The
A rtificial
H orizon
T HREE CHILDREN WATCH AS MIST RISES FROM J AMISON V ALLEY IN THE B LUE M OUNTAINS; SO DOES THE ROCK FORMATION KNOWN AS THE T HREE S ISTERS. W HEN W ALLACE G REEN CREATED THIS IMAGE AT V ANIMANS L OOKOUT IN 1940, HE PERPETUATED A MUCH REPEATED GAG: PHOTOGRAPHING THREE SPECTATORS IN FRONT OF THE T HREE S ISTERS. A LEGEND REPORTS THAT THE T HREE S ISTERS ARE A BORIGINAL WOMEN WHO WERE TURNED TO STONE, ALTHOUGH THE PROVENANCE OF THE STORY IS DUBIOUS.
The
ARTIFICIAL
HORIZON
Imagining the Blue Mountains
M ARTIN T HOMAS
MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY PRESS
F OR R UTH AND B ILL T HOMAS ,
my earliest guides
MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY PRESS
An imprint of Melbourne University Publishing Ltd
PO Box 1167, Carlton,Victoria 3053, Australia
www.mup.com.au
First published 2003
Paperback edition 2004
Text Martin Thomas 2004
Design and typography Melbourne University Publishing Ltd 2004
This book is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968 and subsequent amendments, no part may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means or process whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publishers.
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Thomas, Martin Edward.
The artificial horizon: imagining the Blue Mountains.
Bibliography.
Includes index.
ISBN 0 522 85151 7.
1. Blue Mountains (N.S.W)Folklore. 2. Blue Mountains
(N.S.W.)History. I. Title.
994.45
Designed and typeset by Sandra Nobes
Front cover image: Frank Hurley, Three Sisters with mist background.
By permission National Library of Australia
Back cover image: Thomas Mitchell, Part of New South Wales from the Summit of Jellore.
By permission National Library of Australia
Printed in Australia by Ligare
A cknowledgments
M Y GREATEST DEBT is to Stephen Muecke who discerned value in this project in the early days. For his inspiration, criticism and patience, my heartfelt thanks. I am indebted to Paul Carter, Paul Foss and Jennifer Isaacs for their encouragement and to the reading group consisting of Martin Harrison, Vivienne Kondos, Ruark Lewis, Andrew Lattas, Diane Losche, Ian Maxwell, Cathy Payne and Lesley Stern. Thanks to Barbara Blackmail for friendship and feedback and to Roslyn Poignant for her numerous suggestions. Jim Smith shared insights and documents. John Low opened the door of the Blue Mountains City Councils Local Studies Collection. Lynette Stanger, Jean Murphy, Hugh Doggett, Gwenda Doggett, Ken Duff, Bill Boldisten, Neil Stuart and Doug Macarthur contributed oral history. Dawn Colless allowed me to quote from the story of Mirragan and Gurangatch. June Barker generously shared memories of the Gully. Gavin Andrews furthered my understanding of Bull Cave. Eve Stewart and Laila Haglund contributed memories of V. Gordon Childe while Delia Falconer and Isabel McBryde commented on that part of the manuscript. Jani Klotz, Ross Gibson, Ken Orchard, Vicky Roach, Mark Swivel, Alan Krell, Joan Kerr, Ross Mellick, Richard Byrne and Kate Low all contributed and supported. For their constructive criticism thanks to Greg Dening, Michael D. Jackson, Deborah Bird Rose and Kate Darian-Smith. Thanks also to my commissioning editor Teresa Pitt.
Parts of this book have been otherwise published or broadcast. A version of Morphic Echoes, Stony Silences in Passage Four was published by The UTS Review , vol. 4, no. 1, 1998, and a radio adaptation titled Stony Silences was aired on the ABC in 1997. A radio version of Homage to Catalina, also in Passage Four, was broadcast by the ABC in 1999. A Mountain Is not a Plateau, in Passage Three, was published in Kerb , 6, 1999.
I am grateful to staff of the State Library of New South Wales, Art Gallery of New South Wales, National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Macleay Museum, Fisher Library, State Records of New South Wales, National Archives of Australia, Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies and Geelong Art Gallery who responded to my enquiries. The National Library of Australia was especially generous in providing pictorial reproductions during a Harold White Fellowship in 2002.
Financial support came from the Literature Board of the Australia Council and an Australian Postgraduate Award. The high quality production was assisted by the publication subsidy programs of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and the University of Technology, Sydney.
Finally, my deepest thanks to my partner Naomi Parry, who supported and discussed the project as we prepared to submit it for publication.
M ARTIN T HOMAS
A t the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman, and these hills, the softness of the sky, the outline of these trees at this very minute lose the illusory meaning with which we had clothed them, henceforth more remote than a lost paradise.
A LBERT C AMUS , The Myth of Sisyphus , 1942
M AJOR (LATER S IR) T HOMAS M ITCHELL (17921855) WAS DEPUTY SURVEYOR-GENERAL OF N EW S OUTH W ALES WHEN HE CLIMBED M OUNT J ELLORE IN 1828. C ONVICT LABOURERS CLEARED THE SUMMIT OF ALL BUT SEVEN TREES AND WITH THE AID OF A THEODOLITE M ITCHELL DRAFTED THIS NORTHWARD VIEW OF THE B LUE M OUNTAINS AND SURROUNDING RANGES. H E MET LOCAL G UNDUNGURRA PEOPLE DURING HIS SURVEY BUT, ACCORDING TO HIS JOURNAL, NONE ACCOMPANIED HIM TO THE SUMMITTHE A BORIGINAL MAN DEPICTED IN THE FOREGROUND IS PROBABLY A RETROSPECTIVE INSERTION.
I ntroduction
O nly ideas won by walking have any value .
F RIEDRICH N IETZSCHE , Twilight of the Idols , 1889
T he V iew from J ellore
I DRIVE THROUGH a maze of logging tracks. The No Shooting signs are shot to shreds. At a locked gate, the private property of some weekender, I park the car and continue on. The driveway twists through a building site, then narrows to thread its way among thick sclerophyll and steepen suddenly as it nears the bluff. By the time I reach the summit, my heart is pounding from the short but energetic climb. I gather sticks, light a fire. Behold: the country of this book.
Initially, it is the sense of layering that strikes me. Looking northwards from the basalt dome, the varied succession of range and ravine cuts lateral sections through the panorama: stepping-stones to the horizon. In front of me lie more than a million acres of dissected plateaus. They start almost immediately below with the steep and rugged ranges of the Nattai. The fabric there is richly verdant, the foliage a silken drape through which a shot of ebony completes the weave. From this foreground the colour changes with successive contours. Each layer of country brings a diminution of the darkness until finally it disappears. The blue that was always buried in the green emerges in the midground and triumphs in the furthest ranges to the north. The effect is due to the fine droplets of oil produced by the unusually dense eucalyptus forests that cover the range. With any distance the horizon here is always blue.
