Isabel's Online Journal

By Isabel Chalmers

How do identity and connection go hand in hand? Identity connects people to places and history, providing a foundation for how they live their lives. In Australia, it is seen every day through customs, traditions and contested stories. Jeanine Leane’s 2023 poem ‘Tracks Wind Back’ explores the relationship between Australia and Australianness by emphasising Indigenous Australians’ persistence in their connection to Country, whilst exploiting contrasting colonial accounts of settlement and progression. Leane introduces the relationship through a disputed and unfinished lens with continuous shifts in tone, a collective voice, and biblical analogy. Thus, she positions Australianness as a product of colonial unrest with the perseverance of Wiradjuri memory and sovereignty, reinforcing the relationship between Australia and Australianness, as represented in the last line of this poem: “we are still here to say at Gundagai / deeper tracks wind back”.

Through biblical metaphors and analogies, Leane contrasts the Indigenous Australian connection to country with the uninvited and imposing presence of Christianity in colonial Australia. In the second stanza, Leane depicts settlers viewing the Murrumbidgee River region as ‘their Garden of Eden, almost undiscovered’, disregarding enduring Wiradjuri connections to Australia and exploiting colonial beliefs of an empty and promised land. ‘They slid in like snakes to the apple –’, the verse portrays them as snakes driven by temptation and sin, thus framing colonial settlement as transactional and corrupt. This biblical framing in the stanza challenges more dominant narratives about Australia’s ‘discovery’ as celebratory or progressive, particularly in contrast to the last verse: ‘– this place where Wiradjuri knew no wants’. Leane further breaks down how Christianity sanctioned the dispossession of Indigenous Australians from their land under the belief of religious authority and royal prerogative. The harsh tone in ‘bibles – full of their original sin’, exposes the hypocrisy behind their belief system that built a version of Australianness that excused invasion and displacement. Richard White argues that colonial interpretations of the Bible gave rise to the notion of Indigenous Australians as ‘natural man’, who was thought to be innately sinful and morally lacking, which was used to support the cruel treatment and dispossession in the name of colonisation (White, 2020). The line break between the two verses in the second stanza is significant in emphasising the contrasting perspectives on Australia and Australianness in the poem and adds more depth to the storyline. Leane depicts how national identity was reformed by a colonial standard that saw invasion as a moral purpose and justified through religious hierarchy and unjust customs.

Leane further challenges colonial constructs of Australianness through the violence and erasure brought upon by the settlers through accusatory language, harsh and doleful tones, and accumulative pacing. In the third stanza, Leane lists the tools introduced and the destruction they brought, ‘wagons of wire, steel axes, muskets’, representing the immediate adaptation to the environment made by the settlers, followed by harsh and confrontational language, ‘scarred, raped and built’, illustrating the hierarchy, authority and advantage against the First Nations people. The mournful tone in ‘…back to a time that knows no fall of man, or woman or child’ acknowledges the depth of Indigenous Australians’ connection to Country and highlights the disruption of a long-lasting relationship with the Wiradjuri country people and their loss of identity caused by colonisation. The pacing intensifies the reader’s experience but also represents how rapidly colonisation affected Indigenous Australians’ identity to country, as well as how quickly the settlers’ connection to Australia was built. Eagleton notes that some poems creep, some jog sedately along, while others hurtle hectically forward (Eden, 2023). ‘Tracks Wind Back’ dances between being slow and fast, and metaphorically speaking, this emphasises how the poem’s rhythm reflects the contested and fractured relationships that settlers and Indigenous Australians had to Australia and its emerging identity at the time, and that Australianness is historically a contested concept, influenced by both internal tensions, as seen through the First Nations people, and wider, external global perspectives, as seen through settler colonialism (Huggan, 2007, p. 25).

The poem is written through the Indigenous lens of the Wiradjuri community, and how their voice, history and identity were challenged by the colonisation of Australia. The poem opens with ‘Gundagai is the bend, the curve, the turn in the Murrumbidgee River / ebbing and flowing – the ancient mother of Wiradjuri children’, which highlights how the community viewed the landscape and environment as living, a presence of equal value, or more as ‘ancient mother’ foregrounds the care and nurturing qualities of the deep relationship of the land. The use of the words ‘bend, curve, ebbing and flowing’ brings a gentle fluidity to the poem and a lightness that represents the continuous Wiradjuri connection to Australia, whilst the enjambment mirrors the rhythm of the river. This stands in direct contrast to the stark, violent language used when depicting settlers and their presence. As White argues, no version of ‘Australia’ is more genuine than another since these identities are “intellectual constructs” imposed upon an already diverse country and people (White, 2020). By highlighting an Indigenous connection to place that predates and disrupts colonial ideas of Australianness, Leane’s portrayal of Gundagai confronts these fabricated structures.

Leane’s ‘Tracks Wind Back’ defines the connection between Australia and Australianness as unresolved, contested and layered. The poem explores the lack of and the impossibility of a unified national identity due to the differing life experiences, history and customs of Indigenous Australians and settlers. Through contrast, tone, metaphor and imagery, Leane presents Australianness as a result of colonial unrest combined with the persistence of Wiradjuri memory and sovereignty.

References

Eagleton, T. (2011). How to Read a Poem. John Wiley & Sons. https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=uvsYW0IEqQsC&oi=fnd&pg=PR3&dq=how+to+read+a+poem&ots=-QW2QO9Mkw&sig=SywjVqd7_zNBWqC3eljrdU5y6pw#v=onepage&q=how%20to%20read%20a%20poem&f=false

Eden, G. of. (2023). Garden of Eden. Answers in Genesis. https://answersingenesis.org/genesis/garden-of-eden/

Huggan, G. (2007). Australian Literature: Postcolonialism, Racism, Transnationalism (p. 25). Oxford University Press, Incorporated.

White, P. (2009). The Tree of Man (p. 15-17). Random House Australia.

White, R. (2020). Inventing Australia: Images and Identity 1688-1980. Taylor & Francis Co.

Zetland, R. R. P. A. 35 103 464 446 J. A. C. C. 3A J. A., & redroompoetry.org, N. 2017 A. P. 02 9319 5090. (2023, June 19). Tracks Wind Back. Red Room Poetry. https://redroompoetry.org/poets/jeanine-leane/tracks-wind-back/