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A Single Tree
A Single Tree assembles the raw material underpinning Don Watson’s award-winning The Bush. These diverse and haunting voices span the four centuries since Europeans first set eyes on the continent.Each of these varied contributors – settlers, explorers, anthropologists, naturalists, stockmen, surveyors, itinerants, artists and writers– represents a particular place and time. Men in awe of the landscape or cursing it; aspiring to subdue and exploit it or finding themselves defeated by it. Women reflecting on the land’s harshness and beauty, on the strangeness of their lives, their pleasures and miseries, the character and behaviour of the men. Europeans writing about indigenous Australians, sometimes with intelligent sympathy and curiosity but often with contempt, and often describing acts of startling brutality.This collection comprises diary extracts, memoirs, journals, letters, histories, poems and fiction, and follows the same loose themes of The Bush. The science of the landscape and climate, and the way we have perceived them. Our deep and sentimental connection to the land, and our equally deep ignorance and abuse of it. The heroic myths and legends. The enchantments. The bush as a formative and defining element in Australian culture, self-image and character. The flora and fauna, the waterways, the colours. The heroic, self-defining stories, the bizarre and terrible, and the ones lost in the deep silences. There are accounts of journeys, of work and recreation, of religious observance, of creation and destruction. Stories of uncanny events, peculiar and fantastic characters, deep ironies, and of land unlimited. And musings on what might be the future of the as a unique environment, a food bowl, a mine, a wellspring of national identity . . . From Dampier and Tasman to Tim Flannery and assorted contemporary farmers, environmentalists and grey nomads, these pieces represent a vast array of experiences, perspectives and knowledge. A Single Tree is an essential companion to its brilliant predecessor.
352 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 31, 2016
3 people are currently reading
68 people want to read
About the author
Don Watson
69 books67 followersWatson grew up on a farm in Gippsland, took his undergraduate degree at La Trobe University and a Ph.D at Monash University and was for ten years an academic historian. He wrote three books on Australian history before turning his hand to TV and the stage. For several years he combined writing political satire for the actor Max Gillies with political speeches for the former Premier of Victoria, John Cain.
In 1992 he became Prime Minister Paul Keating's speech-writer and adviser and his best-selling account of those years, Recollections of a Bleeding Heart': Paul Keating Prime Minister, won both the The Age Book of the Year and non-fiction Prizes, the Brisbane Courier Mail Book of the Year, the National Biography Award and the Australian Literary Studies Association's Book of the Year.
In addition to regular books, articles and essays, in recent years he has also written feature films, including The Man Who Sued God, starring Billy Connolly and Judy Davis. His 2001 Quarterly Essay Rabbit Syndrome: Australia and America won the inaugural Alfred Deakin Prize in the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards. Death Sentence, his book about the decay of public language, was also a best seller and won the Australian Booksellers Association Book of the Year. Watson's Dictionary of Weasel Words was published in 2004 and continued to encourage readers to renounce what he perceives to be meaningless corporate and government jargon that is spreading throughout Australia and embrace meaningful, precise language. More recently Watson contributed the preface to a selection of Mark Twain's writings, The Wayward Tourist.
His latest book, American Journeys is a narrative of modern America from Watson's travels in the United States following Hurricane Katrina. It was published by Knopf in 2008 and won both the The Age Book of the Year non-fiction and Book of the Year awards.[4]. It also won the 2008 Walkley Award for the best non-fiction book.
In 1992 he became Prime Minister Paul Keating's speech-writer and adviser and his best-selling account of those years, Recollections of a Bleeding Heart': Paul Keating Prime Minister, won both the The Age Book of the Year and non-fiction Prizes, the Brisbane Courier Mail Book of the Year, the National Biography Award and the Australian Literary Studies Association's Book of the Year.
In addition to regular books, articles and essays, in recent years he has also written feature films, including The Man Who Sued God, starring Billy Connolly and Judy Davis. His 2001 Quarterly Essay Rabbit Syndrome: Australia and America won the inaugural Alfred Deakin Prize in the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards. Death Sentence, his book about the decay of public language, was also a best seller and won the Australian Booksellers Association Book of the Year. Watson's Dictionary of Weasel Words was published in 2004 and continued to encourage readers to renounce what he perceives to be meaningless corporate and government jargon that is spreading throughout Australia and embrace meaningful, precise language. More recently Watson contributed the preface to a selection of Mark Twain's writings, The Wayward Tourist.
His latest book, American Journeys is a narrative of modern America from Watson's travels in the United States following Hurricane Katrina. It was published by Knopf in 2008 and won both the The Age Book of the Year non-fiction and Book of the Year awards.[4]. It also won the 2008 Walkley Award for the best non-fiction book.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 15, 2018
This is a curiously fascinating publication that defies classification either as history or as literature, yet manages to be both at the same time… It is essentially a collection of writings chosen by Watson dealing with that vague and immense subject: the responses of individuals to the Australian “bush”, as interpreted by them from their own particular points of view. I counted 180 extracts from 170 authors. Although there are exceptions, the vast majority of these are from the 19th- and 20th-century CE; and the range is extensive.
