When History May Lead us Astray: using historical documents to reconstruct swampy meadows/chains of ponds in the New South Wales Central Tablelands, Australia

Abstract

This paper examines historical evidence on the occurrence and status of an important landscape element in the Central Tablelands of New South Wales: the swampy meadow/chain of ponds landform. Our findings reject the notion that it is possible to reconstruct this landform as it was at the time of early European settlement, based solely on early colonial documents. Furthermore the analysis of such documents should be used with appropriate caution when benchmarking this landform. These conclusions have been reached by analysing 826 nineteenth-century portion plans, 18 early explorers and settlers' journals, letters and maps, and nine Surveyor General's maps and plans. We suggest that our findings have significant implications for developing management and restoration strategies, better informing conservation initiatives and the development of policies aimed at protecting, conserving and restoring the swampy meadow/chain of ponds landform. Our experience suggests that researchers involved in historical analyses of documents for similar purposes should be wary about factors such as the limitations and reliability of source data, unwarranted interpretations and the imprecise and/or contradictory use of terms. We also suggest that the possible subjective views of some observers, particularly those with limitations in interpreting such a landform, are further reasons to be cautious. If these factors are not taken into account it is very likely to result in a flawed interpretation. We conclude that both landform awareness and other perceptions of an observer at the time of early European settlement may present a hitherto unrecognised subjective element in this and other analyses which could limit the precision of historical reconstruction, without resort to other complementary methods.

Fire regime and vegetation change in the transition from Aboriginal to European land management in a Tasmanian eucalypt savanna

“…Broadly, there are two different approaches to reconstruction of past environments: environmental history, stemming from the humanities; and historical ecology from the sciences (Bowman 2002). The former relies on interpretation of historical documents and images Bowman 2002;Butzer and Helgren 2005;Mactaggart et al 2007;Gammage 2008) and the latter, environmental reconstructions using a range of proxies, the most important being dendrochronology (Banks 1982;von Platen et al 2011) and pollen and charcoal in sediments (Swetnam et al 1999;Whitlock and Larsen 2001;Turner and Plater 2004;Higuera et al 2005;Black et al 2007). These approaches are not mutually exclusive, indeed sometimes they motivate and inform each other, and can be effectively merged to provide more robust reconstructions of vegetation cover (Fensham 1989;Batek et al 1999;Benson and Howell 2002;Lunt 2002).…”

The morphology and geomorphic evolution of a large chain‐of‐ponds river system

“…It is now well established that during the post-European settlement period, many former discontinuous watercourses in southeastern Australia were transformed into gully and continuous channel networks associated with landuse change (Prosser et al, 1994;Fryirs and Brierley, 1998;Mactaggart et al, 2007Mactaggart et al, , 2008Rustomji and Pietsch, 2007). In the Mulloon catchment, 42 km south of Mulwaree in the Shoalhaven catchment, a former large-scale chain-of-ponds system has become a fully integrated, continuous channel system.…”

“…Rivers with discontinuous or absent channels have long been studied as part of the spectrum of fluvial diversity, and their nomenclature is one of debate (Mactaggart et al, 2007(Mactaggart et al, , 2008Fryirs and Brierley, 2018). They tend to occur in headwater, plateau or upland settings in alluvial, low-energy, low-relief, fine-grained filled valleys.…”

“…Other chains-of-ponds have been lost as a result of burial under sediment transferred from upstream gully erosion (Erskine and Melville, 2008). The chains-of-ponds that remain are of (geo)ecological significance as they provide habitat for species dependent on permanent (or longer-term), lentic water (Hazell et al, 2003;Cartwright and Morgenstern, 2016) and are a distinctive river type in southeastern Australia (Eyles, 1977b;Rutherfurd et al, 2000;Mactaggart et al, 2007Mactaggart et al, , 2008Zavadil and Ivezich, 2011). Chain-of-ponds systems are receiving greater attention as part of conservation plans to identify the geographical extent of those that remain (Hancock et al, 2018) so they can be recognized and included in river management policy and legislation Stokes, 2005a, 2005b;Mactaggart et al, 2007Mactaggart et al, , 2008.…”

Sustainable water and energy management in Australia’s farming landscapes

“…Important conservative features of this landscape were based on step-diffusion processes [7], and included natural dissipative and buffering flow line structures variously termed "chain-of-ponds", "pool-riffle sequences", "in-stream wetlands" [17] and "swampy meadows" [18]. On a regional scale extensive anastomosing channel systems operated to capture and disperse water and sediment across broad inland floodplains [19].…”