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Wild Nature
John Blay laces up his walking boots and goes bush to explore Australia's rugged south east forests—stretching from Canberra to the coast and on to Wilsons Promontory—in a great circle from his one-time home near Bermagui. In Wild Nature , the bestselling author of On Track charts the forests' shared history, their natural history, the forest wars, the establishment of the South East Forests National Park, and the threats that continue to dog their existence, including devastating bushfires. Along the way Blay asks the big questions. What do we really know about these wild forests? How did the forests come to be the way they are? What is the importance of wild nature to our civilisation?
336 pages, Paperback
Published June 1, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 4, 2021
“Wild Nature” is an immersive book, a sort of slow journey through the south east forests riding author John Blay’s stream of consciousness. At times philosophical, it’s not primarily ethereal - Blay has too much skin in the game. He lugs his pack, fords lonely creeks, struggles through near impenetrable scrub, gets lost and wet and wounded as he forges his way around the south eastern forests of NSW.
His knowledge is broad and formidable - what a great bushwalking companion he must be! To share the tracks and trails and ridges as old mate gives you the low down, unlocking the botany, geology, biology, hydrology and history - European and aboriginal - of the land on which you’re walking. Blay is passionate, knowledgeable, committed, experienced, thoughtful - and doggedly determined. You don’t need to read between the lines to appreciate that there is a fair amount of off-grid, follow-your-nose, cut-across-the-escarpment, set-up-your-tarp-in-the-rain suffering has gone into this book.
Yet Blay is irrepressibly in love with the wild, and that comes out loud and clear throughout.
Although the book is divided into Parts 1 to 6, I did find myself a bit disorientated as the book unfolded. Blay refers to his earlier work, On Track: Searching Out The Bundian Way, which, judging by the title, has a more linear narrative threat, namely the discovery of an A to B path up the south eastern escarpment from the coast to the Monaro and the high country beyond.
The quest is less straightforward in Wild Nature, and that made the sense of where the whole thing was going a little unclear. Whereas it’s one thing to have an exhaustive knowledge of the areas in question, landing them onto the page and into the life of the reader is a challenge. There isn’t so much a sense of progress as you read, so much as just more. In some ways, that’s an apt metaphor for these vast forests, heathlands and mountains. I needed to adjust to Blay’s meandering episodic structure, which is definitely helped by his structure and the manageable length of the chapters.
I think I would definitely have appreciated more exhaustive maps - perhaps Blay wishes to keep secret places secret? - and some more photographs that directly corresponded to the places and features and vegetation mentioned in the text. I’d liked to have seen photos of his converted troop carrier, a few campsites, the blue hat (what a curious episode!), a few more integrated illustrations or photos or maps or diagrams or timelines.
The recounting of the forest wars and the trek of the lost shipwreck victims in 1897 are an example of literary vehicles which really helped the flow of the book. I’d like to have seen a bit more use of such techniques because these things which are more likely push a book like this from “enthusiast/environmentalist” into the broader readership and thereby give a bigger audience to a subject important to all of us.
I guess Blay gets about as close as he can, letting his feelings about a place give an impression that lists of vegetation and references to geological periods can only really do for those familiar with the terminology. His insights into aboriginal culture are helpful and constructive and certainly add another rich element to the story.
My main criticism is that by not targeting a broader readership I fear this book will more likely land in the realm of the enthusiasts, the activists, the “in” crowd. Blay has missed some opportunities to pull us all into a story which, as he rightly points out, is a story we are all already a part of - our sense of place, the wellbeing of our forests, fauna, flora, families and communities, now and into the future.
It’s probably clear by this point that Blay is an avid conservationist. If you don’t like “greenies” I’d still encourage you to give this book a read. It’s personal and although his heroes are conservationists it’s a generally restrained insight into what drives Blay to see the forests preserved - as opposed to a one-dimensional anti-logging tract. (I have a friend who worked for Forestries in Eden during the late 80’s - I’d be really interested in his thoughts on this book.)
As the book was nearing completion, the 2020 bushfires ripped through massive parts of NSW (including the south eastern forests), burning an area comparable to the size of Britain and making headlines worldwide. Blay’s afterword briefly addresses his first hand experience of the fires from his home in Eden.
Having lingered with Blay in the pages of Wild Nature as a pair of black cockatoos chat overhead as they pick at their banksia breakfast, or stepped onto a creek side carpet of fragile orchids high in the hinterland, or spotted a sugar glider leaping between towering timbers...a sense of scale of what is at stake seems to sink in. A lot has been damaged, destroyed and permanently altered due to logging, agriculture, fire, flood, colonisation, development...Blay leaves us not depressed, but pondering the fact that the long story of the south east forests - in all their breadth and complexity and beauty - is still unfolding.
His knowledge is broad and formidable - what a great bushwalking companion he must be! To share the tracks and trails and ridges as old mate gives you the low down, unlocking the botany, geology, biology, hydrology and history - European and aboriginal - of the land on which you’re walking. Blay is passionate, knowledgeable, committed, experienced, thoughtful - and doggedly determined. You don’t need to read between the lines to appreciate that there is a fair amount of off-grid, follow-your-nose, cut-across-the-escarpment, set-up-your-tarp-in-the-rain suffering has gone into this book.
Yet Blay is irrepressibly in love with the wild, and that comes out loud and clear throughout.
