The Murray–Darling Basin is under threat. This vast and spectacular geographical region, covering one million square kilometres from central Queensland to South Australia, has been exploited for nearly 200 years. Soil erosion, sand drifts, dust storms, salinity, algal blooms, threatened native flora and fauna, the drying out of internationally recognised wetlands and steadily worsening droughts have repeatedly brought large parts of the Basin to its knees. In Wounded Country, award-winning author Quentin Beresford investigates the complex history of Australia’s largest and most important river system. Waves of farmers exploited the region’s potential, with little consideration for the environmental consequences. Dispossession and marginalisation denied local First Nations people their lands and European settlers the Indigenous cultural knowledge to manage the Basin sustainably. Instead, we’ve had ‘nation-building’ irrigation schemes and agricultural enterprises promoted by politicians focused on short-term profits and a development-at-all-costs approach. Expert advice and warnings about long-term environmental effects have been continually sidelined.

Professor Quentin Beresford has had a diverse career in teaching, the public service and journalism. He is the author of Rites of Passage: Aboriginal Youth Crime and Justice; Our State of Mind: Racial Planning and the Stolen Generations, which won the Western Australian Premier’s nonfiction prize; the multi-award winning biography Rob Riley: An Aboriginal Leader’s Quest for Justice; The Rise and Fall of Gunns Ltd, which won the Tasmanian Premier’s Literary Prize and Adani and the War on Coal.