PUBLIC LECTURE: UWA Albany Public Lecture

To some, the transformation of Western Australian landscapes as encountered by first European settlers has been so dramatic as to have seen irrevocable alteration, the early countryside effectively lost to modern experience. In many ways this interpretation parallels views about Aboriginal cultures. Do such interpretations stand up to modern scientific scrutiny? In this talk, Professor Hopper presented a modern journey taken from the central wheatbelt to the Murchison goldfields in the path of Surveyor Robert Austin’s 1854 expedition. The team comprised staff from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Kings Park and Botanic Garden, a consultant landscape ecologist and a Noongar elder. Austin’s journal was published two years before this small party followed in his footsteps. The team was in search of landscapes, plants and animals described and illustrated by Austin’s team, as well as wanting to better understand Noongar perspectives on the country traversed. This contemporary search proved more revealing than first planned. There is hope that not all is lost despite the changes wrought by a settler society less tuned than Aboriginal cultures to sustainable living on old landscapes.