Joy Burch has announced that ANU’s Bill Gammage has won ACT Book of the Year for his book The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines made Australia.
This must be a relief for all concerned as it has already won The Prime Minister’s Literary Prize for Australian History and the Victorian prize for literature.
“It is my pleasure to acknowledge Mr Gammage’s achievement with his book, and the contribution it makes to the ACT’s literary landscape,” Ms Burch said.
The Biggest Estate on Earth challenges the notion that pre-settlement Australia was an untamed wilderness. It examines visual and written records of the Australian landscape, and demonstrates how the Indigenous people managed the land in a more systematic fashion than was historically realised.
