Buffel Grass: An Augmented Landscape

Saskia Maya Beudel

doi:10.5130/csr.v18i3.2344

Abstract

This article examines, in part, the spread of an introduced grass species, Buffel grass (Cenchrus ciliaris), in central Australia. It is also about immersing oneself in an unfamiliar landscape and environment, and exploring the kind of writing that can emerge from that process. It is informed by James Clifford's proposition in 'Fort Ross Meditation' that history occurs on diverse and overlapping temporal registers such as weather, dust, faultlines, human histories, animal histories and histories of seeds, among others. While the article does not explicitly discuss Clifford’s argument, it is an attempt to explore similarly diverse histories including those generated by arid zone scientists, Albert Namatjira’s efforts to gain a grazing licence, environmental impact of settlement (including erosion, dust storms and species extinction), along with personal narratives impelled by engagement with place. The article does not aim to theorise its content, rather to elaborate knowledge of landscape along with that elusive quality, a ‘sense of place’, through connecting disparate things.

Highlights

One year I deliberately chose to spend time in Alice Springs during early summer
In my preoccupation with buffel grass (Cenchrus ciliaris) I spent a couple of weeks at the library at the Arid Zone Research Institute (AZRI), the Northern Territory Archives Service, and the CSIRO library
What had happened between imported seeds carrying such improving potential that, as one nineteenth century seedsman put it, they would ‘cause streams of wealth, and happiness, and progress to meander through all our plains and valleys’, to them later, breeding a form of despair and alarm?1 I had become preoccupied with buffel grass because of the diverse narratives it delivers about processes of placemaking in central Australia

Summary

Introduction

One year I deliberately chose to spend time in Alice Springs during early summer. Until I had only visited in winter, the peak tourist season. It ‘speaks’ on a number of registers: as an ‘instrument of colonial domination’ during settlement and the expansion of pastoralism in the region;[2] it discloses scientific attempts to both remedy the destructive effects of overgrazing and make better economic use of the arid zone; it reveals more recent ecological understandings of desert lands and their biota.[3] As with many introduced species, buffel grass divides opinion.

Results

Conclusion