on wilderness.

wilderness, as a type of natural landscape, is a highly contested term. it can be both ‘physical’ and about ‘individual cognitive’ perceptions. the ‘physical’ refers to a place where nature can work and evolve undisturbed by human activity, while ‘cognitive’ takes into account wilderness as a human concept, which is bound by history and assumptions. wilderness is within human culture and has many values: including aesthetic, spiritual, symbolic, personal. many people have thoughts of wild, unspoiled land, relatively absent from human influence. in a pristine state, wilderness refers to landscapes devoid of human intervention.

through history, there have been various perspectives on wilderness. prior to and during the 18th century, wilderness was the antithesis of ‘good’ and ‘tame’. it was unpopular and words such as ‘desolate’, ‘savage’, ‘deserted’ and ‘unpredictable’ were synonymous with the term. in its raw state, wilderness had little to offer the civilised man - it was a wasteland of time - and a place to be dreaded. by the 19th century, this idea had changed significantly and wilderness was described as beautiful, an eden. exponents of the romantic movement believed ‘untamed wilderness’ was aesthetically appealing. artists [such as john glover and houghton forrest] and authors [such as wordsworth and thoreau] commonly portrayed it as inspiring and positive.

historian and author richard flanagan notes that new settlers in tasmania cleared and reduced ‘wilderness’, thus forcing it to conform to the picturesque. in the 20th century, the definition bears similarities to the perceptions of the 19th century, alluding to a pleasant experience, rather than implying negative connotations. the modern definition of wilderness is a region of a wild or desolate character, where one might wander or lose one’s way. the latter definition firmly places humans in this highly contested natural landscape.

today, wilderness is perceived in many ways. wilderness is not something that can be defined scientifically or biologically. it has long been romanticised, portraying the belief of a sublime experience, a place in which to search for one’s self – an idea that can ultimately help the human psyche. simon schama suggests that wilderness is a cultural construct, writing, “of course the healing wilderness was as much the product of culture’s craving and culture’s framing as any other imagined garden”. wilderness neither locates nor names itself; rather, humans carry this act out. they try to tame, name and, in a sense, fence off areas that are considered significant, much as they would confine a garden.

wilderness can be likened to a garden of sorts. the australian concise oxford dictionary defines wilderness as “desert, uncultivated and uninhabited tract … part of a garden left wild”. there is an idea that regional architecture can be manifested as a ‘bounded domain’ – in a sense, a hortus conclusus, or enclosed garden. ‘wilderness’ might merely be a garden, or a container in which to nurture the human condition; an ‘ideal’ garden, so to speak. such landscapes are ’gardens’, as these natural environments are largely cultivated and managed by humans, as a large garden might be. such ‘gardens’ though, might be conditioned and managed purely for tourist interest, presenting predominantly false images to those who come to tasmania to see the ‘wilderness’ at the end of the earth.

ironically, in order for there to be ‘wilderness’, there must first be a human in a ‘non-wilderness’ environment defining what wilderness might indeed be and not be. further, by this argument, one must also have visited ‘wilderness’ to understand what is being defined. if the argument that “… before there were humans, the world was in a state of wilderness” is highlighted, the implication is that once humans have been in and altered ‘wilderness’, then it no longer exists, as it has for so long been conceptualised. rather, there is only natural landscape.