Mapping Mobility in Australia: from the Bush to the Desert and the Ghostly Place
Résumé
The article deals with the difficult and often alienating relation to the land in Australia. As in many settlement colonies, the land has become a main pillar of national pride and self-definition for an Australian but the type of relation established with the land remains highly problematic and elusive for three main reasons: the fabrication of the “terra nullius” doctrine, the penal nature of early settlement and lastly the inhospitable nature of most of the continent.
Moreover, the issue of mobility and map-making remains very complex and fraught as what characterised the early days of settlement and what contributed to the establishment and consolidation of national sentiment was a worship of the bush, a place where Australians were to define themselves in existential journeys of self-discovery involving hardship, failure and often eventual death.
The article retraces the evolution of motifs and representations of the bush and mobility or the lack thereof, from the first explorers to much more recent and contemporary considerations of national identity as related to place and the delineation of arbitrary boundaries meant to evolve and shift in their spectral nature.