AustLit

'Borderlands Magazine is a literary journal by Territorians, for Territorians and readers anywhere interested in our unique part of Australia.

'The people and places of Australia’s Centre and North are of great interest to many Australians, and often shape the way we are represented and perceived globally.

'They also hold a cherished and historically significant place in Australian literature, for example, ideas of sprawling space, isolation, , and that Australia has a ‘spiritual heart’, are all given voice in the Northern Territory.' (https://borderlands.cdu.edu.au/about/

'Dozens of literary journals adorn the bookshelves of my Alice Springs office. Whether I have read them from cover to cover is another matter. Usually I scan each volume like a kitehawk scavenging for prey, dive for a morsel or two, move on. Trouble is, for a writer such journals are widely considered a pathway to publication. The loosely-stacked volumes are mostly trial subscriptions, a single year of editions purchased at a discount that couldn’t be missed. Next year I ‘traded up’ to a different journal, hoping for something better, Griffith Review, The Lifted Brow, right-leaning Quadrant, left-leaning Overland, and somewhere in between, Granta.' (Introduction)

'Central Australia is widely characterised as a frontier, a familiar trope in literary constructions of Australian identity that divides black from white, ancient from modern. However, recent anthropological and literary evidence from the Red Centre defies such a clear-cut representation, suggesting more nuanced ‘lifeworlds’ than a frontier binary can afford may better represent the region. Using walking narratives to mark a meeting point between Aboriginal and settler Australian practices of placemaking, this paper summarises and updates literary research by the author (2011–2015), which reads six recounted walks of the region for representations of frontier and home. Methods of textual analyses are described and results appraised for changes to the storied representation of Central Australia from the precolonial era onward. The research speaks to a ‘porosity’ of intercultural boundaries, explores literary instances of intercultural exchange; nuances settler Australian terms for place, including home, Nature and wilderness; and argues for new place metaphors to supersede ‘frontier’. Further, it suggests a recent surge in the recognition of Aboriginal songlines may be reshaping the nation’s key stories.' (Publication abstract)

'Visitors to the Red Centre come looking for the real Australia. What they find is both beautiful and disturbing: wilderness, desire, an ancient philosophy of home, and the confusing countenance of the Australian frontier, a meeting place of black and white, ancient and modern.

'Songlines and Fault Lines explores the stories of six epic walks that shaped a nation: a journey of Aboriginal Dreamtime ancestors; John Stuart’s south–north trek across the continent; anthropologist TGH Strehlow’s childhood journey down the Finke River; conservationist Arthur Groom’s reimagining of the country’s heart as tourist play-ground; Bruce Chatwin’s seminal travel text about the Centre, and Eleanor Hogan’s portrait of Alice Springs, a troubled town.

'Retracing the legendary pathways and stories of the Australian centre, Glenn Morrison finds new answers to age-old queries. ' (Publication summary)

 

'Writing Home explores the literary representation of Australian places by those who have walked them. In particular, it examines how Aboriginal and settler narratives of walking have shaped portrayals of Australia's Red Centre and consequently ideas of nation and belonging.

Central Australia has long been characterised as a frontier, the supposed divide between black and white, ancient and modern. But persistently representing it in this way is preventing Australians from re-imagining this internationally significant region as home. Writing Home argues that the frontier no longer adequately describes Central Australia, and that the Aboriginal songlines make a significant but under-acknowledged contribution to Australian discourses of hybridity, belonging and home. Drawing on anthropology, cultural theory, journalism, politics and philosophy, the book traces shifting perceptions of Australian place and space since precolonial times, through six recounted walking journeys of the Red Centre.' (Publication summary)

'While Frederick Turner's envisioning of the frontier remains pervasive in representations of Australian postcolonial geographies and constructions of national identity, recent anthropological evidence suggests more nuanced 'lifeworlds' may better approximate the lived experience of 'frontier' towns such as Alice Springs, in Central Australia.

'This paper reimagines Baudelaire's flâneur to examine two walking narratives from the region. The analysis reveals at least two levels of produced space prevailing in Alice Springs, with many other imagined spaces imbricated in a more complex political geography than Turner's frontier might explain. The paper aims to alert writers and journalists to recent shifts in anthropology, leading hopefully to more nuanced representations of Australian postcolonial geographies.

'The first text is a Central Australian Aboriginal Dreaming narrative called 'A Man from the Dreamtime,' a traditional Kaytetye story. Kaytetye elder Tommy Kngwarraye Thompson told the story to anthropologist Myfany Turpin as part of a collection published as Growing Up Kaytetye (2003). The second is one (walking) chapter from a recent narrative of political geography and memoir by Eleanor Hogan entitled Alice Springs (2012).' (Publication summary)