Over the land

The word on the land.   Australia, a country of incredible landscapes, has the capacity to upset one's sense of what a landscape is, especially if one listens to the Aboriginal custodians of those landscapes (as shown in figure r). From Central Australia, where the great monolith Uluru stands majestically shifting its colours in the evening light, to the rainforests of Northern Queensland, to the gorges and plateaux of the Kimberley in the North West, to the snow-capped ridges of the Snowy Mountains; all of these places have starkly different Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal perceptions. These differences have to do both with the mode of perception and the uses to which it is put.