Fenner School of Environment & Society. Australian National University
Abstract
Soon after A MilRon Wild Acres was published in 1981, I read the book and
realised that I had encountered something momentous. I felt as Les Murray
did when he wrote of RoUs's book that he read and re-read it 'with all the
delight of one who knows he has at last got hold of a book that is in no way
alien to him' (Murray 1997: 158). I was living in Melbourne and I was moved
to write to the author, whom I had not met and could hardly dream of ever
meeting, and who seemed to me to live in an extraordinary, magical and
especially dynamic place. It was slightiy mystifying because I recalled once as
a child in the 1960s being driven through Coonabarabran, and I could
remember the vast tracts of the Pilliga Scmb (as it was disdainfijlly called)
rolling endlessly past the car window. It had not seemed extraordinary,
magical and especially dynamic then. Had it changed? Had I changed? Had
this man's book opened my eyes? All of the above. I had never before realised
how strongly words on a page could animate actuality
