The yellow glow of the setting sun behind a farm truck, a cow and calf to the side and the joyful face of a small boy in workwear and a big hat – even before I open it, the front cover image tells me this book is going to be a treat.
Jessica Howard’s Bush Wisdom brings together a collection of stories and photos of people from across rural Australia in the places they call home. Howard is the editor at Bush Journal, an independent publisher of keepsake magazines and books which was “born out of a yearning to celebrate the beauty of rural living”. She has drawn from it and from her own travels as a writer and photographer to put together Bush Wisdom.
It is 240 pages of words and images that are a feast for the eyes as well as for the soul. If you live in rural Australia, so many of the images feel like home, although there is such a variety of locations that there are new landscapes to explore for everyone.
Howard takes us from Alice Springs to Tasmania, from the Channel Country in Queensland and to Condobolin in western NSW – and that’s just the first four stories. Outback red desert, lush green mountainous paddocks, vast floodplains, and sheep paddocks. Our wide land has such contrasts!
Some of my favourites in Bush Wisdom are:
- Merino stud breeder Georgie Wallace in Ross, Tasmania, whose property has been in the family for 100 years;
- Lagom Farm near Dimboola, Victoria, where Anna Johansson has brought a Swedish sensibility to the property she farms with Aussie husband Tim Inkster, creating a market garden style haven in the midst of broadacre commercial cropping country;
- The Biloela community in Queensland coming together for the annual show, which thrives well into the 21st century on the hard work and commitment of volunteers;
- The foreigners who visited Australia, fell in love with a local and stayed, like Texan exchange student Robin who ended up marrying station manager Evan, moving to the Pilbara and building a life together; and
- All of the stories of families raising their children on the land – the free range, resilient kids who are completely at home swimming in the dam or river, drafting sheep and riding farm bikes.
In the introduction, Howard explains that in sharing people’s “stories of hope, strength and power … something else has happened along the way too, something quite accidental. Kernels of wisdom have emerged from the telling of each story … a fundamental awareness of what makes life good.”
She has grouped the stories thoughtfully and deliberately, into “What I consider to be the cornerstones of rural life: purpose, land, home and community – because we are nothing without context.”
Bush Wisdom is a book you can read from start to finish, or choose to dip in and out of more randomly. Flick through the pages looking at the gorgeous photos and let your mind relax. Dip in today if you’ve got five minutes, and come back next week for more. It’s that sort of a book. It’s also a perfect Christmas gift. I have family in the densely populated Netherlands, and I’m going to buy a copy to send to them to flick through on long winter evenings. Maybe it will encourage them to come visit!
Author: Jessica Howard
Publisher: Affirm Press
ISBN: 9781922992970
Buy through the ARR.News Store
