"A Week of Your Life, and Your Life Savings!"

A couple of nights ago, I had the (mis)fortune of sitting next to a certain "E" who, for about an hour, complained about Australia. This is certainly not the best thing for a new-arrival to hear, but E's constant clamor lead me to think about the place that is Australia and its meaning and significance within the world.

E's grievances against Australia are many, but they come down to two key points: Australians are dumb, and Australia is isolated. When I asked her about what Australians thought of Americans, she said that Americans are also dumb, so dumbness is not a particularly Australian attribute. But the isolation seems particular to Australia. "To get to Europe," E bemoaned, "it takes a week of your life, and your life savings!"

This lead me to reflect upon the place and meaning of Australia on the world-stage and in the Australian consciousness. Though most fifth-generation Australians would identify themselves first with Australia, and then maybe with Europe, there remains, in the back of most Australians' consciousness, a strong connection to Europe--and it is stronger the more recent the family immigrated. (This does not hold for non-European immigrants, of course.) This tie to Europe is evident in a plethora of ways: in childrens' stories, where the landscape and the animals are European; in the way Christmas is represented with plastic reindeer and fake snow in the middle of summer; and, in the fact that wherever you go in Europe, you'll find an Australian...

Rabbits, foxes, deer, cows, horses...none of these is native to Australia, yet they are formative elements in the Australian child's imagination. Thus, many Australians grow up with a longing for a landscape, and a world, that is definitively different from their own. I may even venture to say that the Australian consciousness is more intimately connected to the European landscape, than it is to the Australian. (There are of course attempts -- in childrens' books, in artworks, etc -- to thematize the Australian flora and fauna and Australian wildlife, and grant them a place in the cultural imagination.)

Europe is at the center of the Australian consciousness, therefore the feeling among some Australians is that they are not at the center.

But what is the "center"? If it is determined by imagination and cultural consciousness, as I think it is, then it is relative. But this thought does not penetrate deeply enough into the logic at play here, the logic at play in the very ideas of "center" and "periphery."

To speak of a center, and to claim that it is out there (whether in Europe or Asia or Uluru), and not here, where I am, is to experience the world from a distance, to experience it from an outsider's perspective, to objectivize it. And this, I think, is at the core of E's thinking. A center that is outside of me, that is other than myself, is a center that is an intractable, infinitely deferred object. It is something I want to own, or to be a part of. But... even if I am at the center (Berlin is E's center), will I ever really be at the center? Or will there always be something more that I want? In other words, it seems to me that the logic of "center" and "periphery" is a logic of objectification and consumption, where the center is made into an object (of desire). But the center is not, cannot be, an object.

What then is the center? This question can be restated: what is place, and how do I relate to the place where I am?

I don't want to discount completely E's complaints, because often enough, we are born into a place, a world, where we are not entirely at home, and travel far before we can find a place where we feel truly at home. And this may be the case with E. But... as a general cultural phenomenon in Australia, the feeling of being on the periphery, being isolated, and E's all too simple negations of Australia as such ("everything" and "all" were often used), the logic at work appears to me to be deeply problematic and insidious.

And so I am brought back to thinking about the idea of center, place, and of the relation between imagination and place. What is a center? Should we speak in such terms at all? What of the relation between a person and a place -- how is it developed?

What is fascinating to me about Australia is that although it is culturally distinct from Europe, it is deeply connected to Europe, and this connection remains unconscious, intimate, immediate -- like an umbilical cord, a source of life. Yet its geographic distance, its vastly different wildlife and landscape, and its ancient inhabitants, make it as different from Europe as is possible. And on top of all of this is the fact that Australia's history remains contemporary: the Aboriginal inhabitants have not just disappeared or been forgotten, and its colonial heritage is clear in, for example, some of its architecture (such as Sydney's terrace houses). The place that is Australia, that has become Australia, poses many questions about place, culture, relation and meaning... Questions that are relevant to most of us, in our super-cosmopolitan world, but here, in a country whose identity continues to be developed and brought into relation with its past, the questions are more present, relevant and significant, making Australia, I think, fertile ground for thinking through the meaning and significance of place...

A Rainbow Lorikeet

Spider Grevillea