AUST FLORA Natural History

This is a series of essays about the ways in which landscape is constructed, managed and designed. The essays attempt a synthesis that ranges from the physical and biophysical through land use to perception and cultural and linguistic analysis. The landscapes of Australia are challenging in that its culture, essentially European in origin, is both immensely enriching yet, because generated in an environment vastly different from that of Australia, disabling. This requires a dual allegiance and competing loyalties and demands, often difficult to resolve.

First Edition.

• xviii, 254 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 26 cm.
• #070124
• Part I. Talking: The Language of Landscape: 1. The nature of nature
• 2. Words and weeds
• 3. Journeys through a landscape
• 4. On the road to Botany Bay
• 5. A Snowy River reader
• Part II. Perceiving: The Eyes and the Mind: 6. The evolution of perceptual attitudes
• 7. Eurocentrism and Australian science, some examples
• 8. Figures in the landscape
• 9. Dreaming up a rainforest
• 10. Home thoughts from abroad
• Part III. Locating: The Sense of Place: 11. Sense of place
• 12. The genius loci and the Australian landscape
• 13. Cuddlepie and other surrogates
• 14. Jet-set and parish pump
• 15. Placing the debate
• Part IV. Making: Creating Gardens and the Evolution of Styles: 16. The suburban garden in Australia
• 17. The Australian backyard
• 18. Gardening across Australia
• 19. The garden as paradise
• Part V. Analysing: Ideologies and Attitudes: 20. The rhetoric and ethics of the environmental protest movement
• 21. The perfectibility of Nature
• Part VI. Sharing and Caring: Ecological Frameworks: 22. Biological pollution
• 23. The lie of the land
• 24. Eating the future
• 25. Felling the ‘Groves of Life’
• Coda: learning to be at home: ‘and then came Venice’.
• Geographical perception — Australia
• Human geography — Australia
• Landscape assessment — Australia