Part 5 in the series, A Literary Search for Meaning by Dr Karen Hughes
While Australia has strong traditions of Celtic-influenced medieval fantasy set in European locales, gritty science fiction with harsh desert and “cruel bush” settings, and literary realism focused on survival in a sunburnt land, there is not much contemporary mythopoeic fantasy. This could be because of the political implications of incorporating First Nations mythologies into white stories or the fact that modern Anglo-Australia lacks a rich mythic heritage of its own. First Nations writers are drawing on their own cultural heritage to produce new and diverse works of speculative fiction, but what mythic heritage can the Anglo-Australian writer draw on? Anglo-Australian folklore and mainstream church teachings seem to lack the enchanting elements, such as the sacralisation of nature and the mystical power of spirit helpers, that Indigenous mythologies provide.
In 1981, Veronica Brady published A Crucible of Prophets, analysing the “metaphysical and theological strain in our literature” as a means of understanding the Anglo-Australian experience. After reviewing such authors as Marcus Clarke, Patrick White, David Malouf, Christopher Koch and Randolph Stow, she concluded that these authors were tapping into something deeper than our official “bland and complacent” secular image. Although God had been “relegated to the realm of shadow” (at least in white Protestant Australia) and the gods of material prosperity and economic expansion had taken his place, there was still hope. “The people we most need now,” Brady writes, “are mystics … people who offer alternatives to the worship of power and sensation” (112).
Australia was settled at a time when the Western shift to individualism and the rejection of authoritarian, faith-based God talk were already underway. The rise of the secular left a spiritual void, a lack of meaning which many scholars blame for the escalating rates of depression and suicide in Australia (see, for example, Tacey; Mackay). Hume and McPhillips write that “[T]his ‘inner hunger’ at grass roots level seems to be unsatiated in our times, where high technology, scientific advancement and an insistence on rationality has left many lives devoid of meaning” (xvi). The New Age movement began in the West in the 1960s as a product of and response to this lack of meaning. Initially dismissed by the Australian churches as a shallow, narcissistic quest for self-fulfilment (Tacey, Re-Enchantment), it was slower to gain a foothold in Australia than in places like the US, perhaps because Australians were more sceptical than their northern counterparts (Millikan 34), or because they just weren’t interested. The New Age offered wealth, success and rapid personal development, all with the support of the supernatural. While this was a path that appealed to many in the 1970s and 1980s, it is now considered only a small branch of modern spirituality in Australia—if it is considered spiritual at all. Scholars like Tacey deride these aspects of the movement as anything but spiritual, and Andrew Harvey warns: “The New Age is selling crack. Don’t buy it” (“Power of Awe”). Other scholars, such as Olav Hammer and Hugh Urban, reject this harsh assessment and argue that, despite the term falling out of favour, New Age spirituality has diffused into the mainstream and now forms a part of the current spiritual milieu (Hammer 75).
In 1981, Millikan observed that “to talk about God [in Australia] is not allowable” (9). He saw us as a nation pervaded by a “dark scepticism” that was only relieved by a “strongly disrespectful humour” (34). The common mythos was that religion was on the decline and Australia was becoming a more secular nation with “privatised” beliefs and values. Beneath this, however, Australians were quietly “searching for meaning and purpose” (87). At first, the churches did their best to ignore the changing religious climate. In 2000, Elaine Lindsay wrote that there was “little sign that Australian theologians are alive to, and respectful of, the diversity of spiritualities that already exist within this country”. The exception was Aboriginal spirituality, but this was “primarily as a means of invigorating white spirituality” (13). Women writing on the divine were also largely ignored, despite their very different approach to spiritual themes. Lindsay argues that Brady’s A Crucible of Prophets, while thorough and highly influential, is a product of its time and examines only male fiction writers, suggesting that Brady is looking for “the desert God of the scriptures, the God of mysteries, the all-masterful one” (7) and finds him in the works of Patrick White. Consequently, accounts of Australian spirituality based on the literature and history of “the past 20 years” are “primarily the work of Christian theologians or practising Christians” (11) and leave no place for a more everyday embodied spirituality. Even poet Les Murray, known for being “an advocate of everyday life and everyday people”, examines the Australian “religious tendency” from a Christian “masculinist” perspective (Lindsay 42; also see Murray, “Fisher King” and “Some Religious Stuff I Know About Australia”).
