The Blue Plateau: An Australian Pastoral

By Mark Tredinnick

Located in the Blue Mountains southwest of Sydney, the Blue Plateau is a contrary collection of canyons and creeks, cow paddocks and eucalyptus forests, the first people and ranchers. This book reveals the plateau through its inhabitants: the Gundungurra people who were there first and still remain; the Maxwell family, who tried, but failed, to tame the land; the affable, impoverished, often drunken ranchers and firefighters; and the author himself, a poet trying to insinuate his citified self into a rugged landscape defined by drought, fire, and scarcity. Like the works of Peter Mathiessen, Barry Lopez, and William Least Heat-Moon, The Blue Plateau is a deep examination of place that transcends genre, incorporating poetry, people’s history, ecology, mythology, and memoir to reveal how humanity and nature intertwine to create a home. Elegiac and intimately composed, this vivid portrait of a rugged wilds expands readers’ sense of the place they call home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Milkweed Editions
• Release date: Dec 28, 2011
• ISBN: 9781571318657

Mark Tredinnick

Mark Tredinnick is an essayist, poet, and writing teacher. He is the author of The Blue Plateau: A Landscape Memoir and the editor of A Place on Earth: An Anthology of Nature Writing from Australia and North America. His essays and journalism have appeared in Island, ISLE, Orion, Resurgence, the Bulletin, and the Sydney Morning Herald. Winner of the 2005 Wildcare Tasmania Nature Writing Prize, Tredinnick lives in the highlands southwest of Sydney, Australia.