The Australian landscape and environment was heavily impacted, in a largely negative sense by the Europeans upon arrival and settlement. Australia was vastly different from what the European settlers knew back in Britain, with regard to environment. Australia was different from Britain in so many ways; it was a great continent that spanned for thousands of miles with very few large inland water sources. The climate was also immensely different, as it got extremely hot unlike Britain which was generally a much colder climate. The elements faced were much harsher in Australia; there could be periods of intense drought, followed by flood and also the possibility of bushfire that could ravage the bush land that extended across the continent.
In 1848 explorer Thomas Mitchell provided an uncharacteristically sensitive study of the impact colonists were having on the Australian landscape. Mitchell states that fire, grass, kangaroos and the aboriginal people all seem to be dependent on each other to exist in the Australian environment. The fire opens up forests, which in turn creates grass for the kangaroos to eat, which are then eaten by the aboriginal people cooked on fires. All the elements seem to co-exist. That was until the Europeans came and disrupted the Australian environment. The running of cattle had destroyed much of the top soil where grass would grow after the land had been burned and as such the grass woud not grow, subsequently the kangaroos would not be drawn to the grass and the aboriginal people of that area would have lost their main food source leading to their extirpation. There are other elements of the British occupation of the land that would have had devastating impact to the environment and the echo-system. There was mass deforestation; the clearing of trees which often were the natural habitat to a number of wildlife and native animals. Mining as well as irrigation also altered the natural make up of the land, but the settlers were ignorant of this that they did not realise the destructive flow on effect it had on the local aboriginal population which resulted in their almost total extirpation.
The deforestation of the Florentine Valley. This was just one of the many negative environmental impacts Europeans had on the Australian environment.
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