Brady, as expected, takes a different view. While she applauds Lindsay’s emphasis on the “warm intimacies of the women’s experience of the divine”, she maintains that the “crucial experience of the divine in Australian culture is the Desert”—the “sheer otherness” that “interrogates our notions of reality and value.” Citing Derrida’s “the infinite shatters all horizons”, Brady questions the value of Lindsay’s “nebulous idea of spirituality” and argues that we need a “renewed notion of divinity” to overturn the “patriarchal and colonial hegemony” of Australian literature and culture (“Review”). Although Brady’s argument for a more transcendent “desert God” might have been persuasive twenty years ago and still provides a useful lens for examining writers like Patrick White, Lindsay’s “nebulous idea” is perhaps a better description of modern Australian spirituality. Recent studies note the rise of “Seekers” and those identifying as “Spiritual but not religious” (SBNR), reflecting similar trends across the Western world (Halafoff et al.); Australian government initiatives promote the acceptance and support of spiritual and cultural diversity; First Nations scholars are stepping into the limelight, with popular non-fiction works like Dark Emu and Sand Talk, challenging us to reconsider our ways of looking at the world; and the development of the internet has made alternative spiritualities more widespread, with online communities celebrating more earth-based, holistic and feminine forms of spirituality. Within this changing cultural milieu, new voices, including those of First Nations women writers such as Ambelin Kwaymullina and Alexis Wright, are creating diverse speculative fiction with the potential to redefine the ways in which we think about our land and ourselves.
Is it possible for an Anglo-Australian to write speculative fiction exploring earth-based spirituality without appropriating First Nations mythologies and specific cultural traditions? As the descendant of migrant grandparents, I am part of this changing culture and I see an urgent need for re-enchantment and new mythologies in my homeland. Tyson Yunkaporta argues that all Australians need to pay attention to the vast store of knowledge of this continent and learn ways of thinking that will trigger our own ancestral knowledge (163). This does not mean stealing or corrupting the stories and myths of First Nations peoples, nor does it mean insisting on an alternate history that is difficult to substantiate, an approach which created the recent controversy around Dark Emu (see Marks). Instead, it means listening and learning with respect, understanding fundamental holistic and relational concepts, and determining how these might influence the creation of new mythologies for society as a whole. Miriam Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann offers guidance in an ABC Radio interview, The Wisdom of Deep Listening, advocating for dadirri, a Ngan’gikurunggurr word meaning deep listening, a way of being that is open to anyone who is prepared to be quiet and listen to the land. It is a gift for those who are ready to understand themselves, and involves a “silent, still awareness”, a slowing down to “listen on the inside as well”.
Alice Mills writes that “it has been rare for Australian fantasists to make use of their own Indigenous themes”; Patricia Wrightson’s Song of Wirrun trilogy (1977–81) is one exception, described by Mills as “the most successful attempt by any writer of fantasy … to bring Western fantasy into dialogue with indigenous understandings of Australia” (qtd. in Raddeker 159). Wrightson is a controversial writer who has been both lauded and criticised for using Aboriginal mythologies in her work and, despite its initial success, her Song of Wirrun trilogy is now out of print in Australia (Attebery, Stories 128–39). Clare Bradford, a New Zealand critic who was “particularly irritated” by the “investiture of Patricia Wrightson as a pseudo-Aboriginal elder”, places her in the Eurocentric tradition of taking “whatever is of value in indigenous culture while consigning the bearers of that culture to invisibility or extinction” (Attebery, “Patricia Wrightson”). Brian Attebery notes that “well-intentioned story theft” has been “particularly striking in Australia” (Stories 128), providing as examples the “provincial and backward” (129) Jindyworobak movement of the 1930s and 1940s and the award-winning fantasy fiction of Terry Dowling, whose Rhinosseros books include similar mythical themes to those depicted in Cleverman, a 2016 ABC television series written and produced by First Nations people (178). Attebery distinguishes Wrightson and defends her use of Aboriginal motifs, particularly in her later work, arguing that there needs to be a middle ground:
I don’t want to say that other people’s traditions are fair game, but neither do I want to say that any crossing of cultural boundaries amounts simply to a set of ‘appropriating and controlling strategies’ (Bradford “Aboriginality” 110). Neither of these positions allows for making fine distinctions, nor can either acknowledge the subtlety with which Wrightson has addressed these very issues through characterization, voice, and narrative frame. (“Patricia Wrightson”)
Some Indigenous writers suggest that non-Indigenous writers should be “interrogating your own experiences, cultures and traditions for your story inspirations” (Kwaymullina, “Reflecting”); others, such as Nisi Shawl, argue that a failure to include diverse characters and viewpoints is taking the easy way out (see Shawl and Ward, Writing the Other). Nadia Wheatley reinforces this latter view, noting that writers “can’t exclude [the other] or we paint a monoculture” (“Black and White” 22). Such inclusion, however, must be done with respect. Anita Heiss recommends primary research as a starting point for exploring indigenous themes and says that “everyone should be devouring” the work of Indigenous authors, including Alexis Wright (Case). In The Swan Book, Wright uses mythology, folklore and the power of storytelling to “embody in a Western literary form a contemporary Aboriginal cosmology in its entirety—with serious political intent and real world implications” (Gleeson-Wright). Kwaymullina takes a similar approach, albeit for a younger audience. In The Tribe series (2012–15), Kwaymullina draws on her First Nations heritage to explore themes of interconnection and dependence, lack of social hierarchy, non-linear time, and earth-based knowledge through the mythical visions of her protagonist. She describes herself as an author of “Indigenous Futurisms, a term coined by Anishinaabe academic Grace Dillon to describe a form of storytelling whereby Indigenous peoples use the speculative fiction genre to challenge colonialism and imagine Indigenous futures” (“Reflecting”).
