The big Australian 2020

In 1904 Frederick McCubbin painted ‘The Pioneer’ on land owned by William Peter McGregor, the second chairman of mining company BHP. It was a romanticisation of European settlers who bared the land for imported livestock. The title, ‘The Pioneer’, marginalises thousands of years of land management by Aboriginal communities. McCubbin’s triptych offers an unintentionally prophetic vision of the continuing extractive nature of the country’s economy at the death of its natural environment.