Geoffrey Bolton, Land of Vision and Mirage: Western Australia since 1826.(Book review)

Geoffrey Bolton, Land of Vision and Mirage: Western Australia since 1826, University of Western Australia Press, Perth, 2008, xvi + 270 pages; ISBN 978 098029 640 2.

The arrival of the brig Amity in King George Sound on the morning of Christmas Day, 1826 begins this new history of Western Australia. Although the history leaps over the 50,000 preceding years of Aboriginal history, it does consider the impact of European settlement on the Aboriginal population, displaying a present-day awareness of the need to do so. In a time when we are seeing our history from European settlement in the much wider context of prior Aboriginal settlement and civilisation, we are also appreciating our shortcomings in meeting, negotiating and living with the ancient inhabitants of Australia.

The view is expressed that, after 40 years of contact between Aboriginal people and settlers in eastern Australia, it was inexcusable that Governor Stirling made no recognition of Indigenous land rights. The book records a range of impacts of European settlement on Aboriginal people, including expansion into new areas, conflicts over stock ownership and significant adverse health effects. It is noted that Western Australia's Parliament House was erected 'on the hill where Yellagonga of the Mooro used to camp ... when Governor Stirling and his company were newcomers'.

The author pinpoints isolation as having 'fed a number of Western Australian attitudes and stereotypes'. At the same time, he adds that Western Australia has often displayed 'a notable capacity for innovation fostered rather than discouraged by the State's remoteness'. Technological innovation was the answer of Western Australians to isolation. The view is expressed that 'if Perth seemed a remote outpost of European civilisation, the country districts endured a more than Siberian isolation'. Isolation is also seen as breeding conservatism, the author noting that 'many Western Australian attitudes were still the product of isolation'.

Another theme in the history is the long reign of agriculture in establishing state attitudes and practices and then its supplementation by the dramatic advent of the non-gold minerals industry. Perhaps it is due to this latter development that we owe both the continuance of the Western Australian search for visions as well as its adoption of mirages. But it is certainly made clear that it was the state rather than one particular industry that has given rise to visions and mirages.

The author points out that 'Western Australia was the first agricultural colony attempted in the British Empire for nearly a century, and the first in Australia to be envisaged from the outset as a society of families'. Indeed for 'the first two-thirds of the 20th century, Western Australia would be dominated by a rural ethos'. Whether in the wheat belt or the pastoral industries, the sustenance of the state was found there for many years.

The coming of the Iron Age, as the railways are ...