Atlas of Australia

The "Still Life" picture is OK for story books, art galleries and Greenie publications. But out in the real world, it is an action cinema. Out of the droughts, the fires, the floods, the weeds and the pests, new winners and losers are constantly emerging in the battle for living space. Every species in Australia arrived here as a "feral" invader, colonized vacant territory and pushed aside weaker occupants.

The Recent Invaders

The face of Australia was changed again by the next wave of human settlers, who brought new animals, plants and tools. Their sheep, cattle, horses, ploughs, axes, fencing wire, wheat and vegetables allowed an enormous expansion in the land devoted to human survival. Human population expanded enormously, and other species were pushed aside and some failed.

These settlers also brought a totally new primate species to Australia – the bureaucrat, a sort of parasitic species protected by armed men and granted power to impose their values on all other settlers. This new species, "Homo plumbeus" (lead in the saddlebag) used powerful new weapons such as taxes, fines, fees and red tape to again change the face of Australia. Unfortunately, a bureaucratic predator has not yet emerged.

"Homo plumbeus" has a favoured habitat – a cosy office in a large city. Naturally the more adventurous explorers, prospectors and graziers got far ahead of the regulators and took possession or "squatted" on the best natural resources they could discover. Their axes, ploughs, grazing animals and mines laid the foundations for all the roads, railways, towns, farms and mines that supported waves of new immigrants.

However, the bureaucrats soon followed. The first one to turn up at a selector's door was probably a Land Commissioner.

In the days of the pioneers, trees were the enemy. Unless these were cleared, both the settler and the colony starved. Government land inspectors roamed the bush threatening selectors with dispossession unless they cleared their quota of trees every year.

That policy was wrong, but so is the current policy where Government land spies, using malicious dobbers or aerial surveillance, threaten graziers with dispossession if they dare to clear a tree without a government permit.

Spurred by years of propaganda from the greenies, and the comfortable do-gooders in the well-watered leafy suburbs, politicians of many hues are now prepared to sacrifice Australia's future because too few appreciate how much Australia depends, not on the trees, but on the grasses.

Our Sacred Grass

In the bible it is written "All flesh is grass".

At the bottom of the land-life pyramid is the soil. The soil supports the worms, bacteria, fungi and other soil microbes that decompose rocks, minerals and organic matter. All land plants derive their sustenance from the soil, the air, the rain and the microbes, some of whom live in symbiosis with the plants. These valiant few (the soil microbes and plants) are the sum total of land-based primary food producers.