Remote Australia Online

Outback Australia is characterised by variability in its resource drivers, particularly and most fundamentally, rainfall. Its biota has adapted to cope with this variability. The key strategies taken by desert organisms (and their weaknesses) help to identify the likely impacts of natural resource management by pastoralists and others, and potential remedies for these impacts. The key strategies can be summarised as five individual species’ responses (ephemerals, in-situ persistents, refuging persistents, nomads and exploiters), plus four key emergent modes of organisation involving multiple species that contribute to species diversity (facilitation, self-organising communities, asynchronous and micro-allopatric co-existence). A key feature of the difference between the strategies is the form of a reserve, whether roots and social networks for Persistents, or propagules or movement networks for Ephemerals and Nomads. With temporally and spatially varying drivers of soil moisture inputs, many of these strategies and their variants can co-exist. While these basic strategies are well known, a systematic analysis from first principles helps to generalise our understanding of likely impacts of management, if this changes the pattern of variability or interrupts the process of allocation to reserves. Nine resulting ‘weak points’ are identified in the system, and the implications of these are discussed for natural resource management and policy aimed at production or conservation locally, or the regional integration of the two.

Guest Editorial: Building a Science of Desert Living

Global research over the past decade has increasingly emphasised the fundamentally linked, or ‘coupled’, nature of what have been called human-environment or social-ecological systems. One strand of this thought focuses on drylands. This strand was originally triggered by debates on the nature and causes of desertification, where differing social and biophysical science paradigms put blame respectively on the socio-political factors, or on the biophysical nature of drylands and their climates. Clearly both were part of the story, a view synthesised by a Dahlem conference in 2002 and further refined to five principles stated as a ‘dryland development paradigm’ in 2007. From this thinking have followed many threads related to the interactive nature of humans and their environments in drylands, including those of Australia. At the same time, a homegrown and grassroots set of concepts was being developed under the rubric of ‘desert knowledge’ in central Australia. These ideas were pioneered by Bruce Walker at the Centre for Appropriate Technology in Alice Springs (see his article elsewhere in this volume) but taken up by a diverse group of organisations, people (Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal) and governments. The movement has spawned several complementary organisations, in particular, Desert Knowledge Australia, the Desert Peoples Centre and the Desert Knowledge Cooperative Research Centre, all seeking to operate across the Australian deserts. A series of worthy ideas and approaches has emerged from the various workings of these organisations; these have recently been synthesised as concepts to underlie a ‘Science of Desert Living’, drawing on the principles being espoused for drylands internationally. A key step in this endeavour was to identify a suite of ‘desert drivers’ - interlinked characteristics of desert regions (described below) that appear to underpin many of the features that various researchers have identified in compartmentalised studies of the biophysical and social functioning of desert Australia.

This document provides a short Final Report for Desert Knowledge CRC Project Criteria for Defining Areas of High Conservation Value in the Rangelands, a small project contracted by the Department of the Environment and Heritage (DEH) in late 2005 in the form of a workshop (see Appendix). The objective of the workshop was to draw on key ecological, management and policy expertise to define a state-of-the-art rationale for the mapping of high conservation value (HCV) areas in the rangelands, and, if necessary, to develop the approach required to test and implement this mapping. Workshop rationale: For a number of years there have been concerns in various agencies that approaches to identifying areas of high conservation value used for other regions of Australia may not provide the best outcomes in the rangelands. In response to these concerns, the Australian Government DEH has sought to explore alternative approaches and this workshop was intended to bring together the thinking and expertise around the subject. Amongst other matters, a better basis for defining areas of high conservation value will assist priority-setting for public investment at a variety of scales, including both traditional activities such as reserve acquisition, as well as more contemporary issues such as regional plan accreditation, incentives and off-reserve conservation actions.

