"In the beginning, there was the river -- before the beach, before the drain, before the dredging, before the dams, before numerous other actions that altered the stream. River Dreams reveals the complex history of the Cooks River in south-eastern Sydney -- a river renowned as Australia's most altered and polluted. While nineteenth century developers called it 'improvement', the sugar mill, tanneries, and factories that lined the banks of Sydney's Cooks River had drastic consequences. Local Aboriginal people became fringe dwellers, and many ecosystems were damaged or destroyed. Later, a large section was turned into a concrete canal, and in the late 1940s the river was rerouted for the expansion of Sydney Airport. While parts of the Cooks River have been rehabilitated in recent decades by passionate local groups and through government initiatives, large-scale apartment development is placing new stresses on the region. River Dreams is a timely reminder of the need to tread cautiously in seeking to dominate, or ignore, our environment."--

Ian Tyrrell is a former Scientia Professor of History at UNSW now Emeritus Professor of History at the university. He was shortlisted for the NSW Premier's History Award for Crisis of the Wasteful Nation: Empire and Conservation in Theodore Roosevelt's America (2015) and True Gardens of the Gods: Californian-Australian Environmental Reform, 1860-1930 (1999).