Outspoken returns for its 2013 season with a series of conversations with noted Australian and international authors. We begin with Bill Gammage, the author of the book which, deservedly, won almost every major literary award last year, including the Prime Minister’s Prize, the Victorian Prize and the ACT Book of the Year Award.

In The Biggest Estate on Earth Bill Gammage rewrites the history of this continent in a way that has huge implications for modern Australia both morally and in terms of land management. Early Europeans commented time and again that the land looked like a park, with extensive grassy patches, open woodlands, pathways and abundant wildlife. Mr Gammage argues that this was no accident, it was because Aboriginal people managed the land in a far more systematic and scientific manner than we have ever realised.

We know Aboriginals spent far less time and effort than Europeans in securing food and shelter; now, through painstaking research into written and visual records, Mr Gammage has uncovered the extraordinarily complex and sophisticated systems of land management which enabled this.

What is surprising about reading this book is that it becomes impossible, once the evidence is presented as clearly as it is here, to discuss the Australian landscape pre-1788 without talking about the Aboriginal people who lived here, about the way they lived in and with the landscape and about what governed the way they thought and acted. The book requires a profound re-thinking of everything we have assumed about the nature of this continent and its original inhabitants.

It also shows how, once Aboriginals were no longer able to tend their country, it became overgrown and vulnerable to the damaging bushfires we now experience.

Outspoken is committed to engaging with leading writers across all fields, bringing pre-eminent authors to Maleny for a series of conversations. We are very proud to be able to attract someone of the standing of Bill Gammage.

Special Offer!

As if any further encouragement to attend was required, Claire Booth, of the Queensland Literary Awards and Maleny's Celebration of Books, has kindly donated a signed hardback copy of The Biggest Estate on Earth to one ticket holder.