Cirrus@Austlit

'Scholars considering the acoustics of exploration have focused on how explorers heard Australian space in terms of silence, to argue this silenced Indigenous presence, or that stillness, was incongruous with how a place to be colonised should sound. I focus on the acoustically attuned Ludwig Leichhardt, a science-poet indebted to the Enlightenment, but also engaged with the German Romantic legacy. The manifold acoustic dimensions of expeditioning – including music – were important to him in different ways. The acoustic world could be assayed and harnessed in ways that were often consistent with colonialism. But there was also something fugitive about acoustics. They could mark a site for emotional engagement with place, and sometimes embryonic cross-cultural dialogue. Yet the possibilities were not always heard and, in line with Romanticism, the acoustic could drag down expeditioners’ spirits just as it could buoy them up. It could baffle or be a site for Indigenous resistance.'  (Publication abstract)

'The underwater of Sydney Harbour has its own histories, visual and literary representations, and narrators, but its contributions to Australian culture are yet to be fully recognised. Among European narrators were dress-divers whose technologies enabled access to an otherwise alien, inhuman world. This article discusses early dress diving in Sydney Harbour, focusing on an account by the explorer, Frank Hurley (1885–1962), of diving at Shark Island in 1921. Hurley's account is compared to the experiences of the harbour's professional dress-divers. His departures from reality are read as a science-fictionalisation of Sydney's submarine realm influenced by Jules Verne (1828–1905).' (Publication abstract)

'Sweet Country may be a film constructed with the conventions of a Western – the guns, horses, spirits, and vast frontier landscapes with law and justice as central themes – but it is also a film grounded in oral history and the written archive. This article considers Sweet Country as a historical account of colonialism, scripted, directed and produced by an Indigenous team. It explores how the frontier and race relations are constructed, and how history is merged with myth and narrative to create a potent period piece with the timelessness of an epic and the urgency of the present.' (Publication abstract)

'I was about to begin writing this review when I read an article by Grace Karskens in the latest Griffith Review, concerning a visit she recently made to Dyarubbin (aka the Hawkesbury River) in the company of three Darug women and the historian/archaeologist Paul Irish. Together they are uncovering the Aboriginal history of the early settlers’ farms that flank the river – a hidden history that runs in parallel (and sometimes conflicts) with the well-known pioneer history of this country. The name of their project, ‘The Real Secret River: Dyarubbin’, instantly brings to mind Kate Grenville’s award-winning novel, which of course is set on the Hawkesbury.'  (Introduction)

'Anna Haebich’s book is a richly researched and beautifully written study of Nyungar cultural history with a focus on performance. From the first the book challenges colonial narratives about what is and is not Nyungar performance. Habitually following colonial narratives about so-called primitive cultures, only performances that can be categorised as ‘pre-contact’ are seen as owned in any way by Aboriginal people. Other performances have been described as a sign of cultural contamination or degradation illustrating a loss of culture. At best the performances are described as hybrid or fusion rather than as part of Aboriginal modernity. As the eminent Aboriginal playwright and musician Richard Walley says in the Foreword, the response even in the twentieth century was ‘Hang on this is not Aboriginal’ … ‘Stay in the glass jar over there that’s iconic Aboriginal’ (xii). Even more pertinently, Walley continues with the endless message he and others like him received from white audiences, producers and critics, ‘We don’t want you to do anything else’ (xii). Haebich’s book is enriched by extensive archival research, interviews, detailed examinations of paintings and photographs and her own observations which offer a different perspective. Haebich has also included a valuable collection of images in the book.'  (Introduction)

'In his introduction to this edited book, Paul Longley Arthur notes that the public image of Australian egalitarianism is at odds with the nation's internal experience and policies, historically, and in the present. It would be unproductive, he writes, to attempt to present a case for ‘what we are’ or for the past ‘as it really was’ (2). Instead, stories of previously obscured or hidden lives shine a new light on the complexities of Australian (and other) identities, cultural experiences, society and history, working the ‘gap between image and experience’ (2). In a country obsessed with national navel-gazing, this is the type of national self-examination worth engaging in, he argues.' (Introduction)