Nature scenes

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32554, 13 March 1971, Page 10

Nature scenes

Fierce Encounter. By H. D. Williamson. Reed. 154 pp. The presentation of a book of wild life studies in the Australian wilds is one of its most attractive features. The book is embellished by good print and binding and by the fine illustrations of William Cooper. The author has spent some time in the bush, and his stories of its native animals, especially birds, have the hallmark of personal observation. The human element figures very little in the work, but two stories are about Aborigine hunters, and show their skill in hunting deer by land and that odd beast, the dugong, at sea. Both episodes are lavishly blood-bespattered, and the rites of the feast which followed the kill are not for queasy-minded readers. “Pirate Coast,” the longest of the tales is Wholly about sea-birds—-ospreys, gannets, frigate birds, etc.— their hunting and amatory habits, and the freedom they enjoy, though constantly buffeted by storm and tempest. One of the grimmer tales is of an old bull, rejected by his herd, falling at last a victim to two dingos who after patiently pursuing him until his strength is exhausted move in to the kill with remorseless surety. “Paterfamilias” by comparison is a gently humourous account of a water rat’s humorous account of a water rat’s avoidance of danger not only for himself but for his mate and three youngsters. “Wandana,” the story of a wild swa.i, is moving for the desperate courage it displays, and for the instinct which prompts these wild creatures to seek water in a lagoon a vast distance away across pitiless stretches of parched plain. There is a lyrical quality in the author’s narrative style of which the following is an example—"the quiet or the plains, the level distances broken only by a few solitary trees, the clarity of the air itself created an impression of infinite space . . . and the black mote that was a high flying crow seemed to hang motionless between earth and sun. Its harsh, far-carrying cry pierced the silence smoothly as a needle slides through silk.” This is an impressive book for lovers of nature, and William Cooper brings vividly to life the scenes which it depicts.