Antinuclear

Award-winning book on Aboriginal land management

Gammage wins Vic Premier’s book award http://news.ninemsn.com.au/entertainment/2012/10/16/23/00/gammage-wins-vic-premier-s-book-award 9 news, October 16, 2012  Bill Gammage hopes that winning the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award will mean more Australians learn about the Aboriginal land management techniques before white settlement.

Gammage’s book The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia has just earned him $100,000 – Australia’s richest single literary prize. “If this means more people will read it, I’m delighted about that of
course,” Gammage told AAP. “It took a long while and a lot of hard effort, 12 years (to write)
… 30 or 40 years of thinking before that, so the more people who read it the happier I am.”

The Canberra historian’s novel uses observation, historical accounts, botanical information and anthropology to argue Aboriginal people across Australia managed the land to encourage particular plants and landscapes in certain areas and attract animals for hunting. He also won the $25,000 award for non-fiction.

November 2, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Audiovisual