Bushwalks in the Sydney Region
Volume 1, 5th Edition
edited by: Stephen Lord and George Daniel
NPA Publications Pty Ltd, rrp $ 21.95 (inc. GST)

1.This is a 'must have' book for anyone interested in bushwalking near Sydney. The original concept for the books was simple. Get a group of experienced NPA walkers to describe their favourite walks, put the descriptions into a book, and produce a best seller. Like many in the NPA, I have heard the stories about the editors, George and Stephen, out every weekend checking the details of walks, turning the original rough handwritten material into a consistent and coherent description.

This edition of the book gives you an expanded selection of 93 walks in 31 areas scattered around Sydney. All the favourite walking areas are represented: the nearby national parks such as Ku-ring-gai Chase, Royal, Blue Mountains, Bouddi, Brisbane Water etc; and more distant parks such as Kanangra Boyd, Wollemi, Nattai and Morton. There are 69 day-walks, 20 two-day trips, and four three-day excursions.

Each walk description includes details such as: the distance, the grade, the sort of terrain, the availability (and quality) of water en route. These are, of course, just the details that are vital for your walk.

A special feature is the 81 pages of maps carefully drawn by George Daniel. Annotations such as "views over Hawkesbury" are invaluable in planning morning tea and lunch breaks. But, at least for the extended trips and the more rugged one day walks, a detailed contour map should also be taken and the two maps can be used effectively together.

Like many people, I have an earlier edition (well actually two ... a first and a third edition). But it is worth updating to the most recent edition for a number of reasons. Firstly, the new edition contains an expanded number and range of walks compared with earlier ones. Secondly, and very importantly, the descriptions have been updated to include changes to tracks etc. This is important because it is surprising just how many tracks and access details change over the years. Thirdly, the new edition has lots of nifty features: useful hints about equipment, navigation etc; a nice index of place names; and an area to record your own notes about walks.

Bushwalks in the Sydney Region
Volume 1, 5th Edition
edited by: Stephen Lord and George Daniel
NPA Publications Pty Ltd, rrp $ 21.95 (inc. GST)

2. It has been a long wait for the Fifth edition of Bushwalks in the Sydney Region. Most of the reasons for the delay will become obvious to walkers who have found the previous editions so useful. I use the word 'walkers' advisably because the 30 Easy grade walks have been found to be of great value by people, like my parents, who would not have called themselves 'bushwalkers' but just walkers in the bush.

It is obvious to me that the editors personally checked some of the walks. For example, the editorial note warning of the overgrown section of track between the waterfall at Lovett Bay and the Birnie Lookout track in Ku-ring-gai Chase.

Prominent among the new walks are five in the Wollemi National Park including a group of eight 'activities' around the town of Mt Wilson. All but two are easily accessible from your car.

Alex Tucker

Open Air essays
by William J. Lines
New Holland, 2001. 207 pp.
rrp. $24.95

…to think about humans in the world, we must have direct contact with the earth, taste it up close, feel its vividness," William J. Lines writes at the beginning of this collection of 18 essays.

Lines takes us from his initial experience of nature as a boy through to his exile from Australia in Wales and Vermont to share with us his own visceral relationship to the world.

For one who has sunk such deep roots into an earth he loves and admires, who " had a great appetite for the concrete, almost none for the academic", he also takes us beyond natural phenomena to discussions of nature’s place in the economy and politics.

His commitment to understand and explain the collision of the earth with economics has made the self-described mediocre student into a learned analyst of this conflict. He argues cogently against economic valuations of nature, against turning it into a resource to be valued for sale rather than for its intrinsic quality.

He believes in stating unequivocally the limits of the human uses of the earth and that the muddled thinking of opponents of free trade needs a firmer base to effectively challenge the ideology of globalisation.

"What will motivate the adults of tomorrow to fight for nature if, as children," Lines asks, " they never breathed the open air?" A stimulating read.

Tony Garske