The spread of European settlement in coastal Queensland - The Great Barrier Reef: An Environmental History - page 44

The context of European settlement in coastal
Queensland
European settlement in Queensland followed a long and complex history of
changes in the natural and cultural environment. Archer et al. (1998) described
many such changes in their account of Australian environmental history during
the last 100 million years. Those changes include the evolution of the Australasian
continent since the disintegration of the Gondwanaland supercontinent, the
northward drift of the Australian tectonic plate, fluctuations in sea level, the
formation of the Great Barrier Reef, the arrival of humans in Australia, the
development of trading relationships between Indigenous Australians and
neighbouring societies, and the earliest European settlement in Australia. Below,
I discuss these changes briefly in order to provide a context for the history of
European settlement in Queensland that follows. The account presented in this
section also indicates the significance of the Great Barrier Reef in shaping the
course of the European settlement of Queensland. Bolton (1981, p1) began his
account of the history of north Queensland by referring to the Great Barrier
Reef - acknowledging its danger to navigation - and Bowen and Bowen (2002)
demonstrated that the Great Barrier Reef has been of critical importance in
influencing the development of the colony of Queensland, both as a hazard and
as a resource.
The history of the north-eastern coast of Australia commenced with
the formation of the Australasian continent after the fragmentation of the
Gondwanaland supercontinent, around 200 million years ago (Lunine, 1999,
p95). The Australian tectonic plate moved northwards by the process of
continental drift to its present position, in which a large part of the Queensland
coast lies within the tropical zone with conditions suitable for the growth of coral
reefs. During the continental drift of the Australian tectonic plate, terrestrial
aridity increased and considerable changes occurred in the vegetation and biota
of the continent. In addition, sea level fluctuated in response to alternating
glacial and interglacial climatic regimes and, during the most recent 10,000
years of the Holocene epoch, ice sheet melting and isostatic adjustments of the
Australian plate caused sea level to vary in north-eastern Australia until present
sea level was reached, around 6,000 years ago, although the details of sea level
history in the region are complex (Hopley, 1997; Veron, 2009). After sea level
stabilised, the modern Great Barrier Reef formed on limestone foundations
composed of the remains of Pleistocene reefs; hence, the modern Great Barrier
Reef is a comparatively recent structure in geological terms (Bird, 1971; Hopley,
1982; Hopley et al., 2007) (se e Chapter 3) .
At several times during the evolution of the continent, lower sea levels existed
between northern Australia and south-eastern Asia than occur at present,
which allowed successive waves of human migration into Australia. Australia
was populated by human societies that may have occupied the continent for
more than 50,000 years; a complex pattern of Indigenous countries was created