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SONGLINES and FAULT LINES Six Walks That Shaped a Nation

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SONGLINES and FAULT LINES Six Walks That Shaped a Nation SONGLINES AND FAULT LINES Six walks that shaped a nation By Glenn Morrison BSc BE (Hons) UNSW Student No. 42352274 A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Macquarie University Department of Music, Media, Communications and Cultural Studies June 2015 Songlines and fault lines: Six walks that shaped a nation 2 Songlines and fault lines: Six walks that shaped a nation Table of Contents Abstract 5 Preface 9 1. Introduction: More than a walk in the park 11 2. Literature Review: From Dead Heart to Red Centre 25 3. Pilgrims of the Dreaming Track 73 4. Planting Flags for the Enlightenment 105 5. Finding Home 139 6. In to the Wild 171 7. In the Shade of a Ghost Gum 205 8. A Flâneur in the Outback 239 9. Conclusion: Journey’s end 275 List of References 289 3 Songlines and fault lines: Six walks that shaped a nation In memory of Booper (1936-2014) 4 Songlines and fault lines: Six walks that shaped a nation Abstract In a recent essay, literary editor Julianne Schultz suggests the challenge for Australian writers and journalists is to find ways to allow the various histories of their country to percolate together and inform each other. The purpose is to ‘foster a rich, informed hybrid culture that is not subsumed by myth’ (Schultz 2014). In central Australia, a region often linked to the nation’s identity, one thing stands in the way of such an aim: the hegemonic metaphor of frontier. Curiously, it is this very metaphor that underscores many of the stories defining a popular imagining of ‘what it means to be Australian’. In this thesis I argue that persistently representing Central Australia as a frontier prevents Australians from reimagining it as home. Reading for representations of frontier and home, I undertake a critical analysis of six regional walking narratives that together model place as a palimpsest, thereby articulating a discontinuous history of the Centre’s contested spaces since the precolonial era. For the first time, prominent recounted journeys by settler journalists, travel writers and anthropologists are examined alongside an Aboriginal Dreamtime journey along a songline. The comparative and cross-cultural analysis of the texts draws on their shared foundation of walking and writing as means of place- making. From the six essays emerge a variety of representations for the Centre which, while dominated by the frontier metaphor, betray a distinctive cultural hybridity in the contact zone between settler and Aboriginal Australians. Frontier, the research suggests, is no longer a suitable term to describe Central Australia, and the songlines ― long trivialised by settler Australians’ use of the pejorative Walkabout ― are potentially an important contributor to Australian discourses of hybridity, settler belonging and home. In this way, the work brings a new approach to an ecopoetics of Central Australia. The research advances the underreported role of walking in Australian history and literature, the fledgling writing of Australian places, and builds on recent interest in walking as a critical tool and reading strategy for postcolonial geographies. 5 Songlines and fault lines: Six walks that shaped a nation 6 Songlines and fault lines: Six walks that shaped a nation Candidate statement: Glenn Andrew Morrison This work has not been submitted for a higher degree to any other university or institution. It was researched solely by the candidate, using written, audio and visual sources. No Ethics Committee approval was required. Signed: Glenn Andrew Morrison Macquarie University student 4235 2274 . 7 Songlines and fault lines: Six walks that shaped a nation When we look at a landscape, we do not see what is there, but largely what we think is there. We attribute qualities to a landscape which it does not intrinsically possess ― savageness, for example, or bleakness ― and we value it accordingly. We read landscapes, in other words, we interpret their forms in the light of our own experience and memory, and that of our shared cultural memory. Robert Macfarlane (2008:18) 8 Songlines and fault lines: Six walks that shaped a nation Preface When I arrived in Alice Springs for the first time in 1998, I felt I had come home. Walking the hills that so warmly embrace the town only served to cement this strange notion, until, as I climbed to the top of a giant slab of quartzite I later learned was called the Heavitree Range, I wondered why on earth a working-class white man from Sydney might get such a strong and inexplicable sense of homecoming. Seemed to me Aboriginal people had walked these hills for generations before I had: surely it was their home. I first imagined this research project some time later as a newspaper editor in the town, where I often sought peace of mind in those same hills on long desert walks. Like Henry David Thoreau, I needed my ‘tonic of wildness.’ I wanted to explore the relationship between humans and landscape, to ask: What is home? I wondered why this town, perhaps above all others, figured so strongly in the imaginations of Australians? And why was my feeling of home so out of kilter with literary and media portrayals of Central Australia as a frontier? Reading the texts of those who had walked Central Australia before me soon sparked an interest in Aboriginal ways of seeing this place. That’s when I discovered The Songlines (1987) by Bruce Chatwin. Walking took on a whole new range of meanings thanks to the somewhat pretentious British travel writer, who visited Central Australia for just nine weeks during two trips in the 1980s. More than a simple path to reverie, walking, I came to see, was a cultural, even political act. My project became one of literay research, which some might think means hiding from your fellow human beings in a dusty corner of a university library. Nothing could be farther from the truth. On the contrary, many lively conversations about the work were conducted on walks of the hills surrounding Alice Springs, in cafes, at libraries, while camping in Central Australia, on the phone, Skype or around dinner tables. And while I certainly did a great deal of solitary reading, many spirited fellow travellers guided and encouraged me during the project. For helping bring the project to completion thanks is due to many. Without the good humour and critical eye of my supervisor Dr Ian Collinson, all would surely have been lost: Many thanks, my friend. So too, my original supervisor and 9 Songlines and fault lines: Six walks that shaped a nation discerning reader of a late draft Dr Willa McDonald, as well as Drs Kate Rossmanith and Peter Doyle and my friend and colleague Dr Tony Davis. In Alice Springs, many conversations were enjoyed with Doris Kngwarraye Stuart, Patricia Perrurlye Ansell-Dodd, Leni Shilton, Dave Richards and Jane Munday. From time to time I sought sage advice from anthropologists, historians, geographers and others who gave generously of their knowledge and time, including Dick Kimber, Adam McFie, Dr Melinda Hinkson, Dr Mickey Dewar, Prof David Carment, Megg Kelham, and Prof Rolf Gerritsen; thanks also to Professors Bill Boyd and Alan Mayne for their initial words of encouragement. I acknowledge the generous assistance of the Australian Postgraduate Award for a commonwealth scholarship, Macquarie University, the Australasian Association of Writing Programs, Macquarie Pen Lit, ArtsNT, Varuna: The Writers House, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Territory Quarterly Magazine, Al Jazeera and the Sunday Territorian. Furthermore, the commentary and evaluation of the work by examiners Dr Robert McFacfarlane, Dr Rune Graulund and Prof Nigel Krauth were both generous and meticulous, and contributed greatly to finalising the research. Last but not least, without my family whom I love dearly, the work would not have stood a chance. Some sections of this thesis appear elsewhere. Parts of Chapter 7 appear as Songlines 25 Years on: Encounter, Context and Walking in a Postcolonial Landscape (2012a), published by AAWP. Parts of Chapters 3 and 8 appear as A Flâneur in the Outback: Walking and Writing Frontier in Central Australia (2014c), published in peer-reviewed journal New Scholar. Several chapters draw on In the Footsteps of the Ancestors: Oral Fixations and Ethical Walking on the Last Great Songline (Morrison 2014b). I also draw from an early paper on the thesis for online journal Neo, called ‘In Search of Alice Springs’ (2011). Other sections draw on magazine articles and essays published in Territory Quarterly, book reviews published by the newspaper Sunday Territorian, various news reports and two award-winning personal essays kindly published by the Northern Territory Library. Finally, I have endeavoured patiently to render this thesis free from errors; nevertheless, they will appear, and responsibility for them lies entirely with me. 10 Songlines and fault lines: Six walks that shaped a nation 1. Introduction: More than a walk in the park Only a week or two ago the retiring Canadian High Commissioner described the lands from Alice Springs northward as a land of opportunity comparable with the formerly virgin west of Canada and the United States. It is the Commonwealth's duty to treat it as such. Former NT Administrator C.L.A Abbott ‘Australia’s Frontier Province’ Sydney Morning Herald Tues 28 May 1946 1.1 Overview Writers and journalists have long characterised Mparntwe (or Alice Springs) and Central Australia as a frontier, the supposed divide between black and white, ancient and modern.1 In fact, Richard Davis calls the frontier ‘one of the most pervasive, evocative tropes underlying the production of national identity in Australia’ (2005:7). While the term has commonly characterised the Centre, continuing to represent it in this way defies evidence of the intercultural exchange apparent from a contemporary lived experience of the region (see Myers 1986; Merlan 1998; Ottosson 2010, 2014).
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