My Year Without Matches

March 20, 2014
At a crossroads with her job, her boyfriend and city life generally, Claire Dunn signs up for a year in the Australian bush. She learns wilderness survival skills, builds her own shelter and lives a mostly isolated existence in the bush on the mid-north coast of New South Wales. As Dunn moves through the seasons she deals with different challenges and the book is structured according to her survival needs: Shelter, Water, Fire and Food. Dunn takes the reader deep into both the bush and her own existential crisis. Unfortunately the mixture of the two doesn’t quite come together as a cohesive narrative. Dunn’s exploration of the land is informative and her determination to live off it so authentically is inspiring. However, her listing of birds identified and tools constructed at times is just that, rather than creating a real sense of place. At its worst My Year without Matches reads like a loosely edited diary—complete with dream recollections—but at times it does succeed in conveying the importance of connecting with the Australian bush and the satisfaction in learning to do so. There are definitely lessons to be learned from Dunn’s wilderness adventure. This book will appeal to readers who are interested in nature, outback stories and self-help memoirs.

Portia Lindsay is a former bookseller who now works at the NSW Writers’ Centre