The Gallipoli Mission, landscape and the changing meanings of heritage: On Dangerous Ground (2012), by Bruce Scates

Bringing together history, heritage studies, conflict archaeology, ecocriticism and literary analysis, this article contends that the 2012 novel On Dangerous Ground: A Gallipoli Story provides an important reflection on the multiple meanings of Australian national heritage and its fluctuations at the First World War centenary. As I argue, its author, Bruce Scates, recognizes the different heritages of the Gallipoli peninsula by including a multiplicity of voices and perspectives in the 1915 layers of his novel. The whole tradition of Australian historiography, to which Scates himself has largely contributed, finds its echoes in the text. The article demonstrates how Scates undermines the myth of the glorious Gallipoli campaign and the heroism of the Anzacs, revisiting the mythologized site of conflict from a Turkish perspective. The Gallipoli peninsula is approached as an affective landscape, which deeply transforms the protagonists. However, the fabricated nature of this site of the conflict, and the construction of its special place in the national mythology, are also emphasized in the analysis. Synchronously, On Dangerous Ground problematizes the obligation of the nation towards those missing in action, and the cultural malaise accompanying exhumations.