Cover Essay: Fragile Abundance

Abstract

In establishing the Swan River Colony against considerable odds, Captain James Stirling might be regarded as the forerunner of a long line of Western Australian property developers. Having lost his commission, Stirling was in need of an income and succeeded in convincing both the authorities and enough private citizens to take the trip to the other side of the world. Stirling’s fulsome praise for the prospects of the colony did little to prepare these adventurers for the realities of life in a harsh new world. One of these brave souls was another James escaping financial difficulties, the Scottish botanist James Drummond. Along with a wife and six children, Drummond brought with him a variety of seeds and plants, including many important domesticated food species. It is difficult to underestimate the importance of the plants and animals that accompanied colonisers all over the world. This ‘‘selfreplicating and world-altering avalanche’’ as Alfred Crosby describes it, was as important to the success of the imperialist adventure as any armaments. While the colony was fortunate to have this planting material available, growing enough food to feed the colony was a different matter. Despite the success of riverside market gardens, food was short, disease was rife and the colony was often in danger of collapse. Theft from these gardens was so common that a 10 pound reward was offered for information leading to a conviction. Among the more hardy and adept colonists were Dom Salvado and his fellow Benedictine monks. Using some of the plant material that Drummond brought to Perth, Salvado and the Benedictines established grapes, olives and vegetables at their farm overlooking Lake Monger. It is ironic that in establishing grapes and olives, the Benedictines grew two crops that were well suited to the local climate and soils, but which have not been planted on a significant scale here until recently. Armed with faith and optimism, Salvado seemed to flourish in the challenges of the new world. He spent months at a time living in the bush with aboriginal guides, learning their language and developing a taste for lizard supper. In his memoirs, Dom Salvado displays his horticultural genius in ‘‘noting that the sandy area around Perth ... will grow plants just as well as the best European gardens ... and various fruit trees and plants, both native and foreign, strike root successfully.’’ Not all the colonists shared Salvado’s enthusiasm, however; the historian F. K. Crowley writes that ‘‘most of the settlers agreed with their English plants that there was something wrong with this part of the Promised land.’’ Some 150 years later many Perth gardeners would probably agree. The colonists, their plants and technologies, came from a land of deep and fertile soils fresh from a bout of glaciation just 15,000 years earlier. Glaciers creep across the landscape like giant slugs, leaving a thick bed of mineral-rich rock dust in their wake. Together with volcanic eruptions and crust uplift, these are the processes that lay the foundations for the creation of young and fertile soils. Here in the antipodes we have some of the oldest and most eroded soils in the world. NASA scientists come to Published online: April 17, 2007 Correspondence to: Robert Campbell, e-mail: robert.campbell@ecu.edu.au EcoHealth 4, 236–238, 2007 DOI: 10.1007/s10393-007-0102-8