An Explorer's Vision

Dr Kerry Heckenberg at the University's Antiquities Museum

The written and visual contents of the journals of the hardy souls who explored inland Australia in the 19th century were not solely for the purposes of scientific information, a University of Queensland researcher believes.

Dr Kerry Heckenberg has challenged traditional theories on the role of vision journals and shown Australia's 19th Century inland explorers also compiled their publications to entertain as well as to inform.

Dr Heckenberg was awarded her PhD in art history after examining the use of illustrations and attitudes to vision in the reports and journals.

"My approach provides an alternative to recent studies that concentrate on an ideological critique. I show that the desire for ?pleasurable instruction' was particularly important in the first half of the 19th Century," she said.

Dr Heckenberg's thesis begins by examining the work of John Oxley early in the 19th Century and finished with the publications of the 1894 Horn Scientific Expedition to Central Australia. Her thesis shows how the images contained within these texts were able to provide pleasure as well as information.

"The aim was to try to understand the factors that influenced the format and content of exploration journals, especially their illustrations," she said.

Dr Heckenberg, who holds degrees in both science and art history, said changing responses to the demand for information and pleasure in the text and images of inland explorers were influenced by technological developments such as new printing techniques, photography, increasing specialisation and professionalism in both science and art.

"There was a desire to provide greater interest for general readers, but this increasingly derived from their sensational aspects, particularly images of implied or actual conflict with the Indigenous inhabitants," she said.

Dr Heckenberg said the journals she examined were published partly as records of the findings of exploratory expeditions, partly in order to appeal to future colonists and partly as records of adventure.

She said they were popular with the 19th Century reading public. "My research sets the journals and their illustrations within networks of cultural practices that enabled the construction of meaning and knowledge about Australia," she said.

As well as being an active researcher, Dr Heckenberg has also lectured in art and architecture in courses offered by the UQ School of English, Media Studies and Art History.

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