Once We Were Wildlife

by Inga Simpson

A tender, luminous collection of interconnected tales that explore love, longing and the wilderness - both within and around us.

In this compulsive compilation of eleven stories and one poem - set against scorched landscapes, wild oceans, and rocky terrain - Simpson follows people on the edge of desire, heartbreak and change.

In 'Poached', an ex-soldier finds himself between a poacher and a Bengal tiger. In 'The Wash', a woman's reckless ocean swim reveals the instinct to survive and the end of a passionate love.

From the aching intensity of romantic love to the quiet devastations of motherhood and ageing, Simpson's literary prowess keeps us riveted by the power of nature to shape human relationships and worlds. Melancholic and joyful, masterful and inspiring, this is contemporary fiction at its finest by Australia's foremost writer of the natural world, Inga Simpson.

Praise for Simpson's award-nominated

'Beguiling and entertaining' Weekend Australian

'Storytelling at its best. I was enthralled' SARAH WINMAN, author of Still Life

'I loved this - gorgeous, heartbreaking . . .' ROBBIE ARNOTT, author of Dusk

Genres: Short Stories, Nature, Fiction

253 pages, Paperback

Published March 31, 2026

About the author

Inga is the award-winning author of ONCE WE WERE WILDLIFE, THE THINNING, WILLOWMAN, THE LAST WOMAN IN THE WORLD, THE BOOK OF AUSTRALIAN TREES, UNDERSTORY: a life with trees, WHERE THE TREES WERE, NEST and MR WIGG.

A novelist and nature writer, her work explores our relationship with the natural world.

Inga grew up in central west NSW, and has lived in Canberra, Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast. She is now based on the far south coast of NSW.

WILLOWMAN was shortlisted for the Bookpeople adult fiction Book of the Year 2023.

UNDERSTORY: a life with trees (2017), Inga's first book-length work of nature writing, was shortlisted for the Adelaide Writers Week prize for nonfiction.

WHERE THE TREES WERE (2016) was shortlisted for an Indie Award, and longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, ABIA book awards and Green Carnation Prize.

NEST (2014) was shortlisted for the ALS Gold Medal, and longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Stella Prize.

Her debut novel, MR WIGG, was selected for the 2011 QWC/Hachette manuscript developemnt program and, as a result, published by Hachette in 2013. MR WIGG was shortlisted for an Indie Award and longlisted for the Dobbie Award.

In 2012, Inga was the winner of the final Eric Rolls nature essay prize.

She has a PhDs in creative writing and English literature, and her short work has been published in Griffith Review, Wonderground, the Review of Australian Fiction, Clues, WQ, and the Dictionary of Literary Biography.

Reviews

[Marianne · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Time has slowed so much she found she could understand the trees’ way of thinking. When the sun was on their trunks they whispered in long song-like sentences, to each other, their fungal networks and the creatures around them. Not a remark on the weather, as she had expected, but to try to convey the subtleties of their feelings. They addressed her in encouraging tones, as if trying to nudge her towards something.”

Once We Were Wildlife is a collection of twelve short stories by award-winning Australian author, Inga Simpson. These pieces of varying length, filled with gorgeous descriptive prose, all showcase Simpson’s remarkable literary talent and her enduring investment in nature, wildlife, preservation and climate

In The Wash, a near drowning in rough seas puts extra strain on what had once been a strong, loving relationship. 5/5
In Blue Crane, a divorcee returns from interstate to a favourite summer vacation spot on the bay. She favours the beach and its birds over interaction with people, and her focus on a heron has a surprising outcome. 5/5
In Quartz, technology like drones is making covert missions much more challenging for eco-warriors trying to sabotage the mining operations that have contaminated creeks and groundwater. As they break camp and flee from security guards into the mountains, the tunnel of an abandoned mine leads to a surprise valley and cave. In formerly bushranger country, they find an opportunity. 5/5

In Tanglefoot, what nature photographer Toni captures with her large-format still camera earns her a living, but also, when she can smuggle the negatives out to the right people, helps the campaign against the dams. When a bushfire takes her studio, and with it, her most prized possessions, prints and negatives, perhaps the only consolation is that Gab is safe and she still has her camera. Gab urges care as she’s soon out there, doing what she loves. 5/5

