＂The Most Formidable Teeth＂: Gardening, Collecting, and Violence in Nineteenth Century South-West Western Australia

“最銳利的釘耙”：十九世紀西南西澳的園藝，收集及暴力

Jessica White

《Tamkang Review》 51卷1期 (2020/12) Pp. 85-108

https://doi.org/10.6184/TKR.202012_51(1).0004

摘要

＂I wou'd be particularly oblig'd by you procuring me a Garden Rake, fit for a Lady's use, as I am oblig'd to borrow one of Captn Molloy's with the most formidable teeth, spreading destruction and next to annihilation wherever it is applied＂ wrote Georgiana Molloy, who emigrated to Augusta in south-west Western Australia with her husband in 1830. Her correspondent was Captain James Mangles, a botanical connoisseur living in London who had connections to British horticulturalists. He requested that Molloy collect Australian seeds and specimens for him, and in return he sent her gifts of silk, seeds, and gardening implements. Gardening and collecting were thought to be polite activities for ladies, but for Molloy they became essential to her wellbeing. She established a garden because she loved flowers and needed to keep her family from starvation, while collecting for Mangles was initially a respite from her grief following the death of her son, as well as an intellectual boon for an intelligent woman in an isolated location. Yet through these activities Molloy contributed to what scholar Kate Wright describes as a ＂crime scene＂ in which ＂almost all places [in Australia] are stained with social and ecological violence and trauma＂ (2018). This essay attends to these relationships in south-west Western Australia and demonstrates how, using the metaphor of Molloy's 'Garden Rake,' the small scale of her gardening was replicated in the unsustainable transformation of the Australian environment through European agricultural practices, as well as the violence, both ecological and human, which accompanied these practices. The chapter closes with a discussion of gardening practiced by Aboriginal Australians, described by Bruce Pascoe in Dark Emu (2014), and continued today through businesses owned by Aboriginal people that promote Indigenous horticulture. It maintains that against the backdrop of the bushfires of 2019 and 2020, attention to Indigenous land management, knowledge and sovereignty is critical for the survival of Australia's ecosystems and the humans and other-than-humans which these support.

關鍵字

Georgiana Molloy ； Indigenous ecology ； Noongar ； nineteenth century ； botany ； gardening ； ecology ； violence

並列摘要

「我會特別感謝您幫我購得一把淑女專用的花園鐵耙，正如我感激我先生借我一把最銳利的釘耙，進行摧毀及滅絕」，在1830年與先生莫樂利上尉一起移民至西南西澳小鎮奧古斯大的喬治亞娜．莫樂利如此寫道。她與居住倫敦的植物鑑賞家詹姆士．孟葛爾士互相通信。詹氏與英國園藝界關係密切。他要求莫樂利女士幫他收集澳洲植物種子標本，而以饋贈絲綢，種子，花園工具等禮物回報。園藝及收集被視為淑女的風雅活動，但對於莫氏的幸福更形重要。她建立花園，由於熱愛花卉，並有時令家人免於飢餓。尤其在兒子過逝之後的傷痛，藉由園藝可暫時遺忘。並且居住於淒涼荒野，研究花草植物，對於一位才女，可以滿足知識的渴求。然而莫氏的記載卻提供了學者凱特．賴特所謂的「犯罪現場」的記錄。描繪了「澳洲大陸血腥的社會及生態的暴力及創傷」（2018）。本文主要探討西方移民對西南西澳地區農業的創傷，藉由莫氏「花園鐵耙」的隱喻擴大至歐式農業的方式及暴力對澳洲生態人文的傷害。文末將提及2014年布魯斯．帕斯科出版的「黑暗鴯鶓」討論的原住民農業方式，在2019年至2020年澳洲森林大火的災難下，本文主張必須關注原住民對土地的利用及生態體系的維護對澳洲人文生態的永續生存是至關重要的。

並列關鍵字

喬治亞娜．莫樂利 ； 原住民生態 ； 十九世紀 ； 植物 ； 園藝 ； 生態 ； 暴力 ； 澳大利亞原住民族

參考文獻

Ward, M., Tulloch, A. I. T., Radford, J. Q., et al. “Impact of 2019-2020 Mega-fires on Australian Fauna Habitat.” Nature Ecology & Evolution (2020). doi.org/10.1038/s41559-020-1251-1

Wright, Kate. “In the Shadow of a Willow Tree: A Community Garden Experiment in Decolonising, Multispecies Research.” Cultural Studies Review, Vol. 24, No. 1, 2018, pp. 74-101. doi.org/10.5130/csr.v24i1.4700

Abbott, Ian. Aboriginal Names for Plant Species in South-Western Australia, Forest Department of Western Australia Technical Paper No. 5, 1983.

Allam, Lorena and Isabella Moore. “‘Time to Embrace History of Country’: Bruce Pascoe and the First Dancing Grass Harvest in 200 Years.” The Guardian, 13 May 2020, www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/may/13/its-time-to-embrace-the-history-of-the-country-first-harvest-of-dancing-grass-in-200-years. Accessed 23 July 2020

Barry, Bernice. Georgiana Molloy: The Mind that Shines. Picador, 2016.