31 October

There’s a whole chapter in Gammage’s book on Aboriginal farming without fencing. Fences are bizarre when you think about it, only needed because we insist on eating things that don’t already live here. If we ate native things then there’s no need for fences, just the need to do what Aborigines did, make the land attractive to those animals. Which means everything wins. The land becomes incredibly rich and diverse to attract animals, we get to eat, there’s no need for constant farming bills to buy and maintain livestock etc. The livestock walks or hops onto the land for you, in endless supply. It’s genius, Aboriginal life was the greatest genius the world has ever seen. Instead we fence a handful of species into paddocks that degrade and erode, forcing farmers to spend a fortune buying the stock, feed in bad seasons, vet bills, dams and other water sources, landscape restoration like anti-erosion measures, and of course the cost of building and maintaining the fences themselves. When they talk about ‘closing the gap’ for Aboriginal people, they mean letting them catch up with us. It’s hilarious, the gap is the other way around. We’re absolutely clueless. We live on the land, not in it.