Conserving desert Australian livelihoods

The desert knowledge community has been motivated by the assertion that outback Australia is characterised by a set of features that are not individually unique, but which together cause it to function in ways that are fundamentally different to other physical and social environments. This paper sets out to appraise this assertion. It documents the evidence for the individual features – (i) climate variability at various scales in space and time (climate variability), (ii) widespread low and patchy primary productivity (scarce resources), (iii) sparse, mobile and patchy human population (sparse population), (iv) distant markets and decision-making (remoteness), (v) further perceived unpredictability in markets, labour and policy (social variability), (vi) limited research knowledge and persistent traditional and local knowledge (local knowledge), and (vii) particular types of people, culture and institutions (cultural differences). It then assesses whether there is evidence for the hypothesis that these features are causally linked to act as a consistent syndrome. This can only be partially confirmed as yet, but, if true, implies that management and policy for the region must recognise that the causal links are unlikely to be easily broken. The key consequence for desert people is that they should put more time into planning and managing for their apparently careless treatment by the environment and bureaucracy, and less time railing against it, because it will not go away. The key consequence for sympathetic outsiders is that there are great opportunities to create a policy context in which desert innovation can thrive in response to the ‘desert syndrome’.

Bush medicine for a bustling world

Buffel grass [Cenchrus ciliaris L. syn. Pennisetum ciliare (L.) Link] is an exotic species that has been widely planted in Australian arid and semi-arid grazing lands, and has become an important resource for livestock. It establishes readily and has expanded into such a diversity of land types beyond grazing lands that it is also regarded as a serious environmental weed. Although there is an abundance of literature on the production benefits of buffel grass, there is relatively little about its influence on native flora and fauna in arid Australia, particularly when its cover levels are low. This study attempted to clarify the influence of buffel grass and environmental patterns on the occurrence of ground vegetation, birds, reptiles and ants in a gneissic hill habitat in central Australia where buffel grass has encroached. Despite poor conditions for growth, we were able to distinguish the influence of buffel grass from that of other variables like overstorey cover, soil pH, fire and transect orientation. Cover of buffel grass did not exceed ~20% but it still accounted for a small amount of the variation in the composition of ground vegetation and birds, and of the ‘ground-dwelling’ bird guild and the ‘hot climate specialist’ functional group of ants. There were insufficient reptiles for analysis. We conclude that, even when cover is low, buffel grass can have a detectable influence on some aspects of community dynamics. Given the evidence from published literature and from this study, we expect the influence of buffel grass on the diversity of native flora and fauna to increase, particularly if buffel grass expands into land types previously thought unsuited to its environmental needs.

In August 2005, the Australian Government Department of the Environment and Heritage (now Department of the Environment and Water Resources) commissioned the DKCRC to inform department decisions about market-based incentives for achieving biodiversity conservation outcomes in the rangelands. The title of the commission was ‘Enabling the market: incentives for biodiversity in the rangelands’ (DKCRC project 1.806). It had a whole-of-rangeland focus and it specifically targeted information on market-based incentives. The motivation for this study was largely driven by the large body of work on conservation incentive programs for biodiversity conservation on private lands in the intensive land use zone of coastal Australia. The extensively managed rangelands which cover some 80% of the continent have received little investment largely because the landscapes are perceived to be relatively intact. However, recent State of the Environment reports suggest that rangeland ecosystems are in slow decline and extremely vulnerable to inappropriate land uses, fire management practices and invasive weed species. Biodiversity conservation options in the rangelands are likely to be highly cost-effective and could alleviate the need for large remedial investments in the future. Because there has been less exposure for market-based delivery of conservation outcomes in the rangelands than in the intensive land use zone, it is unknown how transferable they are; this must be understood before embarking on any new investments. The expected outcomes of this study were: • The scientific basis necessary to support the development of a market-based approach to biodiversity conservation in the rangelands • A better understanding for investors of the depth of any potential incentives markets • Improved regional and organisational ability to plan for and implement incentives programs to protect biodiversity.

