Murray River Country

Murray River Country discusses the water crisis from a unique perspective the intimate stories of love and loss from the viewpoints of Aboriginal peoples who know the inland rivers as their traditional country. By engaging with the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia's agricultural heartland, Murray River Country goes to the core of our national understandings of who we are and how we can live in this country.

These experiences bring a fresh narrative to contemporary water debates about the Murray-Darling Basin, and how we should look to more sustainable ways to live in Australia as our approach to water is changing in the face of water scarcity, drought, climate change, and water mismanagement.

Weir wants to move readers beyond questions of how much water will be 'returned' to the rivers, to understand that our economy, and our lives, are dependent on river health. She uses different knowledge traditions to reveal unacknowledged assumptions that trap our thinking and disable us from acting. By engaging with the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia's agricultural heartland, Murray River Country goes to the core of our national understandings of who we are and how we can live in this country.

Production Details

• Paperback
• 240mm x 170mm x 15mm
• 224pp
• Released January 2009
• ISBN 9780855756789

Contents

Foreword
Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Shortened forms
Interviewees
Chapter 1: Narratives and their relations
Chapter 2: Water management in the Murray–Darling Basin
Chapter 3: Connectivity, loss and resilience
Chapter 4: Setting the negotiation table
Chapter 5: Murray Lower Darling Rivers Indigenous Nations
Chapter 6: ‘Deplete, destroy, depart?’
References
Index

About The Cover

Front cover image: Nici Cumpston, Flooded Gum, Katarapko Creek, Murray River National Park, 2007.

Back cover image: The beauty of a dead river red gum forest, Lake mulwala on the Murray, New South Wales upstream from the Barmah-millewa forest.