austr-aliens

2018
the preserve journal n.2

I’ve recently travelled around Australia for five weeks. Having been obsessed with Aboriginal culture since I was a kid I thought I would have come back with a deeper understanding of the food culture of a thousands-year-old civilization in one of the most inhospitable places on the planet. I think I have learnt much more about our white European one, about our relationship with food and the landscape; about our idea of remoteness and, possibly, our vision of the future.

When I was a kid I wanted to be an astronaut but you can't wear eyeglasses. So I decided to explore this planet as if it was another one.

Fortunately, the World is currently witnessing a second space race.
In the present (future) scenario I believe Australia deserves to be investigated a bit more in relation to space exploration. It might actually prove to be more insightful than one might think. It offers me much more than an excuse to talk about the perception of the landscape -whichever we are looking at-, remoteness and food as a key interpretation factor. On the other hand, space travelling is much more than a metaphor for the understanding of
our position on this planet and how different cultures have interpreted its different environments.
The global politic theatre has dramatically changed since the breath-taking arm wrestling between USA and URSS on space conquer. The two former opponents joined forces (after the dissolution of the Soviet Union) but Russia today seems much more focused on intensifying its influence on this planet rather than starting again on another one. China has made remarkable progress in a relatively short time frame -as usual- and it is probably trading with other planets already. We might never know. On the other hand, the USA government, looking forward to 'make America (universally) great again' in a nostalgic revival of the Cold War allocated more funds to NASA and promised to get back on the Moon and possibly on Mars. Eventually what really changed the characteristic of the competition is the entering of private commercial companies, which thing assimilates it more to a rush than a race. All this considered we are very likely to expect a new white western capitalist saga of colonisation outside the gravitational borders of our planet.

If it is true though that the cultural matrix has definitely its origin in the US in a mixture of Forefathers' never-ending pursuit of the new Israel, space cow-boys vibe with a hint of the gold rush, Australia offers a much more realistic and secular prototype. We could possibly say that if the US is the marketing office, Australia is the testing facility of our mindset towards space exploration. From a mere geological and zoological perspective, it is already an alien environment, it is the closest thing to another planet on our own. Australian uniquely harsh landscapes, its natural born killer flora and fauna are both the reason for its fortune on the common imagination and a hard to eradicate misconception.
When the first subjects of the English Crown landed on the Australian shores to establish a penal colony in 1788 the continent hadn't be explored at all -except for a few spots on the coast. They had inadequate cultural means to interpret the landscape they were in. All they had was perseverance and free labour with which they desperately tried to transform that unfamiliar environment into the green and muddy hills of England. Moreover, their complete disdain for the local culture denied them the tools developed through over 500.000 years to adapt and survive off the land. This eventually led to the perception of the new continent as alien and hostile, naturally unsuitable for life.
Nowadays much has changed but this idea is still vivid in many regions of the country as well as in the mindset of its Anglo-Celts inhabitants and in that of many around the World. No surprise that Australian Outback is one of the favourite sets for sci-fi films based on remote planets, which have lately been knowing a revival.

