A - Z Challenge. O is for the Outback and what it means to Australians.

Today our ''country' is the land, a sacred concept to our indigenous people, the aborigines. I've taken an excerpt from an Australian writer, Mary Durack, born to the heritage of a pioneering family and one of Australian's foremost literary figures.She's always lived in the Outback of Australia so is well versed in both its beauty and its terror.

                                                      A Map Of The Australian Outback

How do I explain it? The Outback is kind of, well, more or less, sort of, all of Australia...

Outback is a term that describes rural and remote areas in Australia, the parts where not many people live. The different colours in my Outback map show population density, and as you can see, most of Australia is rather empty... (Ignore the 'I live here,' I don't, I now live in Brisbane...)

Even though 83% of Australians choose to live at the beach or within 50 klms of the coast, strangely we still think of the Outback as the 'real' Australia. My excuse is that I was actually born and brought up in country Queensland so the outback is more than just an idea to me.

Here is an extract from Mary Durack's Keep Him My Country.

"After weeks of oppressive heat the April morning was cool and fresh. The homestead still lay in the grey dawn shadow, but already the sun had touched the flat-topped range to gold and silver and the river pearl-grey with a ragged scarf of mist streaking the dark trees, was stirring to life in its deep flood-ravaged bed. Cockatoos flapped and cried and blood-breasted finches spilled like a shower of rubies over the pale grass." (p.1.)

The Aboriginal view of the land as 'country' is well known. In the novel, Durack uses an aborigine to show how he feels about the land.

Dickie felt his heart swell with pride. The billabong shone like bright enamel under a sunset sky, reflecting the wheeling birds, pale lilies and dark bordering trees. This was his 'little country', the place from which he sprang and to which he would return. His father had found him here, a shadow child in the water feeding on the green weeds. Later the shadow had appeared again in a dream, in the form of a small goanna. After a time his mother had become sick when eating lily roots and she knew then that the goanna spirit had entered her and she would bear a child. The goanna would be his 'dreaming', and this his spirit place. So much he knew but there were secrets about his country and the time long past that he would never know. He would never hold the churinga that had belonged to his father, or, since he was dead, ever know its hiding place." (p.118.)

I talk of my country in the night,

I talk of my lover...

I talk to my country for she is woman

The water and the soil of life,

That the smoke of her fires encircle him in the night

And her strong loins hold him...

I cry to my country that her voice shall sing in his blood

and her hot suns fire him.

I cry to my country -

'Keep him that he may come to my side

For I wait through the burning heat of the day

And the long quiet cold of the night.

I wake when the whirlwind scatters my fire to the dry

bush

And its embers die under the falling rain.

I wait for my lover."

(Extract from an Aboriginal love song)

The literature:

As well as Durack's many novels - (Kings in Grass Castles is another stunner about the early cattle kings of the outback,) there is a modern memoir, Tracks, by Robyn Davisdon, which is an amazing story of a woman's trek across Australia with four camels and a dog. Inspirationsl. There is no shortage of great Australian writing regarding the outback, much of it inspired by real life trials and tribulations.

I hope you enjoyed your glimpse of Australia's Outback.