1st Edition
Visitor Encounters with the Great Barrier Reef Aesthetics, Heritage, and the Senses
Visitor Encounters with the Great Barrier Reef explores how visitor encounters have shaped the history and heritage of the Reef. Moving beyond the visual aesthetic significance, the book highlights the importance of multi-sensuous experiences in understanding the region as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Drawing on archival and ethnographic research, the book describes how visitors have experienced the Great Barrier Reef through personal embodied encounters and the mechanisms they have used to understand, access and share these experiences with others. Illustrating how such experiences contribute to a knowledge of place, Pocock also explores the vital role of reproduction and photography in sharing experiences with those who have never been there. The second part of the book analyses visitor experiences and demonstrates how they underpin three key frames through which the Reef is understood and valued: the islands as paradise, the underwater coral gardens, and the singular Great Barrier Reef. Acknowledging that these constructs are increasingly removed from human experience, Pocock demonstrates that they are nevertheless integral to recognition of the region as a World Heritage Site.
Demonstrating how experiences of the Reef have changed over time, Visitor Encounters with the Great Barrier Reef should be of interest to academics and students working in the fields of heritage studies, history and tourism. It should also be of interest to heritage practitioners working around the globe.
Chapter 1
Introduction
World Heritage Values
New directions in heritage
The cultural bias and potential of aesthetic value
Aesthetics as Senses and Place
Visitor experience
References
PART I: VISITOR EXPERIENCES OF THE GREAT BARRIER REEF
Chapter 2
Orientation, wayfinding and cartographic knowledge of the Reef *
Disorientation and Danger
Controlling Danger: orientation and mapping
Science, tourism and navigation
Visitor Traditions of Orientation
In the Footsteps of the Navigators
Disorientation
Orientation: Continuity and Change
References *
Chapter 3
Visitors’ Sensuous Experiences at the Reef
Seeing the Reef
Feeling the Reef
Fossicking
Heat
Sea Water
Insects
Reef Sounds
Sighing She-Oaks
Birds
Whistling Sand
Smelling the Reef
Tasting the Reef
Turtle
Tropical flavours
Merging Senses and Movement
References
Chapter 4
Sharing Experience of the Reef with the World
Contact and Copy
The Means of Capture
Verbal and Written Description
Collections
Images
Transmission of Experience
The Panoramic View
The Underwater World
Representing a Multi-Sensuous Reef
References
PART II – CULTURAL CONSTRUCTIONS OF THE GREAT BARRIER REEF
Chapter 5
Reef Islands as Signifiers of Paradise
Australian Landscapes of the Great Barrier Reef
Australian Bush as the Everyday
In Pursuit of Paradise
The Coconut Palm as Signifier of Paradise Found
The Coconut Palm and Local Knowledge
A Tourist Gaze for Australian Visitors
References
Chapter 6
Controlling the Underwater Reef through Cultivation of Coral Gardens
Cartographic Mimesis: Control Over the Other
Out of Control: A Return to Otherness
Seeking Similitude: Coral Gardens
Aquariums as controlled gardens
Immersion and loss of control
Coral gardens as imagery
References
Chapter 7
The Great Barrier Reef as Hyperreality and World Heritage
The Simulacra of a Single Natural Reef
Hyper-Reality at ReefWorld
Loss of Place
Conservation of the Great Barrier Reef
World Heritage Listing
Postscript
References
Index
Biography
Celmara Pocock is Director of the Centre for Heritage and Culture and Associate Professor in Anthropology and Australian Indigenous Studies at the University of Southern Queensland. Her research interests encompass human relationships with the environment, including senses of place; social value and community heritage; and the intersections between heritage and tourism.
