Blood and soil: nature, native and nation in the Australian imaginary

Abstract

Australia is a ‘young’ nation with a population that is one of the most polyethnic in the world. Australia's ‘older’ Anglo-Celtic identity developed, it can be argued, out of a mythological relationship to the natural environment. This older form of cultural nationalism continues to be played out and contested in the contradictory denunciation of colonial attitudes and actions, and in the naturalisation of their resulting legacy. A key theme of Australian environmental texts is the idea that temporally and spatially, nature is simultaneously a place where settler Australians may find themselves and a place where they do not belong, precisely because they cannot yet imagine themselves as indigenous. The focus of this article is the historical co-development of Australian environmentalism and nationalism (eco-nationalism). Drawing on an eclectic range of sources including: environmental history texts; texts concerning the origins of nationalism; literature addressing the ‘national character’; educational resources produced by conservation agencies; natural science journals; newspaper reports; weekly news magazines, websites and other anthropological writing on environmentalism this paper charts the historical trajectory of nature, native and nation in the Australian imaginary with particular reference to the ecological debate concerning ideas about what belongs (and what does not belong) in the past and present Australian landscape.