[Season of the Briar provides a] sense of real freshness. Here is a double story, converging in the end to make one: of a party of youngsters spending a summer with a weed-spraying unit, and another party who are bush-walking. The beginning has a tone of rather chummy facetiousness, but once the two parties arrive in a lost valley in Tasmania …, a fine sharpness sets in: beautiful natural descriptions, a great relish for oddity of character and for the irritations that arise among young people: and a final drama of truly breath-taking quality…. One of the virtues of this very distinguished story lies in the way it glances at the limitations of conventional heroism.