Natural Sequence Farming

...

Can you guess (without cheating) which lake in Australia is pictured below?
Some clues.

The year of the drawing is 1815.

The area was not settled until 1815.

So no clearing of land. Can you guess the trees by the lakeside?

Looks like swans and ducks abounding in...

the Macquarie River, near Bathurst, 1815.

Possibly visual evidence of a chain of pond?

The area today, if I'm right, is near a "falls" and a possible remnant "billabong".

You can see the other drawings done by Lewin in 1815/1816 here: [http://archival.sl.nsw.gov.au/Details/ ... 110318770].

What I found interesting was the hills were rather bare (with the steeper mountains looking similar to today), so too were the streambanks...

...

Great post and find Dusty !!

I'm guessing but BW&L crossed the Blue Mountains in 1813. They continued on to Mount Blaxland 25 km south of the site of Lithgow, on the western side of the mountains.[6] From this point Blaxland declared there was enough forest or grassland "to support the stock of the colony for thirty years",[10] while Lawson called it "the best watered Country of any I have seen in the Colony".[1] Wikipaedia

So I hazard a guess it's somewhere near Bathurst??? Belubula ? Macquarie?

Trees look like Cypress Pines...many old and gnarly ones. The old pine in the foreground looks like it was cut, to facilitate the artists capture of the scene. No gums near the water cos local people killed them because of the eucalypt toxins which poisoned the aquatic freshwater species.


So the area too looks like it had been cool burnt, indicated by a lack of ground cover but the area still looks cool and moist cos of the fog and water present.

it's hard for me to see but there MOST definitely would have been ponds in the river especially during dryer times. The quote above from Lawson is apt as too the descriptions given by Bill Gammage, in his book, The Greatest Estate on Earth.
I would be very grateful to you Dusty, if you could post more photos from this collection. THANK YOU.

The picture is titled "Sidmouth Valley showing Macquarie River", which would be about 10km WSW of the village of Tarana, near Kinghorne Falls.

Probably black swans in the picture. Preferred habitat from Birdlife Australia:
"Black Swans...occur wherever there is a wetland, from river estuaries, bays and great lakes to inundated pasture and water-meadows. In some places, where the wetlands are permanent, Black Swans are sedentary, remaining throughout the year."

Two more from Lewin in 1815/1816:

Cox's Pass. Ridgetops treed with gum; hillsides downslope largely devoid of gum, as per Peter's allelopathy chapter? Cox's River. Maybe a leaky weir in the foreground? Lewin is not afraid to depict tree stumps or heavily forested areas as in many of his other drawings. These pictures by him are too early in Bathurst history for any wholesale clearing to have taken place. So in my estimation they represent a rather innocent depiction of the land as it once was (prior to colonisation). God knows what it looked like 150,000 years ago... Sydmouth Valley. Perhaps faint signs of multiple streams across valley floor?

Two more:

Macquarie River, 1815/1816. The Plains (Bathurst presumably), 1815/1816.

Wonderful images.


Definitely a leaky weir there in the one of Cox's River pictures, along with a cow in the background and a gentleman in a blue coat watering his horse and someone? on the track near the river.

In the picture below of the Macquarie River, if you look very closely, the river is shown in perspective as being in the HIGHEST part of the floodplain, with the floodplain falling away and below the river. This is how Stuart described our inland rivers when he was looking for water.....he had to walk uphill to find water, meaning the rivers and streams that flowed thru our floodplains were always on the higher ground.

Thanks for posting.