In Poached, having exited the Army injured, Damian indulges his childhood fascination with tigers by going on a three-week Assam expedition. It’s not enough; he manages to secure a “volunteer” position making the ranger service more effective in protecting these wonderful beasts, always a target for poachers, as can be rangers in the wrong (or maybe right?) spot. 5/5

In The Great Walk, Andi is meeting Chris for the last two stages of his South Island Great Walk, but he’s not where she expects, so she unloads and heads to the next hut. He hasn’t been seen; she stupidly left her mobile at home. Back at the first hut, things aren’t right – she’s disoriented, has a fall, spends the night in the open. When she finally finds Chris, nothing is how she thought… 5/5 So moving!

In Once, We Were Wildlife, Marie is a guide on Frankie’s sixteen-day walk in Central Australia, “tall and broad and smiley, sings in the morning, like the desert birds.” She proves attentive; there’s comfort and ease in the time spent together. Each is recovering from stress and sadness, and whatever this is has energy, happiness and falling, the start of something? It seems so, but over the course of months, despite sharing nature walks and food they both love, Marie runs hot and cold - will Frankie’s heart be broken again? Her friends keep a caring eye on her. 5/5

Tarn is a beautiful free verse description of what an Aussie marsupial experiences in a tarn. 5/5
In Sea Wolf, Marlen is on an island off British Columbia’s Great Bear Park, documenting the last apex predators, in particular, the sea wolves. Wholly captivated, she becomes irrevocably one with nature. 5/5
Colony takes the reader into the life of a seabird, from hatching through maturing to adulthood, including encounters with outsiders and disease. 4/5

The Melt describes the effect of civilisation, including eventual global warming, extinction, and sea level rise, from the perspective of the polar ice caps. 5/5
Out Of The Forest is a hopeful little tale that sees the trees of the alpine forests acting to overcome the receding tree-line forced upon them by global warming. 5/5
All highly recommended.
This unbiased review is from a copy provided by Hachette Australia

[Marika Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

Utterly transported by this collection of short stories. Each one has to be contemplated, savoured, appreciated in its entirety - reflected on, fermented, before you can move on to the next.

I read this over a couple of months for this reason - after the first one it was clear that I was absolutely not in Kansas anymore, Toto.

Short story collections can often feel like being in a restaurant and ordering a whole bunch of entrees because you can’t decide between the salt and pepper calamari or the trio of dips or the arancini so you get all of them and make it a meal. Entrees for dinner are great - best of all the worlds, many plates, jokes with the wait staff, but in the end it’s forgettable food. Thank you, next. Finishing the last story of this volume today felt like leaving a fine dining restaurant after the most perfectly balanced degustation - you saved for months to afford it and in return you were nourished in ways you don’t fully understand yet and will never forget.

I wish I could wipe my memory and read these again.

[Lauren Keegan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful collection of short stories from an award winning nature writer. I especially loved the stories set by the sea, the call to the ocean and the wild is a theme throughout the book. I'll read anything Inga writes!

[Suzie · Rating 3.5 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars. Such evocative and beautiful writing. I found some of the stories so incredibly moving, although very sad and a little depressing. I think my favourite story was Poached, but I did also like the title story

[Nicholas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written stories of people at points of transformation, inextricably linked with the landscape and wildlife.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

My partner and I attended an author talk for this book in Maitland. I’m so glad we went and discovered this story after I had noticed it at a local bookstore.

It’s such a pleasure to read well written prose of Australian landscapes. I was able to form a rough idea of the story location from the description of the plants, waterways and geology before the formal name was hinted later.

What surprised me more than anything about this book was how the human experiences emerged. I chose the book for the nature writing but found myself turning the pages to chase the passion, heartbreak and curiosity of the protagonists.

The only part of the book I didn’t resonate with were the final couple of stories from the perspective of seabirds that I could see were trying to make a statement on oil and climate change but didn’t align with the earlier beautiful stories in the book. Once we were wildlife was brilliantly tangled through the key stories of the book, just dropped off a little at the end.

So glad to have rediscovered the author after reading Understory many years ago. Looking forward to exploring her other works due to her unique and impressive way she captures nature, human relationships and landscapes into words.

