People have occupied the Australian mainland for at least 56,000 years, but Tasmania was the last part of Australia to be colonised – the oldest dated habitation layers in the state accumulated about 40,000 years ago.
The ecological effect of human colonisation of Australia has been debated at length, with particularly strong views exchanged on the role of humans in the extinction of the megafauna. Were these beasts hunted to extinction? Or couldn’t they cope with a changing climate? Or did humans change the ecology of the landscape so drastically that they starved? Or was a combination of these processes responsible?
The early European visitors to Tasmania remarked on the widespread burning of vegetation by the Aboriginal population. It is highly likely that deliberate fires have been lit for thousands of years and that the frequency of landscape fires increased after human arrival. Fire was the only effective tool the early immigrants had for clearing tracks, flushing out game and producing fresh new growth to entice animals into open areas.
Botanists, soil scientists and archaeologists have all argued that the vegetation and soil pattern in Tasmania is partly a result of fire. The abrupt transition between “wet” eucalypt forests (with a dense fire-
sensitive understorey and nutrient-rich bioturbated soils) and “dry” eucalypt forests (with a...
