Beyond Blank Spaces: Five Tracks to Late Nineteenth-Century Beltana

Khatun, Samia

Abstract

From the 1860s, the colonial settlement of Beltana in the northern
deserts of South Australia emerged as a transportation hub atop an
existing, cosmopolitan center of Aboriginal trade. Viewing a colonial
settlement on Kuyani land through a mobilities paradigm, this article
examines intersecting settler and Aboriginal trajectories of movement
through Beltana, illuminating their complex entanglements. Challenging the imperial myth of emptiness that shaped how Europeans saw the
lands they invaded, this article renders visible the multiple imaginative geographies that existed at every colonial settlement. Examining
mobility along Kuyani and Wangkangurru tracks alongside British and
Australian mobilities, this article makes a methodological argument for
writing multiaxial histories of settler colonialism.

Citation

Khatun, S. (2015). Beyond Blank Spaces: Five Tracks to Late Nineteenth-Century Beltana. Transfers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies, 5(3), 68-86. https://doi.org/10.3167/TRANS.2015.050306

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Mar 3, 2015
• Publication Date: Dec 1, 2015
• Deposit Date: Oct 16, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 16, 2019
• Journal: Transfers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies
• Print ISSN: 2045-4813
• Electronic ISSN: 2045-4821
• Publisher: Berghahn Journals
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 5
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 68-86
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.3167/TRANS.2015.050306