| Summary: | This paper asks the question ‘can the land have a voice?’ in land stories and examines the relationship between subaltern theory and landscapes. It investigates how we make space for the voice of the land through various written genres. It draws upon the regional setting of the Sunshine Coast, using journals, local histories, nature writings, and land stories. These include Petrie’s 'Reminiscences' and the exploration journals of Green; nature writings such as Nancy Cato’s 'The Noosa Story' and the work of botanical painters; local histories; and Indigenous tales. How is land’s voice heard – who speaks for and from the land, how do they speak, and who listens? Can the inanimate have a voice? Can the subaltern apply to the land itself? Who or what remembers the foot of the conquistador: the expert history or the amateur memories of the coloniser, the stories and art arising from the responses of those displaced, restructured post-colonial mythologies, or the land itself? The way we define edge voices determines how they might be heard. The subaltern is reflected, defined, denied, and created in written land stories. We are all colonisers of land, transforming it to differing cultured scapes.
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