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kcfromaustcrime's review against another edition
4.0
Way too big a conceptual book for a month's lead in reading to a bookclub gathering, this is one that many of us agreed needed to be on the shelves, for dipping in and out of. I loved so much about this book, but need to think, reread, consider and probably rethink much of it. Definitely one for the to be bought stakes now though.
smitchy's review
2.0
I know many people who loved this book and part of me can see why: Watson has a good turn of phrase and has attempted to tackle a topic of massive scope; the mythology, history, relationship to, reality of, environment, future and indigenous dwellers of the Australian Bush.
The term "bush" itself has massive scope from tea-tree coastal scrub, to saltbush plains, to towering temperate eucalypt forest, to tropical rainforest, and everything in between. The traditional indigenous farming methods (laid out very well in Bruce Pascoe's Dark Emu BTW), the impact of white settlement, the degradations and deforestation that resulted make for depressing reading. The treatment of Aboriginal Australians is harrowing.
I struggled to stay focused while reading this. Watson frequently goes on tangents and meanders from one subject to the next. A methodology that is sometimes interesting, sometimes frustrating - drawing from his own childhood reminiscences, settler journals & diaries, official records, newspapers, art, fiction and poetry Watson attempts to encompass the entirety of white Australia's relationship to the land we inhabit and I feel it is just too much.
Australia is a vast country and this topic is equally vast - narrrowing it down might have made this book a bit more readable. However if this is a topic you are interested by all means read The Bush but I can't help but feel there are many more readable books out there that might be more specific.
This one left me feeling helpless (you get beaten over the head with what we have done to the environment and no real steps forward are suggested), depressed (again the environment and also treatment of Indigenous people), a bit bored (he rattles on a bit), angry (our politicians are still happily fucking the environment - I'm looking at you Adani mine and Murry River Scheme) and not really that enlightened (could be because I have been reading a few on this topic over the last year or so but if you have never read anything this will give you a broad overview).
I also felt Watson took a great joy in pulling apart the cultural myths surrounding "the bush" and our relationship to it - I didn't feel that was a bad thing in itself but he seemed to really revel in it and the attitude kind of got up my nose a bit (this is coming from a skeptic and atheist - I love pulling apart myths and fuzzy thinking) I think maybe because I didn't feel any of the mythologies he was picking apart with such relish are held quite as dear to people of my generation as they were to people of his (50-odd year age gap there), or maybe it is simply the fact I grew up in a rural area (the area where he starts the book incidentally) and so I am more aware of the ralities of "bush" living than someone from a suburban background.
The term "bush" itself has massive scope from tea-tree coastal scrub, to saltbush plains, to towering temperate eucalypt forest, to tropical rainforest, and everything in between. The traditional indigenous farming methods (laid out very well in Bruce Pascoe's Dark Emu BTW), the impact of white settlement, the degradations and deforestation that resulted make for depressing reading. The treatment of Aboriginal Australians is harrowing.
I struggled to stay focused while reading this. Watson frequently goes on tangents and meanders from one subject to the next. A methodology that is sometimes interesting, sometimes frustrating - drawing from his own childhood reminiscences, settler journals & diaries, official records, newspapers, art, fiction and poetry Watson attempts to encompass the entirety of white Australia's relationship to the land we inhabit and I feel it is just too much.
Australia is a vast country and this topic is equally vast - narrrowing it down might have made this book a bit more readable. However if this is a topic you are interested by all means read The Bush but I can't help but feel there are many more readable books out there that might be more specific.
This one left me feeling helpless (you get beaten over the head with what we have done to the environment and no real steps forward are suggested), depressed (again the environment and also treatment of Indigenous people), a bit bored (he rattles on a bit), angry (our politicians are still happily fucking the environment - I'm looking at you Adani mine and Murry River Scheme) and not really that enlightened (could be because I have been reading a few on this topic over the last year or so but if you have never read anything this will give you a broad overview).
I also felt Watson took a great joy in pulling apart the cultural myths surrounding "the bush" and our relationship to it - I didn't feel that was a bad thing in itself but he seemed to really revel in it and the attitude kind of got up my nose a bit (this is coming from a skeptic and atheist - I love pulling apart myths and fuzzy thinking) I think maybe because I didn't feel any of the mythologies he was picking apart with such relish are held quite as dear to people of my generation as they were to people of his (50-odd year age gap there), or maybe it is simply the fact I grew up in a rural area (the area where he starts the book incidentally) and so I am more aware of the ralities of "bush" living than someone from a suburban background.
read_with_pinot's review against another edition
DNF - so far ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. Dense with detail and info so a lot to take in and so long - hope to come back to. Not a romanticised or white washed portrayal of the Australian bush and childhood spent in it - makes you question widely held notions about the Australian bush, people from the bush and quintessential Australian-ness.
rojaed's review against another edition
5.0
This book is written in a relaxed, discursive style that is easy to dip in and out of. The story of is one of destruction and cruelty but he tries to be fair to settlers acting from ignorance and recognises their love of the land. But it is bleak - as well as the murder of thousands of First Nation people, there is the destruction of whole ecosystems.
tasmanian_bibliophile's review against another edition
5.0
‘The Australian bush is both real and imaginary.’
‘The Bush’ offers an expansive narrative in appreciation of Australia’s bush heritage. Don Watson’s book encompasses the roles and impacts of Indigenous peoples, convicts, settlers and migrants as well as native and introduced flora and fauna. There is no single Australian bush: the country is too big and diverse, and people’s uses and experiences of it are too different for there to be any singularity.
