Gardens, landscapes, wilderness: ways of seeing ourselves

Abstract

In 1992 I was travelling with Japanese university students through western New South Wales, heading for Alice Springs. The houses, street lights and electricity poles were far behind and the only sign of human presence was the bitumen road, stretching as far as the eye could see. One young woman confided she was getting frightened at the emptiness. I realised she might become more so when we reached the inland with its vast expanses of red sand stretching to the horizon. I sat with her, explaining how Aboriginal people would see this landscape. For them it could not be uninhabited, wild or remote. They were connected to every tree and hill, brought into being by the same spirits who brought them into being. What looked alienating to her was intimate to them, albeit a different intimacy from that of a Japanese garden. By the time we reached the desert she could celebrate seeing a landscape through a different cultural lens. I found myself asking questions about these differences.