The Erotic and the Exotic: French in Australia
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The Erotic and the Exotic: French in Australia Bonnie Thomas, University of Western Australia At first sight one may wonder if there is any role for French in a country colonized by the British in 1788 and lying thousands of kilometres from the European continent, in a place where English has been the national language since that time and whose inhabitants are descendents of convicts and settlers. The largest island and the smallest continent in the world, Australia remains one of the most isolated countries on earth and until recently has been firmly monolingual. While Aboriginal languages number in the hundreds 1, they are increasingly dying out through lack of use. When one thinks of Australia images such as kangaroos and koalas come to mind, the outback, an ancient Aboriginal culture, the Sydney Opera House and beautiful beaches. What, then, do all of these things have in common with France? A brief survey of Australian history reveals in fact that this isolated land could have been a French colony. As one researcher into Australia’s past puts it: “A French Australia? Almost!” 2 Known as terra australis incognita (unknown southern land) from the twelfth century onwards, 3 significant exploration in Australia began in the 1600s by the Dutch. The first recorded French attempt occurred even earlier - between 1503 and 1505 - by Paulmier de Gonneville. 4 Although no discoveries resulted from this voyage and all the charts mapped were lost in a shipwreck, the French continued their interest into this unknown southern continent. Various expeditions were conducted throughout the eighteenth century, the most important of which occurred in 1788. Following Captain Cook’s landing at Botany Bay in 1770 and his claiming of the land as New South Wales, Captain Arthur Phillip arrived in the area in 1788 and set up the first Australian colony. Alongside this story of British exploration and colonization, however, there is the little known fact that the Comte de la Pérouse arrived only three days after Phillip and Australia could in fact have come under French sovereignty. “If the wind off Botany Bay had been blowing from a different direction during the last week in January 1788, so that La Pérouse had edged into the bay ahead of Arthur Phillip, we might have all been brought up on La Fontaine and ‘la cuisine’.” 5 For most Australians, this connection with France is unknown, overshadowed by the exploits of British explorers. The French played an important role at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, however, with French navigators such as Bougainville, Saint-Allouarn, d’Entrecasteaux, Baudin, La Pérouse and others helping to put Australia on the maps “which Europeans were plotting of the oceans, islands and lands distant from their home.” 6 While these French 1 Pierre Grundmann, En Australie , Hachette, Paris, 1983, p. 54. 2 Noelene Bloomfield, “Introduction” to a CD Rom on French Exploration in Australia, Perth, Australia, 2002. No page numbers given. 3 Joel P. Henderson, Encyclopaedia Britannica , Brown, 1993. Accessed by internet: http://65.107.211.206/post/australia/austchron.html. 4 Bloomfield. 5 Joseph Lo Bianco & Alain Monteil, French in Australia: New Prospects , Centre d’Etudes et d’Echanges Francophones en Australie / Australian Federation of Modern Language Teachers’ Associations, Canberra, 1990, p. 103. 6 Ibid . explorations did not result in any colonization, they nevertheless bequeathed a legacy of scientific discoveries, place names and a few memorials as a witness to their activities in the Southern Hemisphere. 7 Nicolas Baudin conducted the most influential of these expeditions of scientific discovery between 1800 and 1804. 8 With his ships ‘Le Géographe’ and ‘Le Naturaliste’, Baudin arrived on the west coast of Australia in May 1801 and spent three months in Western Australian waters charting parts of the coast and collecting scientific data. He soon turned his attention to southern Australia which he called “Terre Napoléon” and gave French names to many parts of this region. In Western Australia today, French names abound with places such as Esperance, D’Entrecasteaux National Park, Cape Legrand, Freycinet Estuary, Cape Naturaliste and Geographe Bay. There are also countless examples of the French influence in Australia in other names throughout the continent. Accompanying Baudin on his travels were two artists, Charles Alexandre Lesueur and Nicolas Martin Petit, who recorded the zoological, geographical and ethnographical features of the region in drawings and engravings. 9 François Peron, a naturalist on board the ‘Géographe’, published his account of the Voyage to the Southern Lands in 1807. In a striking synthesis of French, Australian and Martinican history, this book featured an engraving of a small zoological garden at the palace of Napoleon’s wife, Josephine, at Rueil-Malmaison, close to Paris. 