Secret History Of Australia Conference

The Secret History of Australia Conference

Organised by Nexus Magazine in Brisbane

 

 Prelude

I grew up in one of the most Eurocentric and explorer focused  regions of Australia, the Blue Mountains.  I lived in Wentworth Falls, which was named for the explorer Wentworth, and his fellow explorers also had their names given to Lawson,  which was a few towns down the mountain, and Blaxland in the foothills.  Every time we travelled past Katoomba towards Blackheath (which was often), we'd drive past the Explorers Tree, which went from just a stump in my childhood with a sign out the front, to an elaborate pagoda in my teens.  The legend goes that as Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth struggled through the brush and scrub, they scratched their names on this tree.  

In my early childhood I lived in Blackheath, and went quite often to Govetts Leap, named for the surveyor William Govett, which sported a rather fancy plinth and memorial, and in the town itself is a huge statue of a man on a horse, with the legend of Govetts Leap, who was allegedly an escaped convict that leapt off a cliff on his horse rather than be captured.  

My sports groups in primary and high school were named after the explorers, and I was taught that this land that was Terra Nullis (or 'nobody's land') when the mighty Captain Cook landed here, peopled by primitive blacks who hunted and gathered and scrabbled about in loin cloths and skins, with heathen spears, boomerangs and crude stones being their only tools.  The 'brave' explorers set out from Sydney where Captain Cook landed, and battled through the impenetrable scrub of the mountains where I lived, facing starvation and hardship all along, but they didn't have as hard a time as the other explorers, who had to face the harsh desert heat and lifeless plains beyond.  

One of the clearest memories I have of primary school was in about grade 4 - and I remember how the man looked, where he was standing, and every detail of the room and the children in it  -  when we had a relief teacher, who was stumped about what to do with this class that he had for a day, so he read us the story of Pemulwuy.  I remember it so clearly, because it was the one strident discord to the 'history' I was taught about this land and it's people, being the story of a powerful man who fought back.  

I remember taking walking tracks through the dense scrub and bushland of the Blue Mountains National Parks around Wentworth Falls, and imagining that I was walking through land looking like what it must have looked like before Captain Cook arrived.  Picturing small family groups, clothed in loin cloths and skins, picking their way through the almost impenetrable bush, and maybe staying the night in caves on their way. 

For most of my life, whenever I've seen dense bush and scrublands, I've felt warm little wuffles in my heart, about how I was getting a glimpse of what it must have looked like before colonisation.

But did it?? 

The Conference

After following a diverse and colourful crowd into the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre, I wound my way through the halls, and the first thing to happen on entering our conference room was a gorgeous and thorough welcome to country, by Derek Oram Sandy from the Yerongpan Aboriginal Dancers.  After performing on his didgeridoo, he explained to us the boundaries of his land, the towns that still have indigenous names, and what they meant.  

We then met Duncan Roads the Editor of Nexus Magazine, who gave us another form of welcome to the conference, and confessed that this was the first conference he'd organised that had been led by spirit.  After getting the idea for it delivered into his mind, he'd begun to organise it and run into some snags fairly early on, and decided to give it all up to spirit.  And then two days later, was rung by a stranger who said his ancestors had told him to contact Duncan, and help pay for the conference.   I was very much struck by a comment he made later, about how he'd been looking all his life for answers all over the world, and they were here all along under his nose, in the unbroken religion and culture of the incredible people who spent 120,000 years on this land.

 

He next introduced us to Barry Eaton, who was to be our Master of Ceremonies for the conference.  A well known radio and television presenter who spent many years with the ABC, who is also an author, and generally fascinating person.  At one point in his introductory speech, he informed us that many of the Original People of this land prefer to be called Originals, instead of Aboriginals.  On deeper inspection, the word Aboriginal is rather insultingly the term given to any indigenous people, flora and fauna of any continent.  He was also rather marvelous at introducing the speakers and their extensive lists of achievements and academic acclaims. 

Then came the first talk of the day - Falsified History I — Landscape management by Bill Gammage, who ironically wrote his book 'The Biggest Estate on Earth - How Aborigines Made Australia' based almost exclusively on the journals, notes and paintings done by the early explorers, surveyors, and 'settlers' of this land, some of whom I was surrounded by the history of, during my childhood in the Blue Mountains.  Bill is a historian and professor at the Australian National University, with numerous books and awards, and this book is an incredible resource in the re-membering of this land.

