A Single Tree

A Single Tree assembles the raw material underpinning Don Watson s award winning The Bush These diverse and haunting voices span the four centuries since Europeans first set eyes on the continent Each of these varied contributors settlers explorers anthropologists naturalists stockmen surveyors itinerants artists and writers represents a particular place and time Men in awe of the landscape or cursing it aspiring to subdue and exploit it or finding themselves defeated by it Women reflecting on the land s harshness and beauty on the strangeness of their lives their pleasures and miseries the character and behaviour of the men Europeans writing about indigenous Australians sometimes with intelligent sympathy and curiosity but often with contempt and often describing acts of startling brutality This collection comprises diary extracts memoirs journals letters histories poems and fiction and follows the same loose themes of The Bush The science of the landscape and climate and the way we have perceived them Our deep and sentimental connection to the land and our equally deep ignorance and abuse of it The heroic myths and legends The enchantments The bush as a formative and defining element in Australian culture self image and character The flora and fauna the waterways the colours The heroic self defining stories the bizarre and terrible and the ones lost in the deep silences There are accounts of journeys of work and recreation of religious observance of creation and destruction Stories of uncanny events peculiar and fantastic characters deep ironies and of land unlimited And musings on what might be the future of the bush as a unique environment a food bowl a mine a wellspring of national identity From Dampier and Tasman to Tim Flannery and assorted contemporary farmers environmentalists and grey nomads these pieces represent a vast array of experiences perspectives and knowledge A Single Tree is an essen