Landscape reflects who we are and how we think about ourselves
In his Boyer lecture, Malouf states “we are makers, among else, of landscapes.” This quote reflects how our landscape influences who we are and where we come from, but also that we, too, shape the landscape in which we live. (it is reciprocal process)… The settlers and colonisers were particularly attracted to the Western Plains, because they saw in it a vision of their own aesthetic and cultural ideals about “nature” that reminded them of home.
We often shape and imagine our landscape in ways that make us feel comfortable and secure about ourselves. Our landscape reflects a vision of ourselves. In his Boyer lecture, Malouf draws attention to the way the settlers tried to reshape the Australian bush according to their homeland. The settlers’ vision of “nature” was like an English landscape garden as was evident in a Poussin or a Claude painting. In particular, Joseph Banks tried to recreate gardens by “stepping back in imagination to a place on the far side of the globe”. Malouf states that he played a “godlike little game with himself and with a whole new continent.” He brought an “arkload of plants” that was suitable for a climate similar to Southern France and set about making his own Garden of Eden according to his vision of home. This was like bringing his version of “home” to Australia.
Malouf: “The European landscape is a made landscape, a work of ‘culture’ in both senses of the word.”
In many ways, we shape the landscape according to our practical lifestyle needs. By using fire sticks the aborigines created open forests for grazing and easy hunting. It is now widely acknowledged that they changed the form of the continent’s vegetation. This shows how man recreates the landscape so as to benefit his lifestyle. In other words our landscape becomes a product of our way of life.
The landscape often becomes a product of our imagination. In addition, “through naming and storytelling and myth-making, all the features of the land took on a second life in the imagination and in the mouths of women and men.”
Other times, as Malouf states in his Boyer lectures, we often shape our landscape according to our practical as well as our cultural lifestyle needs. Malouf maintains that ironically the “natural” landscape was just as cultural as the “gentleman’s park” because it had been reshaped for thousands of years by the aborigines’ lifestyle needs. They remade the landscape in their vision because through the practical use of fire they changed the vegetation of the continent – rainforests disappeared in favour of fire-resistant trees like the eucalypts.
Our spiritual interpretation of the place and the stories we tell about a place have an impact on our understanding or our physical environment as well as on our place in the world. For example, certain places nourish a person’s spirituality. Malouf’s comment that we are “makers of landscape” refers to our ability to recreate the landscape in our own image and according to our imaginative and spiritual possibilities. The landscape often becomes a product of our imagination (internal life) and tells us a great deal about our identity. The aborigines tell stories about who they are and where they come from. In most stories of the Dreaming, the Ancestor spirits created the animals, plants, rocks and other forms of the land. Animals and plants recall the eternal ancestors to the aborigines and interpret their connection to the land. Previously their ancestors wandered the earth in animal form – as kangaroos, lizards or emus – or in human shape. For example, Uluru is not just a sandstone rock to the aborigines as it is to many Westerners. In Aboriginal mythology Uluru is the Intelligent Snake from the higher spirit realms of the universe and has become a symbol of fertility – the father and mother of all forms of life.
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