Death is never far away from the surface in this collection of essays about humanity’s interaction with nature. Rawson’s father is living with (and dying with) Alzheimer’s disease. The deaths in the natural animal world herald a phase of accelerated extinction. She asks how culpable we humans have been, what we’re doing now to arrest/reverse this, and what we need to do in the future. She admits she has more questions than answers.
After living in very hip downtown Melbourne, Rawson moved to the Huon Valley in Tasmania. She wasn’t a natural fit for the bush; the move was more about managing money. She admits that she’s fully immersed in writing about nature but not entirely comfortable living in it. The move allowed her to consider the implications of the changes in the natural world, though. ‘In Tasmania, I will go back to the moment before everything went wrong.’ In Tasmania it’s possible to pretend that all the ecological damage humanity has wrought on the mainland doesn’t exist.
Humans, even with the best intentions, are liable to fall into the pit of unintended consequences. Rawson avoids the low-hanging fruit of cane toads and focuses on Tasmania, where lyre birds were introduced to save them from foxes. They’re now considered a pest.
Koalas, chlamydia-free in Tassie, need to be managed to avoid them destroying the manna gum population. The questions Rawson poses can seem directionless, but it isn’t rambling; it’s about trying to plot a course to a better destination. So, she doesn’t mind letting the reader travel with her onto a detour and into a rhetorical dead end. The reader is ultimately left with the choice of destination.
Reviewed by Bob Moore
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I grew up in Canberra and then spent quite a few years dawdling around the streets of San Francisco, Prague and Phnom Penh. These days I live in Tasmania’s Huon Valley. Formerly editor of the environment and energy section of The Conversation, an independent news website, I now work for a Tasmanian conservation organisation. I like cats, quiet, minimal capitalisation, and finding out that everything is going to be OK.
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