The River -- a good read
Submitted: Thursday, Mar 04, 2010 at 11:53
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rocco2010
Gidday
I has been interesting this week while listening to news reports of the floods in Queensland to be reading The River, a new book about the Murray-Darling Basin.
Author Chris Hammer spent the best part of a year travelling through the basin talking to the people he met along the way. There are no politicians and no experts quoted and no mind numbing statistics, just his observations and the stories of the people who live and work along the rivers.
He doesn't make judgments about irrigators, graziers, foresters or indigenous people, just lets them tell their story. His underlying theme seems to be "how did it ever come to this?"
Hamer started his journey in late 2008 when conditions in the northern part of the basin were dire. He would find things very different if he visited it today.
For someone like me who lives in the West and has never visited the region but is fascinated by it, it has been an educating read.
Hammer was interviewed yesterday on ABC Radio National's Bush Telegraph and if you go to their website you can have a listen to what he is about.
The book is published by
Melbourne University Press.
Cheers
Rocco
Reply By: Jedo_03 - Thursday, Mar 04, 2010 at 20:52
Thursday, Mar 04, 2010 at 20:52
I heard him interviewed on the ABC. He seemed to go to great lengths to state that his book makes no political statements or finger-pointing... However, he obviously had an agenda in mind when he undertook the journey... So what was that agenda..?? Was it merely to write yet another book..?? Just a literary documentary..? A collection of sad anecdotes... Money in the bank..??
I've yet to read his book - but based on what I heard, I, personally - I feel he SHOULD have added political commentary and damned the beaurocracy and interstate feuding that led to the demise of these mighty rivers...
Easy enough for politicians in their hermetically sealed halls in
Canberra to blame it all on Climate Change, when the real truth lies in revenue dollar$ from
water trading and State Territorial claims and abject negligence of resource conservation.
Look at the current 'debate' about "how much"
water NSW will release to flow down to SA... Who owns the fr*ggin river anyway..? Can anyone "own" a river..??
Jedo
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Follow Up By: coongoola - Friday, Mar 05, 2010 at 07:53
Friday, Mar 05, 2010 at 07:53
I've just heard that Cubby station near St. George in Queensland has apparently harvested 100 million dollars worth of
water in the last few days. Obviously saved into their kilometre long ground tanks.
I can't believe they are still allowed to do this, especially since the
Narran River and
Narran Lakes rely on that
water, both of which have been slowly dying for years.
Cheryl
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