This notion of 'curation' in the article and in your comment stretches credulity. Aboriginals were not in a position to 'curate' or 'manage' much at all. Aside

This notion of 'curation' in the article and in your comment stretches credulity. Aboriginals were not in a position to 'curate' or 'manage' much at all. Aside from some rare controlled burns here and there - they didn't have the capacity to 'curate' vast areas of land. More reasonably, their 'industrial footprint' was small by virtue of their near lack of modern industrialisation and their small population. They were light on the land, but let's not construe that with some kind of 'caretaker' moniker - this is a romanticism of another kind entirely. Finally, because aboriginals were present in some areas does not abnegate the notion that they were essentially pristine, i.e. this is not some kind of false romanticisation of the land by Westerners, rather, a mischaracterisation. Lacking a large agricultural base, large scale domestication of animals, an industrial base, large cities or even large populations, it's fair to suggest that such areas were in fact, by and large, pristine - certainly relative to the West. Treatment of aboriginals by whatever policy is an altogether different question.