The Fascination with Australian Ruins: Some Other Meanings of 'Lost Places' (Simmonston‪)‬

In the nineteenth century, European colonists looked to the Australian landscape and lamented its lack of 'ruins'. In the last hundred years, however, nation-builders have been very good at unwittingly creating a contemporary rural scene in which the remnants of buildings and towns are a recurring feature. This paper discusses some of the thoughts and observations that led me to want to write a PhD in History on Australian ruins. It flags the notion that postcolonial ruins--or 'ghost towns' as I specifically study--have a particular kind of resonance, based upon an ambivalent mixture of anxious shame at the failure of settlements to take root and flourish and anxious pride at the rapid creation of an 'historic landscape' which relies neither on Europe nor on Indigenous associations with place. I've spent the last three years thinking about piles of stones. I'm not a geologist, I'm a student of history, and the stones I've been thinking about are the remnants of buildings and towns. There's a rich literature on the nature of human fascinations with ruins. (1) It takes us to predictable places, to the oldest, grandest in situ remains of ancient empires, whose stones inevitably spring to mind at the call of the term 'ruins' and have inspired generations of poetic, artistic and philosophical musings on the patient interplay between 'Man,' 'Nature' and 'Time'. (2) My research is at first an unlikely extension of these discussions, for I will not take you to Greece. I might, however, take you to goldfields, silver and copper fields, to abandoned railways sidings, bullocky trading routes and to agricultural regions established too far into the desert. My thesis is about Australian ruins.