A Multicultural Landscape: National Parks and the Macedonian Experience

2. Connected geographies

Valuing experience and perception Acknowledging that geographic spaces are intricately connected, there remains a question about how these connections are actually experienced. What narratives, what language, do people use to comprehend and actually live out the interconnectedness of landscapes? It is here that the ethnic diversity of Australia – the international quality of our society – assumes particular importance.

An example from Macedonia Consider the experience of Paul Stephen, a Macedonian-born Australian, who provided oral history for this project. Paul was born in a mountainous region of Macedonia in 1936. Until 1948, when he emigrated to Australia, he lived a traditional peasant lifestyle, closer to nature than most of us could possibly imagine. The village where he lived was almost entirely self-sufficient. The only foodstuffs purchased were olive oil and salt. Even clothing was made in the cottages. Until he moved to Australia, Paul wore home-made trousers tied with a rope, footwear fashioned from pig hide, a coarse smock, spun and woven from wool grown on the farm and dyed green in an infusion of walnut husks.

I asked him to describe the landscape of his childhood.

Martin, you're gonna make me cry now. I'm here because of that landscape. We have the most wonderful landscape. I don't remember drought. I don't. We were fairly north, we would have been about eight hundred to a thousand metres above sea level. We had plains and on our plains in fact was originally an ancient city there.

We could see these beautiful mountains where the forest was from the village. It always had snow on the peaks. But he [my uncle] always said to me there's a lake there and this is where heaven is. And not until 1984 was I allowed to enter my area and to one of my cousins I said: 'Look, I have to go to this lake' And my uncle was right, it is heaven. Because there's no tourists there. You couldn't even find a match there. No pollution. The white ducks are still there, the black ducks are still there. I cried with happiness. It is so supreme, so silent, so beautiful and you've got these big pines and they're huge.^[2]

Most noticeable about this account is its emotional charge. It is clear that the landscape of Paul's childhood is the stuff of heart and soul. Although there is no reason to doubt that the lake he describes is a geographical reality, the tone of nostalgia, and the description of it as 'heaven', suggest that this recollected landscape, carried inside him, is also a country of the mind.

One might ask whether landscapes of the mind are really the business of NPWS? Surely the physical landscapes here in NSW are enough to care for! But a little reflection might indicate that physical and mental geographies are not easily isolated.

Social memory physically affects the environment Let's pursue the present example. Paul Stephen had a successful career as a dry cleaner and real estate agent. Now he is a 'landscape manager': the owner of a farm near Picton. Paul has made various choices about what he will do with this property – choices that he believes respect the integrity of the Australian bush while also re-creating aspects of his Macedonian heritage. When he acquired the property 30 acres of it were uncleared. They will remain so for as long as he owns it.

I've got a lot of people asking me for firewood. I couldn't. It's like cutting my arm. I couldn't do it.

But on those areas that were cleared by previous owners he has planted olive, chestnut, walnut and citrus trees. He plans to get a donkey so his grandchildren will be able to ride and get to know the animal that was so important to the farmers in the Macedonian village. He wants the children to be able to pick their own fruit and understand self-sufficiency. He wants them to be Australian but also to realise where they come from.

In talking to Paul Stephen, one rapidly gets a sense of how the different landscapes he has experienced are interrelated. The memory or inspiration of one place will have a discernible impact on others. This is especially noticeable when he describes traditions of socialising that have developed in outdoor recreational settings. We discussed the huge Macedonian picnics that occur annually in Royal National Park.

Social cohesion in park landscapes These events are seen as rowdy, congested and environmentally unfriendly by some of the NPWS personnel to whom I spoke. But to many members of the Macedonian community they are important social traditions. Paul explained how in the early years after World War II, it was predominantly men who arrived from Macedonia, initially intending to stay just a few years, earn some money, and return home to their families. The lack of women companions made it difficult to hold dances which in Macedonia had been one of the main forms of socialising. The large picnics, he explained, where people could eat, drink and play music, were a hybrid tradition, influenced by outdoor celebrations that occurred in the homeland though inflected by the Australian context.

People could expand their national feelings gathering in their language. Because everybody worked in a fish shop or a factory or something like that. So picnics were a tremendous outlet. People looked forward to this. They played a major part in our getting to know each other and for people who would come from overseas it was an introduction to the people. They weren't alone. They could see there's other Macedonians here.^[3]

These (admittedly brief) insights foreground the connection between historical experiences and attitudes to national parks. Here is evidence that any mode of inhabiting and interpreting a landscape is ethnically specific.

Back to the mirror I commenced with an observation about how cross-cultural research can provide a mirror. The ethno-specific experience of our neighbours might tell us something about our selves. In this spirit we might engage with the vast range of ideas, experiences and expectations that accumulate to form the social memory of a society composed of so many immigrant cultures. Sometimes this diversity is viewed pessimistically as a threat to 'national cohesion'. But it can as readily be regarded as a resource of unsurpassed richness, a kind of 'cultural capital'. In the 1999 Boyer Lectures Inga Clendinnen described the migrant legacy as a 'gift' which has bestowed a 'multiplicity of intimate connections, by marriage, friendship, business, with other people and places in the world, and other ways of living in the world.'^[4]

^[2] Interview with Paul Stephen, 5 May, 2000. Multiculturalism and National Parks Research Project Field Tape 8.

^[3] Ibid.

^[4] Inga Clendinnen, True Stories: Boyer Lectures 1999, (Sydney: ABC Books, 1999), p. 27.