The writing of A Million Wild Acres

Abstract

Soon after A MilRon Wild Acres was published in 1981, I read the book and realised that I had encountered something momentous. I felt as Les Murray did when he wrote of RoUs's book that he read and re-read it 'with all the delight of one who knows he has at last got hold of a book that is in no way alien to him' (Murray 1997: 158). I was living in Melbourne and I was moved to write to the author, whom I had not met and could hardly dream of ever meeting, and who seemed to me to live in an extraordinary, magical and especially dynamic place. It was slightiy mystifying because I recalled once as a child in the 1960s being driven through Coonabarabran, and I could remember the vast tracts of the Pilliga Scmb (as it was disdainfijlly called) rolling endlessly past the car window. It had not seemed extraordinary, magical and especially dynamic then. Had it changed? Had I changed? Had this man's book opened my eyes? All of the above. I had never before realised how strongly words on a page could animate actuality.