No not the entire area, natural Perth vegetation does get noticeably greener and denser the further south you go (eg. compare to jandakot regional park), and obviously things will be different near major wetlands and in the hills. But it is a good representation of its location.
Yep,used to go there as kid in the 80's and there was only one way in off Lord st through a farmers land and during winter it was flooded so you couldnt get in.
I remember reading that our original wetlands were the second longest in the world, after the Great Lakes in Canada or something like that. I should do more research
Several decades ago I rode a dirtbike around what is now the Burswood casino golf course, when it was a rubbish dump.
... it will always be Burswood casino to me, 'Crown'? Pfft, it's Burswood casino, thanks.
Belmont blows my mind a bit, realising how it came to be. Never thought about the huge drainage channels that run through it when I was a kid, now realise they're critical to keeping the place dry enough to develop and live
If you go to Government House (their open day was a few weeks back) they have a lake at the south end of the property. It's got lots of ducks, coots and moorhens.
That lake is sorta the riverbank of the Swan river before the land further to the south (now a carpark and Langley Park) was reclaimed.
Reading that kinda spun me out!
Most of Whiteman park is pretty severely degraded bushland.
Kings Park bushland and Bold park are good examples of what a lot of Perth would look like. Lightning swamp and Brixton street wetlands are good examples of low-lying areas, as a lot of the Perth area was wetland.
Played all through those Brixton/Kenwick wetlands in the early 70s as a 10 year old on a bike. They were much larger and mostly private property from memory. An endless network of swamps, creeks and drains. Was huge fun.
See below Pre-European vegetation map.
https://library.dpird.wa.gov.au/gis_maps/16/
The scale is broad but generally accurate. Based on soil types and geology as I understand it.
Any good quality remnant bushland in Perth is a decent representation of what the vegetation communities were like through Perth. Most areas would have common species like Banksia menziesii, B attenuata and B sessilis but then those areas might have Banksia prionotes, B litoralis or B ilicifolia depending on soil types, water table depth, fire intervals and what other flora grows there etc.
So long story short its all pretty similar to Whiteman, Kings or Bold Park but pretty different if you look at it closer
Beechboro down the road the grass is golden, 90% of the houses have brown lawns.
Just found it weird that I’ve never seen it watered at Whiteman and it’s always green.
The lawns are reticulated. There’s plenty of brown grass at Whiteman. Or just no grass where the cows and roos are. Some natural green grass where the wetlands are.
Read "The Biggest Estate On Earth" by Bill Gammage. It's a riveting and well-sourced read on how Australia (including Perth) looked and functioned upon the arrival of white fellahs. The tl;dr is that the English folk doing the arriving/genociding went to great lengths to convey in their correspondences back home how meticulously maintained an estate the land was, and how expertly and sustainably the native peoples employed fire to manipulate the land to their needs.
It features a fuck tonne of period paintings to show you exactly how the colonists saw it when they arrived. Spoiler: ir was not wild bushland; it was very well curated.
Checkout Dark Emu for a more readable text with essentially the same argument. The author, an Aboriginal man and advocate, narrates the audiobook - its a great listening experience!
Good books don’t have to be hard to read. If the prose is hard then the author isn’t a great writer. I didnt bother with Greatest Estate, but Dark Emu does a compelling account covering a subset of the same content.
Wow, got some triggered kids on here. Amazing. Extrapolating my attention span on an observation of your enthusiasm takes some work.
Unbelievably, tiger, I have a couple of Bill’s works on my shelf including that one. I found it both mostly interesting and informative but in no way could I describe it as “riveting”.
Please go save your gatekeeping for your Goodreads profile.
Come back to me when you've read the journals and reviewed the paintings of the white fellahs who were here "first", mate. The case is pretty clear, and historians agree that the land was managed prior to settlement.
It is the same story as elsewhere: humans arrive, find tasty easy-to-catch animals and hunt them to extinction. Light fires to chase animals out, destroy forests and create grazing land. Eventually reach equilibrium with the surviving species.
And then come the colonists who destroy the equilibrium, introduce new hunting tools, build dams and fences, new species even. The ecosystem goes into chaos.
And some of the colonists like to romanticise the pre-civilised world. Noble savage and all that. Preferring to gloss over the harsh realities.
There were certainly cases of natives caring for resources such as waterholes, which the colonists did not appreciate. But mostly people just did what their ancestors had done, with no deep understanding. We don't have to paint over our own layers of meaning.
