Australia is the second driest continent on the planet, yet it is covered with waterways, from Tasmania’s Franklin River to the Ord in Western Australia, the Alligator rivers of Kakadu and Melbourne's Yarra. They are crucibles of culture, a means of transportation, sites for play, sources of power, bringers of joy and anguish, and givers of life. More than any other part of the landscape, rivers demonstrate the interconnectedness of life.
In the new book, Rivers: The Lifeblood of Australia (NLA Publishing $49.99, 1 October 2020), award-winning author Ian Hoskins provides a fascinating visual history of Australia’s most well-known, loved, engineered and fought over rivers. Not only the lifeblood of Australia, they are also of incredible—sometimes painful—local importance, as reminders of the dispossession suffered by those first peoples and their descendants and evidence of the devastation wrought by drought and dying waterways.
A thoughtful foreword by former prime-ministerial speechwriter Don Watson laments the price rivers have paid for human industry and calls for greater connection with the waterways we rely on for our existence. Rivers: The Lifeblood of Australia explores our complex connections to water and the intrinsic value it provides our nation.
Author Ian Hoskins has worked as an academic and public historian for 30 years. He has written extensively about cultural landscapes, taught at various Sydney universities and worked as a curator at the Powerhouse Museum. His book Sydney Harbour: A History won the Queensland Premier’s Literary Prize for History in 2010. Coast: A History of the New South Wales Edge won the New South Wales Premier's Prize for Regional History in 2014. Ian is currently completing a history of Australia's relationship with the Pacific.
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