Dual Personalities

Well, now in my continuing discourse on Australian life and culture, I have chosen to focus this day's entry on the concept of the Outback. What's really kind of ironic about it, right off the bat is that while it is considered iconic of the essence of Australia, only about 1% of the Australian population actually lives in the Outback. I think in actuality, while it is regarded as a place of adventure, of freedom and untamable, immutable wildness, it is also regarded with fear and suspicion by many of the residents of this fair land. We have been discussing the roots of this fear in Oz Lit, and they go back to first contact with this land. So many of the first explorations ended up with the participants dead or defeated, just from trying to cross the land. They found it dry, inhosopitable, confounding and deceptive. Incidents like floods that come without rain and ground that looks firm but is actually bottomless mud are not exactly the makings of a great first impression. That is the origin of the development of the Outback, "Stay away from the interior!" Faces towards the safety of the coast, many feel like they can't forget the presence of this inhospitable monster which is always at their backs, always lurking somewhere behind them, shrouded in it's mystery. This is so much in the Australian conciousness that you can even find references to "the dead heart of Australia." In many ways, the quiet country setting is regarded as far more dangerous than the violence and fears of terrorism in the cities, somewhat the opposite of many American mentalities. And yet...At the same time, Australians do take immense pride in their land, even in the very danger of it. Many Australians are quick to brag about the dangers of their land, the great variety and creativity that goes into the sheer numbers of things that can kill you here. But more than that, those that do live in the Outback seem to be inextricably connected to it. The aborigines have developed the concept of being "sung to by the land" and once you are sung to by the land, you can never forget it or leave it. It becomes a part of you forever. And there is the iconic nature of the land, that they can love it in spite of, or perhaps because of its wildness, its transcendence, its immutable, frowning indifference to human meddling. Pehaps this vision of the land is somewhat romanticized, but you could never take the Outback out of Australia, not for the country dwellers or city dwellers. So now, the question that I shall leave you with, and shall continue to ponder is, where is the heart of Australia?