Cirrus@Austlit

'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)

'I arrived at Macquarie University in January 1972 in order to get some clear air by taking work as a tutor in history while struggling to finish a postgraduate thesis at the Australian National University. I knew nobody at Macquarie and, as a relatively recent migrant from Central Africa, next to nothing about the history department. I’d been hired to tutor there in a large compulsory first year history course called ‘The West in Early Modern Times’, and also in a third year subject on ‘Victorian Social History’ taught by a Dr Jill Roe.' (Introduction)

'The Great Barrier Reef, argues Iain McCalman, has been created by human minds as well as coral polyps, by imaginations as well as natural processes. In this landmark book he charts our shifting perceptions of it, from the terrifying labyrinth that almost sunk Cook's Endeavour to a fragile global treasure.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.