Saving Hattah Lakes: Changing Masculinities and the Campaigns for a National Park, 1900–1960

Abstract

Hattah Lakes is a network of lakes in Victoria’s north-west in a region known as the Mallee. This article focuses on three white men who were critical to saving the Lakes: a bushman, a naturalist, and a scientist. All recognised the unique nature of the Lakes and each operated within changing understandings of masculinity as they sought to protect the Lakes from development. These three men viewed the Lakes as a place of natural beauty and abundant wildlife which needed to be cherished and protected, but they were also men who in different ways profited directly or indirectly from the exploitation of the land. Their relationships to the Lakes were shaped by gendered and racial ideologies that privileged different ways of knowing the area: as a bush landscape; as a wonderland of birds and trees; as a sophisticated natural system to be studied.