RIVERS: THE LIFEBLOOD OF AUSTRALIA

Rivers have long run in the blood of Australians.

Givers of life and subjects of anguish, Australian rivers have shaped the nation from the moment the first Australians arrived tens of thousands of years ago. Offering the vital ingredient for life, they are also guardians of culture, a means of transportation, sites for play and leisure,and sources of power-deeply entrenched in almost every aspect of human life and an irreplaceable part of the global ecosystem.

Australia's vast inland seas of some 50 million years ago have disappeared, leaving a continent that is mostly desert. Of the waters and wetlands that remain, most of which are connected to rivers, 65 are listed as Ramsar Wetlands of International Importance. 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.

In this broad-ranging survey of some of Australia's most well-known, loved, engineered and fought over rivers, from Melbourne's Yarra to the Alligator rivers of Kakadu, award-winning author Ian Hoskins presents a history of our complex connections to water.