Born in a Tent

Examining Australia's long and proud history of camping, this meditation follows the story from campfire to gas bottle and from a tarp slung on saplings to polymer tents and aluminum poles, revealing as it does so the ways in which camping connects individuals to the land, to the past, and to one another. Historian Bill Garner recalls that Australia was first settled as a campsite, and that though the Europeans brought tents, they hardly invented the concept of camping—the Aborigines had been camping for millennia prior. He examines how camping has helped nurture some of the most widely held values in Australia: egalitarianism, tolerance, and the premium placed on practicability. As it connects holiday camping to the whole story of Australian settlement and the ancient ways of making a home on that remote continent, this beautifully written and illustrated book encourages readers to examine their own histories of camping and observe how their family stories and the national story are entwined.