The Bush
I want to tell you this week about a book titled The Bush by Don Watson.
The Bush by Don Watson is a chunky, scholarly, but entertaining book about the large bit of our continent that is not the outback desert, and not the coast where the vast majority of us live, but the inner ring between the two. That place that remains a holiday visit for most of us, that place we call The Bush.
Don Watson was Paul Keating’s speech writer. He is a journalist and a chronicler of Australia, USA and the English language. He has published six other books and as you can imagine he writes an excellent read.
The Bush approaches its popular subject in a different way. It is partly a journey through country, a history of the settlement of Australia, a searing expose of the obscene amount of damage we have done to this unique continent and of course an investigation into what makes us Australian.
It is a fascinating and at times conflicting book. The incredible sacrifices and effort made by the colonists and the later settlers conflicting with the mind-boggling harm to the environment, the greed, stupidity, rapacity and waste, and the murderous campaigns against the aboriginal inhabitants.
But it is also funny, informative, affectionate and thankfully not too full of the bullshit we like to feed ourselves about the true-blue Aussie character. As well as acknowledging the hurt to the indigenous people and their land caused by the development of Australia, the book describes the incredible bravery and work ethic that the settlers and squatters showed as they cleared the land, built houses and a living with their bare hands. It is also better than most in acknowledging the role of women in helping build a new life in a wild foreign land.
Swaggies, floods and droughts, mice, rabbits, sheep, cattle and snakes are all here in the stories of the settlement of areas like The Mallee, Riverina, Darling Downs and the WA wheatbelt.
It is not all tales from the past, there is plenty of discussion, interviews and reporting about the now and the future of the bush (well at least till when the book was published in 2014).
Will bush towns survive the 21st century?
Are we very slowly but surely starting to make good again the land and our relationship with First Nations people?
Is it too late to change our ways?
I don’t know, but if you want to read a book about Australia that mixes history with personal account, written by a true professional who knows how to entertain as well as inform then The Bush is for you.
The Bush
Don Watson
Penguin Books 2014
427 pages