As for the previous space fever, culture is as crucial as science in the pursuit of defeating gravity and sending a human being outside the atmosphere. Way before the first rocket took off, the race had already started on a cultural level. If all the scientific and technological gains were highly secreted novelists provided the world with a window on the remote areas of the infinite Universe, unfolding those of the human mind. If on one side the space race propelled the golden age of sci-fi, on the other hand, it had the horizons wide opened by authors whose aim was not only to entertain or persuade the public. They projected the finite nature of mankind and its technology in a dialogue with the sidereal landscape, scoping mutation patterns in ethic and aesthetic in absence of gravity, millions of light-years away from Earth. Before anyone could actually see our home planet standing out in the dark, they questioned the cultural construction of time and space on a new scale, exploring the possibility of encounters with other forms of life and intelligence. Space travel was then perceived as the imminent next step in the human evolution, cultural structures and artefacts were expected to mutate accordingly.
Dropped the illusion of meeting developed forms of life anytime soon close to home, the fast-growing concern related to the health of our planet made the focus shift from space travelling to space colonisation. The last fifteen years registered an increase in films set in the space which address major environmental issues and forecast the imminent need to migrate elsewhere either on another planet or on space stations. Private companies in the meanwhile, inspired by the immortal classics of sci-fi literature of previous generations, started developing programmes for human settlements on other planets. Disregarding any note for caution by scientists they might be landing manned missions on Mars as soon as in 2024. The aim is no longer to explore and understand but to build a landscape which is suitable for human life. The threat is no longer represented by hostile beings but by unknown microorganisms and food shortage. Terraforming is no longer perceived as the next step of evolution but it is a necessity for the preservation of the species. Our imagination has somehow been culturally prepared to leave the planet but while in the Fifties mankind was developing new cultural tools to understand a new landscape, we are now experiencing the result of cultural stasis. Mankind is not leaving the cradle but elaborating sophisticated ways to 1 escape its coffin. For all these reasons our image of the future is much less
1 The Earth is the cradle of the mind, but one cannot live forever in the cradle. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Russian scientist (1857-1935) considered one of the fathers of cosmonautics.
distant that it was seventy years ago and looks more like a perfected copy of home.
Once again Australia seems to fit the portrait of the future space colony. I can't recall any other example in the history of colonisation where colonisers put so much effort in completely ignoring what surrounded them and in rebuilding the exact copy of what they have left behind at the point to risk starvation. There have been improvements but not much has changed. Still remembered with the name of First Settlers , as they were supposed to arrange and give rules to an environment that did not answer the European standards, they brought with them seeds, plants and animals from all over the Empire. They were expecting not to find anything edible on the new continent. As soon as they arrived they started terraforming the land to match their cultural idea of it. They established gardens, planted crops and grazed the animals they brought from home. It was soon evident though that it would not work on the short term and they sent ships to India for supplies. Most of the crops gave no fruit and most of the animals died or went wild also due to a complete lack of knowledge and experience both in farming and agriculture within the First Fleet . Of the over thousand people leaving England to settle the new colony just one had a little experience in gardening. People almost starved waiting for the next fleet but they never considered exploring what edibles were naturally available there, excluding a few varieties of fish and mussels which looked and tasted familiar. They never considered native herbs and plants even if they curiously named some of them after known edible plants. Kangaroo meat which was largely available is noted as palatable but still a desperate solution. Speaking of desperate solutions, they would have rather dug out a dismissed use belonging to the darkest hours of the English past such as consuming the meat of stranded whales. Perseverance wins all, even intellect. They eventually managed to grow their crops and farm animals in abundance, enough not only to survive but to thrive. Nevertheless, the country still seems all but settled. They have never adapted to the environment, still struggling to bind the landscapes to definitions that they don't really fit in.
Food happens to be one if not the major filter through which any culture perceives and transforms the landscape it lives in. Food is not natural, it is a cultural construction which determines the way we perceive the world and we radically change it according to what our culture has selected as food.
What Australian grows makes Australia grow is the motto of proud Australian farmers adopted by the reborn nationalist party. But what Australia grows, defines how Australia grows. With less than 250 years of history, the Anglo-Celts Australian is the 2 youngest culture on Earth. Therefore from a cultural perspective, the continent is possibly the last open frontier. Beyond the obsession for lawns and rose gardens heavily irrigated to survive the heat and drought, lays a nation that has never adapted. They obviously could have never biologically adapted in such a short amount of time, yet they have never culturally adapted either. Acclimatisation Societies were established but in Australia words do not always mean what they commonly do. The idea was not to get people's body and mind used to the new climate as the word would suggest, but rather to force foreign species of plants and animals to grow in order to make the new land look and smell like home. It had worked before but they had never met an environment with such a different ecology. Australians define themselves as tough people and I challenge anyone not to be genuinely impressed by what they have achieved in one of the hardest environments in the world. Yet their idea of resilience can't be shared. They definitely show remarkable abilities to cope with the asperity of the climate but these are possibly made worst by their management of the country, which is the product of foreign culture to fit a different environment. They clearly did not adapt and their food could not either for the same biological and cultural reasons. Their taste did not adapt to the new landscape and the one they brought from home can't suit it.
They say once you grow crops somewhere, you have officially colonized it . This could definitely summarise the mindset of the First Settlers. The quotation though does not come from books such as Starting from Scratch: Australia's First Farm written in the early years of Australian colonisation and which would definitely fit the library for the first manned mission on Mars. Those are actually the words of Mark Watney, the first man to successfully grow potatoes on the red planet. He is, of course, a character of fiction; the protagonist of the novel The Martian, transposed into a fortuned film by Ridley Scott. The success of the movie after nearly twenty years of flops for sci-fi, signs both a renewed interest in the topic and, most remarkably, the definition of a new language. 'Martian' -as Alien- would once have identified an unknown creature, likely greenish, anthropomorphic and hostile. Now it is us, as just another nationality. A new great nation on a virgin land. The irrigation channels on the surface of the red planet were 2 As John Newton define the ethnicity of the First Settlers in his book The Oldest Food on Earth- A History of Australian Native Foods.
just optical illusions, we can still be the first to grow crops, the first Martians.

