DST, whilst much is made of the aboriginals use of fire, and what impact it might have made on the environment, I believe that not much would have changed. The environment they lived in, with little grazing pressure from livestock, would have been prone to burning most of the time. Early settlers arrived to find abundant tall grasses suitable for grazing of domestic livestock, obviously the population of native animals was never going to be enough to consume all the feed available given the climate dictated that most of the growth occurs during the spring, the population of native animals would have been dictated by what feed was available over the dry period or the winter. I have a personal theory that whilst the aboriginals may have burnt areas as part of a strategy to ensure a food supply, I think that one of the main reasons was to give themselves a safe area to retreat to when the inevitable bush fires occurred, I doubt they could have survived over the ages without having some such means of refuge from fire.
