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Hinchinbrook Island - The Land Time Forgot : Arthur and Margaret Thorsborne (HC 1996). Photography by Cliff and Dawn Frith.
Lansdowne, Sydney, 1996 reprint. Hardback. DJ is wrinkled and has a piece missing from the rear. Covers slightly bowed, front endpaper missing. 256 pages, Index. Splendid colour photos throughout. Foreword by Judith Wright.
Aboriginal Australians are warned that this book contains photographs of persons who may now be deceased.
Signed on the title page:
Margaret Thorsborne
for Arthur and Margaret Thorsborne
UK: Air mail $AU41.80 Sea mail $AU22.80
USA: Air mail $AU33.30 Sea mail $AU22.80
"... Until lately, visitors have looked in vain for the kind
of guidebooks that go beyond the tourist clichés, and tell them not only of the
present but of the past of the places they see, and of the detail as well as the broad
and obvious view: the species of plants and animals, their habits, their
interrelationships, the effect of the seasons' changes on the landscape and its
inhabitants. Only very lately has this begun to be remedied. A few devotees of
particular regions and places - the Coorong, Wilsons Promontory, Pumicestone
Passage - are now spending time and love on documenting, describing and
illustrating them, not for tourist brochures and glossy handouts, but for those
who want to know and understand what they see.
This is such a book and it is written by two such people. Arthur and
Margaret Thorsbome have for years been lucky enough to live in a place with
which they fell in love long ago, and which they know as few people do.
Hinchinbrook Island and its little group of fellow isles, its waters and the strip of
mainland it lies beside are of a beauty that catches not just the eye but the heart
of people responsive to the spirit of places. The Thorsbornes' own response has
prompted them to write this book.
The island we see now is the living result of myriads of past changes. Its
geology and its ecology have evolved and been formed by the long distant
upheavals and eruptions of the rocks, and the retreats and advances of the coastal
seas and the great rainforests, whose prehistory is only now being gradually
unravelled. The islands themselves are changing; they are as dynamic in their
being as we ourselves are, and this record captures only a second's snapshot in
that majestic unfolding.
But changes have speeded up dangerously since white men first sailed past
Hinchinbrook Island's shores. The increase in population, mobility and demands
threatens all remaining wild places, and Hinchinbrook is no exception.
Development, tourism, alienation of land for settlement, all have damaging,
often unforeseeable, effects. Hinchinbrook has not escaped, and such demands
can only increase.
But books like this can help. They embody qualities in short supply in our
over-simplified age - devotion and understanding. This jewel of an island set in
its still scarcely polluted waters has evoked a delight in two people who love it,
which can be communicated to others; and its story, researched and brought
together for the first time, contributes another landmark in our local history. This
book is not just a 'souvenir' for passing tourists and admirers of Hinchinbrook
Island, but a book that adds to our knowledge of our own history, of the tropical
forests and mangroves and the other lives they support, and of the country we
live in. It is a book to keep and to re-read.
JUDITH WRIGHT
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