Australian Deserts Talk with Dr. Steve Morton
Join Dr. Steve Morton for a talk on Australian Deserts: their ecological, social and cultural significance.
Australia’s arid zone encompasses 5 million square kilometres. As an ecologist, Steve Morton has spent many years studying and thinking about this vast area, learning much about how the ecosystems work, in particular how two forces – erratic rainfall and limited soil fertility – govern their functioning and the lives of their plants and animals. These same drivers affect human occupation of the deserts, causing scarcity of economic opportunity and limiting attractiveness to settler Australians.
The consequences are, firstly, imaginative difficulty in feeling affiliation for the place, in contrast to lustrous Aboriginal belonging; and second, a ‘desert system’ where the local knowledge of remote Australians fails to gain a hearing and in which residents must live with the notions of coastal decision-makers.
Desert Australia resists most attempts to turn it to norms of productive use, and it seems destined to remain an implacable reminder of limits to the endeavours of people of Western cultures.
There will be a Q&A session following Steve’s presentation, then light refreshments.