AustLit

'George Main writes with an eye for detail and a deep feeling and sense of involvement with Gunderbooka and its people and how they were shaped by it. People have left their tracks on the land as Aboriginal art and cultural sites, fences and homesteads. A new environment would emerge yet the character of Gunderbooka has prevailed.

This is so from the first Aboriginal people, to the European pastoralists, contemporary conservation managers and the Aboriginal people who now manage Gunderbooka again. Is this a complete circle or a continuum paced by powerful landscape? It is the unfolding of the land and its people.

Something else has also been achieved along the way. Those of us whose history started with Captain Cook died in abject boredom somewhere around Governor MacQuarie and are reminded that our history is much richer, much longer and more meaningful. We do go back a long way.

George takes us there with a history that starts with Aboriginal people and megafauna, 30,000 years ago. The European newcomers were impatient people with expectations born of another hemisphere, except for some, who could see other futures. Environmental histories such as Gunderbooka will be part of an emerging realisation that we still have a lot to learn about this truly wonderful country and that there are other paths on which to walk forward.' (Source: back cover)