Table of Contents

1. The land is a map: the Aboriginal relationship to the desert; 2. Forms, images, imaginings: European myths of the desert; 3. The 'hideous blank': imperatives for discovery; 4. Geography is never innocent: or, what the explorers thought they saw; 5. Perspectives on the desert: the art of exploration; 6. 'On the tracts of thirst and furnace': dead explorers and national identity; 7. Ripping yarns at the outpost of empire: the desert as adventure; 8. From 'dead heart' to 'red centre': travellers' tales and the lure of gold; 9. Seeing red: twentieth-century art of the desert; 10. A gothic desert: psychodrama in fiction and film; 11. Revisioning the explorers in twentieth-century art; 12. Transforming myths: the explorers in twentieth-century literature; 13. Seeing through biology: contemporary artists examine the desert; 14. The desert in the Age of Aquarius: environmentalism and renewal; 15. The art of reconciliation.

Promotional Information

This exciting, highly illustrated book reveals the impact of the desert on Australian culture.

Reviews

'This is a book that will be around, and widely quoted, for a very long time. It deserves to be.' Serendipity

'This exciting book, highly illustrated in full colour, reveals the singular impact that the desert, both geographical and metaphorical, has had on Australian culture.' The Australian Financial Review

'Seeking the Centre should be read by anyone wishing to understand more about Australia. It is, among other things, an excellent compendium.' The Times Literary Supplement

'Seeking the Centre should be read by anyone wishing to understand more about Australia.' The Times Literary Supplement

'This book is enormously pleasurable … a pertinent and intelligent overview of the long history of non-Aboriginal representation and colonisation of desert spaces.' Catriona Elder, University of Wollongong