ABSTRACT
Australia was burning before the people came, and indeed it is plausibly suggested that it was the smoke from bushfires that brought the first Aboriginal people to the northern shores. How the first arrivals knew Australia was here has always been a bit of a puzzle, because the water gap is so great that there is no land on the horizon to guide travellers. The analysis of pollen grains and charcoal fragments has formed a major part of the theory about the effect of Aboriginal use of fire on the Australian environment. It is often claimed that some Australian plants and animals have actually adapted to fire, evidence of an extraordinarily long period during which fire has been more significant in the Australian environment than it has been on any other continent, but this is probably not strictly true.
