M Rolls

Robert Lawlor Tells a 'White' Lie

A casual browse through almost any bookshop reveals a growing interest in Aborigines and their cultures, not because of their importance and significance in their own right, but because of their perceived utility in satisfying Western needs and desires. There is hardly a complaint, problem (be they personal or symptomatic of wider issues) or variant of spiritual questing to which elements from Aboriginal cultures have not been applied. Although this work comes wrapped in the spirit of ‘good intentions’, the constructions of Aborigines the authors employ rarely escape the crude notion that they remain a people from and of the past. In this article I look at one of the more popular books that perpetuates this myth, but my primary focus is on how the author misleadingly substantiates his portrayal of Aboriginal peoples. The book poses as a work of serious—if not anthropologically original—scholarship.

Casuistry, commentary and killing cattle: Transgressing notional borders of belonging

ABSTRACT In 2011, ABC Television’s Four Corners broadcast “A Bloody Business”. The program’s confronting subject was the live cattle trade to Indonesia, and in particular, disturbing slaughtering practices. Notable was repeated use of the phrases “Australian cattle”, “Australian livestock” and “Australian animals”. The inference was that these were “our” cattle, some of which suffered shockingly cruel deaths. The implicit nationalism informing the program’s emotional provocation begs the question in what sense were the cattle, an introduced cloven-hooved domesticated animal, Australian? This raises related questions: if cattle are “ours”, why not other exotic flora and fauna, and what of settlers and more recent immigrants too? After briefly discussing this program, the paper considers a range of different engagements with Australian landscapes. Of principal interest are affinities to landscape based on social organisation. Pivotal to this are notions of lifescapes and emotional geographies. These notions form the foundation for following discussion on several disparate entanglements with landscape. The discussion ranges across cattle, pastoralists, Aborigines, water buffalo, other exotic flora and fauna, kangaroo shooters, shearers and immigrant responses to national parks. In doing so, the paper explores the vexed issue of who and what can be included in the embrace of Australian nativeness.

Writing home: walking, literature and belonging in Australia’s red centre

Morrison’s Writing Home is an important and ambitious work that among other things systematically contests two current orthodoxies: one being that Central Australia is an exemplar of Australia’s enduring frontier; the other that settler Australians will always be alien to the land in which they dwell. In picking apart these shibboleths, some will no doubt proclaim Writing Home is controversial and inimical to Aboriginal aspirations and the realisation of restitution for dispossession. This would be to misread Morrison. Morrison also addresses a significant lacuna in Australian literary scholarship, that being the paucity of critical literature addressing writing of and about the Centre, despite the existence of a significant regional corpus. Given the influence of the Northern Territory in constructions of Australian identity, it is peculiar, as Morrison points out, that there is so little evaluation of the local literature informing these constructions (34). Nevertheless, his book is not a survey of this body of literature. Rather it selects key texts from different eras with which to illustrate his overarching argument. Texts selected are by those who have walked, no matter how briefly (Chatwin for example), the Central Australian places of which they write.

“‘More fun than the locals’: Cultural Differences and Natural Resources”

In the latter half of the 1990s there was a long-running but unreported conflict over use of a coastal rock platform on the Central Coast of New South Wales, just to the north of Sydney. This multifaceted dispute was between poor Korean Australians from the inner suburbs of Sydney and locals. The source of this conflict was the manner in which the rock platform was being used, how its resources were exploited and the type of social life that accompanied these activities. Different peoples brought different understandings to the rock platform, and they acted in accordance with those understandings.For many older settler Australians, and for the diminishing number of those ‘on the land’, the essence of what it is to be Australian is found outside of urban environments. Colloquially referred to as ‘the bush’, this can mean virtually any rural, remote, regional, or non-urban setting. For those living in cities, and for more recent immigrants to Australia, national parks are one site that provides ready access to ‘the bush’. As with the coastal rock platform, different peoples bring different understandings to their encounters with national parks and ‘the bush’, and their use of these places changes accordingly.This paper begins with a description of the rock platform incident, before moving on to discuss the response of different immigrant groups to national parks and other open public spaces.