For much of his talk he had this photo of the land around Sydney up on the screen, showing the fertile abundance and careful planning inherent all over the continent.  He went into great detail about the many ways that the Original folk of this land cared for it, from lighting selective fires to planting vast fields of grain.  Grasslands were often encouraged in the fertile valleys around water, as a lure for the wandering wildlife to be gracefully turned into food.  And scrub was virtually nonexistant, as fire was used regularly to clear the bush and help seeds to sprout.  This method of whole country farming, without the excesses of a ruling class, was the reason that so many early explorers and settlers kept comparing this new and stunning landscape to 'English parklands'.  He pointed out that all the Law of this land before colonisation, was based on caring for country and all its inhabitants.  He stressed that the concept of 'think global, act local' started here.  And made the very interesting proposition that as the mob here never moved from hunter gatherer to agriculture only, they never set foot on the road of settled agriculture that led to the gentry and peasantry like the rest of the western planet at least.  

I consider myself as being very fortunate to have been able to meet him after his talk, thank him in person for the amazing work he's done in bringing this information to light, and getting him to sign a copy of his book that I'd brought along.  And highly recommend every Australian to purchase a copy and find out the true and sadly mostly secret history of this incredible continent.  

Click here to buy a copy

The next speakers were the father and son team of Steven and Evan Strong, researchers and academics who have written several books.  Their talk was titled Skulls that Rewrite History.  They have spent many years learning and living with the Bundjalung Language Confederation (Northern Rivers Region of New South Wales), Ramindjeri (South Australia) and Gumilaroi peoples (Northern New South Wales).

They showed us a series of photographs of two skulls that they were alerted to, on a private site, where two skeletons were found buried in a sitting position next to each other, with their  hands crossed over their chests, and with huge ceremony signified.   They only had a short time to investigate,  and were sad to find that the site had been disturbed, with the bones strewn all over it, before it was all shut down and made inaccessible by government officials.  Which it remains to this day. 

They noticed instantly that both of the skulls were totally unique, with one having no sutures at all, which is a constant feature of all terrestrial skulls, and the other having huge nocturnal eyes.  And they believe these skulls to be from somewhere other than earth.  

Making sense of these skulls has led them in very interesting directions, and as quoted from their site,

"One avenue we intend to pursue is the possibility that so extreme are the features of these two skulls and skeletons it is feasible that they are not only the ancestors of all Original people, but the ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’ whose genetics lead to the emergence of a new hominin strand that spread throughout the planet: Homo sapiens sapien."

For a far better accounting of this story than I could offer here, and for more details and photos, you can further your study of this story on their site here.   They also made reference in their talk to the 22 skulls that were discovered at Kow Swamp, which have since been reburied, and the site also flooded.  More can be read about those skulls here.

They then went on to speak about another skull they had interactions with, and were actually in possession of, displaying it before and after their talk.  This skull was very similar to the two skulls they'd only been able to investigate briefly, and their relationship with it was very esoteric, as they believe it to be of Pleiadian origin, and again, this story is best told in their own words here.

 

The third talk of the day was about Starlore, ETs and Origins by Stella Wheildon.  Straight up, I learnt a word that I'd never heard before, Matristic.  Which according to Stella, is the partnership between Matriarchal and Patriarchal structures in balance.  Her blog has a far better description and explanation of the word here.  

Stella maintains that the Original people were semi-nomadic, as they followed the path of the stars reflected on the earth, and that the Dreamtime was a Matristic time.  And according to the Lore of this time, as well as the Dark Emu in the sky, there is also a feathered serpent Goddess.  So the Dark Emu and Goddess share the Milky Way.   In this time the Sun was the Mother, the Moon was the Father, and the Universe was the Grandmother.  The Galactic Grandmother was represented in the Dreamtime, and her totems were the Dragonfly, the Water Lilly, the Whale and the Shark, as this Lore and customs depict the creation lore of the Sky Ancestors, who made them.   And the Dragonfly birthed the Emu.  A point that Stella made often over the weekend, and that was obviously very important to her, was that before occupation, there were two Lores.  One of the Bird Goddess or Rainbow Serpent, and the later one that was created by the refugees that came to Australia after the great flood.   But you can get a much more descriptive explanation on all of this from Stella herself in the links I've provided above.

 

The fourth and final talk for the day was a combined effort by Lionel Lauch and Duncan Roads on Mysterious Creatures and more.  Originally intended to be an expose about many of the mysterious and mythical creatures of this land according to it's people by Lionel, it didn't however quite work out that way.   But I know that Original people have strict protocols for what can be said and who can and can't be there when it's said, so who knows what was going on behind the scenes. 

