Ashley Hay - Gum: The story of eucalypts & their champions

Ashley Hay writes with heart, head, energy and passion. She understands the natural world as we must all experience it, with deep love and respect. To preserve Country and to save ourselves we must live with and in a treed world. They are our champions, just as Ashley Hay is for them.

Tony Birch, author of The White Girland Dark as Last Night

Gumis one of my favourite books, I return to it often. Ashley Hays curiosity ranges wide, her research skills run deep and shes a beautiful writer, thinker and storyteller. To have all these skills brought to bear upon a tree as deserving, as iconic, as the eucalyptus: well, Im in heaven.

Sophie Cunningham, author of City of Treesand Melbourne

A classic of Australian environmental writing, Gumoffers a startling new perspective on Australian history, suggesting powerful new ways of seeing the past and revealing the complex and often surprising ways trees shape both our physical and imaginary worlds.

James Bradley, author of Ghost Speciesand Clade

Ashley Hays words fill you with the same kind of awe and wonder as a crushed gum leaf held to your nose: Gumis a heady, intoxicating and powerful exploration of the extraordinary history and relationships between people and the iconic eucalyptus. Since reading this book, the sight of gum trees has filled me with a new level of reverence and gratitude to know these sentient beings, and to know Ashley Hays writing.

Holly Ringland, author of The Lost Flowers of Alice Hartand co-presenter of Back to Nature

The books great strength comes from the unfolding sense of Australian national identity that somehow crystallizes around the eucalyptus tree.

Tim Flannery, The New York Review of Books(2002)

Hays Gumis like a gum itself: it is made in equal parts of light and leaf; of music and matter [It is] a sturdy, shapely book of fact, animated by wonder. Mark Tredinnick, The Canberra Times(2002)

Hay brings these peculiarly Australian trees to life, describing a slice of our colonial history in the process. The Sydney Morning Herald(2002)

As this beautifully written and evocative book makes clear, we are tied to the gum tree in ways we cant even imagine. Eureka Street(2002)

Also by Ashley Hay:

The Secret: The strange marriage of Annabella Milbanke and Lord Byron

Herbarium(with Robyn Stacey)

Museum(with Robyn Stacey)

The Body in the Clouds

The Railwaymans Wife

The Best Australian Science Writing 2014(as editor)

A Hundred Small Lessons

Griffith Review 62: All Being Equal(co-edited with Julianne Schultz)

Griffith Review 63: Writing the Country(as editor)

Griffith Review 64: The New Disruptors(as editor)

Griffith Review 65: Crimes and Punishments(as editor)

Griffith Review 66: The Light Ascending(as editor)

Griffith Review 67: Matters of Trust(as editor)

Griffith Review 68: Getting On(as editor)