A free public lecture in Dubbo next month will examine the “true nature of the Australian landscape” when the First Fleet arrived at Sydney Cove in 1788.
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It will be delivered by Emeritus Professor Bill Gammage AM, from the Humanities Research Centre at the Australian National University in Canberra
The lecture is part of Charles Sturt University’s (CSU) Exploration Series of free public lectures.
Professor Gammage will discuss the subject of his book, The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines made Australia (2011), at CSU in Bathurst on August 1 and CSU in Dubbo on August 2 .
“Much of the landscape of Australia at the time of British colonisation in 1788 was not natural but made," Professor Gammage said.
"Using illustrations, this public lecture will sketch how Aboriginal people, including Wiradjuri, managed land at the time Europeans arrived.
“People allied with fire and no fire to distribute plants, and used plant distribution to locate animals, birds, reptiles and insects.
“Country was carefully arranged to give every species a preferred habitat according to law, while resources were made abundant, convenient and predictable.”
Professor Gammage has also written The Broken Years about Australian soldiers in the Great War (1974), An Australian in the First World War (1976), Narrandera Shire (1986) and The Sky Travellers on the 1938-39 Hagen-Sepik Patrol in New Guinea (1998).
He co-edited the Australians 1938 volume of the Bicentennial History of Australia (1988), and three books about Australians in World War 1.
Professor Gammage was historical adviser to Peter Weir's film Gallipoli, and to several documentaries.
The Biggest Estate on Earth public lecture will start at 6pm on August 1 at lecture theatre 422, building 902, Tony McGrane Place, CSU, Dubbo.
Light refreshments will be served after it.
The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines made Australia will be on sale at the cash price of $35.
For more information contact Melissa Britnell on 6885 7370 or hocdubbo@csu.edu.au.