At the beginning of this book, I set out to provide answers to the question ‘What is the nature of Gariwerd?’ It has long been well understood that the mountains are geologically and ecologically significant. Nevertheless, they are not static, and neither have their human populations been – over time, the people and environments of Gariwerd have interacted and changed in a variety of ways. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, Gariwerd and its people have witnessed a great many transformations. The people who live there, the ways they use its resources and the impact that this has on the environment have all changed, sometimes in drastic ways. As a result of the first waves of pastoral settlement, the grassy woodlands of the plains below were altered, as were their ecosystems. In the mountains themselves, grazing, forestry and mining have all left their mark. The settlers often looked upon the mountains with a sense of awe, however, and their diverse and distinctive plant and animal communities provided as much interest to the scientific community as they did to the broader public, which has flocked to the mountains for recreation and tourism since the late nineteenth century. By the end of the twentieth century, it was an appreciation for the environment and its conservation that dominated the ways in which people came to think about the ranges.
This period of dramatic and concentrated change was just the most recent in at least 22 000 years of human occupation and use of Gariwerd. Djab wurrung and Jardwadjali people and their ancestors had lived in and around the mountains over hundreds of generations, and they had both witnessed and caused their own environmental changes and had their own ways of thinking about the environment. They made great use of the resources on the plains below and, much as the Europeans would, took to the mountains for both leisure and work. With the pastoral invasion, their relationship to the mountains was almost entirely severed, only to be recovered later in the twentieth century. Their people were massacred in great numbers or died of disease and malnutrition. For a long time, the only reminders of their presence were the rock art sites they had left behind. The rediscovery of Australia’s ancient past, the recognition of Indigenous Australian belonging to the land, and the broader awareness of their distinct ecological knowledge have all become more prominent in recent years. By coincidence, the declaration of the Grampians National Park in 1984 occurred at the same time as this cultural and political revival. Gariwerd and its history have thus become a microcosm of these debates and discussions of national significance.
As ecological threats on a global scale overwhelm what were once seemingly reliable forms of local, regional and national conservation – the national park being one key example – we have had to think carefully about the human relationship to the environment. As the history of Gariwerd shows, the ways in which humans have interacted with their environments, and changed them for better or worse, can be traced far back into history, as can the ways our thinking about nature has evolved. Understanding a past such as this can only serve to strengthen our hope and aspiration to adapt and respond to environmental change in the future.