Book's title stillapt

摘要

When West Australian author Randolph Stow wrote about his home town of Geraldton in the 1965 novel The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea, few would have predicted that the same title could have been applied to the ongoing (and rather ludicrous) debate regarding the proposed establishment of a deepwater port just north of the Mid West city. The idea of building an industrial harbour at the mouth of the Oakajee River has been kicked around since the early 1970s, but it first gained significant momentum in the second half of the 1990s when the Richard Court-led WA Coalition Government decided it would be a good idea to build the port with an adjacent heavy industrial estate at what was (and pretty much remains) a challenging greenfields site.