BUSH, The

While most of us live in cities clinging to the coastal fringe, 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. A milestone work of memoir, travel writing and history, The Bush takes us on a profoundly revelatory and entertaining journey through the Australian landscape and character.

Don Watson was born in 1949 in Australia. He is an author and public speaker. He took his undergraduate degree at La Trobe University and a PhD at Monash University and was for ten years an academic historian. He wrote three books on Australian history before turning his hand to TV and the stage. For several years he combined writing political satire for the actor Max Gillies with political speeches for the Premier of Victoria, John Cain. In 1992 he became Prime Minister of Australia Paul Keating’s speech-writer and adviser and his best-selling account of those years, Recollections of a Bleeding Heart: A Portrait of Paul Keating PM, won both 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 2001 Quarterly Essay, Rabbit Syndrome: Australia and America won the inaugural Alfred Deakin Prize in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. Death Sentence was a best seller and won the Australian Booksellers Association Book of the Year. In 2015 his title, The Bush, won the Indie Book of the Year, the Book of the Year at the 2015 New South Wales Premier Literary Awards, and The Douglas Stewart Prize for Nonfiction. His 2016 Quarterly Essay, Enemy Within: American Politics in the Time of Trump is on the bestsellers list.

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