TOU102 Introduction to Travel and Tourism (external)

Notes and photos to accompany a lecture by
Lesley Willcoxson 1998
Prepared by Jim Macbeth

It is hard to think about studying tourism without maps and photos. Interestingly, many travel books have neither. Likewise, many of our lectures have neither. This one was different. The purpose of this webpage is to house the photos that were included with a lecture given by Dr. Lesley Willcoxson, then of Murdoch University. The taped version of the full lecture is available to students enrolled externally in this unit. The aim of the lecture is not just to illustrate a type of travel and tourism but mainly to show students why they should carefully evaluate what they read. This lecture gives a number of clues that will help you think about the 'authenticity' of the travel story genre.

The lecture is about travel writing and publishing. But, it is also about a fascinating journey through the Australian 'desert' in summer in a small 4-wheel drive. The published article with accompanying illustrations can be found in the Unit Reader entitled "WISH YOU WERE HERE …" available to students at the Murdoch Bookshop. The photos in this webpage are illustrations to the lecture that are not found in the Reader.

Lesley Willcoxson undertook a 10 000km journey through outback Western Australia and parts of the Northern Territory during December 1996. The newspaper article chronicles some aspects of the trip. The lecture is primarily about how Lesley's original text changed because of her own editing and through the action of the newspaper sub-editor.

The first effect of the sub-editor's efforts was to include a map and title that misled the true nature of the journey. To quote Lesley Willcoxson:

The journey I took was from Perth up to Meekatharra and Wiluna, across on the Gunbarrel Highway to Alice Springs, along the Tanami Desert Road to Kununurra, down the Gibb River Road to Derby, with a little detour into Windjana Gorge, a larger detour than I imagined, and then back down the coast to Perth via Cape Range National Park - that is 10,000 kms.

The journey was undertaken to see the State to which Dr Willcoxson had recently moved and which fascinated her. She likes travelling and camping. Writing about the journey gave her a chance to reflect on her trip and to share it with friends by letter. [There is a good message in here for students keeping a journal for their own assignment work.]

Lesley Willcoxson sent the manuscript to the newspaper because of encouragement from friends and because she wanted to set the record straight; that is, she wanted to show that it is not only men in fully equipped large "macho" type 4 wheel drives can do this sort of thing. The Australian accepted the story subject to severe editing.

By the time I had edited it from 9,000 to 1,800 words I felt as though I had disappeared from the story. What I also did was I took most of the other people out of the story.

Once the text had been accepted other changes occurred that were beyond the author's control. In particular the file photos used were completely inappropriate. As you can see in the Reader, the map is wrong, the picture features a man and the vehicle is large and imposing and a camp fire is shown during the dry season (that is, the actual journey was done during the summer so it was 'dry' in the southern portion).

[W]hen the article came out, this is what was there. A wonderful photo of a man in his digger hat, next to his big macho 4 Wheel Drive with all the CB radios and everything - you know. I will show you the car I actually went in. So, he's got a Landcruiser or Pajero or one of those sorts of vehicles. The car I actually went in, a little Suzuki Sierra, bears absolutely no relationship to this thing in the article.

Lesley Willcoxson then uses the lecture to give students insight into the problems of fact and fiction; where does autobiography merge with fiction? How we write about things changes the way readers experience our journey.

The lecturer also points out that you can also see in the Reader how the experience of a thunder storm is dramatised and fictionalised in the writing; more accurately, how it gets an imaginative overlay.

There were, according to Lesley, two other forms of 'fictionalising'. First, she censored an interaction with a stranded motorist to 'clean-up' his language. Second, she had to make editorial choices to get down to 1800 words.

And, there were editorial choices, my editorial choices to compress experience. So, the Cape Range experiences became a one paragraph experience at the very end of the story. Whereas in fact it spanned over numerous pages, well numerous paragraphs in my original story.

Students of travel and tourism, especially those using travel writing as 'data' and for academic purposes should heed the warnings embedded in this bit of travel and travel writing.

What I hope I have done is given you the impression that the story written was not the story published. In fact, look very carefully at those things that happen when you are actually reading travel fiction [sic], because much of this was out my hands and that which was in my hands influenced what you read anyway. I made choices that affected what you saw.

Reader beware!

The slide show that follows is included to give some idea of the places and events that Lesley Willcoxson chronicles in her lecture.

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