“Just as there are many homes, there are many journeys home. Each one of us will have a different journey from anyone else. The journey home is mostly ongoing and in some ways never completed. It is a process of discovery and recovery”. (Bringing Them Home report.)
By Dr Jennifer Minter (English Works)
According to Professor Andrew Taylor at Edith Cowan University, landscape is not “what is out there, unseen”. It is how we look at landscape that matters and the fact that I am looking at it from where I am because of who I am. As he remarks, a photograph of the landscape does exactly that. It clearly reflects my point of view, my interest in my surroundings and my association with place. Similarly, landscape can be likened to a blank canvas in which we are the artists who apply our artistic touches in a way that reflects our hopes, our desires, our fears and phobias. Everyone has a different way of looking at landscape which is influenced by their prior experiences and the accumulation of knowledge about who they are and how they see their own individual place in the world. As such the landscape takes on many hues – much depends upon our feelings, our position in time and our attitudes, experiences and memories.
Individuals may inhabit the same place at the same time, but have a completely different relationship with their world. In Mending the Wall, Robert Frost depicts both literally and symbolically one’s intuitive relationship with surroundings that can vary from individual to individual and neighbour to neighbour. The narrator instinctively does not like the wall, “something there is that doesn’t love a wall”. Specifically, he does not like to be hemmed in; he believes that there is no practical reason for the fence and prefers to leave room for his imagination to soar beyond the narrow confines of place. Alternatively, the neighbour believes that, “good fences make good neighbours”. Such a view appears to be associated with darkness “not of woods only”. He appears conditioned, perhaps by his father, to view a wall as a good thing to have which separates and conquers space.
Likewise, depending upon experiences and sensitivities the same individual may relate in ambivalent or contradictory ways to the same landscape. For example, country landscapes may conjure a sense of serenity, peace, bliss and beauty. At other times, they may evoke horror. The fires on Black Saturday (Kinglake, 2009) and in the Blue Mountains (2013) transformed a paradise into a living nightmare for many citizens. The physical landscape, which was once a blooming oasis of greenery, became black and desperate within a few hours. Such landscapes become infused with danger, destruction and loss. For years to come, psychologists say, weather patterns will become phobic signs of loss and danger. Similarly, many authors use storms and weather disruptions to mirror their character’s distress or to herald impending disaster. (Just think of the night Macbeth bludgeons King Duncan to death in Macbeth.)
William Stanner, an anthropologist who worked in indigenous remote locations during the 1950s and 1960s, believes that different attitudes to land create competing worldviews and are indicative of different power structures. He identifies land as a “white construct” and white people as ”tongueless and earless towards this other world of meaning and significance”. This is certainly true of the distinction between the indigenous and the settlers as depicted by Rachel Perkins in One Night the Moon (2001). The theme song captures the aborigines’ experience with the land which is one of respect and mutuality. The land is their being, their soul. This symbiotic relationship is conveyed in the respectful phrase, “the land is me”. In other words, the land is bigger than the sum of their various individual parts and determines both individual and community identities. For aborigines, the land also speaks to them about origins. Albert says, “my being’s here where I belong”.
This intimate century-deep knowledge is also translated into physical actions such as tracking – a symbol of their spiritual closeness. Albert states, “I can track the shadow of the moon from hearts to the limits of the land”. Albert instinctively knows that Emily would have followed the light; he knew immediately that Jim and the team of settlers had taken the wrong path.
It is this deeply instinctive and intuitive knowledge that enables the indigenous girls in the Rabbit Proof Fence (2002) directed by Phillip Noyce to track their way home from the Moore River Native Settlement, north of Perth in Western Australia. Nine weeks and 1,500 miles later, the Aboriginal girls, following the rabbit-proof fence return to their community at Jigalong, thwarting the authority’s attempts to apprehend them.
