In the great sickle-shaped hinterland of the Western Australian wheat belt, trees have been exterminated. Like embroidered motifs at the hem of a bleached and threadbare rug, a few lonely specimens mark the corners of paddocks. Now and then you’ll encounter a remnant stand of wandoos spared because of hulking domes of granite underfoot, but most of what you see is a land scraped utterly naked. Today, as I drive north from Perth toward the old pastoral lease at Mt Gibson Station, a wicked easterly howls in off the desert and the sky is pink with dirt. Less than a century ago this bit of country was a series of eucalypt woodlands of remarkable biodiversity, but it was bulldozed and burned at the urging of successive governments to make way for cultivation. The fragile soil exposed by all this tree grubbing was quickly depleted; then it was laced with billions of tonnes of the miracle additive superphosphate, which lured two generations of farmers into the delusion that their operations were sustainable. Emboldened by good seasons and high prices, grain farmers pushed right out into the drylands. At the time it must have seemed that nature itself was surrendering to human ingenuity and the vigour of a new settler culture.