Of Human Bondage: The Breaking in of Stockmen in Northern Australia

This article examines the cultural forms through which the young European-Australian stockmen who work on the cattle stations of north Queensland are socialised. Exploring their interactions with a social and physical landscape and their rites of passage, as manifested in everyday actions, performance and material culture, it reveals how — and why — they are given little choice in acquiring values which are intensely adversarial to the land and to the indigenous people of Australia. It also explores the relationship between the transmission of particular values to these young men and the wider political and hegemonic role of the pastoral sub-culture in defining Australian national identity.