Curious Indeed, or Curious in Deed? Some peculiarities of post-settlement relations with an antipodean river

Abstract

Prominent in many historical accounts of European first contact with Australian nature are stories of encounters between European curiosity and curious Australian biota, such as the platypus and the eucalyptus. In this paper, I argue that post-settlement relations with the Goulburn River, one of the largest rivers in south-east Australia, likewise attest to the centrality of curiosity in early European engagements with Australian landscape. In mapping several relational ontologies of the Goulburn River, I attend to the socio-material practices in which this river has been performed as different and as normal. My interest is in a specific form of difference, that of antipodean difference: the river as topsy-turvy, backwards, unusual, or inverted in relation to some presumed norm, whether that norm be rooted in memories and experiences of European rivers or imaginings of an original state of nature. This is a story of how an extraordinary river became ordinary, and of how we might understand antipodean difference as curious in deed (i.e. as performed), rather than as curious indeed (i.e. as an innate quality of Australian nature).