4.5/5

[Carol Seeley Reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love - the cover art work and the first story really impacted me - the location, the action, the surf… the rip…. A fantastic read. Read just for this story - it packs a punch.

The rest… intriguing voices, narratives and so varied.

I think short stories might just be Inga Simpson’s strength.

[Jodie Murray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful short stories about nature and animals and life

[Magdalena]

Almost everything I read (and write) these days is focused on ecology in one form or another. It isn’t surprising given the rapidly advancing crisis unfolding in front of us, from global heating to ecosystem collapse and biodiversity loss. Inga Simpson has always written into this space, regardless of the genre of her work. She may be one of the most knowledgable writers in Australia on nature writing given she has a PhD on the subject. Once We Were Wildlife is a collection that explores the human/natural world connection, moving beyond the standard character arc into metamorphosis. The characters are not so much in nature as they are discovering their essential selves as nature. Simpson handles the transformation subtly but the writing is so resonant that the reader cannot help but rethink their own sense of self.

The pieces, eleven stories and one poem, are distinct but also overlap, with characters and settings reappearing, themes recurring, and progressions in time nad space that echo from one story to the next. All of the pieces involving humans pivot around a longing for connection:

For that was the nature of longing; there would always be another wave, another project—perfect in the imagining – just over the horizon. (“The Wash”)

The world of the more-than-human has an almost magical feel, shimmering and sensual, from the the bright red flash of a fox to the ghostly remnants of a drowned stand of Huon pine:

The trees’ twisted, tumbledown shapes are familiar and yet strange, like they have rearranged themselves through the year. The fagus are retreating upslope. The pines, too. Behind the camera, it’s as if she can slow the turning of the earth. But there is no stopping it. Or their slow deterioration: a branch fallen here, a crown contracted there, another trunk cracking and crumbling. And underfoot, their ever-more-tangled roots. (“Tanglefoot”)

These relationships could lead to life or death, a moment’s connection, a drowning or fall. Marlen is drawn into dangerous surf, Tone, a photographer, falls off a cliff after making contact with an eagle, Sally, a lonely widow, develops a relationship with a heron, and the same Marlen we met earlier finds herself following a Sea Wolf through the mist. The connection outside of the human awakens something both dangerous and redemptive, like the Damian and the Bengal tiger in “Poached”:

God, those eyes. The little flecks of fire in them. She was beautiful. So beautiful that tears blurred the detail of her patterning and whiskers. But he knew anger when he saw it, pain. (“Poached”)

Even when things go badly, the end feels like some kind of return, a homecoming. There is consolation in tree roots and fungal networks, or the “greying tangle of patient pines”.

Hiking is a key part of many of these stories. Both “The Great Walk” and the title story, “Once We Were Wildlife” contain the rituals of multi-day hikers, from the preparation to physicality of the hike itself, forest changing under foot. “The Great Walk” is a moving story about a couple who spent their lives hiking together. This story is poignant and a little sad but it also feels transcendent. In the end, the division between the human and natural worlds unravel. There are many multi-day hikes in the title story. “Once We Were Wildlife,” which, at 80 pages, is long enough to be a novella, The story explores desire and longing against a backdrop of alpine valleys, ‘bluebird skies’, orchids and robins. The love between Frankie and Marie mirrors the dissolution of the others stories in the collection, including the ending which hits like an epiphany. The inclusion of Pádraig Ó Tuama’s Poetry Unbound is perfect preparation for “Tarn”, the tarn-shaped poem that follows Frankie’s jump into a tarn, “shedding layers like some alpine animal, changing her colours.”

Down to cool dim. Slowing down. Shifting stones, shifting stones, sediment cloud, Stop.

Many of the stories that follow take sentience to its limits, going beyond anthropomorphism into the perspective of a she-wolf, a tree, a colony of birds, penguins, and even a melting iceberg, each with its own distinct way of inhabiting the world, often at timescales that are vastly different to the human:

We cannot stop time. The world shifts and turns, forms and re-forms. We were land once, and we will be land again. Forgetting ice. Forgetting ships. Forgetting them. We cannot hold back the weight of all this water. (“The Melt”)

As the human perspective recedes the narrative becomes more poetic and less abstract, rooted in sensation, progression and motion. The final story, “Out of the Forest”, is set well into the future, narrated by a tree collective. I won’t say more about this story other than that Simpson’s depiction of a post-apocalyptic future is masterful, providing a view of the Symbiocene that is oddly optimistic:

So we sang sun into sap, as we always have, to hold ourselves together, new songs forming as we went.

