 The 26th Richard Jones Memorial Lecture WHO MADE THE WILDERNESS?
Bill Gammage
Monday, 19th August 2019
Stanley Burbury Lecture Theatre, UTAS Sandy Bay
5:45pm for 6:00pm start
Refreshments from 5:30pm.
Bill Gammage is an emeritus professor in the Humanities Research Centre at the Australian National University (ANU), researching Aboriginal land management at the time of contact (“1788”). He grew up in Wagga. A graduate of ANU, he taught history at the Universities of Papua New Guinea (1966, 1972-6) and Adelaide (1977-96). He wrote The Broken Years on Australian soldiers in the Great War (1974), An Australian in the First World War (1976), Narrandera Shire (1986), The Sky Travellers on the 1938-39 Hagen-Sepik Patrol in New Guinea (1998), and The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines made Australia (2011). He served the National Museum of Australia for three years as Council member, deputy chair and acting chair. He was made a Freeman of the Shire of Narrandera in 1987, a fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences in 1991, and an AM in 2005.
This talk takes sides in the debate about the notion of wilderness in Tasmania. To do so it focusses on Tasmanian rainforest. It argues that in 1803 (shorthand for when Europeans first reached various parts of Tasmania), Tasmanians were managing rainforest with fire and no fire, both equally important.
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