Elder among last to remember Australia's forgotten 'parkland'

Aunty Carol Pettersen recalls Western Australia's farming landscape before mass clearing Menang Elder Aunty Carol Petterson was four years old when her family worked as shepherds. They would drive the herd through bushland and along rivers towards the West Australian coast. Standing on the same rocks they once used to cross the Gairdner River, about 200 kilometres south-east of Perth, she has vivid memories of the landscape. "There were no fences around … it was like a parkland," she said. "I can still visualise it." The family didn't have dogs; they drove the sheep themselves, and so long as the lead sheep was headed in the right direction, the rest would follow. "I had a wonderful childhood," she said. "We didn't have motor cars, and I almost feel like I'm from the dinosaur era because we walked." And walk they did, managing up to 20 kilometres a day, keeping pace with the horse and cart carrying their gear. Back then, places were known only by their Noongar names. Nearby Jerramungup was Yarramoup, "up" meaning "place" of the "tall" (yarra), "yate" trees (mo). Aunty Carol said it was the only place around where yate trees grew on a hill. "So when the people said Yarramoup, you knew where to go because we'd follow the hills and the landmarks to know where we were going," she said. They learned to read the country around them. "We knew about the weather, we knew about the animals, we knew where the bush foods were," she said. "If there was samphire by the creek, we would wrap it up in paperbark with meat and put it on the coals. "We gathered our salt from the bush and our sweetness from honey. "To this day, I don't use sugar, and very little salt." For Aunty Carol, country provided everything they needed. "It's home," she said. "When you look at the bush, it's our kitchen, it's our dining room, it's our yarning room, it's our classroom, it's our study area, it's our therapeutic area." But the country Aunty Carol remembers was a much richer and more abundant landscape than the one seen today. Gondwana Link chief executive Keith Bradbury has studied early explorer journals to understand just how dramatically the landscape and its wildlife have changed. "I've read the early explorer journals, trying to understand how different the country was then, because there's no question it was very different," he said. "You had people like James Drummond, who went through that country in the 1840s, just marvelling at its botanical richness. "If you read the early journals, the big hazard of riding through the bush was that woylies and tammars would just bolt out all the time and startle the horses." An excerpt from surveyor John Septimus Roe's journal, dated October 22, 1848, described it as "a large extent of good grassy country … well watered by a river and its numerous branches". But by 1950, the Hassell Estate was sold to the state government and mass clearing began to make way for post-war soldier resettlement. Aunty Carol and her siblings are among the last to remember what it was like before that time. She hopes her story will inspire people to reconnect with country. "We don't see any separation, everything is whole," she said. "Everything is connected, and we are only just one little part of that."