Wild Cat Falling Belonging Analysis

Through the use of poetic devices, the author has successfully encouraged the audience to explore their thoughts on Australian identity and to reflect on our nation’s history.

Both speakers ply nature as setting to express their emotion.the speaker in the poem “The Lonely Land”apply “cedar and jagged fir’s action” as setting to express the lonely environment of the poem and the negative attitude.

The ‘tourist destination’ portrayal of the landscape is highly emphasised in Joe’s narration. This depiction of Australia as a natural, dramatic landscape is continued throughout the film, with several other settings and landscapes showing a direct link with this first representation.

This essay will critically explore Barbara Baynton’s bush stories Squeaker’s Mate and The Chosen Vessel and it’s representations of the implications life had on women in the bush during the 1800’s and the 1900’s and examine the notion the bush is no place for a woman. According to Wells, the Australian bush is defined as having “an iconic status in Australian life and features strongly in any debate about national identity, especially as expressed in Australian literature”. Most Australian bush poems and short stories portrayed women as stay at home housewives. Women who went to live in the remoteness of the outback with their husbands were responsible for doing household chores, cooking, having children and looking after their child,

“Australians all let us rejoice, for we are young and free” I lulled the words over in my mind as I stared out at the bulga (mountains) from inside my car. The view of the mountain range was captivating beyond expression- the mellow, yellow rays of the setting guwing (sun) shed a soft light over the beautiful landscape. Clear grassy plains contrasted with the dense green shrubbery of the bush, this was my nura (country)- I loved it. Into the opening stumbled a young gubba (white man). He carried a rifle and prowled the area waiting for a dingu (dingo) to hop past.

It is crucial that we study Australian Narratives as it creates insights into events we may have not explored. This is evident in the novel "Crow Country" written by Kate Constable. It teaches us about Aboriginal beliefs and spirituality, Australia's History and respect, as we experience what it feels like to live in rural Australia, creating an understanding about Aboriginal people. Therefore, through a close read and study of "Crow Country", readers are able to learn new and important things about our past and present, showing that it is crucial to study Australian Narratives.

Similarly the idea of Australian life and isolation is depicted in ‘Journey: The North Coast’ where poet is eager to reach home. Perhaps the poet desires to visualise beautiful Australian landscapes as to allow the readers to view the magnificence of flora and fauna in contrast to the man-made destructions. It appears that the poet has been isolated for ‘twelve months’, and Sydney in this case acts as a barrier of poet’s desire towards nature. The title itself symbolises poet’s home and the destination which contradicts to the urban

In this society, literature plays a major part in schools around the country and for many generations. Literature has helped create a social norm in today’s society, such as marginalisation of the indigenous Australians. Marginalisation is the treatment of a person group or concept that is seen as insignificant, and this is shown throughout different types of literature that schools provide. Among some of the literature includes the novel of wild cat falling which presents marginalisation as the novels main theme. Wild cat falling was written by Mudrooroo, also known as Colin Thomas Johnson, an Aboriginal novelist who is best known for his work on the novel Wild cat falling. The novel was published in 1965 and tells the story

Henry Lawson’s ‘The Drover’s wife’ is a personal story depicting an archetypal portrait of all drovers wives of the 1900’s. Lawson represents the wives through a woman characterised as a strong, protective mother who has the ability to fight against the disasters of the Australian bush. Lawson’s use of alliteration, “The bush with no horizon.. no undergrowth, nothing to relieve the eye” emphasises the isolation of the drover’s wife from the rest of the world. The unequivocal tone and hyperbolic image of ‘no horizon’, portrays the harsh landscape allowing the responders to empathise with the loneliness. The provocative image of the Drover’s wife and its environment enhances her development of resilience, tenacity and fortitude which is vital

Many of Tim Winton’s fictional texts mirror moments in his own life, and with an understanding of Winton’s personal context, we can begin to discover the importance of these events and an understanding into why many of his text orbit around similar ideas. Through the insight given in his landscape memoirs, Lands Edge and Island Home, a more considered reading of his fictional texts; Breath, A Blow, A Kiss and Sand can be found. Specifically, these texts explore the role that landscape and place have had in shaping his perspectives and distaste of the expectations of Australian males. These texts each explore certain aspects of the expectations that men all over Australia are subjected to that Winton strongly opposes. Winton grew up in the 1960’s middle-class suburb of Karrinyup, WA, his working class Christian family’s beliefs and values, and events in his early life have evolved to form many of his present-day values towards landscape and masculinity.

