Local Cultures – Global Spaces

Abstract

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This paper will examine underground desert spaces within examples of contemporary Australian media. Representations of Australian landscapes on film have been frequent and varied and have been the subject of extensive theorisation and critical interpretation in relation to discourses of national identity, history and culture. While rural landscapes have been central to the national cinema’s articulation of conflicts over land ownership, and senses of belonging, portrayals of the undergrown have received little representation, despite the country’s reliance on natural resources for its prosperity. Divergent understandings of Australian landscapes have underlined how Aboriginal rights, historical claims and capitalist realities collide in the national consciousness. The exploitation of Australia’s mineral wealth has connected contemporary debates about the nation’s cultural identity, economic security and environmental responsibility. This paper will consider two popular cultural texts which foreground the elusive treasures of Australia’s underground rural spaces, and their status as sites of ambiguous ownership, dubious wealth and contentious value. In Opal Dream (2006) a parent’s vain pursuit of desert gemstones is contrasted with his daughter’s unwavering belief in the existence of her imaginary friends. The adult’s failure to find one, and the child’s apparent loss of the other, prompt a sober reappraisal of meaning, community and value. In the fantasy narrative Firebite (2022), underground mining spaces do not hold hidden riches but instead harbour a repressed colonial horror persisting into the present. Both texts suggest the allusive potential of Australian underground spaces, and their relevance to national discourses of the environment, economics and cultural history.