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The author finds that "attention to the garden as an expression of identity has been slight ...discussion by cultural critics has focussed on the significance of the bush as the key to understanding Australian identity. In particular, the white man's ambivalent relationship to the bush.... In contrast focus of this article is on "the individual and cultural meanings that found expression through the garden and [war-time letters]" of Wifred Stephensen to her husband in internment camp in Sydney.
Against the background of the orchard myth in Genesis, the author argues "that cultivated space, as an expression of settlement, presents issues of identity and place ... [and explores] how the orchard has been imagined in Australian literature" (p.122).