10 It seems that the Empress had requested that some animals from the southern lands be brought back for her and in this picture there are black swans, kangaroos, emus and other Australian fauna. It is a rare discovery indeed to find traces of Australia in a publication of that era. In a further connection with France, English explorer Matthew Flinders 11 was the first person to promote the use of the name ‘Australia’ rather than ‘ terra australis ’ from 1804 while he was reworking his charts on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius. The French, under General Decaen, detained him there as a suspected spy from 1803 until 1810 whilst on his return voyage to England despite him having a French passport. When he was finally released and returned back to England, Flinders worked on his monumental book, A Voyage to Terra Australis , published just before his death in 1814. The chart accompanying this book carried the title General Chart of Terra Australis or Australia . Thus, in a sense, the concept of ‘Australia’ began in Mauritius. Against this backdrop, then, the role of France is far more significant than one might initially think. The continuing French association with Australia is evident in the kaleidoscope of societies established between the two countries. A small selection includes the multiple Alliances Françaises found throughout the continent, the Association of French Speaking Doctors, the Association of French Teachers in Victoria and the French Australian Chamber of Commerce. 12 At the same time, the popularity of the French language in Australia remains as a powerful testament to the role of France in the country. Mauritius, although no longer politically a part of 7 Anny P.L. Stuer, The French in Australia , Australian National University Press, Canberra, 1982, p. 25. 8 Bloomfield. 9 Ibid . 10 Ibid . 11 For more information on Flinders see the website www.slnsw.gov.au/flinders. 12 Bianco & Monteil, p. 16. France, represents a large body of French speakers in Australia, particularly in Perth. Traditionally the foreign language drawing the largest number of students, French has formed part of the education of many Australians. Although this phenomenon is gradually changing with the rise in popularity of Asian languages in Australia, French continues to be the most studied European language in the country. While adult memories of French education in high school vary from the fond to the horrific, the experience remains an important one and is rarely forgotten. In a humorous recollection, one Australian records the legacy of these linguistic studies. “Like many Australians of my vintage, I learnt French at high school, five torturous years. Like most of my peers, fortunate enough to later travel to France, I could neither understand nor be understood. As a consequence, I have eaten grilled pituitary glands when I thought I had ordered steak.” 13 Thus, on a historical and practical level, French retains an enduring presence in Australia. In a special edition of Bouillon de culture broadcast from Sydney in January 2000, 14 Bernard Pivot explores the relationship between France and Australia with invited guests from Australia’s academic, literary, Aboriginal and musical worlds. 15 Robert Dessaix, a celebrated writer and broadcaster and one of Australia’s few public intellectuals, describes what he sees as the intriguing yet largely unexplored relationship between France and Australia. For Australians, Dessaix locates the mystery of France in its embodiment of the erotic. When Australians speak of France images of romance, the soft and musical French accent, beautiful women, alluring men and the magic of the City of Lights flood the imagination. For the French, by contrast, Australia represents everything that is exotic in its unusual flora and fauna, the mythology of the bush and its isolation from the rest of the world. Indeed, Australia for the French becomes a certain ‘terre du rêve’ or dream land which has little to do with the daily reality of urban life in Australia. Beyond these evocative impressions stimulated by the notion of ‘France’ and ‘Australia’, Dessaix also sheds light on the deeper meaning of French for Australians. Reminiscing about the search for his biological mother in his absorbing autobiography, A Mother’s Disgrace , Dessaix describes the potency of his discovery of French intellectuals as an adolescent. “Much more interesting than meeting my mother by then, in my mid-teens, during stolen moments in foreign languages, was encountering Jean-Paul Sartre in French. And André Gide soon followed ( Si le grain ne meurt , L’immoraliste and others). This gave rise to a shadowy Impure Land in my head. French and France were suddenly cloaked in deviance and desire, eroticised, not just by sexuality, but more powerfully, perhaps, by being simply so deeply knowing . Over there they knew .” 16 Dessaix’s poetic introduction to French intellectual life reflects the more general importance of French thinkers in the world of ideas. There are many domains in which these intellectuals have established their authority, ranging from philosophy and history to architecture and gender studies.