Although the book is divided into Parts 1 to 6, I did find myself a bit disorientated as the book unfolded. Blay refers to his earlier work, On Track: Searching Out The Bundian Way, which, judging by the title, has a more linear narrative threat, namely the discovery of an A to B path up the south eastern escarpment from the coast to the Monaro and the high country beyond.
The quest is less straightforward in Wild Nature, and that made the sense of where the whole thing was going a little unclear. Whereas it’s one thing to have an exhaustive knowledge of the areas in question, landing them onto the page and into the life of the reader is a challenge. There isn’t so much a sense of progress as you read, so much as just more. In some ways, that’s an apt metaphor for these vast forests, heathlands and mountains. I needed to adjust to Blay’s meandering episodic structure, which is definitely helped by his structure and the manageable length of the chapters.
I think I would definitely have appreciated more exhaustive maps - perhaps Blay wishes to keep secret places secret? - and some more photographs that directly corresponded to the places and features and vegetation mentioned in the text. I’d liked to have seen photos of his converted troop carrier, a few campsites, the blue hat (what a curious episode!), a few more integrated illustrations or photos or maps or diagrams or timelines.
The recounting of the forest wars and the trek of the lost shipwreck victims in 1897 are an example of literary vehicles which really helped the flow of the book. I’d like to have seen a bit more use of such techniques because these things which are more likely push a book like this from “enthusiast/environmentalist” into the broader readership and thereby give a bigger audience to a subject important to all of us.
I guess Blay gets about as close as he can, letting his feelings about a place give an impression that lists of vegetation and references to geological periods can only really do for those familiar with the terminology. His insights into aboriginal culture are helpful and constructive and certainly add another rich element to the story.
My main criticism is that by not targeting a broader readership I fear this book will more likely land in the realm of the enthusiasts, the activists, the “in” crowd. Blay has missed some opportunities to pull us all into a story which, as he rightly points out, is a story we are all already a part of - our sense of place, the wellbeing of our forests, fauna, flora, families and communities, now and into the future.
It’s probably clear by this point that Blay is an avid conservationist. If you don’t like “greenies” I’d still encourage you to give this book a read. It’s personal and although his heroes are conservationists it’s a generally restrained insight into what drives Blay to see the forests preserved - as opposed to a one-dimensional anti-logging tract. (I have a friend who worked for Forestries in Eden during the late 80’s - I’d be really interested in his thoughts on this book.)
As the book was nearing completion, the 2020 bushfires ripped through massive parts of NSW (including the south eastern forests), burning an area comparable to the size of Britain and making headlines worldwide. Blay’s afterword briefly addresses his first hand experience of the fires from his home in Eden.
Having lingered with Blay in the pages of Wild Nature as a pair of black cockatoos chat overhead as they pick at their banksia breakfast, or stepped onto a creek side carpet of fragile orchids high in the hinterland, or spotted a sugar glider leaping between towering timbers...a sense of scale of what is at stake seems to sink in. A lot has been damaged, destroyed and permanently altered due to logging, agriculture, fire, flood, colonisation, development...Blay leaves us not depressed, but pondering the fact that the long story of the south east forests - in all their breadth and complexity and beauty - is still unfolding.
September 1, 2022
An excellent journey through place and history
December 9, 2020
I think this book needed a bit more context than what it was given. There was a lot of potential here for there to be a full and glowing history of the walking tracks and bushwalks undertaken by the author, but instead, what we get is a rather personal history of the author and his relationships with people and the land. This results in a book that's ended rather lacklustre, and I'm afraid to say that I perhaps expected a little bit more from it. I was so hopeful that I would get maps, descriptions, and vivid detailing of the wild world we live in, but I'm afraid that was not the case.
August 22, 2021
I enjoyed accompanying John Blay on a wander through wild places in south-east NSW and getting a sense of the vegetation, terrain and fauna that is found there. Not having visited this area, but wishing to become more familiar with Australia’s east coast, I had hoped to also get a clear idea of the geography, to be able to follow his journey on a map, to perhaps plan my own hike there one day. But this is no guidebook. Instead Wild Nature is a personal meander, with many hikes overlaid, including sidetracks into the past. He revisits old conservation battlegrounds and drawing our attention to the ongoing plight of old-growth forests and the animals that live there.
Of nature documentaries, he says they can confuse people “into expecting nature to reveal one wonder after another as it is on TV. Don’t mistake such flashiness for nature….Only by spending time there do you find how to see nature, to truly see what’s there in front of your eyes. Only by questing, by being shown, by learning, by accepting wisdom does wild nature reveal itself.”
I am not sure I entirely agree with the idea that unless we spend time there, we cannot know how to see nature. As the same assertion could be said to apply to reading nature writing too. I think the point of nature writing is to hint at what is seen and understood when we spend time in nature. Certainly I was left with a deep impression of this area of Australia.
Of nature documentaries, he says they can confuse people “into expecting nature to reveal one wonder after another as it is on TV. Don’t mistake such flashiness for nature….Only by spending time there do you find how to see nature, to truly see what’s there in front of your eyes. Only by questing, by being shown, by learning, by accepting wisdom does wild nature reveal itself.”
I am not sure I entirely agree with the idea that unless we spend time there, we cannot know how to see nature. As the same assertion could be said to apply to reading nature writing too. I think the point of nature writing is to hint at what is seen and understood when we spend time in nature. Certainly I was left with a deep impression of this area of Australia.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews