The Green Centre by Barry Paine

The Green Centre

by Barry Paine

British Broadcasting Corporation, Andre Deutsch, 1976, [First Edition], ISBN 0091301807, colour photographic plates, hardcover, dustjacket

Very Good Condition, a little edge and shelf wear, a little rubbing and bumping to edges and corners, a little wear to end papers, no inscriptions, dustjacket shows a little edge and shelf wear with a little rubbing to edges and corners, small chips and creases (see photographs)

“The forbidding Red Centre of Australia had become green.  A period of extraordinary rainfall had converted the hottest, driest desert in the world into meadows of green, speckled and pooled and streaked with brilliant colour; and since animal life depends on the plants, a whole complex of natural activity had been set in motion.  Barry Paine had the good fortune to make a film of this phenomenon for the British Broadcasting Corporation’s Natural History Unit in collaboration with the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s Wildlife Unit.  It was called The Year of the Green Centre, and many people will remember it with delight.
This book is both the story of how that film was made and a much fuller account than any film could give of the marvels Barry Paine witnessed: the seemingly miraculous devices evolved by plants, insects, reptiles, fish, birds and mammals in order to survive long years of almost complete drought and to flare into life as soon as there is rain.  Arid salt-pans turned into lakes cruised by fish-hunting pelicans; puddles teeming with shrimps – how are such things possible in the driest part if continents?  We learn the answers.  Barry Paine has the gift of conveying information about nature in a way easily understood even by the least scientifically-minded reader.”