The Songlines

For years, I’ve been rereading my favourite travel writers, such as Robert Macfarlane, Pico Iyer, Jan Morris, and Paul Theroux. In 2024, I reread The Songlines, an exploration of nomadic life honouring the eyes and ears of Australia's Aborigines.

Chatwin’s classic is a must read for anyone interested in the concept of the human relationship with landscape and spirituality.

A deeply thoughtful book that made me think very hard about my own place in the world, about how I connect to and interact with nature, and where my life’s journey may be leading me. By focusing on the quality of journey the destination will take care of itself.

Chatwin left his cushy job at Sotheby’s in London to do something far more interesting and important than evaluating and selling rare and precious objects to wealthy collectors. He set out to explore and celebrate the uniqueness of other cultures, in this case, those mysterious dream-tracks which Australia’s Aboriginal peoples memorized, musical maps of their territory, which they sang or recited as they crossed the land from one tract to another. He has a great ear for listening to stories or conversations and, of course, an even better eye for noticing and recording the specifics of landscapes and human behaviour.… show more.

Some people think that Chatwin’s first book In Patagonia is his best but I prefer this marvellously idiosyncratic book about Australia and its aboriginal culture because I have been to the country myself and can testify how accurately he conjures up a place like Alice Springs. The songlines were a way that the aboriginal people “sang the world into being”, a mythological map of Australia, and Chatwin both describes the myth and expounds his own philosophy of walking, of our vital human need for movement. It is vivid, often funny, and wonderfully thought-provoking. Even if you think his ideas are… show more.