Lionel talked about having heard stories about the hairy people and Yowies and Bunyips in his youth, and also shared his abduction stories, but finished after quite a short time, which is when Duncan stepped up in an improvised fashion, and shared some of the stories he'd heard in his years of investigation.  Which also included Yowies, or the big and little hairy men that Rex Gilroy has spent 50 years studying and researching, who are apparently very stinky.  There are also some modern day Yowie hunters who look pretty hardcore, and an interesting historical sighting from the early days of European occupation.  

The mysterious photograph taken by Rich Jones in Batlow, New South Wales that some say was a Yowie (1932)

Bunyips were also mentioned again, living in watercourses throughout the land, and I'd be remiss if I didn't share a video of the Bunyip in Murray Bridge, that all of our children were terrified/delighted by in their youth in South Australia.  Duncan talked about the Original stories of fairys or little people who live underground and teach herb lore, or Mimi spirits as they were called here, of whom there's a beautiful painting down the end of this page.  He also mentioned the Burrunjor, which is an Australian dinosaur cryptid resembling a T Rex,  giant spiders, giant pythons, velociraptor like creatures, Ropen or huge thunderbirds, and a race of giant people.  Which may all sound fantastical, but as this land has the longest occupation of people on the planet, it's more than likely that the Originals did indeed live with giant lizards and other animals. 

Painting of a Mimi Spirit

On Saturday evening there was culture, ceremony and music, with Lionel Lauch assisting us with a Didgeridoo meditation, Stella Wheildon reiterating a lot of the information she'd given us in her talk earlier, with a reminder that there was always two Lores in Australia, that of the Matristic Dreamtime and the one that came after, and a delightful duo who serenaded us with voice, guitar and didgeridoo.  I was so thrilled to recognise the guitarist and singer, as the man who I met on my first spinning busking experience in front of the giant goanna at West End.   He'd welcomed me to the goanna and the mob he was sitting with, and told me a bit about his busking stories of the city, and it was awesome to see him again.  Their music together was very moving.

The first talk on Sunday was about Slater and the Standing Stones by Steven and Evan Strong.  They started off by introducing us to Eliza Hamilton Dunlop (1796-1880), poet and student of the Originals - in particular their languages - who is believed to be one of the first Europeans to hear of and write about the Standing Stones, and to also have been given the words of the first language.

Next we met Frederic Slater, who is believed to have been given her manual about the Standing Stones, as well as her description and drawings of the 28,000 word language, which is apparently the first language spoken on earth.  In the words of Steven and Evan Strong in an article about him, 

"Frederic Slater was acknowledged by academics and government alike, as one of the top experts on Original culture and rock engravings and also extremely knowledgeable in all things ancient Egyptian. So great was his stature and wealth of knowledge, he was elected by his peers to be the President of the Australian Archaeological, Educational and Research Society of Australia."

Despite the esteem he was held in during the majority of his life, his career and fame were ostensibly over when he brought to light the information and research he'd done on the Standing Stones.  Using the descriptions and drawings done by Eliza, he interpreted the signs and reported that the Stones contained the 'Mystery of Life'.   In another fascinating article by Steven and Evan Strong, they report

"The opening placement of stones on the southern edge, which looks very much like a medicine wheel, was interpreted by Slater to read as “guided by truth, man came to Earth through darkness from light of life that shines far off.” This extra-terrestrial theme of somebody or being coming to this planet from “far off” is repeated throughout these constructions, extolling that the “truth was brought out on wings to Earth” and “the Divine Light from afar to the Earth brings the soul to man.”

It is a site without parallel on the east coast of Australia at so many levels. The means of construction, significance, content, sacredness and real possibility that this arrangement chronicles the first time modern humans devised a formal means of expressing words and thoughts, are but some of issues that need to be investigated.

In what only adds to the intrigue, Slater is not only adamant that the ancient Egyptians were not only present (and most probably assisting in the transport of sandstone and fill) but they came in homage and reverence. He asserted that “there is no mistaking the fact that the Aborigines… gave not only to the Egyptians their knowledge and their foundation of hieroglyphics and their philosophy, but formulated the basis of all knowledge in the beginning, now and to come.”"

In a devastating travesty of natural justice, the stones once found and researched by Slater were bulldozed at the end of the second world war, by the farmers who owned the piece of land they stood on, for fear that they would lose their land.  But fortunately, the 184 rocks that were the Standing Stones, believed to have come along with sand and trees from all over the land, were found nearby, and could still potentially be restored.  

