Under the Escarpment - on the late modern history of Bellingen - A Review

A highlight of Bellingen Readers and Writers Festival in June 2022 was the release of Ross Macleay’s latest book, 'Under the Escarpment - on the late modern history of Bellingen' This history of Bellingen is fascinating whether you live here or elsewhere. It conveys the experience of arriving in a new home of one’s choice and confronting an established culture, in this case settler extractivism.

The author has thoroughly researched this detailed book from public archives and oral recounts. In parts the historical events are disputed reflecting the diverse memories of events. The use of words like may have, maybe, and perhaps adds character and uncertainty to this otherwise well-documented history.

When a second invasion of the Bellingen region began in the 1960s and 70s, consisting of mainly educated urban young people with different values to their predecessors, artists, hippies and alternates, the local community put up a strong resistance. The book begins with The Meeting and the events which emerge from this large gathering of both sides are lucidly elaborated.

It covers the banning of the market, the resistance against logging and felling magnificent trees, magic mushrooms, botany, floods, demolition of the community center, and all imaginable topics of modern living.

While reading this book the landscape around becomes mythical. Things become endowed with their  history lending a dimension of time to the surroundings. Reflections about philosophy and the practice of history writing add to this feeling of living in a place which owes its character to the ideas and struggles which created or protected it or failed to do so.

The style is highly readable and entertaining with considerable reflection apparent in every paragraph. People who know Bellingen will be enlightened by this book wherever they go. Like a myth, knowledge makes our experience meaningful. Others will experience it as an entertaining story of universal validity about aesthetics, conflict, love and ecology. And the great drive to make a home somewhere in the world.