Wright further conveys the poignancy of the Aborigines’ disappearance in the third stanza. Structurally, the third and first stanzas parallel each other; both list aspects of indigenous Australian culture that no longer exist. In the first stanza, Wright highlights the loss of the “song” and the “dance”. Similarly, in the third stanza, she notes the absence of the “hunter” and the “spear”. Wright describes the “spear” as “splintered underground”, giving the reader an image of a weapon broken, smothered in the dirt, lying unseen. Thus, the poet stresses the extinction of the Aboriginal tribal traditions. Wright also notes, through her metaphor of the “painted bodies/a dream the world breathed sleeping and forgot” that rituals such as corroboree are no longer practiced. Her use of the words “dream”, “sleeping”, and “forgot” emphasizes that these ancient rituals, so much a part of Aboriginal culture, have ceased to live on today. Wright then states that “the nomad feet are still”. Here, the word “nomad” refers to the itinerant lifestyle of the Aborigines, “still” now, since the Aboriginal way of life no longer has any value in Australian society.

Australia is filled with many different aspects in which makes it the country it is today. I believe it is important to study texts that explore aspects of Australia by studying texts such as ‘The Club’, by David Williamson, a play written in 1977 about an Australian football club and movies such as “The Castle”, directed by Rob Stitch in 1997, about the daily life of an Australian family when their happiness is threatened when developers attempt to buy their house to expand the neighboring airport. Both these texts show us what Australian life was like in the past. By us looking at themes such as language, tradition and the mateship shown we are able to explore different aspects of Australia that make it what it is today.

The idea of Australian Gothic is about the land itself and how people managed to live in a malevolent landscape. the Australian hardships of bush life while presenting a grim and alienated, while the women live in the land independently. The bush women are juxtaposition in the land between fair and strength, and isolation of living alone without a husband or a man to protect them ( Turcotte, 2). This essay will explore the idea of women in the landscape and represent an idea of the women in the forest “emphasises the horror, uncertainty and desperation of the human experience” ( Turcotte, 2) which demonstrate the Australian identity of the woman in the bush. This idea will be presented in the novels of females protagonist “ A Dreamer” by Barbara Baynton and “The

The notion of the contemporary indigenous identity and the impact of these notions are both explored in texts that have been studied. Ivan Sen’s 2002 film ‘Beneath Clouds’ focuses on the stereotypical behaviours of Indigenous Australians highlighting Lina and Vaughn’s journey. This also signifies the status and place of the Australian identity today. Through the use of visual techniques and stereotypes the ideas that the Indigenous are uneducated, involved in crime and the stereotypical portrayal of white people are all explored. Similarly the notion of urban and rural life is represented in Kennith Slessor’s ‘William Street’ and ‘Country Towns’.

Wright’s 1945 poem, The Hawthorn Hedge, is a representation of the predatory power of the Australian landscape over those who refuse to unite with it. It details an unspecific persona’s attempts to establish security by planting a hawthorn hedge, separating her from a harsh, imagined landscape. The specificity of “the hawthorn hedge” reveals that this is introduced British species. As the hawthorn hedge is traditionally used as a natural fence, this clarifies that the persona is attempting to block out the landscape around her. Secondly, the fact that the hawthorn hedge is a British species suggests that the persona is also attempting to establish a reminder of her homeland, Britain. A tenet of Wright’s poetry is the strength of the true Australia and the concept of Australia’s break-away from Britain, exemplified in