Re-writing the history of Australian tropical rainforests: 'Alien invasives' or 'ancient indigenes'?

Environment and History

Volumn 14, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 165-185

  Sanderson, Rachel ^a  

^a NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AUSTRALIA   (Australia)

Author keywords

Biogeography; Gondwana; J.D. Hooker; Queensland; Rainforest

Indexed keywords

BIOGEOGRAPHY; GONDWANA; RAINFOREST; VEGETATION HISTORY;

AUSTRALASIA; AUSTRALIA; QUEENSLAND;

EID: 45249102234     PISSN: 09673407     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3197/096734008X303719     Document Type: Article

References (66)

1. J.D. Hooker, The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage of H.M. Discovery Ships Erebus and Terror, In the Years 1839-1843, Under the Command of Captain Sir James Clark Ross, KT, R.N., F.R.S. & L.S., etc. Part III. Flora Tasmaniæ, Vol. I. Dicotyledones (London: Lovell Reeve, 1860), xxvii.
2. Charles Darwin, 'On the tendency of species to form varieties, and on the perpetuation of varieties and species by natural means of selection', Journal of the Linnean Society of London (Zoology) 3 (1858): 45-62.
3. It was Darwin's reading of Wallace's article, on which Wallace had sought his opinion, which provoked him at last to publicly present his own theory. For further details see J.L. Brooks, Just before the Origin: Alfred Russel Wallace's Theory of Evolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984).
4. Hooker, Flora Tasmaniae, ii-iii.
5. Ibid., xvi-xvii.
6. On Lyell, see Janet Browne, The Secular Ark: Studies in the History of Biogeography (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 102-7.
7. Hooker, Flora Tasmaniae, xxii.
8. Browne, The Secular Ark, 59.
9. Hooker, Flora Tasmaniæ, xxvii.
10. George Elphinstone Dalrymple, Narrative and Reports of the Queensland North-East Coast Expedition, 1873 (Brisbane: Government Printer, 1874), 30.
11. Hooker, Flora Tasmaniæ, iv, xii.
12. David L. Hull, Science as a Process: an Evolutionary Account of the Social and Conceptual Development of Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 102.
13. Hooker, Flora Tasmaniæ, x1.
14. None of the explorers listed had collected extensively in North Queensland rainforest areas - Mueller at this stage had not yet settled Dallachy into his role in Cardwell. A century later, botanist Nancy T. Burbidge, in 'The Phytogeography of the Australian Region', a work which closely followed Hooker's approach, wrote of the North-East Queensland region: 'Unfortunately there is no detailed account of the flora of the area and this analysis has had to be based on scattered records in taxonomic and more general botanical papers...' Nancy T. Burbidge, 'The Phytogeography of the Australian Region', Australian Journal of Botany 8 (1959): 134.
15. Sydney B.J. Skertchly, 'The Origin of Australia', Proceedings of the Royal Society of Queensland 21 (1908): 66.
16. Ibid., 67-8.
17. This is in contrast to the views of Hooker, who argued that the peculiarities of the Australian flora led to the conclusion that it was 'a very ancient one'. Hooker, Flora Tasmaniæ, cii. Skertchly in part was opposing the notion that evolutionary processes are by necessity gradual, and believed that the fossil record suggested that at some times, and under some conditions such as changes in climate, the process of speciation was much more rapid and diverse than Hooker suggested. Skertchly, 'The Origin of Australia', 81.
18. Ibid., 57-8.
19. This idea of a uniform flora at an earlier period of life's history stretches back to the work of Brongniart and de Candolle in the early nineteenth century, and was widely debated during the mid-nineteenth century. It is discussed by Browne, The Secular Ark, 94-102.
20. Skertchly, 'The Origin of Australia', 69-70.
21. Ibid, 77.
22. Those who came with prior experience of the tropics include Skertchly, who spent time in Borneo E.N. Marks, 'Skertchly, Sydney Barber Josiah (1850-1926)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 11 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1988), 621-2.
23. Explorer George Elphinstone Dalrymple and botanist John Dallacby both came to Australia after managing coffee plantations in Ceylon - C. G. Austin, Clem Lack, 'Dalrymple, George Augustus Frederick Elphinstone (1826-1876)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 4 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1972),9- 10;
24. Alan Gross, 'Dallachy, John (1808?-1871)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 4 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1972),6.
25. For details on environmental symbols of nationhood, see Thomas Dunlap, Nature and the English Diaspora: Environment and History in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 100-102.
26. Karel Domin, 'Queensland's Plant Associations: Some Problems of Queensland's Botanogeography' Proceedings of the Royal Society of Queensland 23 (1910): 58.
27. See also A.D. Chapman, 'Domin and Danes in Java and Australia, 1909-1910', in P.S. Short (ed.), History of Systematic Botany in Australia: Proceedings of a Symposium held at the University of Melbourne, 25-27 May 1988 (Melbourne: Australian Systematic Botany Society Inc., 1990), 159-63.
28. Chapman, 'Domin and Danes in Java and Australia', 72.
