Can white people journey into Country?

Hilary Burden knew that she was stepping into deeply political territory as she mulled whether it was possible for non-Indigenous Australians to feel a deep spiritual connection to land.

Hilary Burden taking in the native grass plains of Surrey Hills, Tasmania.

This is not a trick question. It is, however, a tricky one, so let’s try to frame it correctly, before we plunge in. You are an Australian, either by birth or residency. Your ancestors came to this country from elsewhere, which is to say: you have no Aboriginal blood.

You nonetheless feel that you belong in Australia, and there are times when the connection between you and the soil seems not merely physical but deeply spiritual. But are you entitled to describe those feelings as a journey “into Country” with a capital C? Or is that something only Indigenous Australians can say, and feel?

Undersong: A Tasmanian Journey Into Country by Hilary Burden

Tasmanian writer Hilary Burden knew that she was stepping into deeply political territory when she began writing a book that explores whether it is possible for non-Indigenous Australians to feel a deep spiritual connection to land. The first word of her book’s title, Undersong, refers to the “underlying sounds” of the landscape, and the comforting sense of belonging we might feel when immersed in nature. It’s a beautiful work, yet her manuscript, written over a decade, was rejected by many mainstream publishers, “for the fear of it being labelled cultural appropriation.”

Burden, 62, is not Indigenous. She was born in the English city of Bristol in 1961. Her father, a local GP, moved the family to Australia when Hilary was just six years old. She was raised in northeast Tasmania, but moved when she was in her 20s, spending two decades working in media and magazines in Sydney and London.

Hilary Burden gets close to nature in Tasmania

She returned to Tasmania two decades ago to live closer to nature. She has worked as a nature guide, Country Hour reporter, wedge-tailed eagle watcher, and veggie box providore.

When she started her journey into Country, she says, “I wasn’t sure what it was.” In walking ancient lands in England, Scotland and Wales, she had “felt the spirits of the people who passed before. But in Australia, ways of knowing are different. Non-Indigenous people are rightly reminded that Aboriginal culture is not their territory.”

Yet she felt a deep connection to the land in Tasmania, and “wanted to acknowledge Country in a way that was authentic to my experience of place,” she says. Like the feeling you have looking at the beautiful native grasslands in northwest Tasmania, realising how little they’ve changed since Aboriginal people walked across them, or acknowledging the spirits that seem to live in the old cider gum trees with their bark scarred by centuries-old Aboriginal tapping.

Burden sought the advice of local elders in Tasmania, including one of her mentors, Aunty Patsy Cameron, who agreed after reading Burden’s book to provide a foreword. “For me, it is deeply concerning that non-Aboriginal people feel a sense of apprehension about what home means to them, and their place in it,” Cameron wrote. “It is entirely understandable to me that some non-Aboriginal Tasmanians have a deep desire to experience a close relationship to this land. After all, it is their home, too.”

Rayne Allinson, assistant publisher at Forty South Publishers, which ultimately accepted the book, says: “The key question Hilary raises in her book is not only what it means to feel at home in a place, but specifically what it means to feel at home in a colonised place.

“I found that one of the most powerful threads in her book was: how to reconcile that deep sense of belonging to a landscape, while also acknowledging the dark and violent history that defines it.

“It is a deeply contested issue, this idea of who gets to call Tasmania home, but I did like Hilary’s idea that if we connected with it, we might treat it better.

“The language – being on Country – is deeply associated with Aboriginal culture and tradition but, at the same time, there are a lot of people who have moved to Tasmania who have very similar reactions ... a sense of belonging and connection, that goes beyond passports and birth certificates.

“I moved here in 2019, and I felt the same reaction, even before the plane touched down. I had been teaching in the States for 15 years, but as soon as I got here, I really did feel a sense of home, and I have had conversations with many people who feel the same.”

Burden’s book is, she says, “an act of quiet, gentle rebellion in the face of the unconscious hand-wringing that inhibits non-Indigenous Australians from exploring their own journey toward connection.”

And while it took a long time to find a publisher, “I am grateful to the many publishers who rejected” the book because they forced her to “take time to learn what is meant by Country.”

Aunty Patsy invited Burden to “listen to the voices of my ancestors”, and a relationship evolved through walking on Country together.

As part of her research, Burden also returns to the Pebbly Beach of her childhood, remembering the dreams that took her away from Tasmania, and memories that have seeped into her veins, like blood.

When her twin brother visits her from London, where he’s a director in a firm of engineers, they visit ancient rock caves they knew as children, and “reconnect in silence … words are impossible when you feel a deep connection to the landscape.”

Yet, when she first tried to write about how she felt, words didn’t “fall onto the page like I want them to. Being white, and English-born, publishers challenged my right to write about the call of Country. I struggled and questioned it, too. The last thing I wanted was to be colonial all over again.”

She tells The Australian that she had absorbed the message that “as a white woman, it was not my place to write about these things … but I respect all the publishers who rejected me, because in a way it helped me write the book.

“Their resistance helped me get through the writing. We hear more and more in recent years the acknowledgement of Country, and the Welcome to Country – we hear it on aeroplanes now – but does everybody understand what that means? I wanted to explore what that meant.”

She defines Country as more than land, saying it is more like “a thread, a tapestry, a sense of where you belong”.

“We all feel wild somewhere,” she says.

For Burden, “country became a capital C for me, not a small c, when I learned to listen to it. And I wasn’t prepared just to say, oh, it’s the bush, or the scrub. This was the way of describing the spiritual sense that we have, about the people who were living here before.

“Many books have been written about the conflict with Aboriginal people, about the horror and devastation of colonialisation, but we also have much to learn from the First Peoples’ sense of Country, and how they belong. Because once you belong to a place you’re going to care for it. It’s not necessarily about birth. It’s about a feeling: this is my home. I belong.”

She says readers, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, have told her that they feel “a connection” and “a sense of relief”, when they have read the book. One emailed, “Your writing has brought back memories of the rainforest tracks, the leaf mould, the distinctive aroma of rivers and creeks of the North West Coast where I grew up. I now understand what “country” means. I was schooled on the North West Coast and I don’t think I ever met a Tasmanian Indigenous person, and very little was learned at school about our history.”

Burden told The Australian: “It’s a deep sense of connection to the land, where you can relax, and be in your skin. I know the space is delicate, and fraught. But that shouldn’t mean that these ideas can’t be explored respectfully on a personal level.”

To illustrate her point, she tells a story about wandering into the bush, and finding an old stairway down to the pool where she learnt to swim, down to the place she dreamt her childhood dreams, before launching herself into the world.

“The feeling of the land talking to you, it was there,” she says. “It’s like bringing you back to your skin.

“The land knows who you were when you were growing up, before the world took hold of you. And to experience that connection again was wonderful.”

Undersong: A Tasmanian Journey Into Country by Hilary Burden (Forty South Publishing) is out now. Details can be found online.