For the aborigines, then, their ongoing relationship with the land is one of endless recovery of a place to which they intuitively belong. For the settlers, their relationship consists of discovering a place to which they only ever related in a belated and alienated sense.
The white settlers (in One Night the Moon) are strangers in a strange land – both physically and psychologically; their knowledge is only skin deep and as a sign of their difference and diffidence, Emily dies. Their catchcry “The land is mine” captures their desire to own this contested space. They erect signs, “no blacks on my land”, and own guns. Jim tersely reminds Albert of the boundaries and the fences of white occupation, and he becomes increasingly defensive and aggressive – even paranoid.
Jim — “this land is mine; all the way to the old fence line” — is not unlike Robert Frost’s neighbor in “Mending the Wall”, who insists on staking his territory and erecting fences to ward off the unknown. Finally, Jim states, as he takes the gun to shoot himself, “I drove kindness from my door”.
Accordingly, many settlers, as John Kinsella would also suggest, have a contradictorily paranoid relationship with the land born of the guilt associated with the conquest narrative. Once again, symbolically-speaking, many white settlers relied on aboriginal trackers as a sign of their displacement; the trackers “mediated” or interpreted their surroundings to the white settlers, the strangeness of which dents their pride. The tracker in the Rabbit Proof Fence is unable to betray the indigenous girls whose skill he admires and hence assists indirectly in their success and the defeat of the white authorities. Tragically, for Jim, he is unable to acknowledge his dependence on Albert.
More recently, our experiences with dingoes also reflect the white man’s story of place. The Age writer Martin Flanagan remarks, “for thousands of years, there has been a dingo dreaming at Uluru, a story of a dingo hostile to human beings and their infants.” He believes that the Azaria Chamberlain narrative stands as a “marker in the consciousness of a nation, comprised of people from all over the world, predominantly Europe, coming belatedly to terms with a land with an ancient history and a nature all its own.” Indeed, this sense of belatedness is certainly a factor in Jim’s experience with the land and his estrangement and sense of failure influence his response to Emily’s death.
In Kinsella’s poem, Inland, the highway becomes a “kind of stone theodolite” measuring the driver’s relationship with place; it’s an anchoring point against which we evaluate and measure “our depths beyond”. In other words, how far we have come with regards to our hopes, dreams and fears. According to Kinsella, in the case of the white settler’s relationship with the land it is a place of “borrowed dreams” because the “marks of the spirits” have been erased as a result of man’s destructive tendencies. We have overwritten the traditional cultural markers. Consequently, the “old farmer” experiences a sense of dashed and deflated dreams.
A sense of loss, fear and anxiety are also experienced by the “old farmer” and his “bitter wife” in Silo. Victims of precarious nature, they live at the whim of the vicious storm as there is no “hope for parole, petition, release”. Similarly the farmer in Goading storms out of a darkening field “cursing the dry, cursing the bitter yield” reflects an inherent bitterness with a landscape that resists the farmer’s pastoral husbandry: “Sheep on their last legs. Dams crusted over.” It is a landscape where “prayers and patience” fail in the face of harsh conditions, and for the farmer there is no escape. The fears of the farmer mount. But rather than quit and admit defeat, the farmer would rather remain bound to the land through resilience.
Some settlers do score small triumphs despite overwhelming adversity. Over time, Joe Wilson (Henry Lawson’s Brighten’s Sister in Law) acquires some of the intuitiveness of the indigenous through close living with the land. They, too, see the trees as landmarks and learn to track their routes.
The land, too, Henry Lawson would suggest shapes personalities over time. The hostile environment makes exacting demands upon the mother in The Drover’s Wife. It shapes her personality as well as her relationships and changes her through dire necessity. The wife gives scant emotional support to her children because she is so preoccupied battling the adverse challenges of the bush including floods, fires, snakes and the “gallow-faced swagman”. As Lawson states, “she loves her children but has no time to show it.” Suppressing her “womanly” side she becomes cunning, resilient and harsh. Oddly, though, she soon realizes she would be “strange” away from her environment, so accustomed has she become to the loneliness of place. Most importantly for Lawson, those individuals who do adapt to the bush, acquire a sense of the ridiculous that shields them from despair. It is a way of holding the strangeness at bay.
