by Tim Flannery
For those weaned on the notion of multiculturalism the concept of an environmentally based Australian identity may seem alien. Why not let a plethora of cultures from all corners of the globe exist side by side in this expansive land? And isn’t the alternative simply assimilation into the great Anglo majority? While I celebrate Australia’s diverse cultural mix, I don’t think that multiculturalism is the future for Australia, simply because no culture can exist unmodified in a new environment. Old practices die away and new ones, those that help people adapt to their new home, spring up. At the most fundamental level that is what cultures do—they help us to survive in our particular circumstances. As a result, after 214 years of exposure to Australian conditions, the supposedly dominant Anglo culture is no longer truly ‘Anglo’. Instead it has been steeped in the dye of Australia and it is beginning to transform into something else. The same is true for every other cultural group that has entered this continent—even the Aborigines were once newly arrived people from Asia. Whether we like it or not, all of us are in the process of a slow convergence on a yet-to-be-formed Australian culture that is suited to Australia’s conditions.
The single most important change needed for our country is for all Australians to achieve true environmental sustainability. A tremendous start has already been made in the area of primary production, but much more remains to be done. The development of a population policy is central to this process and would, I believe, result in better environmental and humanitarian outcomes.
Australia’s population policy should be based on recognition of the environmental constraints of our land, our economic needs, and the social desires of its people. The only way that such a policy can be achieved is for the nation to engage in a broad, vigorous and truthful debate, accompanied by a government inquiry that is charged with setting an optimum population target. Once the target has been decided we should redesign our immigration program in light of it, with an eye to more flexibility and greater fairness. Before the inquiry has done its work it is not possible to say how large the immigration intake could be, but almost any imaginable scenario would allow for a reasonable level of immigration.
The development of such a policy would remove much of the hysteria and negativity from the immigration debate, for an immigration program firmly embedded in a population policy would transparently serve the national interest, and thus have the support of most people. It would also result in a better humanitarian outcome, because the intake could be framed over a longer period than the current annual intake, allowing us to accommodate those caught up in international emergencies.
Another advantage of such a policy is that by examining environmental impacts to set the population target, we would highlight our most unsustainable environmental practices. These could then be targeted for remediation so that our overall environmental impact would be reduced (allowing for a larger population, if that is what we wish). It would be important for the population target to be reviewed every five years to help track change. Then if environmental conditions improve, we can, if we wish, increase immigration. Ideally this important national process would come under the purview of a Minister for Population rather than a Minister for Immigration. Their responsibility should encompass all things pertaining to population change, including issues such as maternity and paternity leave.
Some people have extremely negative feelings about population policies. It’s important to remember, however, that our schemes of social support for parents and children, and our immigration program, add up to a de facto population policy—one that has not been carefully thought through as a whole. No one has oversight of it, it is not clearly demonstrated to be in the national interest and there is little acceptance of elements of it in the community. Others argue against a population policy on the basis that it would be preferable to reduce consumption rather than concentrate on numbers. While focusing on patterns of consumption is important, it is vital to realise that population is the great multiplier of environmental impact, and that sustainability cannot be addressed without considering it.
Just as important as making environmental sustainability a priority for our nation is recognising the role that Aboriginal people played in shaping this land. Only by doing so will we be able to address critical aspects of our troubled past.
When James Cook sailed up the east coast of Australia in 1770, he remarked that the land looked like a gentleman’s park. And indeed it was, for those eucalypt groves set in grassy plains were the result of 45,000 years of careful management by Aboriginal people. They, just like the Europeans, irrevocably changed the land when they first arrived—but thereafter they crafted it with fire and hunting, creating something new. It was that ‘something new’ that we now recognise as the distinctive Australian landscape. Thus, in a very real sense, this land is human-made—a handicraft of the Aboriginal people.
This concept has profound implications. It means that there is no Australian wilderness and no national park that can exist in its pre-1788 form without the ongoing input of people. All of the continent must be managed. This is one reason why the depopulation of the outback is so distressing—without people, vast areas of the continent will go unmanaged. If we accept this view, it implies that there is an important management role for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in all reserved lands.
We are indebted to Aboriginal people for our land in many ways, and their skills and knowledge are vital to the continuance of the Australia we know and love. Having said this, romanticising Aboriginal cultures is not helpful. Reconciliation must be undertaken on Aboriginal terms—not with some fictional or idealised people or nation, but with Aboriginal communities in their full diversity throughout this land. We need to listen carefully to what they have to say, and assist them in achieving their desires.
We also need to do something symbolic and permanent to mark our change of heart. I suggest we go back to where it all began—Werrong, on the fine harbour of Cadi. Phillip’s act of sycophancy in renaming the pretty cove for Lord Sydney did its job long ago. And even back then those rebellious Irish convicts would have little to do with such toadying. They ignored Phillip’s Rose Hill, instead using its Cadigal name of Parramatta. So it would be in the best tradition of Ned Kelly to return to the name honoured by 10,000 years of use on the lips of its original inhabitants and re-christen Sydney Cove as Werrong, and Sydney Harbour as Cadi.
