Don Watson Don Watson i(A21148 works by) (a.k.a. Donald Ross Watson)
Born: Established: 1949 Korumburra, Korumburra area, South Gippsland, Gippsland, Victoria, ;
Gender: Male
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BiographyHistory

Don Watson went to school at Poowong and Korumburra in Victoria. After gaining a BA (Hons) from La Trobe University, he graduated with a PhD from Monash University. For ten years he was an academic historian before resigning to write, among other things, political satire for TV and the stage (including The Gillies Report), and speeches for the Victorian Premier John Cain. After time as research fellow at The University of Melbourne, he became Prime Minister Paul Keating's speechwriter and adviser. He stayed in that position until Keating's electoral defeat in 1996. Since that time he has published a number of popular non-fiction books including Recollections of a Bleeding Heart: Paul Keating Prime Minister (2002), Death Sentence: The Decay of Public Language (2003) , the travel narrative American Journeys (2008) and Bendable Learnings (2009). (Bendable Leanings was shortlisted for the 2010 ABIA Book Awards in the General Nonfiction Book of the Year category.)

Most Referenced Works

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon The Passion of Private White Cammeray : Simon and Schuster , 2022 24969723 2022 single work biography

'From the bestselling author of The Bush, the story of a fifty-year relationship between a Vietnam veteran and a remote Aboriginal tribe: a miniature epic of human adaptation, suffering and resilience.

'The Passion of Private White describes the meeting of two worlds: the world of the fiercely driven biologist and anthropologist Neville White, and the world of the hunter-gatherer clans of remote northern Australia he studied and lived with. As White tried to understand the world as it was understood on the other side of the vast cultural divide, he was also trying to transcend the mental scars he suffered on the battlefields of Vietnam. The clans had their own injuries to deal with, as they tried to adapt to modernity, live down their losses and yet hold onto their ancient lands, customs, laws and language.

'Over five decades, White mapped in astonishing detail the culture and history of the Yolgnu clans at Donydji in north-east Arnhem Land. But eventually presence meant involvement, and White became advocate more than anthropologist in the clan’s struggle to survive when everything – from the ambitions of mining companies and a zombie bureaucracy, to feuds, sorcery and magic, despair and dysfunction – conspired to destroy them.

'And the fifty-year endeavour served another purpose for White and the members of his old platoon he took there. Working to help the community at Donydji became a kind of antidote for the psychic wounds of Vietnam. While for the clans, from the old warriors to the children, their fanatical benefactor offered a few rays of meaning and hope. There was no cure in this meeting of two worlds, both suffering their own form of PTSD, but they helped each other survive.

'This is a miniature epic of human adaptation, suffering and resilience, an astonishing window into both our recent and our deep history, the coloniser and colonised – indeed into the human condition itself.'  (Publication summary)

2023 longlisted Australian Political Book of the Year Award
2023 longlisted Mark and Evette Moran Nib Award for Literature
y separately published work icon The Bush : Travels in the Heart of Australia Scoresby : Penguin , 2014 7838248 2014 single work prose travel

'Most Australians live in cities and cling to the coastal fringe, yet our sense of what an Australian is – or should be – is drawn from the vast and varied inland called the bush. But what do we mean by 'the bush', and how has it shaped us?

'Starting with his forebears' battle to drive back nature and eke a living from the land, Don Watson explores the bush as it was and as it now is: the triumphs and the ruination, the commonplace and the bizarre, the stories we like to tell about ourselves and the national character, and those we don't. Via mountain ash and mallee, the birds and the beasts, slaughter, fire, flood and drought, swagmen, sheep and their shepherds, the strange and the familiar, the tragedies and the follies, the crimes and the myths and the hope – here is a journey that only our leading writer of non-fiction could take us on.

'At once magisterial in scope and alive with telling, wry detail, The Bush lets us see our landscape and its inhabitants afresh, examining what we have made, what we have destroyed, and what we have become in the process.

'No one who reads it will look at this country the same way again. ' (Publication summary)

2015 shortlisted Colin Roderick Award
2015 winner Queensland Literary Awards Non-Fiction Book Award
2015 shortlisted Melbourne Prize
2015 winner New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Book of the Year
2015 winner New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction
2014 winner The Fellowship of Australian Writers Victoria Inc. National Literary Awards FAW Excellence in Non-fiction Award
2015 shortlisted Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) Australian General Non-Fiction Book of the Year
2015 winner Indie Awards Book of the Year
2015 winner Indie Awards Nonfiction
2015 shortlisted Victorian Premier's Literary Awards Award for Non-Fiction
2016 shortlisted Festival Awards for Literature (SA) Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature South Australian Literary Awards Award for Non-Fiction
y separately published work icon American Journeys North Sydney : Random House , 2008 Z1477248 2008 single work prose travel

'Only in America - the most powerful democracy on earth, home to the best and worst of everything - are the most extreme contradictions possible. In a series of journeys acclaimed author Don Watson set out to explore the nation that has influenced him more than any other.

'Travelling by rail gave Watson a unique and seductive means of peering into the United States, a way to experience life with its citizens: long days with the American landscape and American towns and American history unfolding on the outside, while inside a tiny particle of the American people talked among themselves.

'Watson's experiences are profoundly affecting: he witnesses the terrible aftermath of Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast; explores the savage history of the Deep South, the heartland of the Civil War; and journeys to the remarkable wilderness of Yellowstone National Park. Yet it is through the people he meets that Watson discovers the incomparable genius of America, its optimism, sophistication and riches - and also its darker side, its disavowal of failure and uncertainty.

'... American Journeys investigates the meaning of the United States: its confidence, its religion, its heroes, its violence, and its material obsessions. The things that make America great are also its greatest flaws.' (Publisher's blurb)

2008 shortlisted Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) Australian Book of the Year
2008 winner The Age Book of the Year Award Book of the Year
2008 shortlisted Western Australian Premier's Book Awards Non-Fiction
2009 shortlisted Prime Minister's Literary Awards Non-Fiction
2008 winner Walkley Award Best Non-Fiction Book
2008 inaugural winner Indie Awards Nonfiction
2008 shortlisted Queensland Premier's Literary Awards Best Non-Fiction Book
2008 winner The Age Book of the Year Award Non-Fiction Prize
Last amended 3 Feb 2014 13:55:19
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