Using geographical and semiotic means to establish fixed points of a never-ending story: searching for parameters of authenticity in a case study of Australian history

ABSTRACT

Recent scholarship has suggested that history-linked and heritage-based tourism, and its engagement in the never-ending telling of stories, is becoming solidly entrenched as a contribution to the popularisation and consumption of the record of history. The essential challenge for tourism is to tell the story by using history-linked sites and objects as cultural ‘texts’ and as conduits between the past and the present – for providing the experience of ‘being there’ without ‘being there’. Using a story about an episode of Australian history as a case study, this paper experiments with perspectives from geography and semiotics to probe for certainty with fixed points in the story, points which are marked by tangible and visual characteristics and which are at least indicative of important elements which create the identity and significance of the storyscape. A story told through tourism will seldom be permanently fixed, and this circumstance has implications for some of the ideological interpretations of ‘authenticity’, and although the fundamental shape of the story might not be imperilled, the quality of the experience presented through tourism might be. Important implications of this challenge are addressed in this paper.

KEYWORDS:

• Heritage tourism
• storyscape
• epistemological pluralism
• significance
• Ned Kelly
• authenticity as a moving target

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Michael Fagence trained as a geographer. His principal interests include the application of mixed methods research to investigating and interpreting subjects in history-linked and heritage-based tourism.