The same happened in Australia, and the mindset stays. The youngest culture on Earth clumsily steps over a land which has been inhabited and managed for at least 50.000 years, sharing it with the most ancient living culture on the planet. European-Australians had long denied this culture until the cohabitation became impossible. Then they tried to eradicate it and lately they have largely neglected and marginalised it. Considered nomadic savages, there was nothing worth to be understood about them and the settlers dealt with them as with pest animals to get rid of in the competition for resources. This perception was inherited by the descriptions provided by the first explorers. Charles Darwin himself did not grant them a portion of the shrewdness he gave to finches. The lack of evident signs of extensive mechanised agriculture or animal farming led to the definition of terra nullius , nobody's land. Unable and eventually unwilling to recognise a sophisticated management of the land which, in fact, did not match the European standards, the First Settlers claimed the right to rule on the continent. It was not a military occupation, rather an agricultural one. And it still is. The invasion has been relying little on weapons, much more on alien seeds and grazing animals. The food the Europeans brought along with them and the way it is grown has been dramatically changing the delicate ecosystem of the continent clashing irremediably with the local resources. The whole white Australian storytelling suggests they have engaged a holy war against the repulsive environment. On the other hand, native peoples -now gathered under the name of Aborigines- did not just survived it, they have been methodically shaping it in ways developed to fit it over several thousands of year. Plants and animals are not domesticated as we intend it because, as our culture have been proving for over two centuries, the land can't bear it. Nevertheless, they have an outstanding knowledge of the biorhythm of plants and animals, their impact on the soil and water resources. They use controlled fires to help some plants to reproduce and limit other ones while eventually reducing considerably the hazard of extensive bush fires which now devastate huge portions of the country every year. Fires were also used to confine animals in order to hunt them more easily. There is evidence of canals built not to irrigate crops but to regulate flood water in order to prevent it from eroding the thin layer of soil. All the efforts were aimed to reduce the stress and mitigate the effects of the weather on the land, which thing sounds like proper modern agri-culture, and quite cost-effective. Remarkably all of Country - how the Aboriginal call the incredibly complex bio-cultural landscape now known as Australia- is managed under a single
system of laws once shared by the over 500 groups. Thanks to the impressive understanding of their land Aboriginal people can traditionally rely on a diet way more various than the whitefella 's . 3 Most of its inhabitants now can recognise mainly two long seasons in Australia considerably cross-faded by the availability of food. Aboriginal people used to divide the year into more than a dozen seasons corresponding to a mind-blowing variety of different food at different stages. An early misconception and still lasting racism though has labelled them as hunters and gatherers relegating them on a lower step of the evolution ladder.
Aboriginal people do not own the land, they do not fence it and exploit it for profit. They do own the Dream of the landscape they live in, the Song , the Dance and the Storyline ; the system of cultural and practical means that allow them to understand and therefore take care of the land. In the peculiar cosmogony of Aboriginal people any feature of the landscapes, any animate and inanimate element is the legacy of an ancestral being's journey on this land in ancient times. Every single inch of Country, what lays on it or underneath the surface is sacred and therefore intimately known by all the members of a clan accordingly with their age. Songs telling the stories of the ancestral beings are shared among clans on special occasions in order to preserve them and spread the knowledge. With the knowledge, the care comes along. For this reason, I suspected possibly the most used word in Australia today has no translation in any Aboriginal language. There is no such concept as remoteness in the Aboriginal conception of their land. Some of the people I had the chance to talk to actually confirmed it, strengthening my idea that the remoteness of a place is related to the possibility to access the knowledge rather than the place itself. One can always recollect the knowledge from the Elders of that region they say, or “You can always find food, it is someone's Dream”. Everything is known in its intimacy, cared and preserved. Food is perceived as a link with the land, it has a strong spiritual dimension as well. Collecting food is an expression of it and allow the transmission of those cultural means of caring.