Rangelands support many ecosystem services important to humans, including climate regulation. They also have a significant role to play in the mitigation of greenhouse gases. However, the capacity of any rangeland to do this depends foremost upon the condition of biodiversity, and the functioning of its ecosystems. Considerable research has been undertaken on rangeland condition but it has not yet included the assessment of biodiversity (plants, animals and microbes) as a primary focus. Rangeland managers have struggled to assess biodiversity condition because it is rarely defined, is everywhere (so what do you assess?), is always changing in response to natural and human disturbances (so how do you know when it has changed?) and what amount signals management action. Here we present a framework that addresses these issues, and apply it to select surrogates and indicators that are scientifically defensible in biological and planning terms for assessing biodiversity. An arid Australian rangeland region is used as a case study to develop and apply our approach. We were not able to illustrate interpretation of condition because of the absence of long-term monitoring data in Australian rangelands, but we do provide guiding principles about sampling design and analytical methods for interpretation that use raw data rather than multimetrics. We discovered that different management outcomes expected to be informed from assessing biodiversity condition affected surrogate and indicator choice, and that a number indicators were not robust when assessed on conceptual relevance, measurement qualities, feasibility of implementation and policy and management relevance for four different management outcomes. Our work highlights the importance of stating the expected outcomes of biodiversity condition assessments up front, so that indicators relevant to future management are chosen. It also shows that critical thought on the robustness of indicators is warranted, especially as condition assessments under climate change will require information on the functional traits of species. We conclude by assessing the strengths and weaknesses of our framework in relation to environmental planning

The assessment of biodiversity condition is becoming increasingly important in natural resource management (NRM), especially within the context of climate change. The challenge facing land and biodiversity conservation managers is knowledge about what biodiversity to assess, how to measure it and how to interpret complex ecological information to inform policy and management decisions. There are few operational frameworks to solve these challenges. This technical report examines the feasibility of identifying appropriate indicators to monitor and assess biodiversity, focusing on an arid rangeland landscape. Using an ecological risk assessment philosophy, we developed a method to identify and select outcome-based indicators to audit biodiversity and assess its condition. We interpreted this challenge as an exercise in designing a biodiversity monitoring program at the regional scale where the purpose of monitoring was to detect change, interpret monitoring data to assess condition and make management decisions. We focused on the regional scale because most planning, management decisions and reporting for biodiversity occurs at this level. Lessons learned in other studies indicated that we needed to take a strategic approach to identifying indicators, as not all indicators will be suitable to measure information pertaining to the desired management outcomes. We were also aware of the importance of acceptance of indicators; therefore, it was important to identify a set of field-based and remotely derived indicators that were scientifically credible and practical to measure. We also propose a new method to interpret biodiversity condition, and we illustrate it using a hypothetical example.

Over the last few decades, approaches to natural resource management have evolved towards greater recognition of the importance of involving communities in decisions which affect their areas of interest. Throughout Australia a number of "interface organisations" have been established to facilitate dialogue between governments, industries and communities for sustainable natural resource outcomes. Several such "interface organisations" exist in the Lake Eyre Basin, however, little is known about the success factors of their engagement approaches. A method has been developed to assess these success factors in the Lake Eyre Basin, which includes: (i) development of regional social, economic and resource profiles; (ii) a toolkit of engagement success factors of NRM organisations; (iii) case studies of organisational interventions; and (iv) development of on -going engagement monitoring systems. Research on the regional social, economic and resource profiles is near completion.

The Australian outback is a unique ecological and social landscape. The people who live here cope with harsh and variable environmental conditions, particularly in terms of rainfall and the availability of surface water. The human population density is very low – less than 0.001 people per km2 – which is considerably less than the national average of 2.6 people per km2. This population is widely dispersed around small urban centres that are remote from major Australian cities. The dominant land use is grazing, while other land uses include agriculture, mining, tourism, defence and nature conservation. There is a growing interest in a broader diversity of economic activities, particularly ecotourism, to supplement grazing activities. Environmental drivers are dominated by the availability of water, with ‘droughts and flooding rains’ likely to remain a central feature of life in outback regions of Australia. Water supply for human or ecosystem use across this region is determined by the highly variable rainfall and very high evaporation rates relative to rainfall. Water issues are very different between coastal and interior outback regions, including in the regions in this study. Along the coastal and semi-arid region surface water flows are more reliable; in the interior they are highly episodic and hence unreliable. In the interior, water bores are vitally important sources of reliable water necessary to support human populations and their production systems. These harsh environmental factors frame all human activities in these regions, and, in turn, some human activities lead to adverse environmental impacts such as erosion. Consequently, public interests and stewardship roles of various tiers of governance impose institutional constraints, such as rules, that seek to align individual activities and decision making with the interests of the wider community.

