Sydney or the Bush
In At home in the world I put down how I got to
The world is the home of our homes.
by thinking about ‘home’ and the relationship to/with 'world'.
And in writing that decided to separate out the thoughts about home/world and it relationship, in my head at least, with country and country/city, and empire.
I cover part of that at Worldbuilding 101.
But here are the thoughts following those on 'home'.
There is an Australia phrase ‘well it’s Sydney or the bush’ indicate an all or nothing approach, perhaps on the toss of a coin, some gamble worth a go, even if the downside is not much.
See Origin of the australian phrase ‘Sydney or the Bush’② for one report of its coining. (must do my own research on trove to confirm or extend this).
The late Victorian Australian poet Henry Lawson claims he insisted on the capitalisation of the word ‘Bush’.① This keystone claim is not as important as Henry Lawson’s role in writing the countryside experience in to the Australian psyche. He didn’t call it the country, as it included lands and experiences that were beyond that genteel rural experience we see in the old country’s use of the word countryside.
From the viewpoint of the early to mid 21st century the whole project of boosting the settler expansion in the name of a republican democrat looks bizarre, especially as the countryside, and the Bush in all its grey zone inclusion of wildnerness, terra nullius, and nothingness, is still a countryside that is an outgrowth of the city. The countryside, the Bush, in Australia’s case, is an outgrowth of the orginary city: Sydney.
It looks bizarre for while it included Aboriginal interactions, it had no insight into country: on country, acknowledgement of country, care for country.
I guess that country is the nothing the Bush represents in the phrase ‘Sydney or the Bush’.
Sydney represents the crown, society, economy of settlers, their gold boom retailers, a port for whalers, sealers and slavers, the squatters and their labourers, my ancestors, who boiled down cattle for lard, and horses for hide, without a word or song for country.
The world that came was an empire, and the first thing empires do, is make sure that the world is not a home for homes like country, and all allegiance is to the machinery of state and it binary options of Sydney or the Bush.
① Davision, Graeme. “Sydney and the Bush: An Urban Context for the Australian Legend.” Australian Historical Studies, October 1, 1978. https://doi.org/10.1080/10314617808595587.
② Tréguer, Pascal. “Origin of the Australian Phrase ‘Sydney or the Bush.’” Word Histories (blog), February 28, 2018. https://wordhistories.net/2018/02/28/sydney-bush-origin/.