What Does the Outback See?

When we look at the landscape, we see red earth and scarlet rocks. We see timelessness, beauty, and endurance, an environment that supersedes our own existence. Blue skies, pools of water, dry sweeps of sand. If our gaze was turned back on us, might we wonder how we ourselves appear to the country? What do the unbroken horizons and ochre earth see in us? How do we present in their vision?

Do they see brutality? Since colonization, there has been encroachment upon the natural world. Roads, imported animals that have gone feral, buildings, pollution…all of these are legacies of human intervention. We have portioned up parcels of land and stamped our names on them, claiming property. 

The natural environment: Honeymoon Gap, Central Australia

 

The remote corners of the outback bear witness to the dispossession of people and place. But does the landscape also hold memories of kindness and wise stewardship? Of a balance struck between human and nature, as we learn that we cannot exist without the other. For millennia, this land has been carefully tended to by human hands. Not everyone has brought wanton destruction.

However, in recent times, people have left undeniable marks on the outback. Sealed roads and outstations, crops, flocks, and herds of livestock tell this tale eloquently. Still, the dreamers seeking sunsets appreciate the beauty of where they live, and the connection to the land is strong. Whether we are the original hands who cared for the land when time was born, or whether we are more recent, we need the land for our sustenance. Does it feel our kindness or our destruction? That question is for each one of us to ponder.