Tourism has been increasingly used for, and directly linked with, rural poverty reduction in developing countries. However, the application, and to an extent the principles, of the widely used organising framework for considering poverty reduction, the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach (SLA), may not fit fully the tourism situation, and vice versa. Based on a review of the literature we first suggest that sustainable livelihoods for tourism should be viewed in a broader tourism context, rather than merely taking tourism as a development tool. Second, the SLA seeks household livelihood sustainability at the individual or household level, while tourism sustainability is often applied to the industry and destinations at wider, more macro level scales. Thus, a reconciliation of the tensions and opportunities between the SLA and tourism needs to be found. Third, tourism research has demonstrated local residents' increasing concern about participation in political governance associated with tourism development, with less participation jeopardising local people's assets from a livelihood perspective. Therefore, an additional concept of institutional asset (mainly community participation) needs to be incorporated within the SLA. Given the above understandings, a sustainable tourism livelihood was defined and a Sustainable Tourism Livelihoods Approach (STLA) is proposed. The potential applications of the STLA are discussed and future research is recommended.

In comparison to the major dust sources in the Northern Hemisphere, Australia is a relatively minor contributor to the global dust budget. However, severe dust storms do occur in Australia, especially in drought years. In this study, we simulate the 22–23 October 2002 dust storm using an integrated dust model, which is probably the most severe dust storm in Australia in at least the past 40 years. The model results are compared with synoptic visibility data and satellite images and for several stations, with high-volume sampler measurements. The model simulations are then used to estimate dust load, emission, and deposition, both for over the continent and for over the ocean. The main dust sources and sinks are identified. Dust sources include the desert areas in northern South Australia, the grazing lands in western New South Wales (NSW), and the farm lands in NSW, Victoria, and Western Australia, as well as areas in Queensland and Northern Territory. The desert areas appear to be the strongest source. The maximum dust emission is around 2000 μg m−2 s−1, and the maximum net dust emission is around 500 μg m−2 s−1. The total amount of dust eroded from the Australian continent during this dust event is around 95.8 Mt, of which 93.67 Mt is deposited on the continent and 2.13 Mt in the ocean. The maximum total dust load over the simulation domain is around 5 Mt. The magnitude of this Australian dust storm corresponds to a northeast Asian dust storm of moderate size.

Termites (order Isoptera) are insects, with a highly evolved social system of soldiers, workers, and two reproductive classes. Australia houses more than three hundred species, and colonies can have a million or more members, with prolific egg production from queens. Waste paper is in large supply in landfills and increasing daily. Since termites obtain most of their energy requirements from the digestion of cellulose, there is an opportunity to utilise their services to break down this waste paper and utilise the resulting termite biomass as a food source for the aquaculture, pig, and poultry industries. Nutrients left behind in termite wastes may also be useful for horticultural purposes, particularly compost. The aim of this project was to look at the feasibility of this idea, with emphasis on applications in areas where recycling is not economically feasible, as recommended by the Desert Knowledge Cooperative Research Centre centred in Alice Springs, Northern Territory. This project commenced with a pilot study in Perth, using a colony of Coptotermes acinaciformes in a termitarium. Here, the attractiveness to termites of different types of waste paper was evaluated. C. acinaciformes decomposed a total of 5.9 kg of paper over 20 weeks, displaying a preference for newspaper over glossy-coated paper, and glossy paper over bleached office paper. Trial two involved mixing paper types and adding moisture, which increased overall decomposition, but saturated samples were less preferred. The termites decomposed 6.9 kg of paper over 20 weeks. The decomposed remains and soil in the laboratory containers were evaluated for nutrients of horticultural significance via two pot trials and CSBP analyses. Mixing termite workings into a sand and peat control (4:3:1) increased the pH from 4.96 to 8.18 and conductivity from 0.08 to 0.25 dS/m. The workings mix revealed low levels of nitrogen and high levels of phosphorus, potassium, sulphur, organic carbon, and the trace elements copper, zinc, manganese, and iron. Addition of nitrogen to the workings increased plant productivity substantially. Then, next to the landfill of the Alice Springs rubbish tip, the trial was extended to a large-scale field evaluation, using 44-gallon drum feeding stations exposed to C. acinaciformis. The feeding stations were successful in focusing feeding activity, but decomposition of the paper in the plastic bags was relatively low. The most successful bag showed 561.6 g decomposed paper (20.8 %) over 20 weeks.

