It's been a while since I listened to this ABC radio broadcast, but I still remembered it when I discovered Don Watson's book in one of the op-shops. What a find! Over 400 pages of meditations on the Australian bush for four dollars. It's worth its price for his contemplation of horses and sheep in the rural landscape alone.
"For every marvellous horse there was a dog equally exalted: dogs that wore chamois boots and put flocks of sheep in and out of paddocks while the men were having lunch; a brave one on my mother’s side died at the hands of a kangaroo ... There is scarcely a photo of my grandfather that does not have a dog in it, and in some of them there are five," Watson writes, before a dissertation on breeds and temperaments of dogs and, it naturally follows, dingoes.
Mostly, though, "The Bush" is a challenge to Australians who’ve long favoured city life on the coastal plains over life in the towns and the emptiness beyond; a challenge to contemplate what it really is about this country that makes us who we think we are. Again, what a find!
