A Country in Mind: Memoir with Landscape

(Paperback)

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'The chunk of land bordering Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland is known as Namatjira. For most of us it is remote; geographically and metaphorically it is the heart of Australia.' After a period of loss, and much change, Saskia Beudel began walking. Within eighteen months she had walked in the Snowy Mountains, twice along the South Coast of Tasmania, the MacDonnell Ranges west of Alice Springs, the Arnhem Land plateau in Kakadu, the Wollemi National Park in New South Wales, and in Ladakh in the Himalayas. Throughout the course of her journeys, she experienced passages of reverie, of forgetfulness, of absorption in her surroundings, of an immense but simple pleasure, and of rhythm. The book that emerged contrasts her internal landscape with the external landscape, considering her relationships with her family in the context of environmental and anthropological histories. It champions the history of Namatjira country and conveys social and environmental issues.