Despite largely ignoring the whole context, Europeans understood this peculiar relationship with food and tried to eradicate it. When violence proved to be useless if not counterproductive in the aim of subduing and 'civilising' Aboriginal people, they forcefully changed their diet in order to keep them away from their traditional resources. Welfarism nowadays is acting in the same way, forcing them in cities and providing them with money 3 The name Aboriginal people refer to European with. Generally in opposition to Blackfella , not necessarily dispregiative.
without the need to work. These policies have been causing massive social and health problems among Aboriginal people whose diet has been subverted together with the social and cultural fabric. At the same time, this keeps them conveniently away from the land; a land then needed to build the new white saga of self-inflicted martyrdom against ungenerous Nature.
Today the rhetoric seems still standing but the martyrs are getting rare to be found. Farmers ask governments to place more money to support them on the front of more and more frequent droughts and floods. They organise themselves in support cooperatives and blame climate change as if they had nothing to do with it. As if environmental degradation was not related to the way the nationalist idea of food independence has been pursuit inconsiderately, regardless of the costs. Eventually, they flee to the coast where the climate is more clement, leaving behind semi-desert towns and thriving coal mines. The government tries to send them back to the Outback; positions must be held, the frontier kept. No surprise Australia is possibly the only western country without its own space programme. A national space agency has just been founded last July and, as imaginable, it seems to be more focused on looking down to Earth than travelling the sidereal distances. Australians are probably more practical people, or they just have their own alien planet to deal with. An arcane one, still largely unintelligible by a culture that has been neglecting the basic keys for its interpretation. A planet far to be called home.
We will, eventually, expand the boundaries of our species. We will escape gravity challenging the sidereal vacuum to settle new, untouched landscapes. Technology makes it seem almost real; like it is happening already, as our mind was actually meant to be developing in this direction. What we cannot predict, apart from the effects on human biology, is how culture will adapt to the new context and how it will change the landscape. Australia has considerably built our imagination of space colonisation and has possibly given us a glance of what attitude we are approaching the terraforming of another planet with and how we are reshaping this into an alien one. Exactly as it happened in Australia the food we choose to take with us will determine our approach towards the new landscape and eventually it will define the type of society we would build. As it was for the First Settlers the new landscapes we face are thought to be a blank canvas. This might be in fact true this time, with no previous culture or native plants and animals. Nevertheless the selection of food and whether we consider it from a mere nutritional point of view or as a cultural factor; an element to synthesise home or a generative agent of cultures is crucial. In one scenario a version of the BBQ even worst than the Australian
one will come back from the outer space; in the other, we might really be able to design the next step of mankind on this planet or elsewhere, with a better understanding of whatever landscape it will be moving into.
We have a continent to learn. If we are to survive, let alone feel at home, we must begin to understand our country. If we succeed, one day, we might become Australian.

Bill Gammage The Biggest Estate on Earth
Man is an artefact designed for space travel. He is not designed to remain in his present biologic state any more than a tadpole is designed to remain a tadpole.

William S. Burroughs

Inspiring readings: -The Oldest Food on Earth- A History of Australian Native Food , John Newton. Sydney, 2016 -The Bush , Don Watson. Penguin Group (Australia), 2014.