Icons, Landmarks, Archives and Polls: Australian Studies Now

Abstract

In another bumper issue of the Journal of Australian Studies, the expanse of Australian studies takes us from frontier history, crime narrative and visual culture through to questions of free speech, minority cultural identity, “larrikins” in Australian televisual culture, and feral horses. We are also pleased to offer an insight into current polling in the lead-up to the late 2023 referendum on the question of an Indigenous Voice to Parliament inscribed in the Constitution. The picture that emerges reflects the uncertain terrain of the referendum’s outcome, an extremely timely piece given the rancorous debate that surrounds it. Why are we drawn to seeing Big Things—oversized three-dimensional representations of everyday objects—when we travel around Australia? In the first article of this issue, “Making a Mark: Displays of Regional and National Identity in the Big Things of Australia and Canada”, Amy Clarke looks closely at these phenomena, which have attracted only minimal academic attention to date despite their pervasive presence across several countries. Sometimes dismissed as “lowbrow” or commercialised art forms, Big Things are, in fact, landmarks that can be investigated as material evidence of the identities and values of the communities— local, regional and national—who build, maintain and visit them. Clarke’s article takes a comparative approach to the 1,075 Big Things in Australia and 1,250 in Canada, revealing chronological, geographical and typological trends that highlight the capacity of these structures to represent their surrounding regions. In doing so, the article also demonstrates the value to be gained through studying Big Things as networks of meaning that evolve over time, reflecting the changing nature of their host societies. The cover image by Amos Gebhardt was chosen because it relates closely to Simon Farley’s contribution to this issue, “Mateship with Brumbies: Horses, Defiance and Indigeneity in the Australian Alps”. Farley notes that brumbies have occupied considerable space in settler-Australian culture since the 1890 publication of “The Man From Snowy River”. From the 1980s onwards, brumbies have been culled periodically to preserve “native” alpine ecosystems, which have not evolved to support hoofed animals. Such culls, however, are often highly controversial. Farley’s article leverages Sara Ahmed’s concept of affective economies to explain why the culling of brumbies generates such heated debate and intense public outpourings of emotion. The author relates the hyperaffective public performances of brumby supporters to a crisis in settler identity in Australia: as Indigenous activism has undermined the legitimacy of settler claims to belonging, some settlers have begun to use brumbies to assert their own kind of indigeneity. Linda Wells’s article, “Sarah Breaden: ‘A Refined and Splendid Kind of Girl’”, is based on her research into a collection of tin dwellings known as the Bungalow—located in the Northern Territory during the early 20th century. In the National Archives of Australia, Wells came across a file named “Sarah Breaden (Half Caste) Education”, which told a partial story of Breaden’s institutional life as a child of a Central Australian Aboriginal mother and a white father, who passed through the Bungalow at one time. Wells’s exploration of Sarah’s story, situated within a larger creative history of the first Bungalow in Alice Springs (1914–