Abstract
David Carter asserts that "non-indigenous Australians have invested enormously in the 'cultural production' of land and landscapes, for these were ways of claiming possession, of telling stories about nation, race, settlement, tradition, and the right to belong" (2006: 156). The bush-realist writers of the 1890s claimed possession of Australia, promoting its cultural independence based on a distinctive environment and the vernacular in support political independence. Yet the Indigenous inhabitants were notably absent. Since the second half of the 20th century, Indigenous writers could finally lay similar claims and redefine their place within the national mythology. Melissa Lucashenko's Mullumbimby (2013) is an example of such a redefinition.
Mullumbimby is about Jo, a divorced Bundjalung woman who purchases a piece of ancestral land while she struggles with her sense of belonging. This paper examines how Lucashenko "claims possession" of Jo's ancestral land through the use of language. The novel reveals there is a deep spiritual connection between the land - the bush - and the Indigenous language, with words from the domains of nature and belonging used almost exclusively in Bundjalung. Once Jo becomes attuned to the language of the bush, she can communicate with it and learn more about her culture. The bush, conceptualised in the 1890s as the national space of white Australians, is thus claimed back as an Indigenous space full of history. It becomes one of the characters in Mullumbimby, which exhibits agency and the ability to communicate, thus helping Jo find her sense of belonging in a multicultural Australia that belongs to both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.