Wright’s deep love of the Australian landscapes and her growing distress at the destruction of it by white Australians drives her devoting into a series of environmental conservation campaigns aiming at repairing the wounded native land. More than just inhabiting Australia, Judith Wright goes through a process of reinhabitation. That was, according to Berg and Dasmann’s definition, not only “learning to live-in-place,” but doing so “in an area that has been disrupted and injured through past exploitation” (1977, p. 399). Reinhabitory practice is not simply to minimize harm to the environment or to be able to sustain the current circumstances, but to find ways of living that repair the environmental harm caused by previous behavior. In this sense, the prefix “re” envisions not a simple return to the past but a creative salvaging, a new-old process that reorients residents toward elegant adaptation (Lynch 2012, p.18).
Chapter Five Conclusion
Wright’s life-long integration into Australia is to coordinate the “double aspects” of Australia with the “two threads” of her life. Namely, with a focus on Aboriginality and environment in Australia, she tries to reconcile these opposing stereotypes – “land of exile” and a “land of hope.” As a “land of exile,” Australia is a place that estranges Wright; as a “land of hope,” however, it is a place for which Wright devotes her life. From alienation to belonging, Judith Wright has embraced all the aspects of Australia and been on the way of integration into this country. Her bond with Australia remains strong and her sense of Australia continues to be comprehensive. Wright’s development of the sense of place is presented in her collections published between 1946 and 1985, which could be divided into three major periods.
When Judith Wright was a young girl, her sense of place is ambivalent. Given her love of Australia’s fascinating local scenery, she is unable to mentally identify with the local environment. There is a hidden sense of alienation in her mind, caused by the unfamiliarity, uncertainty, and loneliness of being of English descent in Australia. The entanglement of the sense of place attachment and alienation makes Wright waver between being a patriotic Australian or a nostalgic European, which is also a common mindset of many other European in Australia. While Judith Wright may be hampered at times by estrangement, her exploration of Australia never falters, which is promoted by her genuine curiosity and sympathy for this land. Her descriptions of her childhood life are full of those idyllic scenes of nature and delightful moments in a tone lighter than that of many of her later poems. Growing up, Wright is exposed to a great deal of colonial truths of Australia.
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