Leslie Allan Murray was born in 1938 to become one of the most exceptional poets of his generation. Brought up around his father’s dairy farm Murray valued the sparsely populated and saw the beauty in the hilly and forested beauty within this rural landscape. As a nationalist and republican, he believes that his writing is defining what it means to be Australian making reference to the cultural and spiritual landscapes of an individual.
Those who find a connection with the land are able to feel enchantment and a sense of belonging when around their landscape. The human interaction and relationship with their surroundings is shaped by ones own personal connection they make between themselves and their environment. However not in all circumstances is this innate relationship to the land reciprocated. The result of human activity and development can however be detrimental to the environment.
Murray’s poem ‘Sydney and the Bush’ (1977) conveys this idea of how a loss in connection with a landscape can have a negative impact on those who cherish it, and in some instances affect their inner landscape. Sydney and the Bush is a historical poem in that it reflects differing relationship that Aboriginal Australians and European settlers have had with the land in which they inhabitant.
‘Sydney and the Bush’ represents how over time humans have manipulated the land to suit their own benefits and needs, consequently pushing back the bush. Not only does Murray explore this theme of a constantly changing landscape but makes reference to the original owners of this land who were disposed of their land in order to make way for white Europeans. Both these themes however can be related through the extended metaphor of the loss of land whereby the bush in each stanza is being pushed back and back, over time. Thus the Aboriginal Australia was forced to follow the path of the bush and retreat back with the bush.
Landscapes are symbolic and figurative which can change ones emotional and physical state of mind, whereby this environment shapes their individuality. However unlike the Aboriginals of Australia, the Europeans who invaded this land failed to understand this concept and the value of the landscape to the inhabitants who were already there. A way in which to underline this idea and show the clear differences between the Aboriginals and Europeans is in the line “the men of Fire and of Earth became White men and Black”. Colour symbolism has been used to represent and show the difference between the inhabitants of the land, whereby the whites perceived themselves as pure and superior to that of the black, whereby the word black has many negative connotations associated.
Inhabitants have ultimate power over the landscape and their influences affect this ever-changing environment. The constant change of an environment is due to the negative impacts which humans pose on a landscape. The repetition of the phrase ‘When Sydney and the Bush first met’ has been utilised in many stanzas, slightly transformed to juxtapose the natural bush with the unnatural and urbanised city centre. The slight change in each version of the line represents the changing view of society as well as the progression of city and the relationship individuals make with their own landscape. The natural bush can therefore be represented as a prisoner in its own environment. The effects of colonisation are apparent from the loss of land, urbanisation and the so called ‘civilisation’. The fourth stanza clearly highlights how urbanisation had taken over the environment through the line ‘The bushmen sank and the factories rose’ as bushman were forced to retrieve back with the bush as the factories grew. The line explores how industrialisation has altered the city landscape and now overpowering the bush lifestyle. A reference to the great Australian dream of owning a quarter-acre block as been used in the fourth stanza. Juxtaposition has been employed to separate this idea from the previous stanzas in portraying how humans how want to live with the bush and build their homes incorporating parts of the environment. The last two lines ‘When Sydney and the Bush meet now there is no common ground’ is particularly powerful in highlighting how the two are not easily comparable to each other as they both possess different qualities and how the inhabitants have placed a clear subconscious divider between them.
A.D Hope poem ‘Australia’ explores the similar theme of a loss of land and the connection associated with it. Hopes poem explores this idea of how the country has become worn out which can be relatable to Murray’s poem which represents how the bush landscape has become worn out and no longer favourable. The dispossession of land experienced by Aboriginals is also mirrored in both poems. Both poets feel strongly about these issues, thus relating their poems would highlight this similar message.
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