29. D.A. Herbert, 'Presidential Address: The Relationships of the Queensland Flora', Proceedings of the Royal Society of Queensland 40 (1928): 10-12.
30. J.M.B. Smith, 'An Introduction to the History of Australasian Vegetation', in J.M.B. Smith (ed.), A History of Australasian Vegetation (Sydney: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1982), 12.
31. J.H. Brown and A.C. Gibson, Biogeography (St Louis: The C.V. Mosby Company, 1983), 234.
32. Herbert, 'The Relationships of the Queensland Flora', 12, 14-15.
33. D.A. Herbert, 'Present Day Distribution and the Geological Past', Victorian Naturalist (April 1950): 228-9.
34. Ibid., 230.
35. R. Schodde, 'Origins, Radiations and Sifting in the Australasian Biota - Changing Concepts from New Data and Old' (Nancy T. Burbidge Memorial Lecture, 1989), Australian Systematic Botany Society Newsletter 60 (September 1989): 3.
36. D. Johnson, The Geology of Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 73.
37. Schodde, 'Origins, Radiations and Sifting of the Australasian Biota', 5.
38. L.J. Webb, 'A Physiognomic Classification of Australian Rain Forests', Journal of Ecology 47 (1959): 551-2, doi: 10.2307/2257290.
39. L.J. Webb and J.G. Tracey, 'The Rainforests of Northern Australia', in R.H. Groves (ed.), Australian Vegetation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 67.
40. L.J. Webb and J.G. Tracey, 'Australian Rainforests: Patterns and Change', in A. Keast (ed.), Ecological Biogeography of Australia, vol. 1 (The Hague: W. Junk, 1981), 607-8.
41. Interview with Geoff Tracey, National Library of Australia (hereafter NLA) TRC 2845/46: 3.1.9. As Adam points out, 'Referring to living taxa as primitive does not necessarily imply that they are ancestral, but rather that they possess a larger number of primitive traits than other taxa. P. Adam, Australian Rainforests (Oxford, Clarendon Press: 1992), 158.
42. Webb and Tracey, 'Australian Rainforests: Patterns and Change', 609. Edaphic sifting refers to the influence of soil type on vegetation formations.
43. Interview with Geoff Tracey, NLA TRC 2845/46: 3.1.10. However, while continental drift had the status of geological orthodoxy by the early 1970s, it took botanists - many of whom responded to these developments with 'outright rejection' - a little longer to accept the new theories than it did geologists. J.M.B. Smith, 'An Introduction to the History of Australasian Vegetation', 2. For a more recent and detailed overview of Australia's rainforest past, see R.J. Morley, Origin and Evolution of Tropical Rain Forests (Chichester: John Wiley and Sons, 2000), 225-35.
44. A. Keast, R.L. Crocker, C.S. Christian (eds.), Biogeography and Ecology in Australia (The Hague: W. Junk, 1959). Interview with Geoff Tracey, NLA TRC 2845/46: 2.1.6-7.
45. A.P Kershaw, 'A Late Pleistocene and Holocene Pollen Diagram from Lynch's Crater, North-Eastern Queensland, Australia', New Phytologist 77 (1976):469-98, doi: 10.1111/ j.1469-8137.1976.tb01534.x.
46. Webb and Tracey, 'Australian rainforests: patterns and change', 628.
47. Ibid., 637-8.
48. Ibid., 642-5.
49. Ibid., 649, 651.
50. Ibid., 654.
51. Ibid., 654-61.
52. Ibid., 663.
53. Ibid., 661.
54. They concentrated their analysis on genera as knowledge of species distribution for the region continued to be inadequate, and many species remained unnamed and some undescribed. Webb and Tracey, 'Australian Rainforests: Patterns and Change', 668-669.
55. Ibid., 672.
56. Ibid., 676.
57. Judith Wright, The Coral Battleground (West Melbourne: Thomas Nelson, 1977), 3-4.
58. Veronica Brady, South of My Days: A Biography of Judith Wright (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1998), 429.
59. J. Wright, 'Rainforest', Collected Poems 1942-1985 (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1998), 412.
60. R. Hill and M. Graham, 'Greater Daintree National Park' in J.G. Moseley and J. Messer (eds.), Fighting for Wilderness. Papers from the Australian Conservation Foundation's Third National Wilderness Conference, 1983 (Sydney: Fontana/ACF, 1984), 9.
61. See Rainforest Conservation Society of Queensland, Tropical Rainforests of North Queensland: Their Conservation Significance (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1986), on the basis of which the Australian Heritage Commission recommended World Heritage Listing.
62. J.M.B Smith, 'An Introduction to the History of the Australasian Vegetation', 27.
63. Webb and Tracey 'Australian Rainforests: Patterns and Change', 676.
64. On Aboriginal use of rainforest plants see R. Cosgrove et al., 'The Archaeology of Australia's Tropical Rainforests', Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 251,1 (2007): 150-73, doi: 10.1016/ j.palaeo.2007.02.023.
65. On rainforests and fire, see D.M.J.S. Bowman, Australian Rainforests: Islands of Green in a Land of Fire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
66. For a detailed analysis of human impacts on tropical rainforest over the past 700 years and a discussion of the implications of climate change see Simon G. Haberle, et al., 'The Impact of European Occupation on Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecosystem Dynamics in an Australian Tropical Rain Forest', Journal of Ecology 94,5 (2006): 987-1002, doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2745.2006.01140.x.