Mallee Country tells the powerful history of mallee lands and people
across southern Australia from Deep Time to the present. Carefully
shaped and managed by Aboriginal people for over 50,000 years, mallee
country was dramatically transformed by settlers, first with sheep and
rabbits, then by flattening and burning the mallee to make way for
wheat. Government backed settlement schemes devastated lives and
country, but some farmers learnt how to survive the droughts, dust
storms, mice, locusts and salinity - as well as the vagaries of
international markets - and became some of Australia's most resilient
agriculturalists. In mallee country, innovation and tenacity have been
neighbours to hardship and failure. Mallee Country is a story of how
land and people shape each other. It is the story of how a landscape
once derided by settlers as a 'howling wilderness' covered in 'dismal
scrub' became home to citizens who delighted in mallee fauna and flora
and fought to conserve it for future generations. And it is the story of
the dreams, sweat and sorrows of people who face an uncertain future of
depopulation and climate change with creativity and hope.