A Sense of Place

Author and social researcher Hugh Mackay argues that "Place is crucial to all Australians. It's fundamental to the human sense of self, sense of community, sense of mortality and sense of destiny." He says it's silly to put cultural distance between aborigines and other Australians by attributing to indigenous people a mystical sense of  place, a special relationship with the land that transcends anything we urban types could comprehend.

In his 2005 article that Maria gave the writing class for homework he continued, "It's all rubbish, of course. Not the special relationship bit; that's true enough. What's rubbish is the idea that the sense of place is unique to indigenous people, or even that it's more special, more "spiritual" for them than for us."

I have to disagree. He mentions the MCG, Flemington, the SCG, the WACA or the Gabba as places that symbolise deeply embedded cultural values. They don't do it for me. I see them as commercial venues designed to extract money from large numbers of people, and very successful at that they are. I have and do attend such places due to my sporting interests however I'm fully aware of the extravagant costs involved to park the car, gain entry and buy refreshments. There’s nothing sacred for me there.

He then says, "If sport doesn't do it for you, think of Gallipoli, Changi or the Kokoda Trail. Think of the Australian War Memorial, or the smaller memorials- parks, plaques, obelisks and halls scattered across Australia." Well they don't do it for me either. In fact war repulses me. I have not been to Gallipoli, Changi, or Kokoda but I have read of their historical significance. It puts these places no higher on my list of sacred sites than the bay in west Scotland where 1000 soldiers died in a storm on their way home after surviving the horrors of World War 1, or battlefields all over the world where loss of life has been high. Or Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden, London, Falluja. So war doesn't do it for me either.

Hugh then goes on to suggest I visit my primary school playground, the suburb where I grew up, the house I lived in as a child, the places where we had holidays. "Go back and feel it. Sense it. Tell me it doesn't mean anything." I have gone back. It's all so changed it seems unreal, like my past never really happened. The people of my childhood are not there. It does nothing for me. Unless freeways and supermarkets where once cows roamed and birds sang turns you on, you will agree. Sorry Hugh. Going back doesn't do it for me.

So what does it for me, gives me a sense of place? I feel it it in my garden; where I have spent pleasant time over 30 years, where I have nurtured and fed, grown food, watched trees grow, listened to birds, played with children, buried numerous pets. I feel it in my house; where I have cooked and eaten so many meals, raised my boys from babies to adults, shared a bed with Lib as we have gone from young married couple to approaching old age, spent so many winter nights warming by the fire. You could say that my family has connected me to this place. No doubt if we sell up and move all will change. The town has already changed dramatically. There are new housing estates, more cars.

But I have felt it in other places. I felt it sitting on a park bench in the plaza in Cuzco, Peru, with Lib, having a picnic lunch of dry biscuits, tinned tuna and avocado, the sun warm on our backs. Around the plaza are shops and cathedrals built by the Spanish on Inca rock foundations four feet above the ground. Indigenous people in traditional costume go about their daily trading and the Andes mountains tower in the background giving the scene a feeling of timelessness.

I felt it on an afternoon stroll at Ubud on Bali, around ricefields where farmers work the same way they must have for centuries. In a corner of a field in a stone workroom an old man worked at woodcarvings which filled the building and must have been his life's work. There was nothing to be seen that suggested anything had changed in centuries.

I felt it looking down into the Grand Canyon, trying to grasp the immensity, and the impact this timeless wonder must have had on the human inhabitants of the area over thousands of years.

And I have felt it at Ayer's Rock. I was there as a young man in 1972, when a friend and I pitch our two man tent in the camping ground from where we watch the setting sun change the Rock's colour. There was nowhere else to stay if I recall. I went back a couple of years ago with Lib. We had to stay in the official resort accommodation. The cheapest room was about $200 per night. I bought a six pack of stubbies from the bar, the only place you could buy alcohol. It cost me $36.

I don't think we can possibly have the same connection to place that the aborigines have. Their ancestral families revered the landscape and the flora and fauna that provided sustenance. Their history is there for them in all that exists. Our history is twined with pursuit of money and material gain. In our quest we dig up, knock down, build, knock down, and concrete over. We have altered the landscape drastically in two hundred years, a landscape that was previously unchanged for so long.