This modest website is run by Gary Sauer-Thompson. Its background was a contemporary photographic response to the state of the River Murray in South Australia and the Murray-Darling Basin.
The project’s title, Nourishing Terrains, refers to abook in the environmental humanities by Deborah Bird Rose entitled Nourishing Terrains: Australian Aboriginal Views of Landscape and Wilderness. Her work provided the foundation for the interdisciplinary environmental humanities in Australia.
The photographic project is a reflection on the history of the current land occupation and the use of water in the context of anthropogenic climate change in Australia.
It’s historical dimension is the frontier wars in South Australia is agriculture and the grand colonial project of the British Empire of civilizing the country through nation building was about eradicating unproductive nature (wilderness or the bush) and opening up land for settlers to farm. Jock Marshall’s 1966 book The Great Extermination was an early attempt to draw attention to the devastating loss of native species and a wake-up call to change the direction of economic growth to take into account the interests of nature.
Nourishing Terrains 