Ways of Seeing 'Country': Colonial, Postcolonial, and Indigenous Perceptions of the Australian Landscape

Abstract

Landscape has always occupied a central place in the imaginary of settler Australia. Not only was it a dominant subject of textual and pictorial representations of Australia during the colonial era, but the concept of what is referred to in Australia as "the bush" continues in today's society to be invested with a very special importance in the minds of many non-Indigenous Australians. We see this in the iconic status the bush enjoys in art, fiction, and the contemporary cinema, the key role it plays in current settler-descendant identity discourse, and its sacralisation by twenty-first century conservationists, not to mention its rapidly growing attraction as a tourist destination for settler descendants of all ages and social backgrounds.