Back to the Bush: My Love Affair with Australia and Protecting the Environment

Front Cover
Keith Gasteen, Oct 30, 2014 - History - 268 pages
Back to the Bush is the author's account of his environmental and conservation work from the early 1960s to the end of the 1990s. In a sense this is the second volume of a 2-part series and follows his Under the Mulga - A Bush Memoir published by UQP in 2005.In that first volume, the author traced the history of western land use illustrated by his family's experience of developing two semi arid timbered blocks into functioning sheep and cattle farms. It starts with a trip by Cobb and Co coach, describes the advent of water, carried by hundreds of km of bore drain and the annual cycle of ring-barking and felling timber to feed starving stock in the ever-present drought years. They sold their farms just before wool boomed in 1949.The current volume takes up the story with the family's move out of the bush and into Brisbane, in 1958. The author never felt at home in the city and quickly became involved in CSIRO and DPI fieldwork and inspections of large-scale land clearing schemes in Queensland. In his words, he became "Increasingly concerned for the environment and soils from over-clearing of farming land and heavy stocking in the inland pastoral sector. This gradually led to working through the Departments of Forestry, Primary Industries, National Parks and Wildlife Service, the Conservation Movement and Shire Councils to promote more sensitive land-use and development and to help establish a network of National Parks in the major bioregions throughout the country, to protect ecosystems and maintain diversity. This was the program I set myself, which dominated my life from the 1960s to the 1990s."What follows is a fascinating blend of the bushman's powers of observation enriching the scientific method and infused with a passion for the land and its people.The book contains nearly 300 colour photos, maps and illustrations and describes soils and land use in layman's terms. It will be of interest to the scientist as well as the conservation minded person who enjoys a good yarn.

About the author (2014)

Wrixon James (Jim) Gasteen was born in 1922 and grew up on his parent‟s western Queensland sheep and cattle stations where he and his two brothers had correspondence school lessons in a little corrugated iron room under the house. Much of his working life has been as a grazier and farmer in Queensland and New South Wales with a short stint of diesel engineering in Sydney and a business partnership with his two brothers in Brisbane. But the lure of the backcountry was too strong and it was soon,,back to the bush‟ again. His passion for nature conservation and balanced land-use management led to detailed studies of soils and plants as part of extensive biological resource surveys and land-use investigations in Queensland, Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales. The Queensland studies resulted in identification and survey of 34 new National Parks, which were submitted to State and Federal Governments. He was made a Life Member of Indooroopilly State High School Parent‟s and Citizen‟s Association: Life Member of the Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland. In 1984 he appeared in a chapter of the BHP Awards of Excellence Book - "The Pursuit of Excellence". In 1993 he was awarded Membership of the Order of Australia (AM). He has written numerous papers and articles for Land-Use conferences and magazines and contributed to several books. Since retirement in 1986, he has written 3 books:,,Under the Mulga‟- A bush memoir: published by University of Queensland Press 2005, then,,Back to the Bush‟ covering 30 years of biological resource surveys and land use investigations, then,,They All Left Tracks‟ - A Collection of Short Stories and Poems.He and his wife Moodgie, a former Sydney University science graduate and University of Queensland Librarian have now retired to their New South Wales Northern Rivers hobby farm five kilometres outside Alstonville where Duck Creek Mountain‟s,,Big Scrub‟ virgin rainforests once reined supreme. They have an adult family of four.

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