EXPERIMENTS IN THE RANGELANDS - Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities - page 107

humans could be ranked separately in the list of species. Some might be an older
'type' or form and therefore the link between advanced humans and other animals,
or some groups could have degenerated from the higher type. It was a classification
system that reflected existing power structures and cultural perceptions of
superiority (Eldredge, 2006).
Now that human difference had a biological basis, it meant that 'white races'
must have distinct biological characteristics. In The Cultivation of Whiteness ,
Warwick Anderson argued that previously 'white' in Australia had meant British
ancestry, but from the 1880s 'whiteness' became a 'type, mobile and standardized'
(2003: 2). Skin colour was too unreliable a determinant, it had to be something
more, but it was elusive. Perhaps it was 'a typical bodily constitution or tempera-
ment', a thought-style, head circumference, predisposition or resistance to diseases
(ibid.). The biological basis for whiteness also encompassed its vulnerabilities and
limitations, not just what made it different and superior. Foreign environments
could affect white bodies. A common belief was that white people were unable to
live and work successfully in the humid and disease-ridden tropics, that there was
'something in the tropical climate inimical to Europeans' (Smith, 1899). The effects
of the environment of the dry interior were more ambiguous. It was too hot to be
temperate, but it was not humid enough to be tropical. The little rain that fell
evaporated rapidly. When scores of inland settlers died in the heat in 1896, Bourke's
Western Herald proposed the solution was a simple matter of cultural adaptation to
the environmental conditions. It implored people to shed the traditions of the Old
Country, such as hot meals, heavy clothes and business hours during the middle of
the day when it was hottest, to mitigate against 'the terrors of the climate' (Anon,
1896a: 2). The editorial argued they were not bound by biological constraints;
instead, how they chose to live with the heat was within their control.
When immigration restrictions were enacted in the colonies and then in the
new nation, to protect Australia, 'for all time from the contaminating and degrading
influence of inferior races' (Isaac Isaacs, cited in McGregor, 2008: 5), it had
implications for agriculture in Australia. Queensland asked for a Royal Commission
into the circumstances of tropical agriculture but this was denied. In 1906 and 1907
nearly 4,000 islanders were deported (Willard, 1967). Agriculture was intricately
involved in the production and protection of 'whiteness' immediately after the
policy changes, and for the next few decades. The deployment of unskilled labour
to the Bogan scrub and the experiment farm at Coolabah were the first engage-
ments with the practicalities of populating and protecting a white Australia.
In 1898, Robert Peacock set out for the new experiment farm near Coolabah.
As manager of the farm, Peacock was charged with carrying out no small task. His
mission was to gain 'the knowledge which it will be necessary to possess before the
millions of acres of now almost useless land, of which the farm is typical, can be
turned to good account' (Mylrea, 1990). Fifteen hundred acres were presumed for
the purpose, and W. S. Campbell of the Department of Agriculture chose 200 acres
on which to make a start. The farm was to give 'special attention' to wheat
cultivation (Anon, 1897a: 5). In the late nineteenth century, plant-breeders crossed