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 addesses 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 since white settlement of one waterscape, where the Lal Lal Creek enters the West Moorabool branch of the Moorabool River near Ballarat in the central highlands of western Victoria. It is a water supply catchment area, where water has been gathered and channeled, waterways reconfigured and connections weakened. In bringing a historical rather than scientific perspective to the issue, Erica Nathan considers what is often lost in the contemporary politics of water re-allocation: what water means to people. She uncovers the knowledge, memory and experience of petitions, picnics, photos and paintings, special trees and boulders, gold diggings, water hole disputes, allocation debates, saw milling, frontage tensions, swimming and fishing that connect people to place.

Lost Waters is a history of one waterscape, but with implications that extend far beyond the one locality. It shows how an understanding of the issues of water and water management must be based on the experience of people as well as debates over resource allocation.

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 horticultural and environmental issues and is an ongoing committee member of the Corangamite Catchment Management Authority (CCMA). She has worked as a teacher in secondary schools and TAFE colleges, a research consultant on environmental matters and a land management planner. Her publications include 'Giving Salt some History and History some Salt', Australian Historical Studies (Oct. 2000) and 'Salinity on the Southeastern Dundas Tableland, Victoria', Australian Journal of Earth Science (2000).

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978-0-522-85352-0