HIST1051 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Bauxite, Eureka Rebellion, The Wilderness Society (Australia)
• Week Twelve
• Lecture 12.1: Living with the Australian Environment
• Lecture Outline
• Part One
• Remembering the environment in Australian History
• Part Two
• Three case studies:
• Wilderness
• Urban air pollution
• Mining
• Focus Questions
• What has been the dominant attitude of Australians to the natural environment?
• How has that attitude impacted on the environment?
• Why does the Australian environment matter?
• Environmental History
• Placement at the end of HIST1051 is fitting
• Environment has been seen as a background for human action
• For environmental historians, the natural environment becomes a focus of study, a factor in
understanding the past
• I will draw on your new understanding of Australian history as I discuss the protection of
wilderness, air pollution and mining
• Part 1: Reviewing the Australian Experience from an environmental perspective
• Indigenous Australia – close and interdependent relationship with the environment
• Dispossession and Possession – Europeans transformed Aboriginal country into private
property to be developed for economic gain
• Convicts – created useable spaces for colony
• Explorers – sought additional resources
• Frontier – hostile, so limited transmission of Aboriginal view of environment
• Gold – environmental damage from mining and urban expansion
• Instrumental view of the environment – there for the use of humans
• White Australia Policy – similar attitudes to environment were carried by immigrants
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• World War I – diggers talets hoed i ar o eiroet
• Depression – in difficulty, go out to land
• World War II – perception that land was still empty, unused and vulnerable
• Suburbanisation – suburbs offer a highly modified experience of the environment where
wild nature is held at bay
• Summary of Attitudes towards the Australian Environment
• Imperfect in that it differed from norms set in Great Britain
• Not cherished but viewed instrumentally as a basis for a prosperous British-Australian
society
• At worst, an enemy to be fought and tamed
• Some historians offer counter view, and a sympathetic perspective became more prevalent
post WW2
• Part 2: Change in attitudes in postwar period
• War, immigration, rising affluence and accelerated threat of development led to rise of eco
nationalism
• Nationalism informed by identification with the environment
• Protection of natural areas
• Lobby for legislation to coordinate the management of national parks
• Boards and authorities to control national parks created in most states in 1950s and 60s
• National Trusts set up to look after both natural and built environment
• For younger people, environmental concern grows out of anti Vietnam protests
• Wilderness.
• Areas away from centres of population – seen as untouched, pristine (ignore Aboriginal
presence and impact)
• A legacy for all human beings – valued for their intrinsic merit – beauty, biodiversity,
longevity
• A key battle: to protect the temperate rainforests around the Franklin River, south west
Tasmania, from a plan to dam the river for a hydro electric project
• Protest
• Tasmanian Wilderness Society, est. 1976
• Use film, public meetings, protests and publications
• 11 referedu o here to da the rier ut % spoil their allots: No das
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