A Country in Mind: Memoir with Landscape. de Beudel, Saskia - 2013

Perth, Crawley: UWA Publishing, 2013. 1st ed.. Paperback octavo, very good condition, black & white text-photos, maps, minor edgewear. 362 pp. After a period of loss and much change, Saskia Beudel began walking. Within 18 months she had walked the Snowy Mountains, the southwest 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, and Central Australia. She also discovers the stories from Australia's desert heart, examines the entanglement of Aboriginal and European cultures, remembers POW camps in Indonesia during World War 2, and relives childhood epiphanies in a haunting collection of landscapes while tracing family secrets across the globe. The author captures the enigmas of displacement, belonging and the intricacies, often at odds with one another, of Aboriginal and settler understandings of the desert environment. (1 of 2 available copies.).