Why do we keep going back to the bush?

Two in three Australians live in a capital city, yet the bush continues to fascinate us, as evidenced by three productions opening in Sydney this month.
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Image from Johnathon auf der Heide’s three screen panoramic film, Australian Gothic, via zillaandbrook.com.au

The Australian landscape is haunted by the violence of the frontier wars, bloodstained and unforgiving. But while the Gothic continues to be a dominant motif in Australian art, it was once rivalled by colonial myths in which the land was conquered and bent to the will of the invader.

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Richard Watts OAM is ArtsHub's National Performing Arts Editor; he also presents the weekly program SmartArts on Three Triple R FM. Richard is a life member of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival, a Melbourne Fringe Festival Living Legend, and was awarded the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Awards' Facilitator's Prize in 2020. In 2021 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Green Room Awards Association. Most recently, Richard received a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in June 2024. Follow him on Twitter: @richardthewatts