Landscapes or Inscapes? Alternative Perspectives on Frontier Life

Abstract

In reconstructing the circumstances of frontier life in colonial Australia, historians have depended upon contemporary representations produced mainly by European men. Occasionally, female perspectives make a welcome appearance, and the work of women writers and visual artists from the colonial period has received some attention in recent years, although a narrow postcolonial focus has tended to produce an outcome that simply replicates previous themes and objectives. Meanwhile, the specificities and sensitivities of female experiences and observations have not been adequately considered. I argue that, by way of spatial representations, or what I choose to refer to as 'inscapes', colonial women's writings and their visual art can make a useful contribution to a more nuanced understanding of the process of colonisation in Australia. To demonstrate this, I examine some of the writings, paintings and drawings of an educated middle-class woman, Lucy Gray, nee Waters (1840-1879), who lived in north Queensland with her husband Charles, between 1868 and 1875.