Eric Rolls and Environmentalism in Australia

The discourse of environmentalism now cuts across several disciplinary fields of studies. The scope of environmentalism has widened to such an extent that it is no longer a local or national phenomenon involving a particular group or community but a global and international issue ridden with crises that often touch upon common lives. In Australia the role of man in shaping the natural environment and vise-versa has been extremely important since the time of human settlement and more so after it was settled by the Europeans. Although it is customary to trace the origins of environmentalism to the rise of green movements in North America in the 1950s and 60s, in Australia too much has been written from the perspective of an environmentalist. Environment now comes up as a top priority issue in policy making and planning. Simultaneously, the cultural and literary output that deals with environment has also grown significantly. This paper will look into one of Australia’s most well-known writer in this evolving field of environmental discourses and try to analyze his contribution as an environmentalist. Eric Rolls (1923 – 2007) stands out as an important figure in the field of literary and environmental activism in Australia. His woks can be best appreciated from the perspective of a living and growing tradition of writing in Australia which overlaps the fields of literature, environmental history and cultural ecology. The issues of resource use and settlement are fundamental to the understanding of Australian nature writing and the importance of Eric Rolls in this context needs to be emphasized. Through his writings on the evolution and formation of Australian wildlife and vegetation after the settlement by the whites, he provided rich commentary on the early colonial attitudes to the continent. The history of environmentalism is a combination of individual and collective activism expressed through cultural, social and political movements. Eric Rolls was not part of any organized environmental campaign. But his writings give us an important insight into the intellectual aspect of environmentalism in Australia. By looking at a few of Rolls’s works this paper will look to understand the multidisciplinary discourse of environmentalism in Australia. It will also make a modest attempt to position Rolls in a dynamic and shifting scenario of environmental change and contextualize his views and observations.