Outback by Thomas Keneally

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Outback by Thomas Keneally Photographs by Gary Hansen and Mark Lang Hodder and Stoughton, 1983, [First Edition], ISBN 0340336692, colour and black and white photographs throughout, illustrated title page, illustrated endpapers (maps), hardcover, dustjacket Very Good Condition, a little edge and shelf wear, a little rubbing and bumping to edges and corners, no inscriptions, dustjacket shows a little edge and shelf wear with a little rubbing and bumping (see photographs) “’Outback Australia’ proclaim number plates on vehicles in the Northern Territory and as Thomas Keneally says: given the aggressive stickers which decorate the trucks (‘Eat More Beef, You Bastards!’), the patina of ochre dust which covers them, the dents, the emergency canisters of water on the roof racks – one is not inclined to argue.Outback is the heart of Australia, the hinterland, beyond the cities and as foreign to most Australians as it is to Europeans or Americans. It is a vat area with Darwin its capital, sparsely inhabited, much of it desert but by no means empty.In vivid character-sketches and anecdotes Thomas Keneally who has known and loved the outback all his life evokes a strange, harsh world where seemingly to compete with the climate and landscape everything and everybody is larger than life.Above all the outback is a magic place. Only the Aboriginals can not be said to be immigrants, having occupied central Australia for more than forty thousand years. Their spiritual life is enriched by their mythology of ‘the Dreaming’. For them, central Australia is a complex network of tracks – Dreaming trails – leading to sites of enormous sacred significance. The greatest is the Rock or as the non-Aboriginal Australians call it Ayers Rock...” other copies of this title and more from Thomas Keneally Show more