The Blue Plateau: An Australian Pastoral [Paperback]

Mark Tredinnick (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0702237108 | ISBN-13: 978-1571313201 | Publication Date: October 1, 2009 | Edition: 1

Located in the Blue Mountains southwest of Sydney, the Blue Plateau is a contrary collection of canyons and creeks, cow paddocks and eucalyptus forests, the first people and ranchers. This book reveals the plateau through its inhabitants: the Gundungurra people who were there first and still remain; the Maxwell family, who tried, but failed, to tame the land; the affable, impoverished, often drunken ranchers and firefighters; and the author himself, a poet trying to insinuate his citified self into a rugged landscape defined by drought, fire, and scarcity. Like the works of Peter Mathiessen, Barry Lopez, and William Least Heat-Moon, The Blue Plateau is a deep examination of place that transcends genre, incorporating poetry, people’s history, ecology, mythology, and memoir to reveal how humanity and nature intertwine to create a home. Elegiac and intimately composed, this vivid portrait of a rugged wilds expands readers’ sense of the place they call home.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In 1998, Tredinnick (A Place on Earth) traveled into Australia's Blue Mountains to delve into the lives and lithology of a landscape profound with geology. He occupies the fringes of the lives he delineates, which include families with roots in the 19th century and a mid-1980s Polish refugee eking it out in a world of drought and devastating fires. Excerpts from a local woman's laconic twenty pocket diaries, each smaller than a pack of cigarettes and taped conversations with chattier men lend balance to Tredinnick's alternating tones: metaphoric, meditative and occasionally textbookish. Evocative as Tredinnick's imagery often is, American readers would have been well served by some photographs of the dazzling waterfalls, the awesome crags and crevices, the unfamiliar plants and animals, even the devastating fires. Tredinnick's book requires patience; readers may find themselves in a temporal thicket as several pasts mingle with an elusive present (I'm going to tell some stories here... and what connects them is my living for a time among them on a piece of ground where they all meet). Absorbed slowly, as a pastoral landscape of loss and experiment in seeing and listening, the book richly rewards that patience. (Oct.)
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Review

“One of the wisest, most gifted and ingenious writers you could hope to find.”
—Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food and The Omnivore’s Dilemma

“Blue escarpment, floods in the bottoms, a “red steer” wild fire, logging, pasturing, sod walled homes, generations evolving and perishing—Australian writer Mark Tredinnick tells us a vivid weave of stories which add up to a story of homeland, his for some years, and along the way he illustrates the complex ways we come to a sense of place, rural or downtown. The Blue Plateau is a gift; a guide to understanding all of us, everywhere; one of those books you read slowly, so it will last, and this one will. This one will be around.”
—Bill Kittredge, author of The Willow Field and The Next Rodeo

"Absorbed slowly, as a pastoral “landscape of loss” and “experiment in seeing and listening,” the book richly rewards that patience." — Publishers Weekly (Oct.)

"In this exquisite meshing of landscape and language, Tredinnick gives voice to the spirit of a place where longing and change are writ large." —Donna Seaman, Booklist

"The Blue Plateau conveys a deep sense, rooted in the very syntax of a lush prose about an austere land, that there can be no meaningful division between nature and culture, between humans and all the other life that interdepends with us, not in the backcountry of southeastern Australia, nor anywhere else." 
—Orion

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Milkweed Editions; 1 edition (October 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0702237108
• ISBN-13: 978-1571313201
• ASIN: 1571313206
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,533,582 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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