In a major review of the novel in The Telegraph (Brisbane) literary critic Nettie Palmer states up-front: “In Brent of Bin Bin’s first books, Up the Country and Ten Creeks Run, the pioneers were struggling with nature in its virgin state. In the new book, Back to Bool Bool, mankind in Australia is struggling with a man-made state of affairs. Not the original bush is now to be tamed, but the weeds of degeneration. The book is therefore less an idyllic picture of the Monaro and the little old town of Bool Bool than an exposure of the “fat hen and nettles” that are choking Australia’s development.”
