William Satchell 's The Toll Of The Bush And Hamish Clayton 's Wulf Essay

While some texts choose to represent the Australian landscape as being harsh and untamed, others appear to present them in a more positive fashion. However, when we get to the heart of each text, it's context and purpose we find a common theme of connection with the land within them. In this analysis I will be using Wild Cat Falling by Mudrooroo, My Country by Dorothea Mackellar and The Drovers Wife by Henry Lawson. Wild Cat falling represents the main character as having a disconnection with the Australian landscape, which leads to him having an identity crisis, not knowing where he belongs. My Country represents the authors connection with the bush landscape,

Gilbert’s poem portrays many Aboriginals plight’s within Australia and conveys notions of despair, anguish and anger for his fellow Aboriginal comrades. Again, Gilbert uses strong visual imagery in “the anguished death you spread” which helps convey the persona’s feeling of horror and anger at the Europeans. This is further emphasised through the poet’s vehement and repetitive use of second person pronouns in “you” which conveys a sense of blame and accumulates into an accusatory tone and generates a strong sense of detachment between the author and the European settlers. Furthermore enjambment enhances the accusatory tone in “you pollute all the rivers and litter every road” because the lack of punctuation and pauses makes the lines sharp and quick, creating a sense of anger in the author. In addition the author’s use of metaphors in “humanity locked in chains” creates a sense of struggle and inability to escape the oppression the Aboriginals are in, whereby the word “chain” is symbolic for trapped and lack of freedom. Kevin Gilbert’s emotional poem brings light to the pain and suffering Aboriginals are going through, which is a stark contrast to the image of Australia, being a free and accepting

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

New Zealand is a known country where people tend to live self-sufficient life styles. This is shown through the story in a number of ways. Raf the main character in the story believes in the two important ideas of privacy and revenue this is seen through the fact that Raf gave up his job of being a lecturer at Lincoln University to purchase a block of land. Living self- sufficiently off the

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.

The Australian remote landscape, commonly known as ‘the outback’ is a powerful symbol that has shaped the Australian identity. Many foreigners and even locals, without any knowledge of the harsh climate, would enter the desert at the risk of never returning alive. In 2009, two men had perished in the harsh Northern Territory outback. Acting Superintendent Steve Heyworth said, “Both men who died fell victim to the harshness of the arid conditions of the Northern Territory.” This horrific incident is just one example of the severity of ‘the outback’. From this local folklore, a metaphor of the

In this essay I will consider the roles of city and country in three short stories; Water Them Geraniums by Henry Lawson, Short-Shift Saturday by Gavin Casey, and Trees Can Speak by Alan Marshall. I will argue through contributing to character development, they provide insight into the construction of contempory Australian identity. In Water Them Geraniums the outback is shown to be an emasculating force, particularly for women, that strips away their humanity until they function in a mechanical way to survive off the land. In Short-Shift Saturday the narrator is a product of an inherited colonial culture and imagines that it is the alien landscape and culture in which he lives that is the agent of his suffering. In reality, the

This essay will critically explore Barbara Baynton’s bush stories Squeaker’s Mate and The Chosen Vessel and it’s representations of the implications life had on women in the bush during the 1800’s and the 1900’s and examine the notion the bush is no place for a woman. According to Wells, the Australian bush is defined as having “an iconic status in Australian life and features strongly in any debate about national identity, especially as expressed in Australian literature”. Most Australian bush poems and short stories portrayed women as stay at home housewives. Women who went to live in the remoteness of the outback with their husbands were responsible for doing household chores, cooking, having children and looking after their child,

In Alistair MacLeod 's collection of short stories, 'The Boat ', 'The Return ', and 'The Lost Salt Gift of Blood ', MacLeod explores the connection between identity and belonging with nature. MacLeod, through the powerful landscape of Cape Breton, the weather, the winter seas, fishing, and the coal mines, provides a background to the human events and the drama to the stories. However, Cape Breton is more than just a landscape and becomes a strong character in its own right, providing a strong link to the life stories and emotions of the characters who are descendants of the Scottish and Irish immigrants who came many years ago and carry their tradition and culture with them. The lives of the men and women are linked to the landscape as

2. The sea was dangerous , the winds did not always blow in the right direction and it was such a long way and difficult to bring enough food and water.

Paterson’s Bush Poetry and his love of the bush, seen in his tendency to romanticise rural Australia and the stereotypical outback “Bushman,” assisted in immortalizing many of ideals and values that Australia’s felt they possessed and hence the formation of an Australian identity that people were proud of.

Through the process of cultural consumption, bluegrass artists asserted New Zealand’s rural identity by adopting a distinctly Southern bluegrass

Maguire’s observation that Herakles functions in her series as a cultural cipher, malleable and familiar, even in this unfamiliar setting. The unexpected blending of his life-story with the distinctive mythology of New Zealand provides a disconcerting perspective on these stories. By giving Herakles, the familiar foreigner who never seems quite at home, the task of colonising New Zealand, Maguire achieves an element of intellectual distance. This figure, “…with its established symbolic baggage, seems at first glance to simplify, even do away with, the complex and messy dynamics of colonisation.”(Marian.M). In fact, Herakles’ mythological remoteness allows, paradoxically, a closer engagement with the difficult realities of colonial history; his translocation to the South Pacific enacts in the most dramatic way the collision of worldview which comprises the origins of New Zealand as a modern

Henry Lawson’s ‘The Drover’s wife’ is a personal story depicting an archetypal portrait of all drovers wives of the 1900’s. Lawson represents the wives through a woman characterised as a strong, protective mother who has the ability to fight against the disasters of the Australian bush. Lawson’s use of alliteration, “The bush with no horizon.. no undergrowth, nothing to relieve the eye” emphasises the isolation of the drover’s wife from the rest of the world. The unequivocal tone and hyperbolic image of ‘no horizon’, portrays the harsh landscape allowing the responders to empathise with the loneliness. The provocative image of the Drover’s wife and its environment enhances her development of resilience, tenacity and fortitude which is vital