This study set out to review work to date on sustainable investment in desert settlements, reporting on extending the lifecycle of remote, particularly Aboriginal, settlement housing and infrastructure relative to social, technical and economic investment. We aimed to synthesise emerging understandings, articulate new thinking in relation to these understandings, and develop keystone strategies for exploring new ideas in the next stage of research. The main thesis of this project is that technical and economic considerations alone are inadequate for developing innovative responses to expressed need. Key factors for success are local end-user experiences and the capacities of desert people in their social contexts, and how they can enhance technological decision-making, so as to extend the life of housing and enhance investment sustainability. Our work was underpinned by the theoretical frameworks of the Total Capital Model, Socio- Technical Systems, Ekistic Theory and Technacy. In the whole-of-system approach we used the goal was a sustained contribution to the local livelihood outcome of housing for settlements. The study confirmed that this approach was an appropriate framework to understand housing and infrastructure issues in remote Aboriginal settlements, and a wide range of stakeholders and desert communities have strongly supported this research and the approach we took to address the issues that affect and can improve the lifecycle of houses and associated infrastructure.

While most Australian human settlements are large, densely networked urban systems located on the east-south-eastern seaboard and the coastal footholds of Perth and Adelaide, a particular class of settlements have long maintained occupancy in the interior of the country enduring the arid and semi-arid localities that make up the vast majority of the continent’s land mass. How this interior class of settlements is perceived plays a significant role in policy formulation processes, including constructing assumptions about their value. This paper brings together two bodies of literature that influence the understanding of the role of remote desert settlements in Australia, namely the ‘mutuality of influence’ and “scale-free networks”, arguing for the need for policy transformation. The first part introduces the proposition of mutual influence between community, ecology and built system pressures; the second explores how the systemic view of human settlements evolved as a viable framework for modelling cities, and describes the scale-free nature of desert settlements. Policy implications from the two theoretical frameworks include the need for new understanding of the complexities surrounding desert settlements as well as alternative approaches to the ones currently adopted by government.

Research on human settlements has traditionally focussed on one or a few descriptive or functional aspects, such as geographical characteristics of the locality, the economy, housing, transport, infrastructure, education or health, or created models with varying degrees of complexity that attempt to bring these elements together. This paper applies a different approach that is based in understanding connectivity within and between complex systems. It outlines a new growth area for settlement research and design which brings into play the concept of scale-free hierarchical networks with preferential tendencies, best described by the power curve. Using examples ranging from remote communities to developing countries, the concept helps explain among others, the economic connectivity within a globalised world. The paper also argues that understanding the implications of connectivity is a step towards predicting, evaluating and diagnosing the social, cultural and economic sustainability of settlements.

Indigenous tourism has been subject to innumerable strategies and changing policies, most raising more hope than real action or outcomes. It remains an extremely fragile and tenuous sector of the tourism industry despite much of the marketing hype indicating otherwise (Schmiechen, 2000). In many ways it is at a critical point as to how many of the fledgling and even established businesses can survive and become viable in an increasingly difficult tourism environment. There is now a greater need than ever for good leadership, clear vision, targeted support and a cohesive effort by all parties concerned to get it right, and most importantly listen and act on the voices of those actually trying to do the business. Research will have an important role in this.

Managing the Transition from Coach to Car Based Markets: the search for commercial value in Australia’s Flinders Ranges

