The Problem Child of Empire single work   column  
Issue Details: First known date: 2019... 2019 The Problem Child of Empire
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

I begin with this quote from Ernestine Hill because her description of the Northern Territory as 'problem child of empire' evocatively captures the paradoxical nature of the 'north' in the settler-Australian imagination - from the moment British settlement pushed further inland and north in the mid-nineteenth century, the north of the continent, the Northern Territory in particular, has simultaneously been construed as both a 'promised land' and a 'white elephant'.'  (Publication abstract)

Notes

  • Epigraph : Here I give you history galloping wild for a century over half a million square miles, the life-story of a colony in quicksand… A nameless land, a land without a flag, a vague earth bordered by the meridians of God… Black men and white men riding in a world without time and where sons do not inherit, and money goes mouldy in the pocket, where ambition is wax melted in the sun, and those who sow may not reap. I write of the Northern Territory of Australia, problem child of empire, land of an ever-shadowed past and ever-shining future, of eternal promise that never comes true. —Ernestine Hill, The Territory, 1951

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Arena Magazine no. 158 February 2019 15880857 2019 periodical issue

    'We seem to be experiencing a shift to a more generalised accept - ance that human-induced climate change is real. In Australia, Liberals, and liberal-progressives, are suddenly standing against the Liberal Party on climate (and refugee) grounds; the required ‘balance’ of denialist voices in mainstream media reporting seems no longer necessary, perhaps impossible to entertain; the level of activism and some common acclimatisation to, if not embracing of ‘sustainable’ agendas is noticeably broadened, if not deepened. Has some threshold been crossed? Is the sense of an ending pushing us towards new possibilities?' (Editorial introduction)

    2019
    pg. 24-27
Last amended 21 Mar 2019 09:04:03
24-27 The Problem Child of Empiresmall AustLit logo Arena Magazine
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