Table Of ContentFresh Water
Fresh Water
New Perspectives on Water in Australia
Edited by
Emily Potter, Alison Mackinnon,
Stephen McKenzie and Jennifer McKay
MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY PRESS
An imprint of Melbourne University Publishing Limited
187 Grattan Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia
[email protected]
www.mup.com.au
First published 2007
Text individual contributors 2007
Design and typography Melbourne University Publishing Ltd 2007
This book is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act
1968 and subsequent amendments, no part may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system or transmitted by any means or process whatsoever without
the prior written permission of the publishers.
Every attempt has been made to locate the copyright holders for material
quoted in this book. Any person or organisation that may have been
overlooked or misattributed may contact the publisher.
Designed by Phil Campbell
Typeset by J&M Typesetting
Printed in Australia by Melbourne University Design and Print Centre
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Fresh water : new perspectives on water in Australia.
Bibliography.
Includes index.
ISBN 9 78052285 4244 (pbk.).
1. Water use - Social aspects - Australia. I. Potter,
Emily (Emily Claire).
333.91160994
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction 1
Emily Potter and Stephen McKenzie
1 Justice and longing 8
Deborah Bird Rose
2 River Murray wetlands: Past and future 21
Peter A Gell
3 Black and white water 31
Rod Giblett
4 The traditional owner experience along the Murray River 44
Jessica Weir
5 Tracking water through the National Archives of Australia 59
Jay Arthur
6 River memory: Narratives of generation, hope and amnesia 73
Alison Mackinnon
7 Water, rivers and ecologically sustainable development 90
Jennifer McKay
8 Reconciliation? Culture, nature and the Murray River 105
Robert Hattam, Daryle Rigney and Steve Hemming
9 Absence and presence 123
Mandy Martin
10 Young people’s representations of the Murray–Darling
Basin 134
Phil Cormack and Barbara Comber
11 A Western Australian perspective on managing wetlands 153
Geoffrey J Syme and Blair E Nancarrow
12 Water recycling in a South Australian community 169
Anna Hurlimann
13 Weirs and flows in the Hawkesbury–Nepean 185
Helen Cheney, Natalina Nheu and Lorien Vecellio
14 Integrating social considerations in catchment
management 202
Sharon Pepperdine
v
15 Justice, culture and economy for the Ngarrindjeri nation 217
Steve Hemming, Daryle Rigney and Meryl Pearce
16 A story is like a river: Weaving the Murray 234
Kay Lawrence and Nici Cumpston
17 Reimagining place: The possibilities of Paul Carter’s 246
Nearamnew
Emily Potter
18 Hurricane Katrina and the rhetoric of natural disasters 259
Stephen Muecke
19 Conclusion 272
Alison Mackinnon and Jennifer McKay
Contributors 275
Index 281
vi Fresh Water
Acknowledgements
This book began life, appropriately, on the Murray River in 2004, with
the initial gathering of a group of researchers from several states, sup-
ported by an Australian Research Council seeding grant. They were
keen to develop interdisciplinary responses to Australia’s pressing
eco-social problems. One outcome of this meeting was the 2005
‘Water Justice’ symposium held in Adelaide, which in 2007 brings us
to Fresh Water.
Many individuals and organisations have contributed to the
processes between river and book, and we are grateful to all of them.
In particular, we acknowledge the support of the Academy of the
Humanities in Australia and the Academy of the Social Sciences in
Australia; the Hawke Research Institute for Sustainable Societies, the
Division of Education, Arts and Social Science and the Division of
Business at the University of South Australia; and the Faculty of
Architecture, Building and Planning, University of Melbourne, all of
whom supported this project.
We especially want to thank Robyn Tucker for her skilled editing
work and insightful reading of the manuscript. Her talent for words
and ideas has proved invaluable. Thank you also to Bill Green, an
intellectual presence at many stages of this work, to Rhonda Sharp,
an early collaborator, to Warwick Mitchell for his knowledge and
advice, and to Adam Gray for his assistance with image collection.
Thank you to Melbourne University Publishing for its support of
the project, especially to Ann Standish and Foong Ling Kong for their
guidance and enthusiasm, and to Cathryn Game for her thorough
and perceptive editing.
On a personal note, the editors would like to thank their part-
ners and families for understanding and accepting the time demands
of a project such as this.
And finally, thank you to the contributors in this collection,
whose ideas and provocations have provided such an inspiring milieu
within which to work. We have truly enjoyed the conversation.
vii
Introduction
Emily Potter and Stephen McKenzie
Living on the driest inhabited continent on Earth, it is not surprising
that Australians are preoccupied with water. With tropical floods in
the north and prolonged droughts down south, this is a country of
extremes. For our farmers watching the dry earth crack below clear
blue skies, or truck drivers cut off from southern markets by rising
waters, their vehicles piled high with ripening mangoes, it seems that,
inevitably, there is either too little water or too much.
Fresh Water: New Perspectives on Water in Australia appears at a
time when the unpredictable nature of water in this country is a
talking point like never before. Depleted reservoirs in highly popu-
lated coastal areas have ensured that water is regularly a front-page
item. Newspapers publish worrying reports on the ‘drying out’ of
Australia, and callers on talkback radio swap water-saving tips or offer
opinions on the latest government response to the issue. While televi-
sion morning shows run segments on ‘what you can do’ to combat the
drought, politicians, scientists and historians publicly tussle over the
facts: is this the worst drought Australia has seen since colonisation?
Is it the worst drought in a thousand years? Is it a sign of global
warming? Or is it merely part of a ‘natural’ cycle?
1
In Australia, water management has been complicated by artifi-
cial state boundaries imposed upon the landscape. Prime Minister
Howard’s plan to refer control of the Murray–Darling Basin to the
Federal Government is an attempt to overcome this, a move that raises
new concerns even as it resolves others. How can water be distinguish-
ed from the land that adjoins it? Would the Federal Government’s
proposal effectively create a new territory within the nation?
Water is a contested issue in Australia, not least when talk of
drought on a national level is simultaneous with flash floods and
swollen creeks in Sydney, Alice Springs and Townsville. This is an
ambiguity both natural and cultural: in a country so prone to irregular
rainfall, our economic reliance on water-dependent agricultural
industries is significant. Moreover, the symbolic role of agriculture in
Australian cultural mythology is strong. ‘Battling the land’ has become
associated with virtue, a test of character and even—for settler
Australians—the right to claim this land as home.
The statistics, however, suggest that this self-image is no longer
sustainable. As rainfall averages are decreasing, temperatures are
rising across Australia. In 2006 the Murray River, one of our most
iconic waterways, experienced its lowest river inflows on record.
Scientists are beginning to speak of ‘super droughts’ and ‘mega
droughts’ if the situation continues to deteriorate. Lakes and swamps
are drying up, lands are becoming increasingly saline. Satellites have
mapped the net loss of 46 cubic km of fresh water across the continent
over the last three years—enough water to fill Port Phillip Bay twice.1
Domestic water prices are set to increase as is the cost of locally grown
food, which will also affect Australian export markets.
In drought-affected farming communities, incomes have dra-
matically fallen and debt levels have risen. In some areas, growers
have lost more than 50 per cent of their standard water allocation.
Agricultural regions are experiencing alarming rates of mental health
problems and resultant social stress. Although 75 per cent of the coun-
try’s fresh water is consumed in rural Australia, both rural and urban
dwellers are implicated in the current water crisis playing out across
the nation. A kilogram of beef bought in the city can take as much as
50,000 litres of water to produce. The provision of drought relief is a
source of contention, with some scientists arguing that farmers should
2 Fresh Water
