‘The bush is everything from a gum tree to any of the creatures that live in it or shelter beneath it, and it is the womb and inspiration of the national character. It is the smell of eucalyptus leaves, long shards of bark waiting for a fire, the din of galahs, the cawing of crows. And invincible silence.’
The bush: no other word in Australia resounds quite like it, yet no other word is harder to define. Here Don Watson, one of Australia’s most esteemed writers, invites us into a milestone work of memoir, travel writing, history and social critique.
Beginning autobiographically on the Watson family farm, The Bush takes us into the lives of pioneering forebears and their struggle to clear and make a living from the land: ‘when they were not milking or ploughing, burning, grubbing or sowing, our forebears hacked at the bracken, burrs, bidgee widgee, wire grass, sword grass, prickly currant bush, bramble and blanket leaf.’
Watson explores the stories we like to tell ourselves about the bush and those we prefer to forget. He writes of the bush as it was and as it is now. He tells tales of great triumph and terrible destruction, heroism, folly and suffering. Watson navigates the unique nature of the bush and the human relationship with it: the people of the land, swagmen, shepherds, squatters, scientists, modern farmers, the indigenous people. He writes about the animals from lyrebirds to brown snakes and blowflies, and he looks at the ethos of work, community, religion, environmentalism, fire, flood and drought.
Vast in scope yet alive with telling detail, and generously illustrated with remarkable photography The Bush is a ground breaking work that will make us see our landscape and its inhabitants completely anew.
Don Watson’s books, articles and essays have been widely acclaimed. His bestselling titles include Recollections of a Bleeding Heart: Paul Keating Prime Minister, which won the Age Book of the Year and Non-Fiction Prizes, the Brisbane Courier Mail Book of the Year, the National Biography Award and the Australian Literary Studies Association’s Book of the Year, Death Sentence, which won the Australian Booksellers Association Book of the Year, Watson’s Dictionary of Weasel Words, and American Journeys, which won The Age Book of the Year and Non-Fiction Book of the Year, the inaugural Indie Award for Non-Fiction and the Walkley Non-Fiction Award. In 2010 Don was awarded the Phillip Hodgins Memorial Medal for Australian Literature. Since 2003 his website weaselwords.com.au has been documenting the viral spread of management-speak and the decline of public language. Don Watson is a regular contributor to The Monthly.
