AustLit

'Nancy Cato’s three-volume epic All The Rivers Run first appeared between 1958 and 1962. The River Murray is the central presence in the narrative, which encompasses the river’s immense length, over 2,000 kilometres, from mountain springs to the sea, and its colourful history from 1890 until the great flood of 1956. During much of that period the Murray was intensively used to transport goods and people, as well as for irrigation as it is still today. The river was subjected to massive re-shaping, in the early twentieth century, when the construction of a series of weirs and locks attempted to transform it into a more reliable medium for transport, and a more reliable source of water for agricultural and industrial uses. All the Rivers Run offers a vision of the Murray as a region, defined by the river itself, with its towns, industries and peoples, its ecology and mythology. What strikes a reader of this novel today, when we are acutely aware of how drastically the whole Murray-Darling river system is endangered, is the way it incorporates the ecological as well as the social history of the river.' (Author's introduction)