Wire Fences in Colonial Australia: Technology Transfer and Adaptation, 1842–1900

Pickard, John

doi:10.1017/s0956793309990136

Cited by 21 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…Both were common and widespread before the increasing adoption of iron wire from the 1850s. 17 They were simple lines of branches and logs cleared off the land and piled up to form crude but cost-effective fences. Sand and plant debris accumulated among the tangled branches inside these fences, making perfect rabbit harbour.…”

Section: Brush and Log Fences And Hedgesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Early Australian rabbit-proof fences: paling, slab and stub fences, modified dry stone walls, and wire netting

Pickard

2021

Rural History

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Fences were critical in the fight against rabbits in colonial Australia. Initially, domestic rabbits were farmed in pens or paddocks fenced with paling fences or walls. Wild-caught rabbits imported from England escaped and became serious pests from the 1850s. As their status changed from protected private property to a major pest, the functions of fences changed to fencing rabbits out. Legislation requiring or specifying rabbit-proof fences lagged several years behind recognition of rabbits as a problem. Most log and brush fences in infested districts were burnt to destroy rabbit harbour. Dry stone walls were modified in many ways; paling, slab, picket and stub fences were all tried, but were unsuccessful, and by 1886 netting was standard. Using examples from the rich agricultural Western District and the considerably poorer Mallee Region of Victoria, this article describes the many forms of rabbit fences used between the 1850s and the mid-1880s. All of the experimentation with different structures was by individual landholders, with colonial governments conspicuous by their lack of involvement until they erected rabbit-proof barrier fences.

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Section: Brush and Log Fences And Hedgesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Early Australian rabbit-proof fences: paling, slab and stub fences, modified dry stone walls, and wire netting

Pickard

2021

Rural History

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“…Even with the new materials, however, fencing was an expensive business. A five‐strand fence around one square mile of 640 acres (259 ha) took 20 miles (32 km) of wire, which weighed about seven tonnes (Pickard, ). For selectors, fences were often part of their lease conditions and helped prevent stock from straying.…”

Section: Evaluating the Commonsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Grazing was not mining: managing Victoria's goldfields commons

Davies

Lawrence

Twigg

2018

Geographical Research

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The great land rush of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw vast swathes of temperate grazing land around the world pass into private hands. Commons and common lands, however, provided a vital interim mechanism in this shift from state control to private property ownership. Commons ensured continued and widespread access to natural resources, including water, minerals, soil, grass, and timber, that was integral to the colonial settler project. The gold rush in nineteenth‐century Victoria sheds important light on this process, where almost 250,000 ha of Crown land were set aside as goldfields commons. These reserves maintained auriferous or gold‐bearing land in public hands and provided access to extensive tracts of grazing for the sheep and cattle of gold miners. In this paper, we examine how the traditional English notion of common lands was transferred to a New World environment and draw on the work of economist Elinor Ostrom to evaluate the use and function of Victoria's goldfields commons in terms of management, regulation, and sustainability.

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“…Investigations at Boro Creek (Erskine and Melville, 1984) and Jerrabomberra Creek (Wasson et al, 1998) found fence lines and other European artefacts within sandy overbank deposits. Wire fences were not available in this region until the AD 1860s and not widely used until the AD 1880s (Hancock, 1972;Pickard, 2007Pickard, , 2010, meaning gully erosion and PSA deposition at Boro and Jerrabomberra Creeks could not have occurred as early as at Ryries Creek, Groves Creek or WP5 from Mulwaree River in the early AD 1800s. Rather, PSA deposition in these creeks was likely concurrent with deposition at Gooromon Ponds and Birchams Creeks in the late AD 1800s to the early AD 1900s (Figure 5).…”

Section: Chronology Of Gully Erosion In the Tablelandsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Timing of post-European settlement alluvium deposition in SE Australia: A legacy of European land-use in the Goulburn Plains

2016

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The timing of landscape change, post-settlement alluvium (PSA) deposition and gully erosion in the southeastern Australian Tablelands remains at the centre of a long-standing discussion over the geomorphological effects of European land-use compared with Aboriginal land-use and climate change. Few quantitative studies date the onset of gully erosion and subsequent PSA deposition in the Tablelands and those that do determine the timing of landscape change for individual catchments rather than across the region. In this study, we present optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) burial ages of swampy meadow (SM) sediment and PSA from six sites spread throughout the Goulburn Plains to place better regional constraints on the timing of landscape change. PSA burial ages at each of our sample sites range between 213 and 81 years before AD 2013, the year during which all samples were collected and measured -corresponding to AD 1800-1932. All measured PSA burial ages post-date European arrival to Australia and are therefore consistent with the generic name and implied age assigned to these sediments before quantitative age estimates were available for them. We suggest, however, that the term 'post-European settlement alluvium' may be more appropriate in the Australian context as Aboriginal Australians were living in the Tablelands prior to European arrival. Associations between the occurrence of gully incision and PSA deposition throughout the Tablelands and climatic factors are tenuous, and we suggest that European land-use practices in the region dominate landscape evolution, which had been driven by climatic factors throughout the Holocene.

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Wire Fences in Colonial Australia: Technology Transfer and Adaptation, 1842–1900

Abstract: After reviewing the development of wire fencing in Great Britain and the United States of America in the early nineteenth century,

Cited by 21 publications

References 17 publications

Early Australian rabbit-proof fences: paling, slab and stub fences, modified dry stone walls, and wire netting

Early Australian rabbit-proof fences: paling, slab and stub fences, modified dry stone walls, and wire netting

Grazing was not mining: managing Victoria's goldfields commons

Timing of post-European settlement alluvium deposition in SE Australia: A legacy of European land-use in the Goulburn Plains

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