• Breadcrumb navigation uses Javascript

---

On antique ideas and the future of Australia

by Simon Longstaff

Towards the end of the fifteenth century, translations of the works of the European geographer, Pomponius Mela, circa 40 AD, revealed his speculation about the existence of a land mass in the Southern Hemisphere to balance that of the North.

Mela espoused his theories in De Chorographia documented at the time of Claudius' invasion of Britain. This document, also known as De Orbis Situ (The Situation of the World) has appeared in various editions from the early Sixteenth Century until his conjecture was resolved in the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries with the European discovery of Australia.

Thinking about the Antipodes or Antichthones, the name used by Mela in his map Reconstruction of the World, went beyond a curiosity about the possibility of a Great South Land existing as a simple geographical fact. The Antipodes were also conceived, by some, to be the antithesis of life in the North – an inversion that was something more than a matter of latitude.

Fertile imaginations conjured up all manner of fanciful images describing the beings that might inhabit the unexplored regions below the Equator. The more bizarre ideas, informed as they were by myth and legend, included their fair share of monstrous beasts and people. It is a distinctively Australian irony that the product of even the most fevered minds failed to prepare Europe for the reality of creatures like the platypus!

However, beyond the fabulous there lay a different type of imagining about the Antipodes. No less the result of yearning for the improbable, a number of writers reflected in their work a hope that the Great South Land would be the location where generally unrealised European ideals might be found, alive and true. That is, there was a hope that ideals such as those of peace, prosperity, natural equality and virtue would be discovered within a land populated by a kind of 'noble savage'.

This process of constructing an 'imagined' land is important because it suggests that the European history of Australia begins long before the voyages of exploration succeeded by landing on the shores of an actual place. Although the outline of this somewhat older history is little known, it might contain an idea of Australia that would challenge the country's dominant understanding of itself.

This understanding is largely based on a tendency to think of Australia's non-Aboriginal history as beginning with 'discovery' and settlement. Indeed, it could be argued that Australia's self-understanding is fundamentally shaped by one raw fact; that the British settled Australia, in 1788, as a penal colony. I would argue that this fact continues to have a grave influence on the way Australia sees itself today.

First, it works to undermine any sense of nobility of spirit in the act of European settlement, especially given the subsequent dispossession of the Aboriginal owners of the land. Second, it makes the creation of a stable, open, democracy seem too much like an improbable success, where victory has been plucked from the jaws of defeat. That is, the history of modern Australia can often sound like one of Houdini's great escapes – but, in this case, the manacles bound a whole people. Many Australians point, with some deserved pride, at what has been achieved in just over 200 years and mumble the sub-text, “Not bad, eh? ... Given where we began?”

While there is a lot of good to be found in the cultural bones of a society that had the pluck to escape such bad, sad beginnings, we need to recognise that there is also some bad. However, my object in writing this piece is not to assay the positive and negative aspects of our national character. Instead, I wonder if a different history of Australia might provide the impetus to move beyond a model of success measured by our ability to transcend the past. Instead, might we use a different perspective on the past to embrace the future?

One of the difficulties faced by those who would choose a future is that the options can seem to be so insubstantial – a series of 'floating worlds' that are available simply because they are possible. However, what if we could choose a future that was both grounded in and inspired by the hopes and aspirations of our ancestors? What if Australia came to see itself as a nation with a history that mandated the building of a truly good society? Could that be a future that we might embrace as a constructive national project?

It is, for me, an interesting idea. For a start, it makes it clear that a vision for Australia has never been exclusively British. Indeed, the ideal to be achieved need not be exclusively European. For example, what did the Chinese or Polynesians think about this land? More immediately, what do the Aboriginal people have to tell us of the ideals that they fashioned for this place over the past 50,000 years? Going back in time to before 1788 need not lock us into one cultural perspective. If anything, it would loosen thinking a little – but would this be enough?

There are a number of obvious and almost insurmountable problems with the idea of nation building as the realisation of an historical ideal.

First, this bloody century has been punctuated by ghastly examples of the destructive forces that can be unleashed in the name of such a project. An inclusive ideal, based on justice, may be possible. Some may say that this is to wish for Utopia. But need the errors of history necessarily lead us to abandon any attempt to build a truly good society?

Second, how will we avoid the temptation to build a vision on a partial and selective reading of this older history? I suppose that it is possible that we might learn to live with both the 'light' and 'shade' of those early imaginings? But who would interpret this history – only the powerful, only the established? Or, could a democratic leadership draw on this history to set a broad agenda that all Australians might embrace?

Finally, there are probably real advantages in being a nation that doesn't hold too many settled (and serious) beliefs about what it seeks to be. Serious commitments can breed serious disagreements. It may be easier to 'live and let live' in a society that doesn't take itself too seriously. And might this be good enough in this Great South Land? Or, is there something more to be achieved?

discuss this article

---