Landscapes are more interesting as a site of fiction rather than fact.
Introduction
- According to aboriginal artist Queenie McKenzie, who we are is often reflected in our relationship with the landscape. In her case, her intimate, personal, and very possessive relationship with the land is critical to her sense of self and helps her find her bearings in the world she calls her own. As she says, “every rock, every hill, every water, I know the place backwards and forwards, up and down, inside out. It’s my country and I got names for every place.” Accordingly, the way we relate to our physical landscape is critical to how we imagine our place in the world. As physical facts merge with our personal and spiritual stories, our landscape becomes more than just place. It reflects who we are and how we see ourselves in the world.
- According to Professor Andrew Taylor (Edith Cowan University), the landscape is not “what is out there, unseen” but it is how we look at the landscape that matters and the fact that I am looking at it from where I am because of who I am. The way we relate to our physical landscape is critical to how we imagine our place in the world. As the objective elements of our surroundings merge with our personal and spiritual stories, our landscape becomes more than just place. It reflects who we are and how we see ourselves in the world.
PARA 1: facts
The physical landscape provides us with a factual basis. It is the ground upon which we walk and the surface we build our house on. It is where we lay our roots and it fulfils our basic needs which are essential for survival. The landscape forms the foundations of life. Rachel Perkins uses the symbolism of Aboriginal tracking to depict their intimate and instinctive relationship with the land. They are familiar with every blade of grass, every footprint and every tree that blows in the wind. (cf Queenie McKenzie’s quote.) Since the beginning of white settlement in Australia, the aborigines were used as trackers because of their intuitive and close relationship with the land. For example in Rabbit Proof Fence, the aboriginal tracker is the only one who can follow the three aboriginal girls, who survive in the harsh landscape. Their “factual” knowledge of the land reflects their close dependency and physical necessity.
PARA 2) DIFFERENT VIEWS ON THE LANDSCAPE
Different attitudes to the landscape create competing world views and often reflect how an individual sees their place in the world. An anthropologist who … .William Stanner identifies land as a “white construct” leaving the western culture “tongueless and earless towards this other world of meaning and significance”. The white settlers typically erect fences as an act of conquest whereas the nomadic lifestyle of the indigenous has tribal rather than physical boundaries.
Symbolically, these contrasting world views on the landscape are portrayed in Robert Frost’s poem ‘Mending Wall’. The narrator and his neighbour have opposing views on the fence that reflects their different view of the world and their place.
Culturally and metaphorically, we often project our values and ideas about origins onto the landscape. From this perspective, the difference between the artwork of the early European settlers with the indigenous dot painters reveals a different interpretations about their place in the world and relationsip with the landscape. These settlers often distorted the Australian Outback into a vision of their own aesthetic and cultural ideals of ‘nature’ as a ‘gentleman’s park’ such as in a Poussin or Claude painting. These representations of the landscape are based on memory and experience, contrasting greatly with the imaginative dot paintings such as Queenie McKenzie’s ‘Hill Country’ which symbolically ref;ects the tracking and spiritual meaning of the landscape.
PARA 3) WECOMPENSATE THROGH EMBELLISHING THE LANDSACPE.
Often, the physical, factual environment does not adequately nourish one’s spiritual and psychological needs. As Malouf states, “we are makers, and much more, of the landscape”. This alludes to the fact that we embellish our landscape, reimagining and reinterpreting the space in which we live to suit our emotional and spiritual possibilities. This is often done through mythmaking and storytelling. The indigenous dreamtime stories about previous animals and ancestors are oral stories which provide indigenous Australians with rich ancestral history that facilitates the transcendent understanding that many aborigines share with the land. These stories are reconstructions of memories and each time they are told, they are taken further away from their factual elements as they are combined with the fictitious thoughts and attitudes of the teller, then retold in a subjective manner.
PARA 4) THE LANDSCAPE CAN BECOME A PROJECTION OF OUR DEEPEST AND DARKEST FEARS
Sometimes, the landscape becomes a dark and gloomy place which represents our subconscious fears, phobias and dark desires. The projection of such thoughts often occurs when our environment fails to nourish our personality and desires. Often a harsh landscape reflects traumatic feelings or memories as in the violent storm in Lawrence’s poem ‘Discord in Childhood’ . A whip takes life as part of the landscape as “the lash of the tree shrieked and slashed in the wind”.
The fence that surrounds his house is symbolic of his attempt to control the land and create a sense of permanence, reflecting Jim’s fearful attitude based on his lack of the century-deep knowledge which is ingrained in his indigenous counterparts.
Often, the desire to erect fences and control and tame the land is counter-productive and leads to darkness and destruction. According to John Kinsella, it fuels a sense of anxiety as settlers and farmers struggle to exploit a denuded landscape.
In recent times, our experience with dingoes also reflect the white man’s view of land. Writer Martin Flanagan remarks, “for thousands of years, there has been a dingo dreaming at Uluru” and believes that the Azaria Chamberlain narrative stands as a “marker in the consciousness of a nation… coming belatedly to terms with a land with an ancient history and nature all its own”. This reflects the importance of respecting the land and understanding and adapting to its dangerous aspects in order to live within our environment harmoniously.
The physical landscape provides us with factual elements that create the foundations of our lives. In order to live harmoniously within the landscape, we alter its image by combining it with our own emotional and spiritual possibilities to create an environment that is nurturing to our personal needs. Despite often bringing comfort and a sense of belonging, when our imaginative landscape does not accommodate for the harsh aspects of the physical landscape, danger and loss of identity can often result.