Sunshine, "Sultanas and Lexias": Place-Making in Sunraysia

Abstract

Place-making is fundamental to the poetics of empire. A detailed exploration of the relationship between name and place in the region of Sunraysia in north-western Victoria and south-western NSW is revelatory of the “region” as a construct, and the role of place names in furthering the colonial enterprise. While regions can be said to coalesce around a unifying factor, whether or not a region endures can also be contingent on the poetic valency of the name used to describe it. Both the name of a region and the stories told about it help secure its place in the cultural imaginary. Although founded on a false premise—a hydrocolony formed around an impermanent waterway—the Sunraysia topos was sufficiently evocative to conjure up an entire reality. The name and its region prevail. Colonial places can “grow into” their skins. As Karen Barad has theorised, the material and the discursive can be consubstantiating; however, colonial insistence on the “blankness” of pre-settlement history combined with a failure to acknowledge settler violence, ultimately see these place-making narratives fail. The history of Sunraysia reminds us that names are the means by which coloniality is enacted, iterated and performed.