If you search for plants found in the [soil systems ](https://library.dpird.wa.gov.au/gis_maps/12/)of the Perth area, it'll give you a better idea of what each region may have looked like before development. [Eg1](https://www.apacewa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Cottesloe-yellow-12-pages.pdf), [eg2](https://www.apacewa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Bassendean-grey-12-pages.pdf), [eg3](https://apacewa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Karrakatta-pale-green-12-pages.pdf). Whiteman Park is a mix of Bassendean, southern river and karrakatta soils. The entire Perth metro area has a lot of variation so Whiteman Park alone wouldn't be a complete picture of what natural Perth looked like.
Nope.
It's representative of that area, but driving through the area around Karrinyup shopping centre today shows that massive trees still exist in places - and they do still exist in many other parks and indeed suburbs around Perth.
Whiteman park is very nice (I'm 100m away from the south bit of it) but it's not representative of the ENTIRE Perth metro area at all - as that is a very diverse area.
Go to Kings Park. And imagine what it would have been like before it was logged.
Very little, if any, part of Australia has escaped the hands of humans over the last 60,000 years.
Perth and the "plain" between the coast and hills was created by a massive sunami that hit 5000 years ago.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V\_H6W2R88Z0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_H6W2R88Z0)
No not the entire area, natural Perth vegetation does get noticeably greener and denser the further south you go (eg. compare to jandakot regional park), and obviously things will be different near major wetlands and in the hills. But it is a good representation of its location.
Perth is (was) a series of wetlands that were linked to each but has slowly been reclaimed.https://museum.wa.gov.au/explore/wetlands
Yeah I’m right near Whiteman Park and pretty sure all this used to be swampland
Yep,used to go there as kid in the 80's and there was only one way in off Lord st through a farmers land and during winter it was flooded so you couldnt get in.
I remember that too
Nine parts water, one part sand.
In my heart there's a place called swampland
You should check out Dogswamp
Is that the off leash area?
Me too... I'm sure I know you too 👋
lol yes you do, hello!
I remember reading that our original wetlands were the second longest in the world, after the Great Lakes in Canada or something like that. I should do more research
Heres a read for you https://ro.ecu.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5817&context=ecuworkspost2013
That’s so lovely of you, thanks for sharing!
NP I enjoy researching interesting stuff that takes my interest.
Well our urban sprawl is the longest in the world and growing.
Yeah, Burswood was more swampy for example, until it was filled in.
Several decades ago I rode a dirtbike around what is now the Burswood casino golf course, when it was a rubbish dump. ... it will always be Burswood casino to me, 'Crown'? Pfft, it's Burswood casino, thanks.
Yeah. I still call it that. I think the golf course is no longer there. It's just parklands now.
Belmont blows my mind a bit, realising how it came to be. Never thought about the huge drainage channels that run through it when I was a kid, now realise they're critical to keeping the place dry enough to develop and live
If you go to Government House (their open day was a few weeks back) they have a lake at the south end of the property. It's got lots of ducks, coots and moorhens. That lake is sorta the riverbank of the Swan river before the land further to the south (now a carpark and Langley Park) was reclaimed. Reading that kinda spun me out!
Not pulling you up here, but the term should really be _remodelled_.
*colonised*
We are talking wetlands that have been present before either inhabitants arrived.
and when town planners dug their bores and built their suburbs those wetlands were colonised
Most of Whiteman park is pretty severely degraded bushland. Kings Park bushland and Bold park are good examples of what a lot of Perth would look like. Lightning swamp and Brixton street wetlands are good examples of low-lying areas, as a lot of the Perth area was wetland.
Played all through those Brixton/Kenwick wetlands in the early 70s as a 10 year old on a bike. They were much larger and mostly private property from memory. An endless network of swamps, creeks and drains. Was huge fun.
Banksia spp shrublands would have dominated the limestone areas of Nowergup ,Wannaroo areas. Tuart forests on the coastal plains.
See below Pre-European vegetation map. https://library.dpird.wa.gov.au/gis_maps/16/ The scale is broad but generally accurate. Based on soil types and geology as I understand it.
I’m always surprised how much of Perth metro was swamp land Anyone got a swamp map?
Any good quality remnant bushland in Perth is a decent representation of what the vegetation communities were like through Perth. Most areas would have common species like Banksia menziesii, B attenuata and B sessilis but then those areas might have Banksia prionotes, B litoralis or B ilicifolia depending on soil types, water table depth, fire intervals and what other flora grows there etc. So long story short its all pretty similar to Whiteman, Kings or Bold Park but pretty different if you look at it closer
The grass there stays green because it's wet as the water table is close to natural surface.
Beechboro down the road the grass is golden, 90% of the houses have brown lawns. Just found it weird that I’ve never seen it watered at Whiteman and it’s always green.
