Climate and Culture in Australia and New Zealand

• Main Author: Cranston, CA
• Other Authors: J, Parham, L, Westling
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Cambridge University Press 2017
• Subjects: climate change; Australia; New Zealand; history; Penal; First Nations
• Online Access: https://eprints.utas.edu.au/26065/; https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316212578.017

Like a template for a climate-changing world, Australia - the driestinhabited continent on Earth - exists in an imaginative and emotionallandscape shaped from extremities. Situated within the geopolitical regionof Australasia/Oceania, Australia's trans-Tasman relations withearthquake-prone Aotearoa (''land of the long white cloud'') began in1788 when New Zealand was included within the British colony of NewSouth Wales. New Zealand, however, was never a penal colony andseparation from its rough cousin came after Maori (consolidated under asingle language) signed the Treaty of Waitangi with the British Crown in1840 - itself a marker of difference between the First Nations of bothcountries. Australian Aborigines, scattered across the continent, eachnation speaking its own language - saw land rights withheld under theillegal fiction of terra nullius, ''nobody's land."