Unbelievably, only 3 months ago, the local council was about to approve building houses on the site, but this has since changed, and only 3 million dollars is needed to buy this site and restore such an amazing world heritage site!  If you felt compelled to help this dream come true, you could become a protector here.

According to Steven and Evan Strong, it used to take years to do the ceremonies required to get to the top of the mound.  It's the oldest temple on the planet, not exclusively Original, but belonging to the world.   They believe that the first men and women on earth, their ritual and history, are all recorded there.  

 

The second talk of the day was a bit of a personal favourite for me, having read 'The Dark Emu, Black Seeds: agriculture or accident?' years ago, and being forevermore changed by it.   Bruce Pascoe presented a talk called Falsified History II — Agricultural practices via Skype, and had an amazing presence despite the distance.  

Bruce's book 'Dark Emu' is written largely from the reports, journals and drawings of early explorers and settlers, and completely challenges the notion that the Original people of this land were hunters and gatherers.   Tragically, the descriptions by the explorers and settlers, are the closest thing we have to filling out the magnificent details of the Original civilisation that lovingly tended this land, on the eve of it's colonialisation, genocide and destruction.  

"If we look at the evidence presented to us by the explorers and explain to our children that Aboriginal people did build houses, did build dams, did sow, irrigate and till the land, did alter the course of rivers, did sew their clothes, and did construct a system of pan-continental government that generated peace and prosperity, then it is likely we will admire and love our land all the more" - Bruce Pascoe"

And he had a lot of questions.  Why had we, as 'educated' Australians, never heard of stoops (or haystacks)?  Why do we not know that the Original people were sowing, reaping and storing grain?  Why do we not know that Mitchell rode through 9 miles of haystacks, that is probably the biggest agricultural field in history, anywhere?  Why don't we know that the Origines were tilling the ground so deeply that you couldn't walk on it, in fields as far as the eye could see?  Why don't we know that they had wells and log houses?  Why don't we know that in Melbourne the farmers noted that the hillsides were terraced?  And why is Brewarrina,  home of the oldest man made structure on the planet - the Fish Traps - not being visited by hordes of archaeologists and tourists, like the Pyramids and Stonehenge?

 

 

 He told a story which is beautifully expressed in this article....

"One of the most vivid accounts was from explorer Charles Sturt, who was the first European to penetrate the interior and see the Simpson Desert.

In his 1844-1846 expedition, Sturt was near death, having already lost some of his exploration party, when he came across a group of some 400 Aboriginals.

They saved his life by giving him water, roast duck and cake which had been made from their own grain, Mr Pascoe said. Sturt repeatedly described the cake as the “best cake he had ever eaten”, even after his hunger had been satiated.

“He describes it in great detail, he describes the method of the milling, the flavour, and he even goes as far as to give a short recipe,” Mr Pascoe said in a phone interview.

“They still call it ‘the dead heart of Australia’ and here he was eating cake made from flour harvested there.”"

One of the main reasons that we don't know more of these stories, is for the plain fact that the early explorers and settlers weren't able to overcome their eurocentric bias enough, to actually appreciate what they were seeing.  As Bruce said in his talk, the word 'civilization' was created by the white fellas to describe their own culture, not other peoples.  And what they actually did in the world, was christianised colonialism.  As well as all the other agricultural practices already discussed in this post, the Originals also had ingenious aquaculture going on all over the land, like the Fish Traps above.  Here is a photo of another form of fishing from his book, which was using a fence of sticks with chutes for the fish to get through and also caught if needed, and seats where folk could sit to do their fishing.

Which leads to another story that Bruce told from his book, and that I myself have told numerous times since I read his book.  Again, the account is described beautifully in this article.

"Later they witnessed the people fishing with canoes, lines and nets. The purpose of the weirs gradually became clear. They were made by damming the stream behind large earthen platforms into which channels were let in order to direct fish as required. On one particular day Kirby noticed a man by one of these weirs. He wrote that:

a black would sit near the opening and just behind him a tough stick about ten feet long was stuck in the ground with the thick end down. To the thin end of this rod was attached a line with a noose at the other end; a wooden peg was fixed under the water at the opening in the fence to which this noose was caught, and when the fish made a dart to go through the opening he was caught by the gills, his force undid the loop from the peg, and the spring of the stick threw the fish over the head of the black, who would then in a most lazy manner reach back his hand, undo the fish, and set the loop again around the peg.