Men and Women of Cadi! To my ear it has a fine ring to it.
Other important changes that will lead to a sustainable future involve our relations with other nations. Australia will always be thinly populated and a minor influence in a world of far larger, more powerful—as well as many far poorer—countries. And yet foreign policy is critically important to us—for it must act as our national insurance policy. This view, I think, necessitates a fundamental restructure of the way we deal with others.
Our guiding light in this matter will always be self-interest, but it must be enlightened self-interest; that is, a self-interest congruent with that of our neighbours. Corrupt and dictatorial governments will rise and fall in the nations around us, but the people will always be there and it is our good reputation with them that will be our greatest assurance of an untroubled future. Only one platform can deliver that: an enduring commitment to the recognition of human rights worldwide. That should be the yardstick against which we measure all of our dealings with non-Australians. The development of such a ‘national insurance policy’ might proceed best if we had a Minister for Non-Australians, a sort of ombudsman whose responsibility would be to ensure that the non-Australian people whom we affect—from refugees to recipients of Australian aid—are well-served and fairly treated in our dealings with them.
Several global environmental issues threaten Australia, not the least of which is a runaway greenhouse effect. Scientists studying global climate change inform us that if global temperatures rise by around 6° Celsius over the next century, it will pose the greatest threat that our species has ever fa
ced during its half-million years of existence. This is because it will create far hotter conditions than humans have ever experienced. What this astounding rise in temperature means for Australians, or indeed anyone, is not yet clear, but the warning signs are ominous indeed. Australia needs to take a global lead in terms of its renewable technologies and the brokering of international treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol.
Education will play a vital role in the creation of a truly Australian nation, for it’s the tool we use to shape our minds to give us the best chance of success in life. A commitment to education that imbues people with a real sense of place is a great national imperative. Yet in this we seem to have lost our way, and are squandering our intellectual resources as profligately as previous generations squandered the soil. Students increasingly seek degrees that will turn them into cogs in the economic machine; and universities are in crisis, with the academic expertise vital to negotiate our way forward in ever-shorter supply. Our nation needs a federally endorsed vision of what it requires of its education system, particularly with regard to higher education. That vision should then be taken up by universities and academics to help shape it, subscribe to it and make it a reality.
Finally, there is one last matter—that of our responsibility to each other. I believe that cooperation, sometimes glossed as that peculiarly Australian phenomenon of ‘mateship’, represents the first significant social response of the Europeans to their new land. By this I mean not just mateship as a masculine blokey thing, but something much deeper—a kind of interdependence fostered by adversity. It came about because the Europeans soon learned, as the birds and Aboriginal people had long known, that one could survive in such a difficult land only if you have helpers and friends.
In the very first Australia Day address, Thomas Keneally discussed how central the concept of a ‘fair go’ is to Australians, and how precious our accepting, relatively equal society is. We are fortunate that our experience in this land has encouraged the development of such a society. Yet now globalisation has brought other social models, developed in other, more competitive places, and these are beginning to influence us.
How can we engage with the world and keep our society equitable, generous and cohesive? Each of us can think of some things that will help, but all signs indicate that we are losing this vital battle to preserve the defining values of Australian society. Perhaps if we all gave some thought to the issue each Australia Day we would stand a better chance.
The darkest horror lurking in the imaginings of nineteenth-century Australians was that this wild continent might somehow claim them, or their children, to itself. As the currency lads and lasses grew up—tall, barefooted and at ease in the bush—those dark fears increased for their parents, who saw degeneration in every deviation from standard European cultural practice. The continent, they feared, somehow forced all of its inhabitants—from its seemingly half-formed marsupials and egg-laying platypus to its naked, black savages—into a base and primitive form. Right up to the time of Sir Robert Menzies and beyond, their worst fear was to return ‘home’ only to find that they had become uncivilised ‘colonials’.
Today that same dark, lurking fear—that this wide brown land might claim us as its own—is, I suspect, our best hope for a sustainable, long-term future. We have realised that we have no other home but this one, and that we cannot remake it to suit ourselves. Instead we must somehow accept this land’s conditions, surrender our ‘otherness’ and in so doing find our distinctive Australian way in a very different world.
Introduction to The Life and Adventures of William Buckley
2002
AT 2 PM on Sunday, 6 July 1835, a giant of a man shambled into the camp left by John Batman at Indented Head near Geelong. Batman had departed for Van Diemen’s Land to prepare a full-scale migration to his new settlement in the wild country around Port Phillip Bay, but the figure that entered his camp that day was a reminder that the region’s European history had begun long before. An astonished Jim Gumm, who had been left in charge by Batman, measured the stranger, discovering that he was six foot five and seven-eighths inches tall (198 centimetres) in his bare feet. Though clearly a European, and ‘well proportioned…with an erect military gait’ the visitor spoke not a word of English. Instead, he pointed to a tattoo on his arm, which bore the initials WB alongside crudely executed figures of the sun, moon and a possum-like creature. Then, when he was given a slice from a loaf, the word ‘bread’ broke suddenly—almost involuntarily—from his lips.
