1. Strangers from the Sea: The Invasion of the Peninsula -- 2. Voyages of Discovery: The Colonisation of the Peninsula -- 3. A Present from the Past -- 4. Living on the Land: Aboriginal Culture, Economics and Land Use -- 5. Living off the Land: Taking Stock of the Cattle Industry -- 6. Social Space and Social Place: Socio-Spatial Organisation on the Land -- 7. Learning Values: Education in the Gulf Country -- 8. In the Eye of the Beholder: Readings of the Country --9. Mapping the Country: Representations of the Landscape -- 10. Antipodean Worlds: Cosmology, Law and Environmental Values
Summary
Examination of the cultural construction of relationships to land in Aboriginal and pastoral communities of western Cape York; contact history- explorers, mining, cattle industry, missions, station life; contemporary social relations in Cape York - effects of colonisation and perceptions of history; pre-contact and contemporary Aboriginal land use - inter-relation of traditional and contemporary economies, land management; relationship to land; the cattle industry - structure and management of cattle stations; concept of nature in the pastoral cultural; organisation of social space in Aboriginal community (Kowanyama) and cattle stations - construction of identity; phenomenological basis of sociality and the symbolic value of objects and land; differential uses of technology - types of education and knowledge valued; modes of reading the landscape - Aboriginal and pastoralist mapping ; cosmology - stories and mythology related to land (Emu and Brolga story); spirituality and ritual; influence of Christian and scientific world-views
