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The Bush

The Bush 2

Travels in the Heart of Australia

by Don Watson
Hardback
Publication Date: 24/09/2014
4/5 Rating 2 Reviews

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$45.00

Most Australians live in cities and cling to the coastal fringe, yet our sense of what an Australian is - or should be - is drawn from the vast and varied inland called the bush. But what do we mean by 'the bush', and how has it shaped us?

Starting with his forebears' battle to drive back nature and eke a living from the land, Don Watson explores the bush as it was and as it now is: the triumphs and the ruination, the commonplace and the bizarre, the stories we like to tell about ourselves and the national character, and those we don't.

Via mountain ash and mallee, the birds and the beasts, slaughter, fire, flood and drought, swagmen, sheep and their shepherds, the strange and the familiar, the tragedies and the follies, the crimes and the myths and the hope - here is a journey that only our leading writer of non-fiction could take us on. At once magisterial in scope and alive with telling, wry detail, The Bush lets us see our landscape and its inhabitants afresh, examining what we have made, what we have destroyed, and what we have become in the process.

No one who reads it will look at this country the same way again. 'The grand Australian bush - the nurse and tutor of eccentric minds, the home of the weird, and of much that is different from things in other lands.' - Henry Lawson

ISBN:
9781926428215
9781926428215
Category:
Social & cultural history
Format:
Hardback
Publication Date:
24-09-2014
Publisher:
Penguin Random House Australia
Country of origin:
Australia
Pages:
448
Dimensions (mm):
245x165x50mm
Weight:
0.89kg
What I’m reading right now… Margaret Atwood, Stone Mattress.

 

My favourite book growing up… On Our Selection, because it gave (hilarious) meaning to our bucolic lives.

 

My all time favourite book is… Anna Karenina. Do I really have to say why?

 

The book I would recommend everyone to read… Anna Karenina (and The Iliad, The Bible, Don Quixote, If This is a Man, etc., etc.) because, perhaps, until you do, it’s a bit like missing the first act of the play you’re in.

 

The book I wish I wrote… The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

 

My guilty reading pleasure is… the Form Guide.

 

The book on my bookshelf that I have never read… A lot of Dickens, but if I live long enough I will.

 

The book that never should have been turned into a film… The English Patient.

 

My book is… finished.

 

I’ll never forget… my name, I hope.

 

My favourite place is… a good bar, anywhere, in my memory.

 

The most dangerous thing I have ever done is… not worth recording.

 

The first time I… tasted pizza (and an olive, an anchovy, a caper and mozzarella) was in December 1967 in Russell Street Melbourne with my friend Ken Bishop. How come I can remember that yet can’t recall the names of half the books I’ve read in the past 12 months?

 

I regret… far more than I have time to say.

 

I remember… mainly the things I regret.

 

The one piece of advice I should have listened to but didn’t… Non, je ne regrette rien. 

 

I love… more than I realised.

 

I hate… the usual things – stupidity, cruelty, injustice, greed, noise.

 

I wish… the hateful could be sent into deep space.

 

I can’t say no to… children, racehorses and books.

 

Yesterday, I… can’t remember.
Don Watson

Don Watson's Recollections of a Bleeding Heart: Paul Keating Prime Minister, 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.

His Quarterly Essay, Rabbit Syndrome : Australia and America won the Alfred Deakin Essay Prize. Death Sentence, his best-selling book about the decay of public language won the Australian Booksellers Association Book of the Year 2003.

Watson's Dictionary of Weason Words, another best-seller, was published in 2004. His most recent book American Journeys won the Age Non-Fiction and Book of the Year Awards in 2008. It also won the inaugural Indie Award for Non-Fiction and the Walkley Award for Non-Fiction.

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4.18

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2 Reviews

Don Watson sends us meandering through The Bush in a thoroughly entertaining and delightful way, delving into its history, its place in the Australian psyche, and the people who shaped it.

Part memoir part travelogue (along the lines of his American Journeys) this is a book you can happily curl up with for a weekend, or dip in and out as you fancy. As always Watson writes beautifully - honestly he could write a history of toilet paper and it would be both stunning and fascinating.

Highly recommended for all, and would be a very good choice for under the Christmas tree for those international visitors, Aussies living overseas, and any who love history, biography, and good writing.

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In this wonderful rambling exploration of the iconic Aussie entity, Watson delves into fact, fiction, and legend peopled with all sorts that make up the rural landscape, history and culture. Throughout he ponders just exactly what do we mean by "the bush"? Highly readable and beautifully written (honestly, Watson could write about squashed slugs and make it enchanting, he's that good) this is a book you'll love to get lost in.

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