Country: Future Fire, Future Farming by Bill Gammage and Bruce Pascoe makes the case that Aboriginal land management — firestick farming, water manipulation, seasonal burning — represents not a historical curiosity but a practical blueprint for contemporary environmental survival.
About This Book
The third volume in Thames & Hudson Australia's First Knowledges series, Country: Future Fire, Future Farming dismantles the reductive myth of Aboriginal Australians as purely hunter-gatherers. Gammage and Pascoe draw on deep history — at least 65,000 years of continuous land stewardship — to document a sophisticated agricultural civilisation: one that cultivated vegetation, managed water flows, stored food, and deployed complex seasonal fire programs to protect both Country and its animals. The book is an urgent intervention, linking this ancient expertise directly to the catastrophic fires and ecological crises of the present. Essential reading for anyone engaged with landscape, ecology, or the politics of land in Australia.
Key Features
- 224 pages examining Indigenous Australian land management, firestick farming, and ecological practice
- Authors: Bill Gammage and Bruce Pascoe
- Part of the First Knowledges series
- Published by Thames & Hudson Australia, ISBN 9781760761554
What You'll Discover
- How Aboriginal Australians used firestick practice and seasonal burning programs to protect Country, animals, and food sources over millennia
- Evidence that First Nations peoples farmed and stored food — challenging long-held assumptions about pre-colonial land use
- The specific techniques of water flow manipulation and vegetation management that shaped the Australian landscape before colonisation
- Why ignoring this deep ecological knowledge has direct consequences for contemporary fire management and environmental sustainability
About the Author
Bill Gammage is a historian whose work on Aboriginal land management has reshaped understanding of pre-colonial Australia. Bruce Pascoe is a Bunurong, Tasmanian, and Yuin man whose writing on Aboriginal agriculture and food systems has generated significant national debate. Together, they bring complementary perspectives — one grounded in historical scholarship, the other in Indigenous knowledge and lived cultural connection.
Specifications
- Format: Softcover
- Pages: 224
- Dimensions: 196 x 133 mm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9781760761554
- Publisher: Thames & Hudson Australia
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Architects and landscape designers engaged with Country and ecological practice, urban planners, environmental researchers, and readers seeking to understand Indigenous land management as a living, applicable body of knowledge.