Coast

July 2, 2012
Many readers will recall The River, Chris Hammer’s award-winning study of the Murray-Darling river system. This new work is much larger in scope, encompassing a journey down the coast of Eastern Australia from the islands of the Torres Strait to southern Tasmania. Hammer blends history, folklore, human interest tales, environmental concerns and tourism into a very readable narrative. In turns inspiring, disturbing, amusing and thoughtful, he carries the reader along through his journalistic skills and selectivity. On the reef we meet the crucially important, microscopic zooxanthella; in Tully, the stoic, resourceful survivors of cyclone Yasi; and on the Gold Coast the sharply divided haves and have-nots. In a chapter entitled Bermagui, the author reminisces about his family and their holiday home in nearby Broulee, while he also muses on the decline of the NSW south coast’s fishing industry. Zane Grey, a prolific American writer of Westerns, makes an interesting cameo appearance, as does Boydtown, a noble failure of private enterprise. An atmospheric description of Hammer’s meandering drive from Eden to Melbourne completes his mainland odyssey then it is off to Tasmania. The author questions many people about local environmental issues, global warming (almost universally dismissed in Queensland), development conflicts and predictions for the future. It is a challenging book with a wide potential readership.

Max Oliver is a long-serving Australian bookseller