Land as an act of control and management:
The white settlers typically own and manage the land. It is a place to be conquered and an object to be owned and subdued.
The sign at Uluru states: “since the early 1940s Uluru has been promoted as a place to climb. This evokes strong emotions of pride, ownership and conquest.” The Anangu (indigenous) clan challenge visitors to change their perspective and respect the spiritual significance of the landscape in accordance with the views associated with the indigenous way of life and their spiritual values.
Distant, removed, alienated connection with the land: 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 forged 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. “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.
Likewise, Age writer and novelist Martin Flanagan speaks of a hostile and displaced relationship with the land which was symbolised by Azaria Chamberlain’s death. He 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. The A C story 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. Flanagan points out that our sense of belatedness to an “ancient land with a all its own” clearly influences the Australian psyche.
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