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Outdoors & Nature |
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To Fight the Wild
written by Rod Ansell, Rachel Percy
Studio : Harcourt
by Harcourt
Publisher : Harcourt
Released : 1986-04
Availability : This Item is currently Not Available
Number of Items : 1
EAN : 9780152890681
Avg. Customer Rating: (based on 1 review)
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A tragic end to a promising young fellow |
After recently hearing the tragic news of Rod Ansell's suicidal attack on a police roadbloack in outback WA (horribly enough, claiming the life of innocent police officer Sgt. Glen Huitson before himself dying), I found he'd written this book way back when his life still looked promising.
Written with the naivete of a young country bloke, and yet with a simple wisdom way beyond his years, this is a gripping and poignant tale of an independant and self-confident young man in love with the bush. He doesn't beat around it, calls a spade a spade and doesn't talk himself up - he just relates his 2 months lost in the torturous Australian desert in a matter-of-fact way that seems lost to this day and age.
The story begins when his boat mysteriously overturns in the strong current of the Victoria River in the Northern Territory. Ansell relates his time, variously almost succumbing to dehydration, starvation and heat exhaustion before settling down with his knife, his rifle, his 2 dogs and 20 rounds of ammunition to form his little camp by the Fitzmaurice River in the middle of nowhere. He lives off his knowledge of bushcraft and wild cattle, before finally being rescued by a party of the Aboriginal station owners.
His relation of the skill of bull-catching is worth reading alone. That job seems damned scary!
Essentially, this is a good introduction to life in the Australian bush as it was done in the recent past, a generation or so ago, when the riding of horses was just about completing its loss of favour to trucks and helicopters. It's aimed at children and teenagers, and contains the odd swear word to maintain authenticity, but remains intructive in its uncomplicated lack of modern world sophistication, and its reverence for the environment that is ahead of it's time.
Unfortunately, the rest of Ansell's life is also instructive in demonstrating how a lack of modern world sophistication can lead to financial failure, depression, drug addiction and ultimate psychosis.
An easy read, slightly awe-inspiring, and sad.
Oh by the way, this is the feller that the Crocodile Dundee character was based on. He never wrestled a crocodile though, that really would be suicidal! |
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