“We are above all makers of landscapes”
Just as the land changes us, so, too, do we change the land – often for practical, other times for spiritual, purposes. As David Malouf points out even the indigenous shaped and changed the landscape over thousands of years owing to their practical lifestyle needs. By using fire sticks the aborigines created open forests for grazing and easy hunting. He concludes, “it is now widely acknowledged that they changed the form of the continent’s vegetation”. (Boyer Lectures, 1998).
Remaking the land: spiritual connections
Our experiences with the land can also lead to spiritual interpretations that help us make sense of who we are and where we come from. Land is also about origins for the aborigines. Malouf’s comment in his Boyer lecture 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. Albert sings, “I heard your spirit calling” which shows how he gains knowledge and wisdom from the spirit of the land. Similarly, in stories of the Dreamtime aborigines create myths about they 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. 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.
In her Dreamtime poem, Lorraine Mafi-Williams recalls the passing of the ancient knowledge carved “deep into the hills”. “sit beside the sacred sits, look deep into the hills, carve the knowledge in your hearts, my sons, for the Dreamtime’s almost gone”.
The Leader of the Greens, Richard Di Natale has, through loving tender care, transformed his 20-hectare Deans Marsh property into a poignant place of “non-reflection”. When he bought his farm, the creek running through it was eroded and silted. Now it runs clean, a home for frogs, yabbies and insects. “He has a special spot on the creek, near two big old tree ferns. Sometimes he’ll go there on his own. But not to think. Instead, he draws on some of the things he learnt in a meditation course, he recently took. “It’s a place I go to not think”. (Good Weekend,
Contrastingly, we often remake landscape in our own, unflattering image. These days, the colonial attitude of the acquisition of land as power and wealth can be seen in the faceless landowners that sweep into communities, according to Glenn Ford, “the last man standing” in Plumpton. A wheat farmer, Mr Ford is proud of his identity foged through and of the land as the “last of the people still trying to make a living off the land”. Contrastingly, the “faceless land owners” and ghostlike investors regard land as an item of conquest, ripe for exploitation, devoid of the pride of identity. “They’re overseas investors who are just land-banking to cash in when the subdivision laws allow it”. They are like the farmers in Wild Radishes (Kinsella), who are dominated by the “bills to be paid, deals to be sealed”. The fact that the radishes are “ripped from the soul” captures a certain harshness in the attitude of the farmer to his conquest.
“Every rock, every hill, every water, I know that place backwards and forwards, up and down, inside out. It’s my country and I got names for every place.” (Aboriginal artist, Queenie McKenzie at Black Fellas Creek, Old Texas, 1995)
As Queenie McKenzie so aptly shows, the names we assign to natural landmarks, reflects our relationship with the world around us. Hers reflects a deep instinctive and intimate relationship.
Likewise, the Mekong River’s name is derived from mae nam kong, which is literally translated as the “Mother of Waters’ in Thai and Lao. As one environmental activist Nita Roykaew says, “the river provides everything: fish, vegetables and herbs. The Mekong is our mother’.
Naming is an important process by which we interpret and evaluate the land. For this reason, in 1993 we reverted to the dual name of Ayers Rock/Uluru to reflect its significance to the indigenous peoples. Significantly, in 2002 the name was changed to Uluru/Ayers Rock to reflect the prior rights of the Anangu. Prioritising the indigenous names, Uluru (Ayers Rock) and Kata Juta (The Olgas), over the explorers’ names reflects the cultural significance of these landmarks; most importantly these names seek to relegate the settlers’ story of conquest and discovery.
Place: a trigger for memories.