Watson could have presented these chronologically, but deliberately chooses not to: instead the entries are listed alphabetically according to the writer’s last name. (There is one exception, which Watson points out: the four extracts relating to the Oxley/Cunningham expeditions — both are dated 1817 and were written about the same events; and their juxtapositions here are both revealing and perhaps even shocking, insofar as they clearly reveal how personal and different the reports are in their intent.) Overall, this results in the book being more of a collage of impressions over this period, one that both blurs individual specific situations with a sense of an overall, overarching, though unspecified narrative, the details of which may very well be left up to individual readers to respond to, each in their own way. Basic follow-through information is provided for each entry so that one might follow it up if so desired.
For me personally one of these overarching narratives relates to the perception and treatment of the indigenous natives. There are entries which reveal some of the more sensitive and humane reactions to their plight and their understanding of the “strange” land the Europeans were taking over — with no apparent political will for follow-up except perhaps conceptually: the odious terra nullius (no man’s land) concept basically allowed personal reactions for individual colonisers and settlers to dominate, sometimes cooperatively, more often than not, however, “permitting” numerous atrocities and punitive actions, even in defiance (or complete disregard) of any laws which were supposed to prohibit or at least minimise such actions.
Despite personal reactions such as Thomas Livingstone Mitchell’s exuberant and almost homoerotic description (1846–47) of his native guide (he found his European companions inferior and inadequate in comparison), the constant impression overall is that those pesky natives were part of the difficulties needed to be dealt with in the settlement of Australia: they were seen as part of the problem, and were treated as such: at best they were simply taken as personal property as and when necessary. I have selected a couple of entries in this regard, in which this mindset is a very thinly veiled sub-text:
First, from Lucy Gray, Journal, 1870:
C has been lately at a station fifty miles away & brought back a little black boy. As he rode up in the dusk, we could not imagine what it was he had behind him; it was the boy holding him tightly around the waist, & peering round his elbow, with a funny little grave face.
At a word from C he slipped off, & stood waiting for him without taking notice of any one else. C had bought him from an old gin for a couple of handkerchiefs, at least he asked her to give him the boy, which she did willingly, & he gave her his handkerchiefs as a present, with which she was delighted.
Whereupon C had his hair cropped, & bought him a blue twill shirt, thus for the first time in his life he was clothed, & most completely, for the garment, made for a man, came down to his heels. He followed C silently, wherever he went, like a little dog who has found a master, standing close by him, & when C went into the house he sat by the doorstep watching for him to come out. At night he received a blanket in wh. he curled himself up, as if he had been accustomed to it all his life. I thought it looked like making a slave of him, when C put handcuffs on his little slender black legs, to prevent him in a sudden fit of home-sickness, going back to his Mammy in the night. He did not seem at least affected by this want of confidence in him, but looked on with interest, & when it was over, put his head under his blanket & went to sleep.
Second, from Emily Caroline Creaghe, Diary, 1883:
…
8 THURSDAY
We slept again outside, but even then it was too hot to sleep. Mr Bob Shadforth went up to “Lorne hill” Mr Jack Watson’s and Mr Frank Hann’s station about 40 miles away. Very hot. No rain. Mr Watson has 40 pairs of blacks’ ears nailed around the walls collected during raiding parties after the loss of many cattle speared by the blacks.
…
20 TUESDAY
The rainy season seems to have set in, in real good earnest; it has been raining heavily nearly all day. Mr Shadforth & Ernest Shadforth came home, but had to leave the dray at Gregory Downs as the roads were too heavy & the rivers too high. They brought a new black gin with them; she cannot speak a word of English. Mr Shadforth put a rope around the gin’s neck & dragged her along on foot, he was riding. This seems to be the usual method.
21 WEDNESDAY
No rain this morning, but dull & cloudy. Rained all the afternoon in showers. The new gin, whom they call Bella, is chained up to a tree a few yards from the house, she is not to be loosed until they think she is tamed.
A final reference, that of Korah Halcomb Wills (publican, and Mayor of Bowen and Mackay in Qld), Reminiscences, ca. 1895, is too extensive to quote here, but his reminiscences are a confirmation of his disdainful attitude and his horrific and disgustingly disrespectful actions (told in almost gleeful boastful pride) which he considered “appropriate” in his dealings with the natives.
As mentioned above, this is only one personal “thread” that can be extracted from this book. There are many other connections a reader might make from the kaleidoscope of images reflected in this intriguing work!
