Imaginative Possession

How do we understand this country?In a period when many easy assumptions of how we live and how our society operates are being upturned, there is room for contemplation of our occupation in a country that is ancient, occupied for at least sixty thousand years and then colonised for not much more than two hundred years. Belinda Probert, a migrant from England forty-odd years ago, poses questions to herself in words and action as to how she understands landscape and how she lives on this...
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How do we understand this country?In a period when many easy assumptions of how we live and how our society operates are being upturned, there is room for contemplation of our occupation in a country that is ancient, occupied for at least sixty thousand years and then colonised for not much more than two hundred years. Belinda Probert, a migrant from England forty-odd years ago, poses questions to herself in words and action as to how she understands landscape and how she lives on this continent. She takes along with her on this inquiry a set of writers with related concerns to test their findings alongside her own. It may be that buying a property in the 'country' to experiment with her abiding interest in gardening involved some overreach. From the exercise, though, she learns much more about fire, trees, water, animals, and protecting herself from fire emergencies.