Memories are fluid. They develop and change depending upon our association and connection with place. Often the stories we tell about who we are and where we come from, and the way we remember our past, are critical to who we are.
For the indigenous people, knowledge of the past and the experiences of ancestors shape their sense of destiny in a way that maybe strange to white settlers. In Yenmilli, a remote part of Northern Territory, Jules Dumoo, a 45-aboriginal man, admires the sacred rock art caves and remembers his ancestors. It is so remote and ancient, scarcely a visitor intrudes; but it is a place where Dumoo feels the spirit of his ancestors, and he remembers how, “they chew the clay then put their hand on the rock and spray it around the hands.” But most importantly, as he watches the rock paintings he feels the spirits of his ancestors, which gives him a sense of pride and fulfilment. He says, ”I feel like they are sitting here with us and we are sitting here together telling stories. Teaching the old stories. It makes me proud and happy. We gotta keep this thing alive. Our spirit is alive up here.” (Refer “Going Home”. )
As memories extend back to our origins, they become increasingly infused with mythmaking. For the aborigines, who are wedded to landscape and time, the mythical connection of land formations and natural objects are critical to who they are and their sense of self. The laws of the landscape, known as ‘dreamtime”, tjajerka, also structure social kinships.
The personal search for origins and family histories
These days individuals are intrigued by their personal histories and spend a lot of time investigating their own personal origins. This is because it helps them understand who they are and where they come from. It helps them imagine a different time and place.
In The View from Castle Rock, Alice Munro returns to Scotland to uncover stories of her ancestors and to discover her origins. Her memories are emotional and intrinsic to the fact-finding author. For Munro whose “long history” goes back to a country “far away from the place where they grew up”, the stories about origin are commonplace, disturbing, disappointing and intriguing. Will O Phaup (born 1695) from Ettrick Valley or Far Hope as it was called, which infuses the Ettrick shepherds with mythical dimensions. The word itself is based on the Norse word referring to a bay; it is partly enclosed by hills and was the natural hunting grounds of the King of Scotland. It was also the “spine of Scotland”, and the hideout of William Wallace, the guerrilla hero of the Scots. As an author, Munro is intrigued by the “stories” and legends that surround William Laidlaw, who took on the “radiance of myth”; this last remaining connection with Scotland is depicted as a mythological figure inhabiting the “highest inhabited house in all of Scotland.” Set apart, his behaviour is surrounded by legend, particularly as he gains a reputation as one of the fastest runners. According to one story his “country breeches fall down”; he runs in his shirt and wins. In this case, the origin becomes a space for dreaming.
Often these stories transform into superstition possibly owing to a contradiction between the social and religious landscape, and our physical and psychological connections. For example, it was a pious religious environment in Ettrick and Will is not a god-fearing Christian. On All Hallow’s Eve, he imagines being chased by fairies, the song “ringing just behind his ears”.
Similarly, stories of my great grandparents also continue to fascinate me as I become aware of my own Scottish origins. On one rather gloomy overcast day, as the story goes, my adventurous 18-year-old grandfather, Charlie Fin, waved his family goodbye in Walpura and joined the gold rush fever. He forged a difficult but rather prosperous life in Ballarat, (before meeting an untimely death) proving that at times it is worth following (literally) a golden dream, or as Robert Frost would say, taking the “less travelled path”. At that time, Ballarat represented a place of feverish hope when there wasn’t much hope around. I learnt that he was also one of the bit players of the Eureka Rebellion, fighting for one’s rights when the government sought to crush all resistance. Ironically, a few months after the Bentley Hotel confrontation, Charlie died in an accidental mining accident, just as his team found one of the biggest nuggets that year on the goldfields. Unfortunately, his wife did not gain her dues and died from a broken heart.
And what about you? What stories lie hidden in the closet?
