Vicarious Travels Through the Enchanted Land of Auz

an interview with my favorite travel companion, Mitchell

I wanted to have a conversation with my travel partner, someone with whom I’ve visited seven countries. He’s also been my husband for nearly three years. Mitchell has been many places I have yet to see for myself, but the one I always ask him about, the place I find completely fascinating, is Australia. Australia is built up in my head as this place of dangerous animals and harsh, unforgiving territory. I also know that it was founded on the colonial oppression of Aboriginal peoples and genocide. Much like my own country - the United States, or Canada, our northern neighbor, Australia committed many heinous acts, like kidnapping native children in the name of “civilizing” them.

Many of the stories and the language I have to describe Australia mirror the colonial discourse of the United States, especially the Southwest, where Mitchell and I were both born and raised. In “The Rhetoric of Empire” David Spurr examines the methodology behind Western colonial meaning-making and asks the following question: “What are the cultural, ideological, or literary presuppositions upon which such a construct is based?” (Spurr, 3). When I asked Mitchell this question in relation to his travels throughout Australia, here is what he said:

M:I traveled there when I was young and most of what I thought I knew about Australia came from the romantic notion of the white frontiersman, similar to the cowboy settler of the American wild west.

Me: So like Crocodile Dundee?

M: Yeah, exactly! And that Hugh Jackman movie as well.

(He’s talking about the film “Australia” featuring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman. This rugged and sometimes problematic film features sweeping panoramas of the beautiful landscape and focuses mainly on the struggles of white settler-colonists. For two truly incredible films featuring stories about Aboriginal peoples, please see “Rabbit-Proof Fence” or “The Sapphires.” Both are amazing movies. 10/10 would recommend.)

Me: I used to love “Crocodile Dundee!” Although from an adult, feminist standpoint it’s definitely a little outdated. “Mick” (Crocodile Dundee) was like this uber-man, murdering crocs with his bare hands and saving the female lead from mortal peril because she was a silly city career girl. He calls her a “Sheila” a lot, and I remember asking my mom what that meant. It was so 80’s that it almost hurts. But this personification of hypermasculinity makes sense if you have this colonial narrative of settling and “subduing” the wild frontier.

(I explained to Mitchell that I recently read Susan Bassnett’s analysis of “Travel Writing and Gender” and her argument that hypermasculine “rape” language has been used as a colonial tool. “The early history of colonialism is one in which new territories were metaphorised as female, as virgin lands waiting to be penetrated, ploughed, and husbanded by male explorers. The overt sexualisation of the language of territorial expansion quickly became commonplace. (Bassnet, 231) I would argue that Crocodile Dundee is a character who personifies this male imperative to “penetrate” and “husband” the landscape. He is so manly and sexual that he could have only been written by a cis-gendered straight man as the ideal male hero.)

M: Yes, like “hard men settling a hard country” in a way that very much feels like the landscape and the people are being subdued. I think the thing that comes to mind for most people when they think about Australia is this dichotomy between like, a beach paradise or a dangerous desert. I also think that at that point in my life I also viewed Aboriginal Australian people as part of the landscape, I’m sorry to say. Obviously, this changed after I actually got there.

Me: Did you meet any Aboriginal people?

M: Yes. One of our cultural liaisons through the school was Aboriginal and one of the texts I had to read for my study abroad class was “Banang.” But mostly the people I encountered were white Australians. But anyway, "Banang": it’s the story of a kid who was a member of the “stolen generations.” He was kidnapped and taken to a boarding school where he was essentially tortured into assimilation into white culture until he escaped. Reading that really opened my eyes to what had been done to the indigenous peoples in that place and also what our own country and Canada have done to First Nations and Native American peoples. It’s horrific.

Me: Did you ever visit Aboriginal spaces during your time in Australia? What was that like?

M: Yeah we did. There’s quite a bit of poverty, similar to the Reservation lands in the US. I think the biggest thing is that most people don’t realize how absolutely massive Australia is. You can drive for days through the backcountry and not see a single soul. I think many Aboriginal people may choose to live remotely, far away from the cities full of the descendants of those who colonized their lands.

(I tell Mitchell about the Ted Talk I've just watched, in which author Chimamanda Adichie discusses the importance of telling multiple stories when trying to understand or interact with different cultures. I play a clip for him on my phone. Adichie says "It is impossible to talk about the single story without talking about power. There is a word, an Igbo word, that I think about whenever I think about the power structures of the world, and it is "nkali." It's a noun that loosely translates to "to be greater than another." Like our economic and political worlds, stories too are defined by the principle of nkali: How they are told, who tells them, when they're told, how many stories are told, are really dependent on power." Mitchell nods, understanding sparking in his dark blue eyes.)

Me: Circling back to storytelling and how a multiplicity of narratives can debunk stereotypes or add nuance and tolerance to one’s perception, did you encounter any of these Crocodile-Dundee type people in your travels around Australia?

M: Yeah I did, they were a couple of guys outside the cities . . . I read a stat on Australian dialects: there are three main ones and they’re all class-related - 10% have a “posh” Australian, which is the closest accent to the “Queen’s English,” if you will.

Me: Like some of the South African accents we’ve heard?

M: Yeah, exactly! And then 70% is just standard Australian which is how most people in the cities sound. The other 20% is “bogan” which would be like a rural accent here. It’s almost like its own dialect and is difficult to understand if you aren’t familiar with it. Like an American accent from a really isolated area like Appalachia.

Me: what about the accents of indigenous peoples?

M: I’d say they have their own dialect but it’s closer to that “country” accent unless they live in the cities. But I’m not an expert.

Me: Gotcha! Alright, we’ve covered language, landscape, class, race, and multiple stories. I want to know: what is a story that would surprise me about Australia, as a person who has never been there?

M: it may not surprise you, but people underestimate the sheer disparity between city and not-city. The vastness of Australia is almost indescribable. Less than 1% of the population lives in the space between the cities on the east coast and the cities on the west coast. I drove from Perth to Broom, from the southwest to the north, and it was very humbling to be alone in so much space. We’re talking days without seeing any signs of human “civilization.” There could be tribes of Aboriginal people living in these spaces but that’s how far they are from each other.

Me: It seems like every tribe would have such a distinct language and culture from every other one because of the isolation and geographical distance.

M: Yeah, although I think many of them share creation stories or cosmological beliefs.

Me: Okay, one of my last questions: How did your time in Australia and the stories you experienced change you?

M: It really made me realize how much I didn’t know or understand about the world. It opened my eyes. It made me want to travel and learn even more, to hear different stories from people who have had different experiences and who have diverse cultural identities.

Works Cited:

Adichie, C. (2009). The Danger of a Single Story. Ted Talks.

Bassnett, S. (2002). Travel writing and gender. In P. Hulme & T. Youngs (Eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing (Cambridge Companions to Literature, pp. 225-241). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CCOL052178140X.014

Spurr, D. (2004). The rhetoric of empire: colonial discourse in journalism, travel writing, and imperial administration. Duke University Press.