‘Reading’ the Landsborough, Leichhardt and Gregory Explorer Trees of Northern Australia in Cultural Studies and Anthropology
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
This article examines theoretical as well as methodological issues provoked by different responses to three landmark trees marked by Europeans during the exploration of northern Australia. The first of these trees is an ironwood that was reportedly marked by Ludwig Leichhardt during his first expedition from Moreton Bay to Port Essington in 1844-45. The second tree is a coolibah marked by William Landsborough during his search for the missing Burke and Wills in 1862. The third is a boab tree marked by the explorer A. C. Gregory during the North Australia Exploring Expedition of 1855-56. Drawing on the results of fieldwork conducted at Borroloola, Burketown and Timber Creek since 2007, I highlight overlapping as well as divergent responses to these trees by local residents of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal descent, pointing to continuing struggle over the meaning of exploration, and colonisation, in northern Australia.
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
a) Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed undera Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share and adapt the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
b) Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
c) Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Open Access Citation Advantage Service). Where authors include such a work in an institutional repository or on their website (ie. a copy of a work which has been published in a UTS ePRESS journal, or a pre-print or post-print version of that work), we request that they include a statement that acknowledges the UTS ePRESS publication including the name of the journal, the volume number and a web-link to the journal item.
d) Authors should be aware that the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) License permits readers to share (copy and redistribute the work in any medium or format) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the work) for any purpose, even commercially, provided they also give appropriate credit to the work, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. They may do these things in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests you or your publisher endorses their use.