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The Road to Botany Bay: An Exploration of Landscape and History
The Road to Botany Bay An Exploration of Landscape and History Author:Paul Carter This trail-blazing re-evaluation of the origins of Australia is a work of powerful imagination. Paul Carter takes insights from many disciplines - philosophy, city planning, sociology, linguistics, psychoanalysis, and art history - and brings them to bear in a deeply original way on the subjects of travel, exploration and settlement. — Australian... more » history is a history of travelling, Carter makes clear; and, as in America, the European newcomers were forever on the move. As they travelled, they wrote about what they saw, for before they could truly call the land their own, they had to symbolize and name it, give it recognizable features and frame its horizons - make it habitable by equipping it with a history.
Drawing on reports and diaries, Carter shows how the first colonists and explorers gave Australia "a local habitation and a name." He reads their narratives and maps, not for the usual historical or geographical data, but for the drama they record: writing and travelling are analogous activities, he suggests; escaping convicts, pioneers, and wandering aborigines emerge as creatures of their own authentic histories, translating strange, unknown spaces into a network of familiar landscapes they call home.« less