engleski

Early Australian Travel Writing

The values and the world picture of Victorian England have greatly influenced early Australian travel writing. From the Watt's steam engine and Stephenson's railroad locomotive which changed the world and set off industrial revolution, to the "anthropology" of Edward Tylor and Benjamin Kidd and the poetry of Rudyard Kipling, all are reflected, directly or indirectly, in numerous passages written by early explorers of Australian landscape. We shall explore the movements of the industrious, in the words of Mary Louise Pratt, the improving eye, and shall deal with both, the beautiful, lush landscape and the endless, arid regions that leave the traveler with "nothing" discovered to describe. Already first descriptions of Australian bush reflect this dichotomy. The bush is also the meeting place (thus future locus of mateship) of the convicts, whose presence is in early travelogues revealed in the we that pitched camps, killed animals or prepared food, and of the Aborigines, who gain importance only in this locus, because are essential for the survival of the travelers. Otherwise, they are presented as children in a kind of primordial, unspoiled existence of Rousseau's noble savages, and need to be subjected to the grand European "civilizing mission". Amazing are the ways in which humankind legitimizes its actions.

Australia; 19th century; travel writing; Victorian ideology

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