The Eco-Complex in its Importance for Agricultural Assessment

Abstract

The Australian continent has an area of about three million square miles and a range of climatic conditions from winter to summer rainfall, wet to dry and hot to cold. Until European settlement about a century and a half ago, the continent was occupied by primitive nomadic peoples who, surviving by hunting and gathering native foods, did not leave any traditional patterns of land use applicable to European development. The accumulation of scientific and geographic information about the continent and experience in land use have both been much restricted in respect to time. They have also been geographically influenced by the concentration of populations in the more easily developed areas of higher rainfall in the east, south-east and south-west which are the main areas of agricultural and industrial production but which collectively occupy only a small part of the continent. The remainder, largely arid, semi-arid or dry monsoon country, mostly has a low natural productivity, is still very sparsely populated, and in parts is still in the explorative stage of pioneering settlement.