I went to an exhibition on the history of migration and colonial rhetoric in Australia and it really helped me to pinpoint my exact issue with the way non-Australians (and. tbh. some aussies) talk about this country
this map is a piece of propaganda from 1921. honestly what shocked me about it was how little of Australia is marked out as “uninhabited”. I have seen maps shared around on this website that basically mark out the entirety of non-coastal Australia as “empty”. fucking colonialists from 1921 were more generous than some of you
the history of colonial Australia is a history of “taming the untameable land”. this has been reinforced through narratives that this country is:
this rhetoric survives in both the way Australia is imagined by non-Australians and in the self-image of Australia. the (white) aussie battler conquers the unconquerable. the outback is imagined as a post-apocalyptic hellscape. our fauna is categorised as uniquely hellish and unwieldy. so when non-Australians make joke after joke about how scared they are of this place. well you can imagine why it fills me with the kind of rage that can only be generated by the understanding that You Are Reinforcing Colonialism
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