might have tempered this view, and the notion of seasonal visitors remained current until the end of the twentieth century. More recently, as the sophisticated nature of Aboriginal land management was demonstrated by, amongst others, Gammage, ‘The Greatest Estate on Earth’, and Pascoe, ‘Dark Emu: Black Seeds’, the nineteenth century judgement has been challenged. An alternative narrative of sophisticated land management has emerged, without new evidence to support it.

In the absence of recorded observations, this research seeks to construct a picture of Aboriginal peoples’ land-use from the marks left on the land by their presence; pathways, quarries, wells, cleared land etc. Evidence of that land-use will be
sourced from various maps and consolidated into a GIS application for analysis.

John Burch is supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Fee-Offset Scholarship through Federation University.