In recent years, tourism in desert and Outback regions in Australia had to face a number of challenges. Desert tourism stakeholders have therefore recognised the need to open up new markets and develop new products in order to maintain a viable tourism industry in the future. In this context, four wheel drive (4WD) travellers have been identified as a particularly interesting market for tourism development in the desert. They have continued to grow in contrast to other market segments and are more likely to disperse from high volume tourism routes in order to explore new and remote regions. They have also been considered as a potential market for new tourism products provided by remote desert communities, especially for Aboriginal tourism products. Aboriginal cultural tourism has been recognised as one of the main pillars and competitive advantages of tourism in central Australia. However, despite substantial investment by government marketing and economic development agencies, the sector is characterised by a lack of product variation and no clear marketing strategy for promoting and distributing products. Available commercial products are largely focused on the organised tour market and are concentrated around major tourist hubs, such as Alice Springs or Uluru/Ayers Rock. Increasing the opportunities for Aboriginal tourism development in central Australia, as well as in other remote desert regions, might require an extended range and diversity of products and new distribution strategies to access new markets. Very little is currently known about the demand for Aboriginal tourism products from the desert 4WD market and the potential for Aboriginal desert people to develop viable products for this growing market sector. To address this gap in knowledge, this research sought to identify to what extent 4WD travellers in central Australia are interested in getting indigenous cultural experiences on their desert trips and what kind of products they might consume. The study further investigated information seeking patterns and trip planning characteristics of 4WD travellers to find out whether current marketing and distribution methods of indigenous tourism products are appropriate for this market. A qualitative study with domestic and international 4WD travel parties was conducted in central Australia to assess their demand for Aboriginal tourism products and their information search and trip planning strategies. The findings suggest that Aboriginal cultural experiences only play a minor role in the overall trip experience of 4WD desert trips. In addition, the region’s current Aboriginal tourism offer, which primarily consists of highly structured commercial tours, and a perceived lack of authenticity constitute major barriers in marketing Aboriginal tourism products to 4WD travellers. Aboriginal experiences that would be desired by 4WD travellers include for example tours and activities, which incorporate educational aspects, personal and informal interaction with Aboriginal people and individual or “off the beaten track” experiences as opposed to experiences offered to tour bus groups and the mass market. The findings furthermore suggest that 4WD markets generally do not plan their trips in all details. Decisions about products to be consumed and activities to be undertaken are normally made spontaneously on the way to or at the destination. Information sources are often extensively used prior to departure to enhance the knowledge about a certain region but do not necessarily lead to a purchase decision in advance. In addition, 4WD travellers expect information about tourism products to be readily available at places where they normally tend to get information. Even if they notice a lack of information about a certain product they would be interested in, they do not actively pursue and extend their information search to chase a particular experience but rather substitute it by another activity that turns out to be available at the location. Aboriginal tourism businesses interested in targeting 4WD travellers will have to consider that information about available products needs to reach the market both prior to departure and at the destination itself. This paper finally emphasises the need for Aboriginal product suppliers to enter partnerships and alliances with existing businesses that are already catering to the current 4WD market to facilitate a more effective distribution process.

This paper uses the Anmatjere region in central Australia to illustrate the way in which local government contributes to settlement patterns in sparsely settled, arid-zone Australia. Census-based profiles of the Anmatjere region are constructed, both over time (1996 to 2006) and comparing Aboriginal and other residents in 2006. The history of the Anmatjere Community Government Council from 1993 to 2008 is recounted, along with some account of our work with the Council from 2004. Finally the paper observes that, from July 2008, the Anmatjere region has become subsumed in a much larger amalgamated local government, the Central Desert Shire. Stretching from the Queensland to the Western Australian borders and with its central administration based outside its own boundaries in Alice Springs, this new, much larger, local government is also seen as potentially having a significant impact on settlement patterns.

In light of some basic desert demography, this paper examines governance patterns for small desert settlements. It traces policy histories which led to the emergence of highly localised, single settlement governance arrangements during the 1970s and ’80s. It also identifies the many pushes since within the Northern Territory local government system for more regional, multi-settlement governance structures. The paper goes on to examine the history of one such regional, multi-settlement arrangement in central Australia, the Anmatjere Community Government Council established in 1993. The paper details our work with this Council over the last 4 years on ‘issues of importance or concern’ to them. The paper aims to learn from the ACGC experience in order to inform the more radical restructuring of Northern Territory local government currently underway towards larger multi-settlement regionalism. It concludes with four specific lessons, the most important of which is that regionalism must build on single settlement localism.

This paper is based on an in-depth study of Creek Camp, an area of selfmade dwellings occupied by Aboriginal people running along the western and south-western sides of Ti Tree, a small roadside town in the Northern Territory. It reports the findings of three sets of interviews, return visits over a ten month period, and the Anmatjere Community Government Council and NT Government responses to the reports and argues that the study has contributed to good governance by both identifying ideas for change and clarifying obstacles for changes.