Words for country: landscape & language in Australia

Tim Bonyhady & Tom Griffiths (eds)

Stories and phrases can powerfully shape the ways in which we experience and manage our environment.

How do stories take root in particular places?

What languages have been used to characterise Australian landscapes and how have they influenced environmental perception and action?

Words for Country answers these questions while exploring the inter-relationship between Australia's landscape and language. Tim Bonyhady and Tom Griffiths have brought together an illuminating collection of essays whose subjects range from the Ord River in the far north-west to Antarctica in the south, from the centre to the coast, the prehistoric to the present. Their terrain is both environmental and cultural, political and poetic.

Words for Country reveals not just how language grows out of the landscape but how words and stories shape the places in which we live.