Just as Ballarat represented the dreams of an impoverished class of workers during the 1860s in Victoria, for the Ettrick inhabitants, America represented a place of hope that was elsewhere. It became infused with their desire for a better life, for a sense of security – a desire for the permanence that constantly evadeso. In The View from Castle Rock, plans are dashed and dreams altered as the author’s memories crowd in on her. Graveyards testify to their misfortune. But first, they become preoccupied with building a new life. From a practical perspective, young James has to readjust his plans; he envisaged a “real and commodious house”, but ends up with a “monastic lifestyle” and an ordinary house which is gradually built over time; the frame and then the roof, “though he didn’t get it shingled” in winter.” He lived with only the board walls “between himself and the weather and in summer he built the brick chimney to replace the stovepipe sticking out of the roof”; there is a sense that he is just making do and he is forced to accommodate his hopes and dreams to suit the circumstances. The author wonders “what was it squashed their spirits? So soon”.
For those who settle in foreign lands, memories can help individuals come to terms with a sense of strangeness. Familiar and nostalgic memories of place help tame the wild. For example, in his Boyer Lectures (1998) David Malouf explains that the British settlers in Australia tried to recreate a sense of home in order to help them resettle and to provide a sense of continuity. Malouf points to the fact that the British settlers often liked those regions of Australia that looked like “home”. Many enjoyed the Western plains in New South Wales because they thought it was a “gentleman’s park” and saw in it a vision of their own aesthetic and cultural ideals of “nature”. Their vision of nature was that of a typical English landscape garden that often looked natural, much like the natural as depicted in a Poussin or a Claude painting.
Contrastingly, the lack of continuous memories and experiences can cause a sense of alienation which increases the fears and phobias of the newcomers. One recalls once again, the guilt-ridden story of conquest and the strange experience with dingoes. Landscape often becomes a trigger of hidden fears lurking deep within. The narrator in Frost’s Stopping by Woods comments on how the woods can be “lovely, dark and deep”. Deceptively enticing and attractive, they are ambiguously dark and deep but nonetheless worth exploring “before I sleep”.
“Just as there are many homes, there are many journeys home. Each one of us will have a different journey from anyone else. The journey home is mostly ongoing and in some ways never completed. It is a process of discovery and recovery; it is a process of (re)building relationships which have been disrupted or broken or never allowed to begin because of separation (Link-Up, Bringing them Home, p. 233).
For the victims of the “stolen generations” going home is fundamental to who they are and their place in the world but it becomes a place of complicated emotions and ambivalence. “Home” may be a joyous occasion of discovery and pride. (“It wasn’t until I met my family for the first time in my life that I was actually proud to be who I was.” (One victim.) (“For the first time I actually felt like I had roots that went down into the ground. But not only into the ground – that went through generations. And it was like I was connected through.” (Victims: Bringing them Home).
However, “home” is also a place of deep regret and pain. It speaks of the difficult story of loss and the knowledge that home is belatedly rediscovered. “They called us ‘whitewashed’, ‘coconuts’, and things like that; also ‘Johnny-come-latelys’. You then had to justify your identity, or try and find a place amongst all that.” For many, the pain never ends.
In more ways than one, landscape and the “road taken” symbolize the choices one makes in life (or is forced to make) that often “make all the difference”. Or as Kinsella would remind us, how we cope with the fog, with “nature’s shroud”, with the secrecy and impenetrability of nature’s secrets becomes a key to our sense of self and place in the world.
By Dr Jennifer Minter, Imaginary Landscapes, VCE Studies, English Works (www.englishworks.com.au)
Images (Kakadu National Park) by David Jansz
See also our VCE workbook for students: The Language of Persuasion: an essay-writing guide.
Please click here to download a PDF version of the Exercises in the Language of Persuasion: an essay writing guide for immediate use. By using these exercises, you will be able to follow our support material on each exercise (See “turn to exercise”). Each “turn to exercise” includes key strategies, suggested responses, students’ samples and assessors’ marks and comments.