The conventional art history account is that John Olsen works within the modernist tradition. I would say that the aerial view, quizzical line, irregular squiggles and dots, and geological mappings presupposes, and expresses the effects of, modern aboriginal art:

John Olsen, Lake Eyre and Still Life, oil on linen.

There is no foreground/ middle ground/ background schema, nor any sign of the traditional European landscape's concern with "human scale."

Olsen himself puts this into question:

"Aboriginal Australians have been artistically interpreting the land for thousands of years of experiencing and looking and being involved, in a hunter-gather kind of way". But though non-indigenous Australians may admire Aboriginal art we can't really identify or understand it in the same way that we have a rapport with a Leonardo or a Rembrandt."

The Australian landscape tradtion is more than the European-Australian one of a Russell Drysdale, Sidney Nolan, Fred Williams and William Robinson. We would now include Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri and Emily Kame Kngwarreye, and Rover Thomas.

John Olsen, The Murray Running into Lake Alexandria, Oil/Canvas

Australia is a post colonial world and so is the Aboriginal understanding of the landscape.