Distinctively visual depictions of the land shape people and their experiences, allowing meaning and depth. In henry Lawson’s short stories the Australian outback evokes a sense of isolation, ultimately shaping the identity of the individual. This is portrayed in the ‘drover’s wife’ and ‘in a dry season’. Furthermore Archie Weller in ‘pension day’ creatively depicts the inextricable connection between indigenous Australians and the land. Thus, depicting how the land can come to shape an individual’s sense of identity.
Henry Lawson’s ‘The Drover’s Wife’ distinctively visualises the harsh and unforgiving nature of the bush, as it shapes the identity and experiences of the protagonist. The emphatic placement of “bush" in” bush all round-bush with no horizon”, sets the scene of the outback, where the protagonist becomes the “bushwoman”. The alliteration and harsh “t” and “r” sounds of the “thunder rolls and the rain comes down in torrents” visualizes the harsh nature of the storm as representative of the bush. This nature of the bush shapes the protagonists identity as she goes from being “like a princess” to being metaphorically “blackened” showing how the bush has transformed her. The allegory of the “Young Ladies’ Journal” visualises the role of the bush in leading her to sacrifice this aspect of her identity.
In Archie Weller’s “Pension Day” the land is distinctively visualized to show the close connection between the indigenous protagonist and the “red land”. The protagonist is depicted as the “leader of the red back people” visualizing his significance in the community, however the colonisation of Australia leads him to be “torn away from his red land’s breast”. Weller distinctively visualizes the “red dust and thin mulge bushes” and the metaphorically “glittering seas of broken glass” to demonstrate the protagonists great appreciation and understanding of the land. This is paralleled with the metaphor “shimmering emptiness of desert” which