Colonial Encounters/Post-Colonial Performances: Francis Webb's 'Eyre All Alone'

Abstract

Assisted by the unpublished work of Jennifer Rutherford and Paul Carter, 'Colonial Encounters/Post-Colonial Performances': Francis Webb’s ‘Eyre All Alone’ discusses Webb’s epic 1958 revision of Eyre’s famous exploration of the land between Adelaide, South Australia, and the Bay of Israelites, Western Australia. Webb presents Eyre on a surface that has been regarded as ‘empty’ or ‘blank’ by colonial history. Eyre’s journey is re-created as if he were an exile experiencing geo-cultural displacement, only finding his way across the extremities of the Australian environment when he recognises his dependency upon an indigenous presence for survival. His encounters with an indigenous other and a culturally inscribed landscape refute the logic of 'terra nullius', whilst illuminating the process of erasure that exploration initiates through the opening up of the land to trade. Webb’s poetry opens his readership to a new kind of thinking about the Australian landscape.

Keywords

• colonial australia, terra nullius, exploration, aboriginal culture