How did Kirby interpret this activity? After describing the operation in such detail and appearing to approve of the its efficiency, he wrote, “I have often heard of the indolence of the blacks and soon came to the conclusion after watching a blackfellow catch fish in such a lazy way, that what I had heard was perfectly true.” 

Kirby’s preconceptions of what he was going to find on this frontier are so powerful that he skews his detailed observations to that prejudice."

You can buy his book here

Bruce was very passionate about potential solutions as well, stating the obvious that in the sunniest country in the world, we should be getting heavily into Solar Power.  He also believes that we could solve many environmental issues by returning to the plants and foods that are native to this land.  And he's personally involved in many initiatives to rekindle our native foods, grains and rices, and striving for a national food culture that is suited to this land and not borrowed from other countries.   He finished up with the statement that the mob here invented bread, the housing dome, and society, and that this land was the fount of human existence.  

I only wish he'd been there bodily, so I could have thanked him in person for the monumentally important work that he's doing.

The third talk of the day was by Allan Euston Williams with Stella Wheildon, and it was called "Origine" (Aboriginal Prophecy and the End of Days).   In perhaps another protocol issue of who can and can't be present when certain things are spoken about, nothing much was said about the actual prophecy, and again, who knows what was going on behind the scenes.  Allan Euston Williams is a Ngarakbul Githabul Wahlubal Elder, and spoke about how he was having difficulties with both the Aboriginal Land Council and the Native Title Tribunal, and how they weren't actually representing his people at all.  

And then Stella Wheildon stood up again to tell us a bit more.  She talked about how Mount Wollumbin was the grandmother, and Mount Lindesay was the grandfather, and there was a sacred marriage between them, with Nimbin Rocks being the neutral ground inbetween them.  And that the end of days was the end of separation, as we formed a global village.  She mentioned the Milankovich cycles, and the Axial tilt that happens every 41,000 years, and how that is about to affect us, and also how between 2019 and 2027 the earth would be pulled into an asteroid belt.  

Stella talked about how the dragonfly represented the All Mother, and how the Pleiades seeded life here and explodes into a supernova every 14,000 years.  She said that 25 million years ago a 4km wide asteroid hit near the East Coast, and that at this time New Zealand was connected to Australia and protected it from the tsunami impact.  This started off an ice age, and sent the mammals that were whales back into the sea, and created the inner sea of Australia.  Which is why the central desert country is whale dreaming.   

 

Stella also rather beautifully recounted how all the water on this planet came from comets, and as the earth and us are both 70% water, that this water is our connection to the universe, to the land, and to each other.  And this connectivity changed the world.  And she mentioned the Blue Star Kachina, that the Hopi indians and Mayans talk about, from the time they experienced such events before.  This article is the closest representation to all the hints I gleaned from the conference, about what is to come.    

The final talk of the conference was by Duncan Roads again, titled Challenging Out of Africa.  Aware of the huge buildup for the reveal about the Origine prophecy of the End Of Days, and as he wasn't prevented by any Original protocols, he tried to fill in some gaps.   It was an off the cuff kind of presentation, but he talked about how the earth doesn't need to be destroyed, and how the theory of evolution as it applies to humans isn't actually accurate.  He maintained that beings from the skies seeded humans as slaves and fodder, and we were created to mine gold.  And the whales opted to stay and help us out.  He noted that often our science fiction and movies are actually quite prophetic, and that there were nuggets of truth in popular movies like 'Cowboys and Aliens'.  

He said that even though we exist in top down imposed slavery, we are all stardust and mini gods in learning.  And the powers that be, in religion, law, governments and corporations, are at their very top, all satanic paedophiles.  And he almost got a standing ovation on this point.  This may all seem far out and fantastical, but there is growing evidence that this is actually the 'reality' of the world of power and money, that has been going on for millennia.  If you want further information about this nightmare that is at the seat of power and money in our world, you could investigate the International Tribunal for Natural Justice, who have closed down receiving new cases in order to focus on investigating human trafficking and child sex abuse.  He said time is an oppressor, and power is in the now.   There's a rather lovely video I found that explains this beautifully.  

Duncan then recounted, that from what he can glean in all the conversations he's had with Original elders, the ancestors or creators or Biame (or aliens that seeded us) left us alone 10,000 years ago, but they're on the way back, expected within the next two years.  And there's an upgrade coming with them, that will send some people mad, as their thoughts and fears manifest in minutes.  When this shift comes, we'll transform according to our consciousness, and the main message that he wanted to convey, and that he'd heard from his elder contacts, was....Do Not Be In Fear.

