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By Root 2215 0

farmers and provided crops critical for survival of European settlers during the first years, until Europeans began to grow their own crops. Thereafter, Indian farmers were merely competition for American farmers and were killed or driven out. Aboriginal Australians, however, did not farm, hence could not provide food for settlements, and were killed or driven out of the initial white settled areas. That remained Australian policy as whites expanded into areas suitable for farming. However, when whites reached areas too dry for farming but suitable for pastoralism, they found Aborigines useful as stockmen to look after sheep: unlike Iceland and New Zealand, two sheep-raising countries that have no native predators on sheep, Australia had dingos which do prey on sheep, so that Australian sheep farmers needed shepherds and employed Aborigines because of the shortage of white labor in Australia. Some Aborigines also worked with whalers, sealers, fishermen, and coastal traders.

Just as the Norse settlers of Iceland and Greenland brought over the cultural values of their Norwegian homeland (Chapters 6-8), so too did the British settlers of Australia carry British cultural values. Just as was the case in Iceland and Greenland, in Australia as well some of those imported cultural values proved inappropriate to the Australian environment, and some of those inappropriate values continue to have legacies today. Five sets of cultural values were particularly important: those involving sheep, rabbits and foxes, native Australian vegetation, land values, and British identity.

In the 18th century Britain produced little wool itself but instead imported it from Spain and Saxony. Those continental sources of wool were cut off during the Napoleonic Wars, raging during the first decades of British settlement in Australia. Britain’s King George III was particularly interested in this problem, and with his support the British succeeded in smuggling merino sheep from Spain into Britain and then sending some to Australia to become the founders of Australia’s wool flock. Australia evolved into Britain’s main source of wool. Conversely, wool was Australia’s main export from about 1820 to 1950, because its low bulk and high value overcame the tyranny-of-distance problem preventing bulkier potential Australian exports from competing in overseas markets.

Today, a significant fraction of all food-producing land in Australia is still used for sheep. Sheep farming is ingrained into Australia’s cultural identity, and rural voters whose livelihood depends on sheep are disproportionately influential in Australian politics. But the appropriateness of Australian land for sheep is deceptive: while it initially supported lush grass, or could be cleared to support lush grass, its soil productivity was (as already mentioned) very low, so the sheep farmers were in effect mining the land’s fertility. Many sheep properties had to be quickly abandoned; Australia’s existing sheep industry is a money-losing proposition (to be discussed below); and its legacy is ruinous land degradation through overgrazing (Plate 29).

In recent years there have been suggestions that, instead of raising sheep, Australia should be raising kangaroos, which (unlike sheep) are native Australian species that are adapted to Australian plants and climates. It is claimed that the soft paws of kangaroos are less damaging to soil than are the hard hooves of sheep. Kangaroo meat is lean, healthy, and (in my opinion) absolutely delicious. In addition to their meat, kangaroos yield valuable hides. All of those points are cited as arguments to support replacing sheep herding with kangaroo ranching.

However, that proposal faces real obstacles, both biological and cultural ones. Unlike sheep, kangaroos are not herd animals that will docilely obey one shepherd and a dog, or that can be rounded up and marched obediently up ramps into trucks for shipment to the slaughterhouse. Instead, would-be kangaroo ranchers have to hire hunters to chase down and shoot their kangaroos one by one. Further strikes