• 'Just like England', a colonial settler landscape

    Author(s):
    Ian Willis (see profile)
    Date:
    2016
    Group(s):
    Place Studies, Settler Colonialism
    Subject(s):
    Australia, New South Wales, Local history, Colonies
    Item Type:
    Article
    Tag(s):
    Cowpastures NSW
    Permanent URL:
    https://doi.org/10.17613/xj68-xq03
    Abstract:
    Early European settlers were the key actors in a place-making exercise that constructed an English-style landscape aesthetic on the colonial stage in the Cowpastures district of New South Wales. The aesthetic became part of the settler colonial project and the settlers’ aim of taking possession of territory involved the construction of a cultural ideal from familiar elements of home in the ‘Old Country’. The new continent, and particularly the bush, had the elements of the Gothic with its grotesque and the demonic, and the landscape aesthetic was one attempt to counter these forces. Settlers used the aesthetic to assist the creation of a new narrative on an apparently blank slate and, in the process, dispossessed and displaced the Indigenous occupants. The new colonial landscape was characterised by English placenames, English farming methods and English settlement patterns, with only cursory acknowledgement of Indigenous occupation.
    Metadata:
    xml
    Published as:
    Journal article     Show details
    Publisher:
    Independent Scholars Association of Australia Inc
    Pub. Date:
    2016
    Journal:
    ISAA Review
    Volume:
    15
    Issue:
    2
    Page Range:
    5 - 18
    ISSN:
    1444-0881
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    8 months ago
    License:
    Attribution
    Share this:

    Downloads

    Item Name: pdf 2016_willis_isaa_just_like_englandi.pdf
      Download View in browser
    Activity: Downloads: 24

    Back to Deposits