Born in a Tent: How Camping Makes Us Australian

by Bill Garner

History seen through a tent flap: this view of post-settlement Australia is ‘alive and itchy’.

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Newtown Review of Books]

Bill Garner’s Born in a Tent was born in a PhD, but you won’t find any impenetrable academic prose here. Garner writes intelligently but straightforwardly, letting his own personal experiences weave their way through the text. His research, assembled into a circling case about how the act of camping has shaped our nation, offers endless nuggets of pure delight, such as the image of Arthur Upfield, author of the Napoleon Bonaparte detective books, cycling out into the bush on a bike without pedals, carrying a shotgun, fishing lines, a light tent and ‘perhaps a cat or a pup in a sugar bag’.

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[David Hunt]

Bill knows all about camping, perhaps a little too much. However, this book delivers genuine and novel insights into the development of Australian egalatarianism and the manner in which impermanent settlements were a challenge to centrist state control. The material on the Gold Rush and Eureka is particularly enlightening. The book is fluently written and contains fascinating photos, illustrations and paintings of our past. Worth a read.