Although I am influenced by Mircea Eliade’s work on shamanism and have drawn on some of his general descriptions in my new novel, Gaba Gali, I have been careful not to write about the specific traditions of any cultural group. I would be interested in exploring such traditions in future projects, but not without more targeted research and the collaboration of the people who have inherited or adopted these traditions and understand them best. In Gaba Gali, I chose the middle path, as scholars like Attebery, Yunkaporta and Shawl recommend, attempting to respectfully explore and learn from “Indigenous knowledge as a spiritual force” (Yunkaporta 163) while developing an awareness of the political and cultural issues inherent in such an undertaking.
While the setting of my novel might appear, at first glimpse, to be realistic, I challenge the reader’s assumptions with an alternate near-futuristic version of rural Australia, incorporating a subterranean labyrinth inspired by the sidhe mounds of ancient Ireland, the home of the mythic Tuatha Dé Danann (Matthews 160) who I have reimagined as a tribe of fifth-dimensional beings living in an alternate dimension inside the earth. This secondary world is based on common fantasy tropes and Celtic themes rather than local Australian mythology and, being non-specific and multidimensional, gave me more scope to experiment with perennialist ideas. That said, writers of imaginative fiction have long used existing locales to imbue their work with a sense of the real. I grew up on a wheat and cattle station on the Liverpool Plains in New South Wales. My family also farmed fifty thousand acres near the mining town of Dysart in Queensland. I have used my personal knowledge of these rural locales to bring the imagined primary world of my novel to life. In the later sections, I moved beyond the mundane to incorporate into the narrative the fifth-dimensional planet Terra, superimposed over third-dimensional Earth. I then went further, providing glimpses of the characters’ non-physical experiences in other places, such as the Miyayan star Doia where Jordy and Uncle Bill, an elder of the Kamilaroi nation, share a sixth-dimensional existence as the collective entity Asher. In these passages, I was no longer striving for realism and instead used various narrative techniques to evoke an alien perspective, relying on the wonder of speculative fiction to challenge the existing paradigm, open the reader to new mythologies and contribute in some small way to the re-enchantment of the world.
Attebery, Brian. Stories About Stories: Fantasy and the Remaking of Myth. Oxford UP, 2014.
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Case, Jo. “‘Getting it Right’: Anita Heiss on Indigenous Characters.” The Wheeler Centre, 5 November 2014. https://www.wheelercentre.com/notes/221927959a6b.
Halafoff, A., et al. “New Research Shows Australian Teens Have Complex Views on Religion and Spirituality.” The Conversation, 8 Sept. 2018.
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Raddeker, Hélène Bowen. “Feminism and Spirituality in Fantastic Fiction: Contemporary Women Writers in Australia.” Women’s Studies International Forum, vol. 44, 2014, pp. 154–63, ISSN 0277-5395.
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Ungunmerr-Baumann, Miriam Rose. The Wisdom of Deep Listening: Miriam Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann and Fleur Magick Dennis. Presented by Meredith Lake. ABC Radio National Interview, Sunday 30 May 2021, 6:05pm. https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/soul-search/the-wisdom-of-deep- listening-miriam-rose-ungunmerr-baumann/13359778.
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