Shaping and shaped by a dry heart

[ The University of Melbourne Voice Vol. 3, No. 1  14 April - 12 May 2008 ]

By Katherine Smith

How Australians live and think has been shaped by water – or rather by the lack of it, according to historian and broadcaster, Michael Cathcart, of the University of Melbourne’s Australian Centre.

Mr Cathcart, who is writing a history of water in Australia, will explore the place of water in the national consciousness when he gives a free public lecture: The Water Dreamers of Australia, at the University this month (see panel).

He says that as soon as Australia was colonised, the dry interior entered the national consciousness as a “troubling desolate silence” with aridity at its heart. Because of that, during the 19th century, an awareness of lethargy and death arose that seemed to capture the spirit of the “silent land”.

“We see the great legends around figures like Burke and Wills arise during that time. It has been suggested that though their expedition ended in tragedy, they have been mythologised because we love failure.

“But I don’t think that is really the case,” he says. “They have been mythologised because they died – because the arid heart took their lives. They were received into the mystery that lies at the heart of Australia, and we became fascinated by that.”

Mr Cathcart says that entering into the 20th century a new group of nationalists, led by Alfred Deakin among others, decided that a nationalism based on death was unacceptable and set out on a great mission to redefine the Australian spirit by altering the physical and, through this, the spiritual, landscape.

And they did this predominantly by changing the way we use water.

The Snowy Mountains scheme, for instance, was a way of making arid land fertile, prosperous and healthy, a way to generate abundance in the heartland.

“It is interesting to look at the parallel case of the pioneering of America,” he says. “When American explorers ventured west, they discovered mighty rivers and plains which convinced them that they were a people with ‘a manifest destiny’”.

“When our explorers headed west, they found silence, despair and death. So it’s no wonder that we think differently from the Americans.

“The early 20th century nationalists surely thought they were doing something healthy, vigorous and good, but they inadvertently damaged the environment through irrigation, with dams, and by destroying the river systems.”

He says we now see a new nationalism emerging, a kind of environmental consciousness, but that it is a more global than local nationalism.