Over the following weeks, as his mother tongue slowly returned to him, fragments of the stranger’s history were revealed. His name, he said, was William Buckley, and he had been living with the Aborigines for so long he had lost track of time. At first he claimed to be a shipwrecked sailor, but then admitted that he was a runaway convict and begged for a pardon. What he told of his life in the Victorian bush so amazed those who heard him that he soon became celebrated as ‘the wild white man’. He was, according to his contemporary and biographer James Bonwick, one of the most ‘wonderful characters’ that Australian history has ever produced.
Buckley’s sudden appearance astonished many because for the previous thirty-two years he had been presumed dead—‘perished miserably in the woods’ according to Lieutenant-Governor David Collins. Yet all the while he had been living with the Aboriginal tribes of western Victoria. With them he had travelled hundreds of kilometres into the hinterland (as yet unexplored by Europeans), experienced tribal wars, witnessed mysterious ceremonies, and even claimed to have seen the fabulous bunyip.
So great was public demand for Buckley’s story that shortly after his discovery an entrepreneur almost tricked him into becoming a sort of theatrical freak show, until the horrified Buckley realised what the game was. He was hardly more cooperative with newspapermen, some of whom assiduously applied ‘the steamy vapour of the punchbowl’ in an effort to prise his story from him. It was in vain also that august personages such as George Arthur, lieutenant-governor of Van Diemen’s Land, made inquiry. Even Governor Richard Bourke himself, who took time out from naming the village of Melbourne to meet with the local celebrity, received just a couple of monosyllables in reply to his numerous and earnest questions. Over the years it was to become a familiar pattern. It mattered not whom the inquirer was, nor whether the questions were learned or salacious—all came away frustrated. John Pascoe Fawkner, one of Victoria’s earliest and most illustrious settlers, was perhaps not alone in thundering, after meeting Buckley, that the man was ‘a mindless lump of matter’.
And yet, unknown to everyone it seems, Buckley had spoken of his adventures. Shortly after he came into the camp at Indented Head he had confided in the Reverend George Langhorne, a missionary whom he was seconded to work under as interpreter, at the salary of £50 per year. Langhorne found that obtaining Buckley’s story was ‘extremely irksome…as I frequently had to frame my queries in the most simple form, [Buckley’s] knowledge of his mother tongue being very imperfect at the time’. The account, which was later transcribed onto just four closely typed pages, remained ‘buried treasure’ for nearly eighty years. When discovered and published in the Age in 1911 it would revolutionise our understanding of Buckley and his experiences.
As a result of his silence and of comments such as Fawkner’s, Buckley has come to be thought of as a dull-witted giant. Such a man, however, could never have survived the things that fate threw at William Buckley. He may have been poorly educated, but his narrative reveals him as a resourceful and adaptable fellow of some perception and intellect who managed to learn at least one Aboriginal language near-perfectly. It is hard to be sure why Buckley remained tight-lipped for so long. Perhaps he was just sick and tired of being treated as a freak, or maybe his life as a soldier, then a convict, had taught him the virtue of keeping his mouth shut. In a frontier settlement like early Melbourne the habit would have served him well, for rumours about him were rife. John Pascoe Fawkner accused him of conniving with the Abor
igines to kill shepherds and steal sheep, while the surveyor John Wedge spread the word that he had been transported for attempting to assassinate the Duke of Kent at Gibraltar!
When The Life and Adventures of William Buckley was finally published in 1852, seventeen years after he had wandered in from the wilderness, it was with the patronage of John Morgan, a Tasmanian newspaper editor who had convinced Buckley to collaborate in producing the book. It’s difficult to determine just how much influence Morgan had in shaping this remarkable autobiography, but there are reasons to assume that his editorialising was extensive—for Buckley was only semiliterate, and he agreed that Morgan should share the profits from the work.
Life and Adventures appeared just three years before Buckley’s death. By then, his story was in effect the only real asset the ‘wild white man’ possessed, for he had been reduced to subsisting on a government pension of £12 per year, supplemented by whatever he could earn portering, carting and carrying messages around Hobart. John Morgan was likewise impecunious, and it was he who suggested to Buckley the idea of publishing the book as a fundraising venture.
The extraordinary narrative proved at once contentious. Just four years after its publication the colonial author and historian James Bonwick published his own account titled William Buckley, The Wild White Man and His Port Phillip Black Friends, in which he outlined ‘weighty reasons of objection to [the] authenticity’ of the account to which Buckley put his name. Bonwick, however, did concede that Life and Adventures, is ‘an authority for the leading facts of his story’. Indeed there is a tinge of sour grapes to Bonwick’s book, for he seems to have coveted Morgan’s role. Bonwick had a fascination with early Melbourne and would go on to write the city’s history. He shared the streets of Hobart for seven years with Buckley and went so far as to interrogate the man’s acquaintances, yet all collaboration with the ‘wild white man’ was denied him.