'A rich biography of artist-turned-environmental- campaigner John Büsst.
'Award-winning historian Iain McCalman reveals the little-known story of influential Australian conservationist, John Büsst. Known to his enemies as ‘The Bingal Bay Bastard’, Büsst, a Bendigo-born Melbourne bohemian artist, transformed into a brilliant conservationist who, in the 1960s and early 70s, led campaigns to protect two of Australia’s most important and endangered environments. The first saved Australia’s endangered lowland rainforests and led to the subsequent UNESCO World Heritage Listing of our Wet Tropics Rainforest Area. The second stopped Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s attempt to mine 80 per cent of the Great Barrier Reef for oil, gas and limestone fertiliser. A plan Büsst likened to ‘bulldozing the Taj Mahal to make road gravel’. Instead, the victory led to the UNESCO World Heritage Listing of the Great Barrier Reef as ‘the most important marine system in the world’. Sadly, both face renewed threat today.' (Publication summary)
'John Büsst earned the moniker “The Bingil Bay Bastard”. From his self-built homestead in Bingil Bay, he campaigned from the early 1960s against grazing and agricultural industries seeking to fell the tropical forests of north Queensland.'
'Iain McCalman begins John Büsst: Bohemian Artist and Saviour of Reef and Rainforest, his account of another man’s heroic environmental activism, by inserting himself artfully into his introductory narrative. Here, he is the historian who missed something when he was writing The Reef, his acclaimed “passionate history” of the Great Barrier Reef, a decade ago.' (Introduction)
'The ‘Bastard of Bingil Bay’ features on no banknote or coin, nor is he listed in any roll-call of ‘important Australians’, and yet, if it were not for John Büsst, it is likely that twenty-odd national parks and rainforest reserves on the far north-east coast of Queensland would not be so designated and might in fact have been obliterated. It is also probable that, without Büsst, today’s fight for the Great Barrier Reef would have already been lost, the vast ecosystem fragmented into a slew of cement quarries and cheap limestone pits. Considering the extent to which this vast coral labyrinth has shaped the identity of modern Australia, the relative absence of Büsst’s influence from the historical record is doubtless representative of the many such travesties historians seek to rectify.' (Introduction)
'The ‘Bastard of Bingil Bay’ features on no banknote or coin, nor is he listed in any roll-call of ‘important Australians’, and yet, if it were not for John Büsst, it is likely that twenty-odd national parks and rainforest reserves on the far north-east coast of Queensland would not be so designated and might in fact have been obliterated. It is also probable that, without Büsst, today’s fight for the Great Barrier Reef would have already been lost, the vast ecosystem fragmented into a slew of cement quarries and cheap limestone pits. Considering the extent to which this vast coral labyrinth has shaped the identity of modern Australia, the relative absence of Büsst’s influence from the historical record is doubtless representative of the many such travesties historians seek to rectify.' (Introduction)
'Iain McCalman begins John Büsst: Bohemian Artist and Saviour of Reef and Rainforest, his account of another man’s heroic environmental activism, by inserting himself artfully into his introductory narrative. Here, he is the historian who missed something when he was writing The Reef, his acclaimed “passionate history” of the Great Barrier Reef, a decade ago.' (Introduction)
'John Büsst earned the moniker “The Bingil Bay Bastard”. From his self-built homestead in Bingil Bay, he campaigned from the early 1960s against grazing and agricultural industries seeking to fell the tropical forests of north Queensland.'
