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Pastoralism and Agriculture

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An Archaeology of Australia Since 1788

Part of the book series: Contributions To Global Historical Archaeology ((CGHA))

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Abstract

Familiar food was in short supply in the first years of British settlement at Sydney Cove. Lack of experience with the local climate and soils meant that early crops failed, while valuable stock wandered off into the bush. Colonists were forced to rely on dwindling supplies of salt meat, flour, peas and rice, supplemented with wild game and fish from the harbour. The “hungry years”, however, did not last long. As early as August 1790, the colony’s chaplain, Reverend Richard Johnson, who humbly called himself only “½ a farmer”, had already cut two crops of wheat, barley and oats from a patch of land beside his cottage in Sydney and harvested more than 1,000 cucumbers and many other vegetables (Symons 2007:16). By 1792, only 4 years after the First Fleet arrived, the worst threat of famine had passed, and by 1805, in spite of droughts, blights and floods, the colony was self-sufficient in basic European foodstuffs, with more than 12,000 acres under cereal cultivation and many thousands of sheep, pigs and cattle at hand (Jones and Raby 1989:158).

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  1. Archaeology Program, La Trobe University, 3086, Bundoora, Victoria, Australia

    Susan Lawrence & Peter Davies

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Correspondence to Susan Lawrence .

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Lawrence, S., Davies, P. (2011). Pastoralism and Agriculture. In: An Archaeology of Australia Since 1788. Contributions To Global Historical Archaeology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-7485-3_6

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