In a Dry Season Essay

Death has overcome the Jamestown colony. In 1607, 110 colonists arrived at Jamestown, but by the end of December, only 40 would still be alive. More people kept arriving, but in the winter of 1609-1610, only one-third of the settlement were still alive. Also by 1611, 80% of the 500+ settlers were dead. An abundant amount colonists died in early Jamestown because of a few reasons. There was a drought, so the food and water were scarce, and the Indians and colonists weren’t on excellent terms.

Stenders continues to create an idealised representation of the Australian identity through his representation of conflict with authority. Conflict of authority is traditionally identified as an aspect of Australian identity when an authority figures is seen to be using power unfairly and in corrupt ways. Stenders is clearly drawing on the historical context of Australia as a penal settlement where mistreated convicts developed a hatred for authority figures that unnecessarily treated them with cruelty. Stenders uses the characters of the Cribbages, the caretakers of the caravan park to embody the notion of the corrupt misuse of power. This is evident in Stenders’ portrayal of them as intimidating and unreasonable in their response to Nancy keeping Red Dog in the park. Stenders positions us to participate in the disregard for authority through his negative representation suggested by their mug and arrogant facial expressions and abrasive tone in, “I don't care if he is the Queen’s bloody corgi.” We are further compelled to align our perspective of them with Nancy’s through the high angle point of view shot focalised through Nancy’s eyes which makes them appear small and powerless.

Australia is filled with many different aspects in which makes it the country it is today. I believe it is important to study texts that explore aspects of Australia by studying texts such as ‘The Club’, by David Williamson, a play written in 1977 about an Australian football club and movies such as “The Castle”, directed by Rob Stitch in 1997, about the daily life of an Australian family when their happiness is threatened when developers attempt to buy their house to expand the neighboring airport. Both these texts show us what Australian life was like in the past. By us looking at themes such as language, tradition and the mateship shown we are able to explore different aspects of Australia that make it what it is today.

The short story, “Doe Season” written by David Michael Kaplan is about a young girl’s loss of innocence and hesitation towards womanhood. In this story, the protagonist, an eight year old girl joins in on a hunting trip with her father and some friends. During this trip, Andy learns that being one of the boys may not be what she aspires after all. A few literary elements Kaplan uses helps readers better understand the story while reading such as, the characters, setting, and symbolism.

This examination will focus on topics such as the poetic techniques used, how Australian identity is portrayed, the effect the text has on the reader and my opinions.

In Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, numerous references are made to different conditions of weather. Even the title of the novel suggests the storminess present in nearly the entire book. The often-changing weather serves to signify the characters’ personalities, as well as the changes that they go through during the course of their lives.

Similarly the idea of Australian life and isolation is depicted in ‘Journey: The North Coast’ where poet is eager to reach home. Perhaps the poet desires to visualise beautiful Australian landscapes as to allow the readers to view the magnificence of flora and fauna in contrast to the man-made destructions. It appears that the poet has been isolated for ‘twelve months’, and Sydney in this case acts as a barrier of poet’s desire towards nature. The title itself symbolises poet’s home and the destination which contradicts to the urban

Wright’s 1945 poem, The Hawthorn Hedge, is a representation of the predatory power of the Australian landscape over those who refuse to unite with it. It details an unspecific persona’s attempts to establish security by planting a hawthorn hedge, separating her from a harsh, imagined landscape. The specificity of “the hawthorn hedge” reveals that this is introduced British species. As the hawthorn hedge is traditionally used as a natural fence, this clarifies that the persona is attempting to block out the landscape around her. Secondly, the fact that the hawthorn hedge is a British species suggests that the persona is also attempting to establish a reminder of her homeland, Britain. A tenet of Wright’s poetry is the strength of the true Australia and the concept of Australia’s break-away from Britain, exemplified in

