ABSTRACT
This chapter attends to contemporary theoretical interest in what has been dubbed the ‘spatial turn’. In the postcolonial context, the authors rely on this framework in order to draw attention to the very materiality of land: its usage, its ownership and its abuse, and also to the experience of landscape. The chapter looks closely at texts that fold within them a deep preoccupation for their surroundings, fully understanding the risks and also the opportunities that reside there. Films such as Ray Lawrence’s Jindabyne, Nicholas Roeg’s Walkabout and Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock, and novels such as Nadine Gordimer’s The Conservationist, David Dabydeen’s Disappearance, Kate Grenville’s The Secret River and Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria, open up possibilities for geo-critical engagement, revealing how landscapes can be both familiar and alienating at once and, more importantly, how navigating the spatial terrain requires the sharing and the giving up of knowledge.
