Conversations with the Bunyip
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Conversations with the bunyip The idea of the wild in imagining, planning, and celebrating place through metaphor, memoir, mythology, and memory Tamsin Kerr BSc (Hons) Griffith University Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, July 2006 Abstract What lies beneath Our cultured constructions? The wild lies beneath. The mud and the mad, the bunyip Other, lies beneath. It echoes through our layered metaphors We hear its memories Through animal mythology in wilder places Through emotive imagination of landscape memoir Through mythic archaeologies of object art. Not the Nation, but the land has active influence. In festivals of bioregion, communities re-member its voice. Our creativity goes to what lies beneath. This thesis explores the ways we develop deeper and wilder connections to specific regional and local landscapes using art, festival, mythology and memoir. It argues that we inhabit and understand the specific nature of our locale when we plan space for the non-human and creatively celebrate culture-nature coalitions. A wilder and more active sense of place relies upon community cultural conversations with the mythic, represented in the Australian exemplar of the bunyip. The bunyip acts as a metaphor for the subaltern or hidden culture of a place. The bunyip is land incarnate. No matter how pristine the wilderness or how concrete the urban, every region has its localised bunyip-equivalent that defines, and is shaped by, its community and their environmental relationships. Human/non-human cohabitations might be actively expressed through art and cultural experience to form a wilder, more emotive landscape memoir. This thesis discusses a diverse range of landstories, mythologies, environmental art, and bioregional festivities from around Australasia with a special focus on the Sunshine Coast or Gubbi-Gubbi region. It suggests a subaltern indigenous influence in how we imagine, plan and celebrate place. The cultural discourses of metaphor, memoir, mythology and memory shape land into landscapes. When the metaphor is wild, the memoir celebratory, the mythology animal, the memory creative and complex, our ways of being are ecocentric and grounded. The distinctions between nature and culture become less defined; we become native to country. Our multi-cultured histories are written upon the earth; our community identities shape and are shaped by the land. Together, monsters and festivals remind us of the active land. Statement of Originality This work has not previously been submitted for a degree or diploma in any university. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the thesis itself. Work published in the course of the thesis (*refereed) Journals *Kerr, Tamsin, 2006 “Who speaks land stories? Inexpert voicings of place” in Limina: A journal of Historical and Cultural studies, Volume 12, May 2006: pp 40-51 <http://www.limina.arts.uwa.edu.au/_data/page/59120/Kerr_Inexpert2.pdf> *Kerr, Tamsin 2004 “As if Bunyips mattered… Cross-cultural mythopoetic beasts in Australian subaltern planning” in Elizabeth Hartrick et al (eds) new talents write/ up Australian Research Institute and University of Queensland Press (Journal of Australian Studies 80): 14-27 <http://www.api-network.com/cgi-bin/page?archives/jas80_kerr> Books and chapters Kerr, Tamsin 2003 Community Cultural Development frameworks QCAN Brisbane *Kerr, Tamsin 2002 “The woman who planted souls” in Songs of Unsung Heroes: Stories and Verse Celebrating Australian Women and their Work Queensland Council of Unions: 110-113 Conference and seminar papers General rapporteur, closing forum, Creative Conservation (Environment, Culture & Community 2) University of Queensland, November 2005 *“Pan place, Coyote space, and Bunyip country: planning for wild-ness and ecological imagination in the creative city” ISOCARP Congress ‘Making spaces for the Creative Economy’ Bilbao, Oct 2005 <http://www.isocarp.org/projects/case_studies/congress_platform> “Bunyip festivals: ways to track and celebrate the non-human in our cities and regions” National Museum of Australia July 2005 “1842, subaltern studies, and the bunyip” Thesis presentation to Environmental History Group, Australian National University, Oct 2004 “Who speaks land stories?” Memory and History Symposium, Centre for Public Culture and Ideas, Griffith University, Aug 2003 “As if bunyips mattered…” Inter-Cultural Studies Conference University of Newcastle June 2002 Scholarships 2001 – 2004 Griffith University Women’s Scholarship 2005 Griffith University Postgraduate Student Association Bursary 2005 Griffith University Graduate Studies Travel Grant 2006 Completion Assistance Postgraduate Research Scholarship Contents INTRODUCTION 1 Conversations with the bunyip 3 