Environmental Management in Australia,1788-1914: guardians, improvers and profit : an introductory survey

I was born in Australia and grew up in a small town not far from a State Capital. I had relatives who still worked in agriculture and my family came from living on the land. Accordingly I grew to love this land and never felt right about the love of all things English.Somehow (perhaps ever since the days of MacArthur ) we have had an element of leadership in Australia that regards Australia as (variously or in combination) something to be tamed, something to be conquered, something to exploit. Clearly our colonial origins have shaped our "Anglo centrism". While everyone and everything exploits its environment even the early Governors of Australia lamented the sorts of extreme exploitation which seems to have set the pace for the rich and famous in Australia permanently.I often wonder if the decimation of the Aboriginal people may perhaps be explained as a way of getting rid of the earliest protesters against this. Certainly even significant figures in the early colony such as Surveyor General Augustus Alt and "Baron" Ferdinand von Meuller were dismayed at the things they witnessed in the early 18th century.Things just don't seem to have changed .... Powell, J. M. (1976).