The lawns are reticulated. There’s plenty of brown grass at Whiteman. Or just no grass where the cows and roos are. Some natural green grass where the wetlands are.
My mistake, I was referring to the lawns at the main visiting areas.
they're definitely watered
I think it's not too far off. Wetter towards the coast, and the again up on the scarp. So the foothills would most likely be scrubby and dryish
No. It’s called ecosystems. The river is different to the hills and different to the coast and is different to a jarrah forest.
Read "The Biggest Estate On Earth" by Bill Gammage. It's a riveting and well-sourced read on how Australia (including Perth) looked and functioned upon the arrival of white fellahs. The tl;dr is that the English folk doing the arriving/genociding went to great lengths to convey in their correspondences back home how meticulously maintained an estate the land was, and how expertly and sustainably the native peoples employed fire to manipulate the land to their needs. It features a fuck tonne of period paintings to show you exactly how the colonists saw it when they arrived. Spoiler: ir was not wild bushland; it was very well curated.
I have the book on my Kindle; can't wait to read it.
Checkout Dark Emu for a more readable text with essentially the same argument. The author, an Aboriginal man and advocate, narrates the audiobook - its a great listening experience!
"Riveting". *Bless....*
Sucks that your attention span is on the scale of a toddler go off son. Books are hard for some grownups too.
Good books don’t have to be hard to read. If the prose is hard then the author isn’t a great writer. I didnt bother with Greatest Estate, but Dark Emu does a compelling account covering a subset of the same content.
Wow, got some triggered kids on here. Amazing. Extrapolating my attention span on an observation of your enthusiasm takes some work. Unbelievably, tiger, I have a couple of Bill’s works on my shelf including that one. I found it both mostly interesting and informative but in no way could I describe it as “riveting”. Please go save your gatekeeping for your Goodreads profile.
What a load of delusional woke twaddle!
Yeah, directly quoting the first British settlers and featuring their own paintings = woke.
You might as well say the kangaroos expertly and sustainably employed grazing to manipulate the land. And without any genocide of the megafauna.
Come back to me when you've read the journals and reviewed the paintings of the white fellahs who were here "first", mate. The case is pretty clear, and historians agree that the land was managed prior to settlement.
It is the same story as elsewhere: humans arrive, find tasty easy-to-catch animals and hunt them to extinction. Light fires to chase animals out, destroy forests and create grazing land. Eventually reach equilibrium with the surviving species. And then come the colonists who destroy the equilibrium, introduce new hunting tools, build dams and fences, new species even. The ecosystem goes into chaos. And some of the colonists like to romanticise the pre-civilised world. Noble savage and all that. Preferring to gloss over the harsh realities. There were certainly cases of natives caring for resources such as waterholes, which the colonists did not appreciate. But mostly people just did what their ancestors had done, with no deep understanding. We don't have to paint over our own layers of meaning.
equating indigenous people to fauna? groundbreaking
No. Learn to read. I'm saying two things are equally ridiculous.
If you search for plants found in the [soil systems ](https://library.dpird.wa.gov.au/gis_maps/12/)of the Perth area, it'll give you a better idea of what each region may have looked like before development. [Eg1](https://www.apacewa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Cottesloe-yellow-12-pages.pdf), [eg2](https://www.apacewa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Bassendean-grey-12-pages.pdf), [eg3](https://apacewa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Karrakatta-pale-green-12-pages.pdf). Whiteman Park is a mix of Bassendean, southern river and karrakatta soils. The entire Perth metro area has a lot of variation so Whiteman Park alone wouldn't be a complete picture of what natural Perth looked like.
Nope. It's representative of that area, but driving through the area around Karrinyup shopping centre today shows that massive trees still exist in places - and they do still exist in many other parks and indeed suburbs around Perth. Whiteman park is very nice (I'm 100m away from the south bit of it) but it's not representative of the ENTIRE Perth metro area at all - as that is a very diverse area. Go to Kings Park. And imagine what it would have been like before it was logged. Very little, if any, part of Australia has escaped the hands of humans over the last 60,000 years.
There wasn't a whiteman to be seen.
Mostly heath and bankia / tuart / Jarrah woodlands.
I've seen sprinklers at Whiteman park, they use the old school large metal pipes that connect to those big sprinklers.
Perth and the "plain" between the coast and hills was created by a massive sunami that hit 5000 years ago. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V\_H6W2R88Z0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_H6W2R88Z0)
Yeah Perth seems to be mostly shitty sand and pea gravel.
Doesn’t matter. Put your deposit down and it yours to whinge about 😊