The availability of water to urban and rural areas across the world is coming under increased focus. The past few years have seen major droughts and major flooding occur across both Northern and Southern Hemispheres as anthropogenic climate change increases the likelihood of extreme weather events. The ways in which towns and cities developed their water supply systems is of immense importance to how we deal with climate crisis in the present, as Margaret Cook, Lionel Frost, Andrea Gaynor, Jenny Gregory, Ruth A. Morgan, Martin Shanahan and Peter Spearritt argue in their incredibly timely and valuable contribution on water history in Australia. Two things appear at the outset: firstly, this is a genuinely co-written book in which the authors successfully maintain a singular voice while bringing their own individual expertise and knowledge to bear. Secondly, the focus on Australia, not only one of the driest countries on the planet but also one of the most urbanized, is important.
The book focuses on the five state capitals of Australia: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. It charts how urbanites interacted with water; their experiences shaped by the unique circumstances of each place. Importantly, the authors pay attention to indigenous interactions with water – the second chapter focuses on the importance of water to Aboriginal communities who inhabited what became urban settlements long before colonization. In so doing, they show how water became embedded culturally in stories and methods of landscape management, as well as language that continues to resonate with those communities today. The authors then go on to examine relationships with water following colonization, attempts to tame the ‘uncivilized wilderness’ with waterworks projects. As the nineteenth century progressed into the twentieth, notions of urban modernity were tied inextricably to the appearance of these cities – the watering of lawns had the practical purpose of helping to keep dust out of the home, but it also presented Australian homes as pristine, a part of the successful civilizing mission against the supposedly savage frontier. This, of course, meant that water usage, and the expectation that water would continue to flow, increased greatly. It was not until the second half of the twentieth century that water authorities, increasingly privatized or corporatized as in the UK, deterred consumers from using water by increasing costs. This, as well as the influence of the growing environmental movement from the 1960s onwards, helped to put pressure on unrestrained water usage in Australia for the first time. The final chapter brings the story almost up to the present, discussing newer techniques for water supply amidst the Millennium Drought such as desalination plants, which have largely become white elephants. The authors also highlight more positive ways forward, such as the use of recycled wastewater, as well as efforts to make consumers more aware of how much water they consume.
There are several key contributions that the book makes. It is clear that, throughout the twentieth century, there were contrasting notions of urban modernity – the supply of water to keep lawns green and pristine was expected, and yet many houses were not connected to sewage systems – over 10 per cent of Australian homes were not connected to sewers in the late 1960s, and Sydney did not deal with this issue fully until the 1980s. This points to another contribution that the book makes: it highlights the continued short-term approach taken by authorities in each of the cities well into the twenty-first century, often driven by consumer expectation, political unpalatability and path dependency. While homes were built, and waterworks projects foresaw future demand, accompanying sewage works lagged behind, and overall water usage was not always estimated correctly as droughts became more common. Desalination plants were built for the five cities, and yet only Perth’s has had regular usage. Meanwhile, water usage became so embedded in Australian culture that trying to suggest changes to usage was a step that politicians were unwilling to make, always in the belief that technology can help to adapt nature to our needs. This all has a salience in the present – politically and socially Australians have been slow to adapt their water usage, and with climate change there is growing pressure to do so quickly.
The focus on urban Australia makes this a national urban study, with developments in each city compared. While this does allow for a survey of how water systems developed in each city, it also means that, at times, there is little chance for the case-studies to breathe as the reader goes from one city to the next in quick succession. From a production perspective, there are interesting maps showing the hydrological development of each city, but because they’re in greyscale rather than colour they are sometimes difficult to make out. These are, though, minor criticisms of an excellently co-written book that makes contributions to issues of interest to urban historians, including urban-environmental history as well as histories of urban housing, suburbia and Australia itself.
