The curious case of the disappearing gold mining town: the cultural landscape of the Clohesy River Gold Field, North Queensland

Abstract

[Extract] Locating a definition of 'cultural landscape' is not difficult. The notion is, however, like sand blowing in the wind. It swirls seemingly without direction of purpose. This is because it is a concept of importance to many disciplines ranging from the sciences through to the humanities. Accordingly, it can be defined as the material manifestation of the relation between humans and the environment where the cultural landscape manifests the contradictory resolution between human acts and acts of nature. It is not a static concept; movement of people, information or crops across the landscape is inherent in this dynamic process of change. A cultural landscape can be viewed thematically in an effort to understand its complexities - as nature, as wealth, as an artifact, as a habitat, as an ideology, as history or as heritage. In this context it is possible to see quite clearly how people allocate value and meaning to a landscape and equally how 'contested meanings' arise. When a 'place' loses its meaning and value and is not recreated, is 'forgotten', when it 'disappears', one has to consider what happened to it. Conventional analysis does not allow us to do this.