During the early settlement of Australia, art was primarily used for documentary purposes by ammeters and pioneers (Splatt and McLellan 1986, 1). The arrival of trained European artists yielded a wave of Colonial oil paintings (Manton 1979, 58), however, these artists were “…trained to regard the landscapes of Europe as the norm.” and therefore their work could not accurately portray the Australian identity and atmosphere (Splatt and McLellan 1986, 1-2). These Colonial artists “…retained the smooth, anonymous surface established by academic procedures and practice.” (Manton 1979, 58). As such, their European eye and techniques distorted the Australian landscape into picturesque, “park-like green hills and bubbling streams bathed in a gentle light.” (Australian Government, 2009), often grounded “….in the middle distance…” (McCaughey 1979, 7). In a stark contrast, the landscapes produced by Heidelberg School artists were lauded for their portrayal of the Australian landscape “…experience(,) realized fully in paint.” (McCaughey 1979, 7). Frederick McCubbin’s Bush Study (1902) exemplifies the difference between the work of Colonial artists and those of the Heidelberg School with its use of Impressionist techniques becoming “…an essential and explicit part of the painting.” (Manton 1979, 58). Within this work, the bush is treated as a familiar abundance and brought “…forward, virtually right up on to the picture plane.” (ibid). The “…iridescent palette and roughened paint texture…” of the work immerses the viewer allowing them to gather a sense of the heat dulled, melancholic Australian bush landscape (ibid, 54-58). McCubbin’s work, as with other Heidelberg School paintings, depict “…a world which is 'natural', self-contained, self-sufficient and paradigmatically Australian.” (Hills 1991,

Australian landscapes have long been used to place fear and anxiety in the Anglo-Australian’s psyche. This anxiety and the requirement for Indigenous peoples to negotiate white ideals is reflected in current Australian literature and cinematic identities. This essay will discuss the critical arguments of what makes the chosen texts Australian literature. This discussion will be restricted to the critiques of the film Lantana directed by Ray Lawrence and the novel Biten’ Back written by Vivienne Cleven. The will firstly look at the use of landscape as a crime scene and how this links to the anxieties caused by the doctrine of terra nullius and the perceived threats from an introduced species. It will then look at the Australian fear of a different ‘other’ followed then by a discussion around masculinity and the need for Indigenous people to negotiate white ideals. The essay will argue that Australian literature and film reflect a nation that still has anxieties about the true sovereignty of the land and assert that Indigenous people have a requirement to fit in with white ideals.

In this essay I am going to conduct an “Australian Bushman” approach to analyze the art piece name Yo Mama’s Last Supper by Cox. Later on in the essay, I will include contextualization of the analysis.

A little pondering suggests that the poem has a keen focus on the Australian environment. The poet is successful to grab our attention with descriptive explanation in the line in the

In 1876, in his preface to Adam Lindsay Gordon’s Poems, novelist Marcus Clarke coined the phrase ‘Weird Melancholy’ in reference to what he perceived to be the ‘dominant note’ of his country’s landscape and his subject’s verse. In doing so, he distilled the entire mood of Australian Gothic into one eerie essence, an essence present, to varying extents, in all texts of that genre. This can be seen through an examination of two exemplary Australian Gothic texts, each vastly different from the other in form and content, but united by their pervasive aura of Weirdness and Melancholy: Henry Lawson’s 1894 short story ‘The Bush Undertaker’ and Peter

Seamus Heaney and Thomas Hardy both depict images of rural life as difficult and uncomfortable. In their poems ‘At a Potato Digging’ and ‘A Sheep Fair’ they describe different aspects of rural life; these were elements of life that would have been familiar to the poets and ones that they would have experienced. In their poetry Heaney and Hardy

Many of Tim Winton’s fictional texts mirror moments in his own life, and with an understanding of Winton’s personal context, we can begin to discover the importance of these events and an understanding into why many of his text orbit around similar ideas. Through the insight given in his landscape memoirs, Lands Edge and Island Home, a more considered reading of his fictional texts; Breath, A Blow, A Kiss and Sand can be found. Specifically, these texts explore the role that landscape and place have had in shaping his perspectives and distaste of the expectations of Australian males. These texts each explore certain aspects of the expectations that men all over Australia are subjected to that Winton strongly opposes. Winton grew up in the 1960’s middle-class suburb of Karrinyup, WA, his working class Christian family’s beliefs and values, and events in his early life have evolved to form many of his present-day values towards landscape and masculinity.