Wetlands in a Dry Land: More-Than-Human Histories of Australia's Murray-Darling Basin

O'Gorman explains in the introduction to this book that she went into the archives interested in the politics of water allocation for rice farming and unexpectedly found that much of the documentation concerned the ducks that enjoyed these anthropogenic wetlands. This then led her to think about the ways in which human societies are enmeshed in complex ecosystems with other species, and to explore various case studies about these species. The use of the plural “histories” in the title is quite appropriate since the book is not a single narrative but a series of case studies of different areas far apart from one another.As a Canadian historian of China's wetlands with little knowledge of Australia, I approached this book curious about wet places and the comparative history of Anglo settler colonialism. I am presumably not the only one who knows little about Australia's environmental history, judging from the fact that this is the first work on Australia's environmental history published in either of the two most venerable environmental history book series (by Cambridge and Washington University Presses). The introduction is well designed to convince Australian readers of the importance of approaching the region's history from a multispecies perspective but does not provide ill-informed foreigners like myself with enough background information on Australian geography, history, or historiography. Nonetheless, O'Gorman keeps the focus on the big issues that outsiders can relate to. I found it clear and engaging throughout.The book begins with a chapter on the contemporary politics of weaving. Beginning with a discussion of how Aboriginal women living at the mouth of the river have long used wetland sedges to weave, the chapter moves on to a broader discussion of how women in other regions use weaving as a way of maintaining traditions and building bonds. Unsurprisingly, when officials decide how water is allocated, Aboriginals usually get the short end of the stick, and they are disadvantaged in other ways, such as being prohibited by law for using wetlands for profit (this reminded me of the politics of wild rice cultivation in North America). The connections between Aboriginal people and wetlands remains a theme throughout the book, as does the importance of including them in discussions about wetland management.Chapter 2 focuses on the history of the town of Toowomba, built in the swamps in the upper reaches of the Darling River basin, from the arrival of European colonists in the mid-nineteenth century until the 1930s. The town dealt with flooding, pollution, and mosquitos, and O'Gorman does a good job of situating this history in the broader context of ideas of social regulation and disease in that period. These ideas return in the subsequent chapter, on the concern over malaria in the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area during the First and Second World Wars and the anti-mosquito campaigns.The following three chapters focus on birds, and I found them the most enjoyable of the book. While birds in much of the Northern Hemisphere tend to migrate seasonally, the limiting feature of the Australian climate for many birds is not seasonal change but unpredictable longer-term climatic fluctuations, which force them to move where conditions are good at any given time without any fixed pattern. Chapter 4 explores how birds adapted to human modification of wetlands, such as irrigating large areas to grow rice, in the same Murrumbidgee region. The diversion of increasing amounts of water to rice paddies over the course of the twentieth century unsurprisingly attracted many ducks, and this chapter provides a fascinating account of the scientists that researched them, farmers who accused them of eating crops, and the growth of environmental protection in Australia.Chapter 5 explores the history of pelicans at the mouth of the river. European colonists initially slaughtered them as rivals for fish, but they then became a focus for conservation. The next chapter turns to the government itself, showing how international agreements on migratory birds became a key tool of the federal government for protecting wetlands. It is a good study of what types of cultural and administrative factors affect which ecosystems are and are not protected.Like the first chapter, the final one is mostly situated in the present, but it contains an insightful discussion of the uses to which history is put in conservation debates. A large increase in the number of protected seals in the river's estuary has reduced the ability of people to live by fishing there, and the chapter does a good job of considering how workers in an extractive industry (fishing) think about many of the issues discussed in the book. The conclusion correctly emphasizes that the types of histories discussed in the book provide important insights into how Australia's wetlands as they become even more unpredictable as the climate changes.This brief summary does not do justice to the many topics addressed in the book or its many insights, and I would encourage anyone interested in similar issues in other parts of the world—especially Anglo settler colonies—to read it. Despite vast differences of ecology, these regions were all settled as part of the same historical process, and anyone who studies any of them should be aware of what aspects of these processes are shared across space, and which are unique to specific places.

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