The stories (and poem) in Once We Were Wildlife are beautifully written and consistently engaging, underpinned by a deep empathy for all living things. Taken collectively, the stories create a picture of how we might evolve, even in the midst of our inevitable self-destruction. Once We Were Wildlife is an important book and one that succeeds in the difficult task of showing us who and what we truly are.

[Ann Göth · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is hard to read contemporary writing about nature without being conscious of the extraordinary changes taking place around us. Climate change, habitat destruction and the loss of biodiversity have become part of the backdrop to so much of what we read – and, increasingly, to how we think about our own place in the world.

Inga Simpson approaches these questions in a particularly distinctive way in Once We Were Wildlife. Rather than simply writing about nature or placing people within natural landscapes, she explores the much more intimate question of what it means to feel connected to the living world around us.

The stories are beautifully observed and often quietly unsettling. Her characters don't simply encounter nature; their encounters seem to alter how they understand themselves. There is a gradual blurring of the boundary between human experience and the more-than-human world, handled with such subtlety that the transformation can almost creep up on you.

Simpson's impressive background in nature writing and her deep knowledge of the subject are evident, but the book never feels like an academic exploration. Instead, the ideas emerge through the stories themselves, through atmosphere, observation and beautifully controlled prose.

What stayed with me most was the way the collection made me question the assumption that humans stand apart from nature. Perhaps the more interesting question is what happens when we begin to see ourselves as part of it.

[Fiona Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Out of a the Forest was my favourite. ❤️

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heartfelt and thought provoking read. My favourite story is Blue Crane.

[Jake Neidig · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb collection of short stories. Meaningful and moving in short, powerful doses. Drowning, wolves, and Frankie story particularly good

[Steph · Rating 4 out of 5]

A touching collection of short stories, I really enjoyed this anthology.

[Cass Moriarty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Indisputably one of the top wildlife and environmental writers in Australia, Inga Simpson (also an accomplished photographer) captures Country, land, climate issues, species extinction, habitat and the sheer wonder of individual animals, birds, fish, insects, plants, fungi and all the elements of the natural world with a focussed, pitch-perfect writing lens entangled with stories of humans and their relationship with the earth, always encouraging thoughtful and challenging questions and debate about the world and our place in it. Her collection of short stories ONCE WE WERE WILDLIFE (Hachette 2026) is a sublime example of her stunning literary prose, her keen eye for detail and her extraordinary descriptive ability.

The stories are varied, including a verse poem, some with human protagonists and some with wild creatures at the centre, a few with a touch of magical realism, poignancy or whimsy. As always with a collection of writing, some stories will resonate more strongly with some people than others. My favourites are BLUE CRANE (with its unexpected ending), POACHED (with its incredibly tense and devastating ending) and especially THE GREAT WALK (a poignant, haunting, tender and moving tale). But other readers will find their own favourites.

Protagonists are young or old, wise or naïve, courageous or sly, furry or winged, predator or prey, alert or dispassionate, ambitious or content, restless or settled. The dialogue is authentic, expressive and meaningful, and the settings are atmospheric, evocative and haunting. A beautiful collection from one of our wisest, deliberate and most beguiling authors.

[Robert Watson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I should have enjoyed this more than I did. A lot of time immersed in the Australian bush, and the Larapinta, one of my favourite places on the planet, the setting for the beginning of the story that gives the collection it's title. The stories felt predictable and clichéd, despite their worthy themes.
Disappointing.

[Jan Lancaster · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of short stories is beautifully written as I expected from Simpson.
There are tales about characters who love the environment, nature, walking, relationships and more.
The title story is the longest and probably the one I enjoyed most. Recommended.

[Kristen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The stories were fine but the editing was not. Nothing memorable here.

[Kate Mathieson · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.4 stars

Rather delightful little tales of humans and nature.