THORNY PROBLEMS - Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities - page 117

sections trace the history of changes in values regarding introduced plant species in
Australia and the economic shifts that have transformed pastoralism in northwest
Queensland. We contextualise the emergence of the prickle bush 'problem'
alongside changing discourses of land management and pastoralist experiences of
tackling prickly trees on their land.
Native and alien species in Australia
Most European settler societies have had a long and awkward relationship with
concepts of 'native' and 'nature'. Both concepts have posed existential challenges
to ideas of authenticity and being in the land. Early Anglo-Celtic settlers in Australia
described their encounters with natives and nature in terms of their strangeness
and lack of culture. Marcus Clarke, a renowned nineteenth-century Australian
journalist and novelist, wrote, 'In Australia alone is to be found the Grotesque, the
Weird, the strange scribblings of Nature learning how to write' (Clarke, 1909: iii).
The strange scribblings of nature were in the form of peculiar animals and plants.
Joseph Banks described kangaroos as, 'almost the Size of a middling Sheep, but very
swift and difficult to catch' (Banks, 1779, cited in Turner, 1968: 5). In his journals
of exploration into Queensland, Sir Thomas Livingstone Mitchell, wrote of
'Various very remarkable shrubs new and strange to me' and of 'trees of a very droll
form' that 'looked very odd' (Mitchell, 1848: 219). Yet at the same time, settler
desire to rewrite the scribblings of nature into a narrative of potential profit was
overwhelming. As James Cook surveyed the prospect of settlement in this new and
strange land, he reassured his audience in England that,
it can never be doubted but what most sorts of Grain, Fruits, Roots &c of
every kind would flourish here were they brought hither, planted and
cultivated by the hand of Industry and here are Provender for more Cattle at
all seasons of the year than can be brought into this country.
(Cook 1770, in Turner, 1968: 4-5)
Nineteenth-century settlement in Australia grappled with encounters of strange
native-ness, desire for profit, and yearning for familiar alien-ness through pastoral-
ism and acclimatisation. Acclimatisation was the way of 'improving' the land by
collecting plants 'from every quarter what is adapted to our soils and climate to
new clothe our adopted country' (Barron Field, 1822, cited in Anderson, 2003:
430). The Queensland Acclimatisation Society, established in 1862, urged the
colonial government to support the introduction of new animals and plants for
settlers to realise the profit and potential from the land. It declared:
The importation and acclimatisation of new animals and vegetable pro-
ductions of a useful description as necessary to the prosperity of the country
[are] obvious, from the fact that the chief producing interest in the colony
owes its origins to the importation of animals not indigenous to Australia, and