Book review of "Going Bush: New Zealanders and Nature in the Twentieth Century" by Kirstie Ross, Auckland University Press, New Zealand and "The Ways of the Bushwalker: On Foot in Australia" by Melissa Harper, UNSW Press, Australia

Brennan, Claire

Abstract

[Extract] These are both well researched, well written books that define their topics imaginatively. Melissa Harper's book addresses the history of enjoying walking the bush: Kirsty Ross's the connections between a society and its wilderness. Both books demonstrate delicious senses of irony and both authors main sufficient intellectual distance from their topics to write excellent histories. The parallels between these two books lie more in the approach taken by their authors than in their topics. Even the environments that they deal with, though both are called 'the bush', are very different. There is some overlap between the two books- both deal with what is known as hiking in North America, tramping in New Zealand, and bushwalking in Australia- but Harper focuses on this activity and what it exposes of settler society's engagement with nature while Ross approaches the larger topic of society's engagement with its natural environment directly.

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Environment and History

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1752-7023

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White Horse Press

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