Mr. Scobie’s relationship with the landscape is emphasised by his placement in St. Christopher and St. Jude. The life-giving source of the landscape is in sharp contrast with the nursing home. The way Jolley describes the activities and the people in the nursing home captures the clincally monotnous and some what groyesque and dusturbing enviroment that it is.
The most specific and evident contrast between the connection that Mr. Scobie has with the landscape and the nursing home is the shift of register from one scene to the next. During the first part of the novel we are bombarded with the incoherent and disturbing details of the events of the day at the nursing home. They also appear to show a detachment to the lives of the patients and do not seem to be caring for the patients, but rather seem to be dehumanising. The shift of register seems to go from one of social realism to a surreal quality.
Mr. Scobie’s religious temperment is a major player in his ability to connect with the connect with the enviroment. His religious quotes tends to enlighten the landscape that he is experiencing. It is his religious background and upbringing which enable him to see so much as a gift. Mr. Scobie’s religious readings serve as a framework for his experiences. This idea is central to the mysterious small hill behind Mr. Scobie’s house. The description of that small “accessible yet inaccessible hill” has a literal and symbolic meaning. Jolley describes the hill as “untrodden”, making this implicit connection of the hill to Wordsworth, and then making a connection with Wordsworth to Isiah gives this landscape a biblical and spiritual essence. It seems to be a place of solitude, somewhere where Mr. Scobie can make his connection with the noursihing landscape and perhaps God.
Similarly, in “Remebering Babylon”, Gemmy Fairley is the key chracter that embodies the myth that the landscape can provide them with something extrodinary against the conventions of society. The most predominant evidence of this is that Gemmy Fairley, who has come in contact with the Aborigines, is the protagonist of the novel. Gemmy is a character with a special gift, a gift that he has learnt from the natives of Australia. Gemmy’s gift is not only the ability to connect with the landscape, but he also has the ability to change the way others view the world.
Jok McIvor was a man that was hesistant to accept and enjoy the Australian landscape. Although he was always different from the community, there was a “difference [that] must have always existed, since he too was as he had always been”, he just hid it from the community, afraid of standing alone. He begins having his own thoughts, and in the process begins experience the world differently. The importance of his realisation is foregrounded by a single senetenced paragraph. Jok begins to have a child-like appreciation of the landscape, and it is his encounter with the bird that ignites this freedom from the group to appreciate the landscape, just as Gemmy would.
Jant shares a special relatinship with Gemmy and seems to be the person that truly appreciates and understands this connection with the landscape. Janet seems to view the world intimately, and has this sensitive awareness of the existence of things outside herself. She seems to landscape in sequences, appreciating the scenes she comes across. The part where she peels the scab off her knee seems to open up the gateway to Gemmy’s world. Malouf uses un-commonly long sentences, and seperates on scene from another, indicating that Janet’s experience is slow, appreciative and almost spiritual.
Mr. Frazer is on of the most important people infleunced by Gemmy. Mr. Frazer has a scientific understanding of the landscape, and his new experiences opened up by Gemmy is contrasted against this. It indicates the opening of a new way to the understanding of Australia. After penning the facts of his discoveries of the landscape with Germany he “adopts quite a different mode when…he takes out his writing-up book and lets himself loose in the realm of speculation.” It is here thet Mr. Frazer becomes poetic, it seems to be a form of realse for his thoughts and feelings. It is here that he pens down the real and “spirit” of what he has discovered on one of his expeditions with Gemmy. It is here that Mr. Frazer discovers that Gemmy, and ultimately the Aborigines relationship with the Australian landscape is life-giving and nourishing, quite unlike the old Eurpean view. He discovers that Gemmys relatinship with the landscape is a “forerunner” to the way that the Australian landscape should be appreciated, rather than destroyed by the way that the old soceity thinks Australia should be. “The mountain has its own meaning…” so let the enviroemnt teach us, rather than trying to control the landscape.
The myths that are central to both these novels is that the landscape can provide people with an antidote against the conventions and evils of society. Both the main chracters of these novels epitomize these myths. Mr. Scobie with his religious temperment is capable of viewing the landscape as agift, and is able to receive it as a life-giving force. Gemmy Fairley, after living with the Aborigines of Australia has the gift of being able to appreciate and understand the relationship man can have with the landscape. Not only is this gift evident in Gemmy, but also in those particular people, Jok, Janet and Mr. Frazer, that Gemmy shares a special relationship with.
