Conquer or Conserve
A feast of storytelling, painstaking historical reconstruction and reflections spanning deep time to the present in the beautiful and unique Byron hinterland.
A feast of storytelling, painstaking historical reconstruction and reflections spanning deep time to the present in the beautiful and unique Byron hinterland.
A feast of storytelling, painstaking historical reconstruction and reflections spanning deep time to the present in the beautiful and unique Byron hinterland.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
As a young uni student, Patrick Morrisey was drawn to the Byron hinterland and imagined making one small part of it his for a while. He cut a path through a sea of lantana emerging into a patch of forest free of weeds. In doing so he glimpsed the land’s potential to one day return to its former glory, encompassing rich biodiversity, old growth trees and curvaceous buttress roots enveloping a water hole – home for platypus, frogs and fish. Art through the grand lines of nature beckoned!
As the ancient grandeur of the land began to re-emerge, its innate character as a fragment of our shared heritage became increasingly apparent. These lands and waters had become a living laboratory. After ecologically restoring the degraded landscape, Morrisey entered into a Voluntary Conservation Agreement with NSW National Parks, protecting 6 hectares of Big Scrub and Moist Sclerophyll forest in perpetuity.
He helped form a Landcare group, then completed a PhD at Southern Cross University, analysing the group’s attempts to protect this valley. He served on Byron Shire Council and as Deputy Mayor. This is his third book.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Supplanting millennia of Aboriginal occupation and intimate connection of the people with sacred lands, European settlement began in the second half of the 19th century as cedar-getters and dairy farmers penetrated the northern limits of the ‘Big Scrub’, possessing and conquering ancient forests and refashioning the land in accord with a very different set of priorities.
The village of Goonengerry emerged as a sweet spot on an elevated table-top, with commanding views of Cape Byron and the South Pacific Ocean, encircled by the Parish of Jasper in the headwaters of the Richmond River.
The land has since borne witness to intense social, political and environmental upheaval corresponding with the rise and demise of primary industries, guilds and fraternities, axemen and hermits, hippies, investors, developers, tree-changers, and village and farm life interacting with a panoply of diverse - and at times conflicting - cultures.
Morrisey brings vividly to life the fascinating evolution of this special place, that in so many ways has paralleled the story of modern Australia. This is a tale of colourful characters, family dynasties, political intrigue, banquets and balls, cricket on the green, horse racing and harvest festivals ... and young men sent off to wars in foreign lands. And – eventually – the gradual emergence of a casual style of rural renaissance mixed with an uneasy, and at times volatile, coexistence.
★★★★★
A wide-ranging portrait and gripping chronology vividly depicting conquest, settlement and the creative tensions at play around coexisting in the Anthropocene.