Australian History
Book Details

The Colonial Earth

New Paperback Edition

Tim Bonyhady

A superb, award-winning book, Colonial Earth challenges the widespread belief that Australia's early colonial settlers despised their environment and were blind to their own destructiveness. Now in paperback.

Awards

NSW Premier's History Prize 2001
Queensland Premier's Literary Award for Non-Fiction 2001
Shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Award 2001
Shortlisted for The Age Book of the Year 2001

Opinion

This is a rare, enlightening and beautifully presented book. Seize it. There are only 2000 copies in this edition. It could vanish, like the heritage it celebrates, at any minute.' (Sally Blakeney, The Australian, 3-4 February 2001)

'The Colonial Earth is art history at its best. . .should be compulsory reading not only for students of nineteenth century culture but for any contemporary artist working with or in the urban, rural or wilderness landscape.' (David Hansen, Art Monthly, March 2001)

About this Title

This is a rare, enlightening and beautifully presented book. Seize it.
The Australian

The Colonial Earth challenges the widespread belief that Australia's colonial settlers despised their environment and were blind to their own destructiveness.

Tim Bonyhady reveals that many colonists not only delighted in their new surroundings but also wanted to preserve them. Our first environmental laws were proclaimed as early as 1788. Many of our most important 'modern' environmental concerns--such as preserving endangered species, protecting forests, maintaining public rights over the foreshore and even the threat of climate change--already loomed large for Australia's first European settlers.

Art is Bonyhady's starting point. The work of many of Australia's finest painters is central to his story. But he also draws upon a remarkable array of sources, from parliamentary debates to poems, to show that concern for Australia's environment is not new, but is deeply rooted in our past.

Winner of the NSW Premier's History Prize
Winner of the Queensland Premier's History Prize
Shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Prize; The Age Book of the Year; the NSW Douglas Stewart Prize; and the best designed book in the APA Book Design Awards

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction
1 Birds of Providence
2 No Person Should Have Two Houses
3 A Painter's Delight
4 Fern Fever
5 Louisa
6 The Master of the Gum Tree
7 Artists with Axes
8 The Kalizoic Brotherhood
9 Uncle Sam, the Baron and King Edward VII
10 The Flood in the Darling
11 Cremorne Pastoral
12 The Template

List of Illustrations
Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index

About the Author

Tim Bonyhady is both an art historian and environmental lawyer. His many books include Images in Opposition: Australian Landscape Painting 1801-1890; Burke and Wills: From Melbourne to Myth, and Places Worth Keeping: Conservationists, Politics and Law.

978-0-522-85053-6