Trustori and wisdom 7 Where the wild lies 16 The post-colonial subaltern 16 A subaltern parade of metaphors 19 From Edge to Wild Within 21 PART I METHODOLOGY AND METAPHOR: LISTENING TO EDGESERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED. Methodologies of place 31 Choosing Insights over Frameworks: participative action research 32 Naming patterns and classifying: the distant comfort of academic research 36 Place thinking: the difference between metaphor and madness 40 Multiple methods conclusion 54 PART II MEMOIR: THE CREATIVITY OF LANDSCAPE MEMOIR ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED. Nature/ writing 61 Who speaks land stories? Inexpert voicings of place 68 The complexities of the subaltern 68 Land writings topography 69 The subaltern voice 76 The unifying sense of loss in land story 77 The land and its scape 78 The voice of the land in land stories 80 Inexpert identities of place 82 From land story to landscape memoir 84 Realism, Art, Memoir and Land 84 Memory, myth, metaphor and mud 89 PART III MYTHOLOGY: IMAGINING THE EDGE OF FEAR ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED. Tracks 97 As if bunyips mattered… Cross-cultural mythopoetic beasts in subaltern planning 101 Reading mythopoetic beasts into the landscape 101 Transcribers of place: Aboriginal art and Western plans 106 The Bunyip 108 As if … (a conclusion) 113 Conversations with the Bunyip 116 Remembering the wild, imagining the bunyip in the urban 119 Pan place, Coyote space, and Bunyip country: planning for the creative city 121 What lies beneath? The trolls of subaltern theory 122 Animals, animals everywhere 123 The wildest place on earth? 125 Planning for the non-human and the mythic 126 Regional Mythic Creatures 128 The wilder spirit of the place? 133 An imagined landscape of human/animal coalitions 134 Frog chorus 136 PART IV MEMORY: CELEBRATING TO EMBRACE FEAR AND REFUSE DESPAIRERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED. The woman who planted souls 143 Arts Now or Later? Community Cultural Development and Visual Literacy 151 Life is art 151 Bunyip festivals: ways to track and celebrate the non-human 157 Festival examples 158 Celebrating Subaltern Identity 161 Landscape memoir and site specific art: voicing object memories of place? 165 The life of objects 165 The practice and rhetoric of Artists in Nature 169 The bunyip memory of place 181 Embracing site-specific fear 181 Celebrating the bunyip wild 184 Celebrating Subaltern and Regional Landscapes of Identity 188 National Identity and Nation Building 189 CONCLUSION 195 Frantic love is small but wild 197 Conclusion 200 BIBLIOGRAPHY 213 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Introduction This thesis asks ‘What if we took the idea of the wild seriously?’ It shows that the wild, embodied by the bunyip, speaks the voice of regional place-specific landscape, through mythopoesis, trustori, and creative cultural memory. The idea of the wild lies beneath all our philosophies and discourses. The wild is creative, fearful, animal, challenging, and complex. This thesis examines what happens to our stories, planning, celebrations, imaginings, and landscape constructions, when we allow the wild to surface. Our expressions of culture/ nature become more emotive, more spirited, more complex and inclusive, more layered, active and celebratory, allowing deeper re- connections with the particulars of each specific place. Planning and living in a community needs to be inclusive of both diverse human cultural groups and the non- human of nature, land, animal, and the mythic. Conversations with the bunyip develops a complex layered understanding of this role of place. It acknowledges the inseparable interactions of culture and landscape, worries at the nature/ culture boundary, and shows how indigenous and multi-cultural philosophies might continue to change our practices and the ways we inhabit our landscapes. It shows the critical roles of creativity and ritual, the mythic and animals, in broadening our imaginations and in celebrating our inhabited land. The wild allows us to ‘reinhabit reality’, to be ‘at home on the earth, becoming native to our place’ (the respective book titles of Freya Matthews, 2005 and David Barnhill, 1999 or Wes Jackson, 1994). This thesis provides a framework to create better environmental and social spaces, and to think about how we live - how we dwell in reality. In merging the reason of planning with the wild of monsters, it revolutionises planning’s potential by demonstrating how essential the regional and the wild is in constructing a sense of place. It calls to a wide audience interested in environmental and social change, in cultural and Australian studies, in environmental philosophy and postcolonial theory, in planning, and in the community creativity of the arts.