Finished reading on the 7th September – ‘Let The Land Speak’ by Jackie French, published in 2013, 440 pages: a history of Australia: How the land created our nation.
A very interesting read, and in the main, presented to a large degree from the Indigenous perspective. Though not to the same degree of ‘almost unbelievable far-fetched’ ideas of Bruce Pascoe, in ‘Dark Emu’ or Bill Gammage’s ‘The Biggest Estate on Earth’, there were certainly strong parallel’s between all three writers in respect to the impact that the originals Australians had on the land, and a strong negative comparison, with the disastrous affect the European civilisation and early decade farming methods had on the land they ‘inherited’ from the Indigenous peoples.
The book was written from a strongly personal viewpoint by a writer who has lived on the land and observed the changes which have occurred over the decades. If she’s not sure of the answer, she provides her theory while acknowledging quite often, that she doesn’t claim her view to be the final word. I think the biggest suggestion I obtained from the book – our early settlers from the UK and similar countries, tried to adopt the English way of farming onto an environment which was totally alien to those methods, and in doing so over the decades, basically destroyed the landscape and environment that the original Australians had managed so well, despite whatever historical claims and assumptions have been applied over the years.
Another reviewer commented that ‘Her work is often concerned with the truth of Australian Aboriginal heritage and contemporary circumstances, with history that’s been forgotten, wilfully misunderstood or deliberately shunned, and a deep and abiding love and respect for the land.’[Shannon].
As stated on the back cover: “To understand Australia’s history, you need to look at how the land has shaped not just our past, but will continue to shape our future’.
To explain the book in more detail, the following are a few more professional reviewers and opinions on the book, to encourage readers.
From BookTopia
To understand the present, you need to understand the past. to understand Australia’s history, you need to look at how the land has shaped not just our past, but will continue to shape our future.
From highly respected, award-winning author Jackie French comes a new and fascinating interpretation of Australian history, focusing on how the land itself, rather than social forces, shaped the major events that led to modern Australia.
Our history is mostly written by those who live, work and research in cities, but it’s the land itself which has shaped our history far more powerfully and significantly than we realise. Reinterpreting the history we think we all know – from the indigenous women who shaped the land, from terra Incognita to Eureka, from Federation to Gallipoli and beyond, Jackie French shows us that to understand our history, we need to understand our land. taking us behind history and the accepted version of events, she also shows us that there’s so much we don’t understand about our history because we simply don’t understand the way life was lived at the time.
Eye-opening, refreshing, completely fascinating and unforgettable, Let the Land Speak will transform the way we understand the role and influence of the land and how it has shaped our nation.
A review from 29 March, 2014 on hercanberra.com.au
I knew when I first heard about Jackie French’s upcoming work on the land that the result would be much more than a book about the geographical elements that comprise our great country. I knew it would be very much about this, but I also knew it would be about spirit. About heart. About an almost ethereal human connection to the land that so many of us fail to feel, even after a lifetime.
And I was right. This is our land through the eyes of one who is deeply in love with every intimate part of its geographical structure, its history, its people—its soul.
Let the Land Speak is, in part, biographical. It is about one woman’s journey, from her oyster-shucking days in Darling Harbour as a child, fossicking along the rocks to find the abundant food available, just as it was when the First Fleet arrived, to the many hours she has spent with Aboriginal women in her later adulthood—women who have passed on innate knowledge and land-connection from millennia past.
It is also an historical account. Opening with the arrival of Captain Cook’s Endeavour, we are taken back in time to first see the ‘real’ Australia encountered by white man. We are introduced to five hundred years of misunderstandings as to how white man first approached this land and how it was subsequently settled.
And my goodness, it is eye-opening.
We are told of the Real First Fleet—the people who came by boat around 60,000 years ago. We are given a vivid picture of the land as it was then, and we are gradually transported to the land we have now. The drought-hardened, flood-ravaged, raw, wild, beautiful land new settlers tried with all their might to turn into the sweet green fields of England, dotted with fluffy white sheep and crops that would never stand a chance.
This is an extraordinary, comprehensive, information-crammed tome that is at once mindboggling in fascinating content, and extremely emotional to read. It made me realise that, like many Australians, I have lived a life more or less detached from the land. Growing up as a teen on the Central Coast of New South Wales, I felt more of an affinity with the ocean than I did the land, and then moving from city to major city thereafter, I again felt more connection to the manmade than I ever did to nature.
As a result, I felt profoundly moved to read of Jackie’s closeness to the land—her ability to predict weather patterns, rains and drought, simply by smell, the mating calls of animals, and the condition and flourishing of plants and trees each and every season in her beloved Araluen Valley in southern tablelands of New South Wales.
French’s book is a holistic view of the place we all inhabit—a land that is tough, has always been tough, and will continue to be tough to live on. It is tough to farm, tough to survive, tough to control—and Let the Land Speak asks us to look at the possibility of releasing this need to control. Of living in harmony with our environment, and allowing it to return to a balance and a beauty that has been—and continues to be—rapidly lost.
It is a cry for help. It is a call to action. And it will not fail to move you.
As we age and become more attuned to our history, and more aware of the possibility held in our future, returning to the land and developing a relationship with earth is an emotional journey. From the plight of the Great Barrier Reef to the life of our farming folk, from the earth-scourging mining industry to the perilous insistence we have to build homes where fire comes and where corroding coastlines will soon wash all into the sea, the overriding messaging in Let the Land Speak is in listening. Stopping. Watching. Becoming one with our land.
This is an important book, and a must-read for all Australians, for it contains messaging we simply can’t ignore. In the words of Jackie herself: “We need to listen to our land. If we fail, we will stumble into a future we can neither predict nor understand.”
A comment from a reader [Paul Daltron] –
I enjoyed this book. I liked reading Jackie French’s reflections based on her observation, over the past 40 years, of changes in the ecosystem of the Araluen valley, south-east of Canberra. The first 3/4 of the book, illustrating ways in which the climate and landscape have influenced human and social development in Australia over the past 60,000 years, were the most interesting.
While from Rachel –
I really enjoyed this book. While it is as much storytelling as it is history, Jackie’s perspective as a woman and a farmer provided me with new perspectives on well known events. I felt the thesis was stretched a little thin in the middle of the book, but the start and finish kept me well engaged. I am in awe of Jackie’s knowledge of her local area and what she’s learnt through observing it. This book hopefully will help me observe and understand more too.
While Shannon, mentioned earlier. Further noted that
have always believed that Australians – both Indigenous (which would seem obvious) and ‘white’ Australians – are and have been shaped by the land. That all the stereotypes associated with Australians – from the positive (laconic and irreverent sense of humour; self-deprecating abhorrence of ‘tall poppies’; community spirit and neighbourliness; bravery and courage; hard-working; laid-back and easy-going; innovative; friendly and welcoming) to the negative (racist etc.) – have their roots in our relationship with the land and what it takes to survive here, whether you adapt to it as the Aboriginals did, or whether you try to mould it into a semblance of an English pastoral landscape as the British did. This understanding started to form when I was studying for my undergrad many years ago; Let the Land Speak confirms and explains it.
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