Australian History
Book Details

Lost Waters

Academic Monograph

Erica Nathan

Lost Waters is a history of one rural waterscape, but with implications that extend to our wider understanding of how water resource conflict is framed and how our waterways are managed. It shows that water has been distilled from its past to produce a resource removed from history and landscapes disconnected from community.

Opinion

Erica is an environmental historian, and brings her ecological knowledge to writing a social history of the catchment, including the communities of Bullarook, Bungaree, Warrenheip and Lal Lal. This book addresses the fragility of Ballarat’s water supply, just as much a problem in the 1850s as it is today. [. . .] Lost Waters focuses public notice onto our waterscapes and offers a most valuable contribution to local history.”
Anne Beggs Sunter, Ballarat Courier, 01/09/2007

About this Title

Lost Waters charts the history of waterscape change for a Moorabool River catchment near Ballarat in the central highlands of western Victoria since white settlement. It is a water supply catchment area where water has been gathered and channelled, waterways reconfigured and connections with local community weakened. In bringing a historical rather than scientific perspective to the issues of water allocation and river management, Erica Nathan considers how people experienced the 'settlement' of water. She questions the central volumetric value that water is given in contemporary debates by discovering a lost geography of water in the knowledge and memory of petitions, water races, picnics, frontage disputes, forest settlements, swimming holes, hidden waterfalls and ti-treed springs.

Lost Waters is a history of one rural waterscape, but with implications that extend to our wider understanding of how water resource conflict is framed and how our waterways are managed. It shows that water has been distilled from its past to produce a resource removed from history and landscapes disconnected from community.

About the Author

Erica Nathan has a PhD from The University of Melbourne and a Masters of Applied Science from the University of Ballarat. She has a long-standing interest in environmental issues and is an ongoing committee member of the Corangamite Catchment Management Authority. She has worked as a teacher in secondary schools and TAFE colleges, a research consultant on environmental projects and is now a freelance writer. Her publications include 'Giving Salt some History and History some Salt', Australian Historical Studies (October 2000) and her current project is a history of the Darebin Parklands in Melbourne.

Book Preview

978-0-522-85351-3