‘A walk among the gum trees’: bushwalking, place and self-narrative

Amidst the “alienation and insecurity of the modern, mobile world” (Barry 1999: 98), bushwalking – that Australian take on walking in nature – performs an important function in the establishment of self-identity. There is an understanding that self-identity has important links to sense of place and the environment, and Giddens (1991) suggests that the stability of ‘self-narrative’ is sought in light of a contemporary landscape of insecurity, and changed relationships between humans and the ‘natural’ world. How, then, might a situated activity such as bushwalking function as a means of establishing self-narrative? Drawing on the experiences of a group of Tasmanian bushwalkers, this paper argues that bushwalking has significant implications for the sense of belonging, continuity, and security by informing a stable self-narrative.