He then launched into the actual talk he had prepared, which was challenging the Out Of Africa belief.  He talked about Lidar and Laser technologies revealing the massive centres under the iceberg tip of what we can see in Mayan cities.  With complex irrigation and terracing and intensive agriculture.   

He talked about many other lost cities being found with this technology, that was forcing us to reassess ancient cultures.  Like Nan Madol, an ancient coral reef city, and Kumari Kandam, or Lemuria, a sunken land mass that Madagascans and Originals both talk about, with the Tamil people uncovering ancient tools and texts.  The Tamil timeline also connects to the Originies, and what Stella Wheildon was talking about.  

Duncan also mentioned Iran's matriarchal Burnt City, where they found the first artificial eye and proof of brain surgery.  And Dr James Maxlow, with his expanding earth theory.  Also about Zealandia, the lost continent off the east coast of Australia, that Stella Wheildon also mentioned in her talk.  And the genetic studies that link the indigenous people of the Amazon and Australasia.

The worlds earliest artificial eyeball found in the Burnt City

And most interestingly, Duncan talked about how people in the Phillipines are earnestly seeking their history, and have proven that there were early humans hunting Rhinocerous between 709,000 - 777,000 years ago.  He also said there were ancient high tech cities off the east cost of Australia.  And shared that one of his spiritual mentors was Burnum Burnum, who taught him about the interconnection of consciousness and matter.  And about how every thought and feeling we have, is picked up by the sun and reflected back at us.  He was told that we're approaching a time when we hate ourselves as humanity, and that when you put out feelings of self hatred, rocks will change course to fulfill our expectations and hit us.  

He finished up by saying that in these times, it's essential to find the peace and love inside, and reiterated the importance of what he said before, which was Do Not Fear!  The Gods are coming back......

 Epilogue    

I've been writing this post for over a month now, and have learnt a huge amount in the process.  Things that I heard about first at the conference with maybe a dash of skepticism, have been proven with ample facts and articles I found during the research for it.  One of my favourite things I found incidentally along the way for example, was about how the Originals knew about the variable star Betelgeuse long before the Europeans.  

But even with all my prior knowledge, and even after writing the Prologue to this post, I still wasn't sure that I'd find information about my childhood home of the Blue Mountains, and I still harboured a belief that they'd always been the wild mountainous terrain that I'd grown up with.  

So I consulted Bill Gamage's book, The Biggest Estate on Earth - How Aborigines Made Australia, and guess what I found.

"In the Blue Mountains Evans reported "spaces of Ground of 3 or 400 Acres with grass growing within them that you can scarce walk through; the ground is strong and good with ponds of water which lead to the River; but when within a 1/4 of a Mile or so of it the course becomes a Rocky gully, and so steep between the hills, that no person would suspect such places were up them"  pg 72

When it came to the impenetrable scrub in the mountains of my youth, and the belief I had that the explorers had to struggle their way through it, I found this from the same book...

"In the Blue Mountains Jean Quoy found "vast forests where you walk beneath very pleasant domes of verdure.  We noticed that all of these were blackened right up, and circumstance due to the fact, the natives liking to set alight the grasses and brushwood obstructing their way, the fire often catches the fibrous bark of the largest trees, which then burn without their trunk being in any way damaged by it and without injuring the vegetation of their tops."  pg158

Early painting showing how the trees were thinned and managed.

 Then there's this....

"Evans was moderately impressed in the Blue Mountains.  It had 'a fine appearance, the Trees being thin and the hills covered....with pasture to their tops; This Range is rather overrun with underwood and larger Timber growing thereon, but the sides are as green as possible'."  pg 188

But this was the real kicker for me....

"Similar clearings pocked Blue Mountains forest.  Above Grose Valley in 1804 was 'a small piece of ground, which was destitute of trees, and no herbaceous brush', north of Katoomba in 1813 'about two thousand acres of land Clear of trees', and further west 'spaces of Ground of 3 or 400 Acres with grass growing within them that you can scarce walk through'." pg 207 (italics and bold mine)

I think Bruce Pascoe is right in this article.  It's time our explorers records and journals were more studied and well read, especially in light of how much damage we continue to do to this land with our european farming techniques.  It's time we learnt about the true nature of this land, and it's Original people.

I'd just like to finish up with a song that me and Currawong believe should be our National Anthem.  Thank you for reading :)