Non-fiction book about the history of European settlement in Australia
A Million Wild Acres: 200 years of man and an Australian forest is a non-fiction book written by Eric Charles Rolls (1923–2007). It was first published in Melbourne by Nelson in 1981. A Million Wild Acres is not just a regional history of what is now known as the Pilliga Scrub, but also a history of European settlement in Australia.
This will be seen as one of the great books about Australia. Eric Rolls gives the history of the forest the laconic power of an extended campfire yarn, spiced with the personal vision that comes from a lifetime of acute observation
— Historian, Professor Weston Bate
Contents[]
Explorers and Livestock: Setting up the Board
The First Moves: A Difficult Game
The Squatters: The Rules are Ignored
Licences to Depasture Beyond the Limits: A New Game to New Rules
Wyndham, Susan. Author Rolls dies aged 84 Sydney Morning Herald 02/11/2007 [1]
Hanley, Penelope. Creative lives: personal papers of Australian writers and artists
Mosman Readers: Eric Rolls - A Million Wild Acres 26/01/2009 [2]
Rolls later qualified[1] this book's debated[2][3] overall position on Australian tree densities and land clearing.[4]
Footnotes[]
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Rolls, Eric (2000). "The end, or new beginning?". In Dovers, Stephen (ed.). Environmental history and policy: still settling Australia. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. pp. 24–46. ISBN9780195507492.
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Benson, John S.; Redpath, P. A. (1997). "The nature of pre-European native vegetation in south-eastern Australia: a critique of Ryan, D.G., Ryan, J.R. & Starr (1995) 'The Australian Landscape – Observations of Explores and Early Settlers'". Cunninghamia. 5: 285–328.
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Bowman, D.M.J.S. (2001). "Future eating and country keeping: what role has environmental history in the management of biodiversity?". Journal of Biogeography. 28 (5): 549–564. doi:10.1046/j.1365-2699.2001.00586.x. ISSN1365-2699.