AustLit

'‘In time and with water, everything changes,’ according to Leonardo da Vinci, who worked with Machiavelli on a strategic and ultimately doomed attempt to channel the flow of the Arno. Large-scale water management has had some notable successes in parts of Australia, but as poor practices and climate change put river systems under near-terminal stress, we face irreversible and potentially catastrophic ecological failures. Michael Cathcart, in The Water Dreamers (2009), provides an account of this. Attempts to rectify the ecological degradation of our rivers involve expensive and possibly futile federal policies, opportunism, and the potential for suffering in farming communities. Everything may indeed change in time and with water, but changes in water practices in Australia are particularly fraught.'  (Introduction)

'The Year of the Farmer begins with an ominous scene of dogs running at night with “blood on their minds” towards sheep trapped in their paddocks, “innocent to the coming game”. Dogs aren’t the only predators in this darkly comic new novel by the author of The Dressmaker. As for prey, not all are sheep by any metaphorical stretch, but many are indeed trapped in their paddocks. Drought is upon the land. The farmers who haven’t already sold up can feel their creditors closing in, and the local water authority doesn’t appear to have their best interests at heart either. The river, with its uncertain flow, divides town and country in more ways than one. '  (Introduction)