Fred William’s successful artwork ‘Upwey Landscape’ displays the plain scenery of the typical Australian bush. The work consists of a plain canvas -without a foreground or a background- with a particularly high horizon of a brown-red, earthy coloured ground spotted with black and green abstract trees. The composer uses distinctively visual features such as the use of high horizon, repetition and colours to paint a picture of the isolated Australian landscape in the reader’s mind.…
William Robinson and Imants Tillers are both Australian landscape artists. Robinson born in 1936 and Tillers in 1950 both have a completely different stylisation in how they view and capture the land they paint. Imants Tillers Mount Analogue (1985) a mass media appropriation of Eugene Von Guerard’s North-East view from the northern top of Mount Kosciusko (1863) is very alike to William Robinson’s Ridge and gully in afternoon light (1992.) They both use similar methods and materials to construct their artworks and though we in both artworks see a different view of a landscape, several key techniques and meanings both seen and felt are portrayed similarly in both artworks.…
2. ‘19th century Australian landscape painting does not represent the physical environment; rather it reflects European painting conventions and Imperial agendas'. Critically discuss.…
The short story "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien takes place in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. In this story we are introduced to First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross and his platoon. They all differ in age and ethnicity, and have different views on the Vietnam War. One thing that they all have in common is that they bear the weight of their country on their back, but they also have different emotions weighing on their hearts at the same time. We see three different sides to Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, the soldier, the love stricken man and the leader that has learned a valuable lesson. Each of his characters carries something different.…
Throughout Cloudstreet, there are numerous concepts that portray the Australian cultural identity as Winton attempts to tell a story of the "typical Australian".…
A. Cloudstreet, written by Tim Winton in the 1980’s and published in 1991, is a novel born out of its historical context. It agrees and affirms many of the key ideas of the time; that national pride is crucial towards Australian national identity, and the evolving acceptance of the Indigenous having rights to their own land. However, the text rejects more notions of the time than it affirms, rejecting ideas of individualism and higher education for all. Instead, it offers an idealized representation of an Australian society that has long passed, giving a nostalgic view of the simplicity Australia had at the time. Understanding…
Reading Tim Winton's rollicking, heartbreaking, hopeful saga, Cloudstreet, you are immersed in Australia: its histories, its peoples, its changing values, and its multiple longings. It is Australia imagined large and sprawling, but also in ordinary, intimate detail from a particular dot on the map: working class Perth, Western Australia, from the 1940s to the 1960s. Humorously, lyrically and poignantly, the novel probes questions of where and how to belong. Always already transient and haunted, belonging is a precious but fragile dream, in the midst of family, friends and neighbours. As the Pickles family move into the big, trembling house at number one Cloud Street,…
“The Eucalypts of Baringhup…seemed symbols of deprivation and barrenness”. Gaitas use of symbolism highlights Romulus and Christine’s inability to connect with the Australian landscape through their negative pessimistic attitude. Ultimately their lack of acceptance results in their poor understanding of the inferior landscape…
Lawson uses distinctively visual techniques to portray the harshness of the Australian bush environment. In ‘The Drover's Wife’, Lawson describes the bush in negative overtones with nothing to alleviate its bleakness ‘stunted, rotten native apple trees’, ‘waterless creek’, ‘everlasting, maddening sameness.’ This is reinforced in “bush with no horizon... no ranges... no undergrowth...” Through cumulated negation and repetition of ‘no’ Lawson paints an uninviting and sparse setting for the story. Likewise, Lawson perpetuates the same idea in his ‘In a Dry Season.’ Lawson engages the reader immediately through the use of second person ‘you’ll’ and the imperatives ‘Draw’ and ‘add’ in the accumulation of images ‘Draw a wire fence and a few ragged gums, and add some scattered sheep away from the train.’ This allows the audience to participate in recreating the bush setting. The narrator’s negative impressions of the outback is evident in the stoic tone ‘the least horrible…
the short story “The Drover’s Wife” by Henry Lawson. An interesting visual scene of the role of a woman in society in the Australian outback is presented through the literary technique of chronological listing. when the drovers wife is up all night waiting for the snake to surface vivid recollections of her previous experiences of ‘drought’ ‘fire’ ‘floods’ ‘sickness’ ‘loss’ ‘stranger danger’ and ‘isolation’ gives us an insight into the interesting distinctively visual roles placed on a drovers wife in the Australian bush. Similarly in the film “Australia” by Baz Luhrmann we are shown through interesting film techniques of montage, tracking shots, and aerial views a wide array of distance (Darwin to Faraway Downs) from civilisation, various weather conditions communicating the hardships and the isolation endured in outback society.…
In addition the powerful setting of the outback itself is seen to create the image of the settlers. The endless ‘travel’ motif in “That monotony that makes a man…
By way of a varied use of descriptive language the short stories of Lawson and poetry of Mackellar show that it is true that distinctively visual texts allow the reader to vividly imagine and gain insights into the characters, relationships and settings. Lonely drover’s wives, Bushmen and fettlers, as well as the setting of a sunburnt Australian landscape are brought to life and into unique relationship, in the visual imagery of Henry Lawson and Dorothea Mackellar’s compositions. Henry Lawson created a strong image of the uniquely Australian bush and the hardships of the people who have lived and worked there. The two important stories which reveal Lawson’s vision are, ‘In a Dry Season’ and ‘The Drover’s Wife’. He draws on the tradition of oral storytelling to make the bush come alive through colloquial language and idiom. Lawson uses a dry, sardonic humor to entertain and provoke empathy for his characters. His descriptions of the various settings are blunt but precise with illustrative adjectives and nouns of a “horrible” land. Contrastingly, the related text, Dorothea Mackellar’s poem, ‘My Country’, expresses a vivid and memorable panorama of place, drawing on a kaleidoscope palette of nouns, rhyme and first person perspective to ingrain in the reader’s imagination her passionate vision of the land and “love for her country, Australia.…
If we were to base Australia’s modern identity off these ideas of the beautiful, romanticised outback, and Chris Hemsworth-like bush rangers, it would be a hugely inaccurate reflection of who we truly are. So what ideas and text would reflect a diverse Australian voice? Henry Lawson and Les Murray are authors whose…
Good morning teachers and students. Though our national identity is an evolving one, aspects of our identity are constant. Some of these aspects include the iconic sporting legend, mateship, the notion of the underdog and the Aussie battler. This is conveyed in a number of texts in a variety of ways. The texts we will be discussing today include “The Man from Snowy River” by Banjo Paterson and an episode from “My Place” by Nadia Wheatly. The two texts thoroughly present the evolution of the Australian identity from the time of the Bush culture to more recent times. The ideas are conveyed with the use of various poetic, cinematic and language techniques.…
Humans and the natural worldA.D. Hope * Australia Les Murray * The quality of sprawl * Bat's Ultrasound * Inside Ayers Rock * The Dream Of Wearing Shorts ForeverMark O’Connor * Turtles Hatching * A Queenslander Remembers the Twentieth Century * Rainbow Lorikeets * The Beginning * Moon Over Mindil Beach, N.T. Bruce Dawe * Search and Destroy * Advice to an Interplanetary VisitorHenry Kendall * BellbirdsMidnight Oil *…