Since the process of colonisation began, European Australians have attempted to come to terms with both the landscape of their acquired homeland, and its enormous impact on the cultural and emotional life of the new nation.
Many colonists’ initial response of horror at the new landscape was partly overcome by attempts to render realistic portraits of its difference. For some early visitors, such as Joseph Banks, the aim was to document and catalogue flora and fauna for genuine scientific purposes. For others, such as the colony’s earliest painters (see 4.1.3), there was an urge to describe the land for those ‘at home’, or for themselves, as a means of coming to terms with the new realities of vision they were experiencing. Some refused to accept the essential characteristics of the land in which they found themselves, and attempted to adapt it, both physically and metaphorically, into something that approached familiarity; that is, they began the process of creating a new Europe. The lupins and other English perennials planted by the artist John Glover in his Tasmanian garden feature prominently in some of his best-known paintings of the colonial countryside. To this day we share his vision of the English country house, surrounded by Canterbury Bells and grass trees.
Poets and artists pursued these different aims, and have continued to do so ever since. In coming to terms with the reality of the landscape, the dominant culture and its artists have also been struggling with another major but central issue: although they aspire to belong to the land and develop an almost mystical relationship with it, there are others who belonged first.
In the modern mind, this has led to a cultural consciousness which is a blending of European (and particularly British) perspectives: use of the land as a resource, fear of its overwhelming size and elemental power, nationalism, urbanism, a conscious development of a national character based in part on paradigms (such as the ‘outback myth’) of white superiority, and traditional patriarchal ownership and management of land.