Watson could have presented these chronologically, but deliberately chooses not to: instead the entries are listed alphabetically according to the writer’s last name. (There is one exception, which Watson points out: the four extracts relating to the Oxley/Cunningham expeditions — both are dated 1817 and were written about the same events; and their juxtapositions here are both revealing and perhaps even shocking, insofar as they clearly reveal how personal and different the reports are in their intent.) Overall, this results in the book being more of a collage of impressions over this period, one that both blurs individual specific situations with a sense of an overall, overarching, though unspecified narrative, the details of which may very well be left up to individual readers to respond to, each in their own way. Basic follow-through information is provided for each entry so that one might follow it up if so desired.
For me personally one of these overarching narratives relates to the perception and treatment of the indigenous natives. There are entries which reveal some of the more sensitive and humane reactions to their plight and their understanding of the “strange” land the Europeans were taking over — with no apparent political will for follow-up except perhaps conceptually: the odious terra nullius (no man’s land) concept basically allowed personal reactions for individual colonisers and settlers to dominate, sometimes cooperatively, more often than not, however, “permitting” numerous atrocities and punitive actions, even in defiance (or complete disregard) of any laws which were supposed to prohibit or at least minimise such actions.
Despite personal reactions such as Thomas Livingstone Mitchell’s exuberant and almost homoerotic description (1846–47) of his native guide (he found his European companions inferior and inadequate in comparison), the constant impression overall is that those pesky natives were part of the difficulties needed to be dealt with in the settlement of Australia: they were seen as part of the problem, and were treated as such: at best they were simply taken as personal property as and when necessary. I have selected a couple of entries in this regard, in which this mindset is a very thinly veiled sub-text:
First, from Lucy Gray, Journal, 1870:
C has been lately at a station fifty miles away & brought back a little black boy. As he rode up in the dusk, we could not imagine what it was he had behind him; it was the boy holding him tightly around the waist, & peering round his elbow, with a funny little grave face.
At a word from C he slipped off, & stood waiting for him without taking notice of any one else. C had bought him from an old gin for a couple of handkerchiefs, at least he asked her to give him the boy, which she did willingly, & he gave her his handkerchiefs as a present, with which she was delighted.
Whereupon C had his hair cropped, & bought him a blue twill shirt, thus for the first time in his life he was clothed, & most completely, for the garment, made for a man, came down to his heels. He followed C silently, wherever he went, like a little dog who has found a master, standing close by him, & when C went into the house he sat by the doorstep watching for him to come out. At night he received a blanket in wh. he curled himself up, as if he had been accustomed to it all his life. I thought it looked like making a slave of him, when C put handcuffs on his little slender black legs, to prevent him in a sudden fit of home-sickness, going back to his Mammy in the night. He did not seem at least affected by this want of confidence in him, but looked on with interest, & when it was over, put his head under his blanket & went to sleep.
Second, from Emily Caroline Creaghe, Diary, 1883:
…
8 THURSDAY
We slept again outside, but even then it was too hot to sleep. Mr Bob Shadforth went up to “Lorne hill” Mr Jack Watson’s and Mr Frank Hann’s station about 40 miles away. Very hot. No rain. Mr Watson has 40 pairs of blacks’ ears nailed around the walls collected during raiding parties after the loss of many cattle speared by the blacks.
…
20 TUESDAY
The rainy season seems to have set in, in real good earnest; it has been raining heavily nearly all day. Mr Shadforth & Ernest Shadforth came home, but had to leave the dray at Gregory Downs as the roads were too heavy & the rivers too high. They brought a new black gin with them; she cannot speak a word of English. Mr Shadforth put a rope around the gin’s neck & dragged her along on foot, he was riding. This seems to be the usual method.
21 WEDNESDAY
No rain this morning, but dull & cloudy. Rained all the afternoon in showers. The new gin, whom they call Bella, is chained up to a tree a few yards from the house, she is not to be loosed until they think she is tamed.
A final reference, that of Korah Halcomb Wills (publican, and Mayor of Bowen and Mackay in Qld), Reminiscences, ca. 1895, is too extensive to quote here, but his reminiscences are a confirmation of his disdainful attitude and his horrific and disgustingly disrespectful actions (told in almost gleeful boastful pride) which he considered “appropriate” in his dealings with the natives.
As mentioned above, this is only one personal “thread” that can be extracted from this book. There are many other connections a reader might make from the kaleidoscope of images reflected in this intriguing work!
February 8, 2020
The Bush was Don Watson’s very successful nonfiction book reflecting Australia’s experience of the bush, the natural environment from colonial times on. This book, A Single Tree contains some of his research documents . If that all sounds dry, don’t be put off. The bush here is mainly referring to the world people lived in, presented in a fascinating range of very short selections, mainly old but some modern. White people’s memories and writings dominate but there are indigenous contributions too. Form varies, from government records, explorers’ accounts, extracts from novels, letters, poems, books by historians, geographers, environmentalists. You can’t get away from terrible attitudes and events resulting from white encroachment onto Aboriginal land. I read it a bit at a time. It’s a good reminder of our past.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews