Roff Smith, photographs by Sam Abell.
Australia: Journey Through A Timeless Land.
Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 1999 (reprint 2001).
Book information: Amazon.com.

A large format picture book with essays describing various regions of Australia; a good introduction to Australia, somewhat oriented towards potential tourists, but not a travel guide. More detailed versions of the author's travel anecdotes can be found in his other book.

William J. Lines.
A Long Walk in the Australian Bush.
Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 1998.
Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 1998.
Book information: Amazon.com, Booktopia.

An account of a long distance hike during September/October 1993 along the Bibbulmun Track in southwestern Western Australia. The Track route was redesigned 1993-1998 so the book's account does not correspond to the current Track.

Additional Bibbulmun Track links:
Dept. of Conservation and Land Management (CALM), WA (due to mergers now called the Dept. of Environment and Conservation)
Aushiker: Hiking in Western Australia
Wikipedia
John Chapman (bushwalking enthusiast and guide book author)

On the frame of a travelogue the author hangs short essays dealing with: the environmental history of the region, forestry (particularly the Jarrah tree), exploitation and management of natural resources, Aboriginal lore, ecology, native & non-native flora & fauna, human interaction with nature. Rather than a travel guide for tourists the book is a survey of how people interact with nature.

The author is a strong critic of the destruction of Jarrah and Karri forests by dams, logging, bauxite mining, and the negligence associated with the spread of Phytophthora cinnamomi infection (dieback). (Land clearing for agricultural uses was historically a major cause of deforestation but the author doesn't have much to say about this except for an episode after World War I when a government scheme promoted the clearing of land that turned out to be unsuitable for crop farming.) Much of the author's intent is to examine the sources of human thought and action at group and individual levels that lead to the destruction of forests and a general disregard for nature. In the author's analysis some wellmeaning people who contribute to this destruction include: (a) government forestry managers who actively enable the depredations of the logging and mining industries; (b) people who live their lives entirely within a human fabricated setting and are constitutionally unprepared to defend or relate to nature on its own terms; (c) environmentalists who operate within the rationalist framework of industrial, free-market civilization and thereby become unwitting accomplices in the destruction of Western Australian forests. The author distinguishes between himself as a nature lover and environmentalists, perhaps a strange distinction on its face, but one can find some sense in it in light of the author's philosophical opposition to the ideas of progress and growth: human material progress, economic and population growth invariably occurs at the expense of the destruction of wilderness. In the author's analysis no amount of "sustainable" or "renewable" practices can prevent such destruction in a context of growth and "progress."

Additional links for the Jarrah forests, Australian conservation organizations, etc.:
Western Australian Forest Alliance (WAFA)
WAFA: About our Jarrah Forest: The World’s Only Jarrah Forest: Reversing the Decline
The Wilderness Society - Western Australia
The Wilderness Society - The Western Australia Forest Campaign
Conservation Council of Western Australia
Australian Conservation Foundation
The Colong Foundation for Wilderness
Environmental Defender’s Office of Western Australia
Southern Forests (tourism information) nice map
Managing WA forests (state government website)
Forest Products Commission (state government agency)
Alcoa in Australia (bauxite miner)

Roff Smith.
Cold Beer and Crocodiles: A Bicycle Journey into Australia.
Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2000 (reprint 2001).
Book information: Amazon.com.

I would be happier if this book were twice as long and had more pictures (many Amazon reviewers also comment that the book seems too short to them). The author bicycled a counter-clockwise route around Australia starting and ending in Sydney during 1996/1997. Most of the text discusses the regions he visited during the first half of his trip: New South Wales, Queensland, and the Top End. He has very little to say about southwestern Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria and Tasmania. He relates many stories of encounters with the inhabitants during the first half of his trip; after that his interest in the adventure wanes. The desolation of the northwestern, western and southern coasts, a crash with injuries in Western Australia that required a 3 week recovery, followed by the Nullarbor Plain, cumulatively seems to have broken his spirit (the author admits this on page 277). Then he picked up a viral infection in South Australia that hindered the remainder of the trip. The book may be insightful for NSW, QLD, NT and parts of WA; it is very weak for SA, VIC, TAS.