J. M. Arthur. The Default Country. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2003. [Book review]

The lucid and provocative argument underlying J. M. Arthur’s "word map" can be summarised in a few sentences. Her claim is that the English language carries within it the image and idea of a particular kind of environment and landscape. That vision was transported to Australia with the language and acts as a screen between the colonists" eyes and the country they view. What the non-indigenous Australian sees, or rather, projects across the actual landscape when they write or speak about it in English, is the country that they althought or hoped would be there: almost anything but the country that is. In fact, to represent Arthur’s argument accurately, it is not simply the colonist’s "hope" or "dream" of a particular kind of country that is disappointed, but a hope carried within the language itself. Risking a form of pathetic fallacy, Arthur writes: “the language sees double; two landscapes, one present and one ‘remembered.’ The double vision results in expectation and disappointment. The words look for what is not there, for the other country that didn’t happen. Charles Sturt is not the only person who has, in belief and expectation if not in physical reality, towed a boat through the Australian landscape” (24).