Message from the InASA president

This issue foresees a change in the editorial team of JAS. After six years as co-editor, Melissa Harper is stepping away from the unrelenting grind of editorial responsibilities. First co-editing with Martin Crotty, Melissa remained at the helm when Maggie Nolan commenced as co-editor in March 2010. Throughout Melissa’s investiture, the routine of journal publication was punctuated by a number of issues, including the RQF journal ranking exercise and the transfer of publication to Taylor & Francis. This period also saw the reintroduction of the annual John Barrett Award for the best written article in two categories (open and postgraduate) appearing in JAS. Strangely, given the centrality of publishing in quality journals to our work as scholars, the role of editors is largely unheralded and unrecognised. On behalf of InASA, I thank Melissa very much for her significant contribution to the flagship of our association, and we wish her all the very best for the future. With the next issue of JAS, we extend a warm welcome to Julie Kimber as co-editor. Julie teaches politics and history at Swinburne University in Melbourne. She has had a long association with the journal Labour History, beginning as an editorial trainee in 1999, and she has been the book review editor since 2002. Her current research examines the intersections of discriminatory law and the politics of marginality. InASA looks forward to Julie’s contribution. This issue also heralds two new editorial assistant positions at JAS. I congratulate Kath McCabe and Alexandra Dellios on being awarded these positions from a very strong field of applicants. Kath is a PhD candidate at the University of Queensland, whose research explores populist rhetoric in Australian Prime Ministerial speeches, and Alexandra Dellios is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne, who is interested in ethnic community involvement in heritage and other public history practices. I thank them both for their willingness to come on board this exciting venture. Finally, I want to welcome Tanja Luckins in her capacity as JAS’s book review editor. Tanja, who teaches Australian studies at Deakin University, has degrees in art history and history and draws on her interdisciplinary background in her role at JAS. Her most recent book is The Australian Pub (with Diane Kirkby and Chris McConville 2010). She is assisted in editing the book reviews section with Deakin University colleagues Sophie Loy-Wilson, who joined Deakin in 2013 to teach Australian Studies, and Professor David Walker, who contributes from Beijing, where he is currently the inaugural BHP Billiton chair of Australian Studies at Peking University. Sadly, this issue also includes an obituary for Bob Bessant, a long-time editor of both JAS and of JAS’s book review section, who died on 2 May, 2013. Beyond JAS, Bob played a significant role in the development and promotion of Australian studies. Journal of Australian Studies, 2013 Vol. 37, No. 4, 421–424, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14443058.2013.844881

Finding fault: Aborigines, anthropologists, popular writers and Walkabout

The popular middlebrow magazine Walkabout was published between 1934 and 1974. Its principle aim was to promote travel to and within Australia and to educate Australians about their continent. It aspired to be an Australian geographic magazine, and to this end it focussed on inland and remote Australia, and natural history. For this reason, and because it was published throughout a period, particularly in the early decades, when only those Aborigines living afar from populated regions were recognised as Aborigines, many of Walkabouts articles were about Aborigines or, more commonly, made mention of them. There are very few critiques of Walkabout, but those that do exist are critical of its portrayal of Aborigines. Notwithstanding that there are many reasons to find fault, it is possible to read this material in a more salutary light, even against the apparent intention of at least one of the contributors, Ernestine Hill. This article considers the work of a number of popular writers and two of the anthro...

Picture imperfect: re-reading imagery of Aborigines in Walkabout

Abstract The representation of Aborigines in the popular Australian magazine Walkabout has attracted the attention of a small number of scholars. For the most part their analyses draw a distinction between the portrayals of primitive natives and those of the emergent modernising Australian nation. It is argued that Aborigines appear as debased, as noble savages, or as bearers of an idealised and imagined traditional culture. These representational strategies are evident in both photographs and text in Walkabout. Whilst not necessarily disagreeing with these critiques, more nuanced readings of Aboriginal photographic representation in Walkabout are possible. This article seeks to reveal the potential for a more diverse and complex understanding of the images appearing throughout the 1930s.