ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the importance of cultural factors on land settlement. Matthew Tonts and Julia Horsley address the issue of international knowledge transfer on land settlement schemes. The physical environments in which these schemes were undertaken range from equatorial forests to cool temperate grasslands and even include the reclamation of land from the sea. Twentieth century land settlement schemes were characteristically commenced in remote and environmentally challenging locations and were seen as being capable of growing to maturity in extremely dynamic technological, economic, social and political circumstances that often rendered the guidelines, for undertaking ventures obsolete. For example, in 1905, Western Australia's Royal Commission on Immigration decreed that, “all considerable areas of agricultural land must have a fifteen-mile rail service”. This example illustrates why a study of the legacies of twentieth century land settlement schemes is a valuable corollary of a study of these schemes' lives.
