On this Ground: Best Australian Nature Writing

by Dave Witty

Many of us gain inspiration, solace, beauty and a sense of wonder from our interactions with nature, and writers have long plumbed and explored these depths.
At the same time as many of us tune in to natural landscapes, our environment is imperilled as never before. We are in the midst of a climate emergency that is challenging the future of our species, and all living creatures we share the earth with.
This unique collection of Australia’s best new nature writing gathers together some of our most widely known and most original voices to reflect on our relationship with nature.
These pieces, by turns compelling, urgent, poignant and passionate, offer an insight into the wonder of the natural world around us, and form a clarion call for its protection.
With an introduction from Dave Witty, and featuring contributors including Tim Winton, Bruce Pascoe and Inga Simpson, this collection makes the perfect summer read or gift for the nature-lover in your life.
Praise for What the Trees See:
‘Fascinating and revelatory’ – Kate Holden
‘The story of learning a landscape’ – Billy Griffiths

Genres: Nonfiction, Environment

Kindle Edition

Published January 22, 2025

Reviews

[Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a lovely collection of writing, with a range of writers conjuring up the slower, quieter, more sensory experience that being in a less artificial environment can bring. There are some spectacular pieces here. Some of these, like Lily Chan's The Golden Age, Lilian Pearce's Contaminated Kinship and Joelle Gergis and Tim Winton's only-slightly-curmudgeonly contributions, were new to me. Others, including entries from Debra Dank and James Bradley's breathtaking books and Valentine's truly terrifying Twitching, were not. But there was significant pleasure in rereading, given the transportive nature of the prose.
The collection did make me start to wonder if there is too much serenity in the way we write nature, that we read into this something of a pace set by Thoreau or our own expectations of calm, lush description and longer, rhythmic sentences. Gergis is an exception here, writing with pace and urgency, in a way that integrates her relationship with the environment with every aspect of her life. While many others dealt with social entwined issues, the writing felt slower. It is hard to fault this, however, when so little in our contemporary lives allows us space to breathe.

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not all of the stories were my cup of tea but many of them have tipped my brain upside down and given it a good shake 🙂

[Hannah St John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this collection from start to finish. So much to think about and digest amongst beautiful writing and I know I’ll be processing some of these stories for weeks to come. I will be forcing my friends and colleagues to read many of them as well - I’ve already made my family read of the apocalyptic brush chickens.

[Rozanna Lilley · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is so much to enjoy, and to learn from, in this diverse collection of recent Australian nature writing. Sometimes the contributions surprise. Lily Chan's account of how her Japanese parents ended up in rural Western Australia as ashram members conjures a heady, shabby world of red clay cultism. Ben Walter's nicely titled 'Outside, Mona Lisa' offers insight into the value of pedestrianism, of climbing nondescript mountains that are a gap in a personal map. Enjoyment of the ordinary, of 'scraggy bushes and patches of scree', lies at the heart of his vexed quest to walk off the beaten track. Inga Simpson provides a note of hope as she chronicles her rewilding of 'up the back', her childhood haunt on her parents' farm in central west NSW. Her love of landscape is linked to her love of photography as she recaptures childhood joy. In 'Contaminated Kinship', Lilian Pearce powerfully contrasts the ancient ecology of Australia with the speed of settler violence, focusing in on the poisonous legacy of lead mining in Broken Hill. In doing so, she draws a clear connection between social inequality and exposure to toxins, with residents left only hollow laughter about being 'lead-heads'. Kim Mahood writes about how her connections with local Aboriginal people shaped her childhood, the grief of losing a beloved dog, the ongoing connection to ancient footprints preserved in claypan. These seemingly disparate scenes are tied together by implicit questions of permanence and impermanence, of the ephemerality and resilience of each life. Emily Mowat takes us to Macquarie Island where she is a field biologist. Giant petrels and bull elephants, furious winds and rotting kelp are her daily fare. A drifting iceberg is a stark reminder of the perils of climate warming. This is a theme taken up in many contributions, including James Bradley's 'Beaches'. Sea levels in the Torres Strait Islands are rising at twice the global average. As the bones of ancestors are washed away by incoming tides, Bradley outlines the existential threat posed to all Pacific Islanders. With two dozen essays to choose from, readers will warm to different contributions. Many are filled with a sense of dire urgency; all are worthwhile.

[Kristin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really appreciated reading this anthology (published 2024) collecting together the best Australian nature writing of the prior two years.

Literature up until the relatively recent invent of the cli-fi genre, has stayed relatively silent on the climate crisis, and nature writing in its most traditional sense has often revolved around the aesthetic and descriptive, with detail-oriented observations offering an almost meditative solace to those perhaps disconnected from the natural world. The kind of nature writing in this anthology by comparison is far more aware of the human impacts upon the future of the natural world and the pervasive anxiety that accompanies that, and considers political, First Nations cultural, and ecological angles in a more essayistic fashion.

It examines if we even should, as settler-colonists, and if so how, write of this country when its First Peoples know it so much more intimately, and within its pages shows that finally perhaps we are making space for Blak voices in publication. But it also considers how inherently Western and ‘white’ the field of science is, even when it now invites racially diverse and indigenous input. We have also separated science from spirituality, and therefore how exclusionary is science to indigenous perspective when indigenous connection to the natural world and understanding and preservation of Country is also fundamentally spiritual.

It touches on relatively recent ways of engaging with the natural world, facilitated by the internet, like citizen science, both its place within science and its value as a conduit with which to connect the everyday person to the natural world in a more immediate way, facilitating people caring about what happens. It also examines things like shifting baselines, the idea that each new generation is accepting more and more species decline simply because for them in their lifetime that is all they have known and thus they consider it normal.

I found this collection of nature writing to provide a current and nuanced discourse on the state of the natural world within this country and also in relation to the present global trajectory.

[Karina · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an absolute treasure trove of exceptional writing. The chapters are as diverse as our unique Australian landscapes, flora and fauna. And urgent; these essays stay in your mind long after you have read them, immediately re read them and dwell on them during your morning walk. From Bruce Pascoe's blistering narrative about an endangered orchid, Joëlle Gergis sharing her intimate insight as a global climate change scientist, Inga Simpson taking us on an emotive journey up the back to her country and Mark Tredinnick impelling us all to reconnect to country, just to name a few. A collection of our finest Australian writers waxing lyrical and justifiably ranting on a topic close to my heart, our natural history.
My favourite passage goes to Tim Winton describing 'the amorphous church of postmodernism' as like a sea anemone, "a festival of dancing segments and tentacles, advertising its complex glories to the ecosystem. But at the first approach of a stranger, it withdraws all appendages and retreats behind its own sphincter." Just brilliant writing in every essay that makes for an unforgettable read.

[Kloe · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I have read all year, and deeply moving.