Flood Country: An Environmental History of the Murray-Darling Basin

摘要

As its subtitle suggests, this book deals with a lot more than floods, but the title does draw attention to the important role of floods in this basin, especially in the drier western sections, where the natural systems are essentially flood-driven. The book consists of seven chapters. Four of them, Chapters 1, 3, 5 and 7, deal with specific cases: the Gundagai flood of 1852, the Bourke flood of 1890, the Murray flood of 1956, and the Cunnamulla flood of 1990, spread over the time-span of European occupation of the basin. The intervening chapters, 2, 4 and 6, discuss broader issues in progressive occupation and (mis?)man-agement across defined time periods: 1850-1890, 1890-1956 and 1956-1990.