Margins
Cry Me a River book cover
Cry Me a River
The Tragedy of the Murray Darling Basin
2020
First Published
4.08
Average Rating
155
Number of Pages

Part of Series

The Murray–Darling Basin is the food bowl of Australia, and it's in trouble. What does this mean for the future - for water and crops, and for the people and towns that depend on it? In Cry Me a River, acclaimed journalist Margaret Simons takes a trip through the Basin, all the way from Queensland to South Australia. She shows that its plight is environmental but also economic, and enmeshed in ideology and identity. Her essay is both a portrait of the Murray–Darling Basin and an explanation of its woes. It looks at rural Australia and the failure of politics over decades to meet the needs of communities forced to bear the heaviest burden of change. Whether it is fish kills or state rivalries, drought or climate change, in the Basin our ability to plan for the future is being put to the test. “The story of the Murray–Darling Basin...is a story of our nation, the things that join and divide us. It asks whether our current systems - our society and its communities - can possibly meet the needs of the nation and the certainty of change. Is the Plan an honest compact, and is it fair? Can it work? Are our politics up to the task?”
Avg Rating
4.08
Number of Ratings
187
5 STARS
32%
4 STARS
45%
3 STARS
21%
2 STARS
2%
1 STARS
0%
goodreads

Author

Margaret Simons
Margaret Simons
Author · 6 books

Margaret Simons (b 1960) is an Australian academic, freelance journalist and author. She is currently the media commentator for Crikey and has written ten books. She is currently Director of the Centre for Advanced Journalism at the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, the University of Melbourne. Simons was a finalist for a Walkley Award for journalism in 2007 for the story Buried in the Labyrinth, about the release of a pedophile into the community, published in Griffith Review and her book The Content Makers – Understanding the Future of the Australian Media was longlisted for the 2008 non-fiction book Walkley award. Simons also writes for The Age, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Monthly. For many years, she wrote the "Earthmother" gardening column for The Australian. Simons has a doctorate from the University of Technology, Sydney and was co-founder, with Melissa Sweet, of the community-funded news site YouComm News. She lives in Melbourne. (from Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margare...)

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