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| Introduction of European farming practices increased pressure on both the indigenous peoples of Victoria's basalt plain, and on the grasslands that had supported them. Agriculture changed the basalt plain forever. |
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| Digital composite created by Csaba Szamosy for Imagine The Future Inc, 1996, from historic photographs contributed by Melbourne's Living Museum of the West, Parks Victoria, and the Hood Collection, State Library of Victoria. |
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| Draught horses pull a Sunshine Harvester, an Australian innovation after which the suburb of Sunshine was named. |
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| Photo contributed by Melbourne's Living Museum of the West. Photographer and date unknown. |
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The plough completed the near-annihilation of native grassland communities of Victoria's basalt plain begun by the early pastoral industry.
Agricultural production allowed a more complex industrialised economy to develop as entrepreneurs sought to meet the needs of the growing colonial settlement. Trees were ringbarked and burned, fences were constructed, and slowly thousands of hectares of 'virgin' soil were cultivated, either by hand or by horse-drawn ploughs, and sown with introduced cereal crops.
Mills were established to grind the grain into flour, bakeries to transform the flour into bread, and foundries to produce the machinery required to plant, reap and process the agricultural produce. One of the most famous of those foundries was the Sunshine Harvester works, established by Hugh Victor McKay in 1907, which gave its name to what is now the western Melbourne suburb of Sunshine.
European-style agriculture has contributed much to the economic development of the basalt plain, but many practices have also caused considerable ecological damage, including salinity, acidification, irreversible soil erosion and loss of habitats for native fauna such as the Eastern Barred Bandicoot and brolgas.
All farmers know they have to change their practices if agricultural production is to remain viable over the long term. With more than half of small farming enterprises suffering low profitability, many do not have the capacity to implement more environmentally sound land management strategies without external support. But through Landcare groups and other catchment management initiatives, both country and city people are now working together to remediate land damaged by past agricultural practices, and to develop new ways of producing food and fibre that are more environmentally benign.
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| Farm workers enjoy a 'smoko' or tea break in the paddock during hay making, somewhere on the basalt plain around 1900. |
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| Photo contributed by Melbourne's Living Museum of the West. Photographer unknown. |
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What are your stories about farming on Victoria's basalt plain, and about healing the damage of past practices?
<Copyright Imagine The Future Inc 2002.
Text by Merrill Findlay.
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