‘The bush could gulp you, or your children, much as the dread interior swallowed explorers, drovers and prospectors.’
The first European farmers and settlers experienced the Australian bush as quite alien, and saw it as something to be tamed and brought under control. In the main, they tried to impose European practices, with limited success. But there were those who learned to appreciate its difference and diversity, and who tried to understand it.
‘Farming is like playing a piano: it is measured violence. It teaches a man willing to learn that there is a right way and a wrong way of doing everything.’
The bush is seen as part of Australia’s national identity which is ironic, given that most Australians live in cities on or near the coast. The bush is an iconic ideal, yet few of us have much experience of it in any form and the people from the bush have been migrating into city suburbs for 50 years.
‘So long as people of the country are the real Australians, other people are less real. This might be only to say less distinctively Australian, or it might mean out of touch with reality and real people, and not knowing which side their bread is buttered on.’
This book describes the roles of farmers, timber workers, miners, shepherds, squatters and selectors. It mentions the experiences of returned soldiers (including his grandfather) on their soldier-settlement blocks, and the role of women.
‘The bush never stops adapting, both as an environment and as a mental construct.’
Don Watson’s family history as settlers and farmers provides a framework for the book, augmented by his own observations while travelling across Australia, and interviews with different ‘bushies’ along the way. He describes beautifully a complex relationship with the environment: its biological, historical, political and social aspects. Don Watson’s narrative is part travelogue, history and memoir; his analysis clearly presented.
‘The bush is really two places: the watered and the unwatered, which means two places in time as well as in space.’
These days, my own personal bush lies within the Snowy Mountains, and trees (especially eucalyptus trees) are an important part of that. I enjoyed reading the entire book, but especially the descriptions of trees and scrub and the experiences of people – both Indigenous and others - who know the land on which they live. The tensions between Indigenous and non-Indigenous uses of land are made clear, as are the consequences of the introduction of non-native flora and fauna.
I enjoyed this book immensely: both content and presentation. It’s a book to read, and revisit.
My thanks to Netgalley and Penguin Books Australia for making an advance copy of the book available.
‘There is no one bush, but many bushes.’
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
‘The Bush’ offers an expansive narrative in appreciation of Australia’s bush heritage. Don Watson’s book encompasses the roles and impacts of Indigenous peoples, convicts, settlers and migrants as well as native and introduced flora and fauna. There is no single Australian bush: the country is too big and diverse, and people’s uses and experiences of it are too different for there to be any singularity.
‘The bush could gulp you, or your children, much as the dread interior swallowed explorers, drovers and prospectors.’
The first European farmers and settlers experienced the Australian bush as quite alien, and saw it as something to be tamed and brought under control. In the main, they tried to impose European practices, with limited success. But there were those who learned to appreciate its difference and diversity, and who tried to understand it.
‘Farming is like playing a piano: it is measured violence. It teaches a man willing to learn that there is a right way and a wrong way of doing everything.’
The bush is seen as part of Australia’s national identity which is ironic, given that most Australians live in cities on or near the coast. The bush is an iconic ideal, yet few of us have much experience of it in any form and the people from the bush have been migrating into city suburbs for 50 years.
‘So long as people of the country are the real Australians, other people are less real. This might be only to say less distinctively Australian, or it might mean out of touch with reality and real people, and not knowing which side their bread is buttered on.’
This book describes the roles of farmers, timber workers, miners, shepherds, squatters and selectors. It mentions the experiences of returned soldiers (including his grandfather) on their soldier-settlement blocks, and the role of women.
‘The bush never stops adapting, both as an environment and as a mental construct.’
Don Watson’s family history as settlers and farmers provides a framework for the book, augmented by his own observations while travelling across Australia, and interviews with different ‘bushies’ along the way. He describes beautifully a complex relationship with the environment: its biological, historical, political and social aspects. Don Watson’s narrative is part travelogue, history and memoir; his analysis clearly presented.
‘The bush is really two places: the watered and the unwatered, which means two places in time as well as in space.’
These days, my own personal bush lies within the Snowy Mountains, and trees (especially eucalyptus trees) are an important part of that. I enjoyed reading the entire book, but especially the descriptions of trees and scrub and the experiences of people – both Indigenous and others - who know the land on which they live. The tensions between Indigenous and non-Indigenous uses of land are made clear, as are the consequences of the introduction of non-native flora and fauna.
I enjoyed this book immensely: both content and presentation. It’s a book to read, and revisit.
My thanks to Netgalley and Penguin Books Australia for making an advance copy of the book available.
‘There is no one bush, but many bushes.’
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
jgwc54e5's review against another edition
3.0
This took ages for me to finish. Part memoir, history book, botany text, literary review and myth buster , it’s an interesting and well written book. It just made me so mad! And sad too. The myth of the australian bush is based on lies, violence, racism, sexism and environmental degradation and yet the myth lives on. My rating of the book is based more on my reaction to it than the quality of the book itself.
horseyhayls's review against another edition
4.0
A definitive tome on all aspects of rural Australia from a European/colonial Australian perspective.
skadinova's review against another edition
5.0
I loved this book. I loved Don Watson's unflinching portrayal of our landscape with colonial warts and all. He loves the bush and although much of this book brought an overwhelming sense of grief and anger at what we have lost, I gained insight into many aspects of different parts of our landscape, the changes brought about by colonisation and the ways in which we are trying to turn things around. This is ultimately a love letter to the Australian Bush and you can't help but be carried along by Don Watson's obvious love of it. I.highly recommend the audio book read by Watson.