HUNTING
“Tasmanian Aborigines desire re-empowerment in land management … to continue relationships with land that has not been despoiled – much of which is in national parks. ”
The Muwinina used fire to clear the undergrowth. Slow, carefully timed and executed burns encouraged the growth of new pick. Green grasses. This attracted grazing animals like wallaby and kangaroo—which grew to enormous size.
French expeditions in the late 18th Century sailing up the southeast coast reported extensive burning in the foothills of the Wellington Range, describing the Mountain as ringed with fires. From Storm Bay, Baudin observed that the high forests upon the Platform Mountain (kunanyi) were less dense—appearing to have been burnt off.
One of Baudin’s officers, Louis-Claude Freycinet came ashore near [present day] Glenorchy desirous of meeting the Muwinina people whom he had seen from the river. His longboat beached and the crew took off after the Muwinina who were heading swiftly inland toward Goats Hill. The crewmen observed them alighting the bush as they walked over the brow. The French, undeterred and as quickly as they could, followed through a wall of smoke. They next saw the unknown Muwinina ascending Mount Hull several kilometers away, and then in the afternoon at Mt Communication, setting one burn line after the next. The French could not catch up and after an all-day twelve kilometre hill-climb, desisted, observing the locals still extending the front of their fire as they vanished over Collins Bonnet. Describing the day in his diary (unknowingly) Freycinet became the first to record fire-stick farming at landscape-scale. Today, the subtleties of the methods the Muwinina used are now re-emerging and being re-applied.
A blaze on the Mountain reported in 1806 may well have been one of the final fires of the Muwinina. The park-like, cleared landscape which they now occupied, rich in game, was formed and maintained by the Muwinina. It made hunting, as well as travel, easier. Without this carefully tended grazing land, effectively farmed, the British colonists may well have starved or been forced to abandon their camps.