Austbiblica

The book of Joshua and The Timeless Land are both about the failure of the ideology of conquest. In both texts leading characters are portrayed as the agents of conquest. Joshua acts under the command of Yhwh, and Phillip acts according to his orders from the King George III.

In both cases what they are instructed to carry out does not happen. At the end of the book of Joshua, the land of Canaan is still not yet conquered and its inhabitants all wiped out. At the end of The Timeless Land, Phillip reflects on his failure to create another England in the settlement at Botany Bay/Port Jackson.

Both books reflect on the illusion of a total conquest, but in very different ways. In The Timeless Land it is achieved by recounting Phillip’s reflections on the foolishness of the flag-raising ceremony and his concern to impose strict law and order.

In the book of Joshua it is achieved principally not by character construction, but by the presence of contradictory points of view in the text. While 13:1—21:42 reflect the view that the conquest is not complete, the placement of a text such as 21:43-45 has another viewpoint which refers back to the ideology set out at the beginning of the book. However the viewpoint of 21:43-45 is quickly undermined in what follows. Chap. 23 presents the conquest as incomplete, while chap. 24 presents a version of the conquest at odds with what has been previously narrated.

Both The Timeless Land and the book of Joshua confront us with one of the allusions about our history in this land, the ideology of conquest. It is a part of our cultural heritage. The ideology of conquest has been central to our European self-understanding, and is also part of the biblical tradition. One idea that underpinned our coming to and settling in this land was the ideology of conquest. Although focussed on the settlement at Sydney in its first years, The Timeless Land represents an experience not confined to that particular time and place.

If we are to reimagine our relationship with the land, we have to let go of the ideology and the illusion of conquest. In many ways our attitude is like that of Phillip in The Timeless Land. He sees the land as alien and untrustworthy, an attitude that stands in clear contrast to that of the aboriginal peoples who knew the land intimately and were nourished by it. Our failure to conquer and dominate offers us a wonderful opportunity. In letting go of the desire to dominate and control the land,
we can start to imagine new possibilities of how we relate to this land.

Blueprint for a Living Continent: A Way Forward from the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, 2001.
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Gaile McGregor, EcCentric Visions: Re Constructing Australia (Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1994)