Where River Meets Sea

Estuaries are dynamic coastal waterways where salt and fresh water mix. Where River Meets Sea describes the value and status of Australia's 974 estuaries and takes readers on a state-by-state tour describing the health, geography, science, management and ecological functions of these unique coastal waterways. It includes profiles of people and their relationships with estuaries. The book's many photographs, maps, case studies and diagrams will help Australians to better understand, appreciate and wisely use these natural areas. Chapters on natural history, coastal science and management give an understanding of our vast network of pristine and heavily modified estuaries – from isolated tide-dominated estuaries in Australia's tropical north to those shaped by waves in southern, temperate waters. Other chapters show how people use and value coastal catchments and waterways, the impacts of human development on natural ecosystems, and how estuaries can be better managed in future. Where River Meets Sea aims to provide Australians with a deeper appreciation of our coastal waterways that are both vital for our economy and precious to our quality of life. This is a re-issued version of the original work published by the CRC for Coastal Zone Estuary and Waterway Management in 2004,

A spellbinding, spirited tale of two men exploring masculinity, race, and belonging in a desperate search to feel at home in their own skins. An enthralling nautical epic, River Meets the Sea traces the dual timelines of a white-passing Indigenous foster child in 1940s Vancouver and a teenage immigrant in the suburbs of Nanaimo in the 1970s. A natural-born storyteller, Ronny is a left-handed “alley mutt” without a birth certificate who searches for his mother everywhere — most powerfully, he hears her voice in the surging Stó:lō River. Born in the middle of the ocean on a merchant ship departing Sri Lanka, Chandra is a Tamil boy with “skin like a charred eggplant” who finds his haven from the pressure to assimilate by swimming and surfing in the Salish Sea. Moving gracefully between these parallel stories like a wave, the novel traces the seemingly separate lives of these sensitive young men and their everlasting connections to water. When their troubled paths inevitably cross, they form a sacred bond based on the mutual understanding of what it means to be othered, illuminating the interconnectedness of humanity and our innate relationship with the natural world.

My father says there has been a forest here for over a hundred million years," Jeannie Baker's young protagonist tells us, and we follow him on a visit to this tropical rain forest in North Queensland, Australia. We walk with him among the ancient trees as he pretends it is a time long ago, when extinct and rare animals lived in the forest and aboriginal children played there. But for how much longer will the forest still be there, he wonders? Jeannie Baker's lifelike collage illustrations take the reader on an extraordinary visual journey to an exotic, primeval wilderness, which like so many others is now being threatened by civilization.

Literary fiction set in Australia by the ocean.

"McGhee writes confidently as one who remembers the ordinariness of adolescence as well as its angst . . . and compellingly creates a protagonist blindsided by loss." — Publishers Weekly (starred review) For seventeen-year-old Rose, it keeps happening — the car crash. The car crash that put her sister, Ivy, in a coma with only a respirator keeping her alive. While Rose tries to find support from her reticent mother, distraction from the series of boys she meets at the town’s gorge at night, and empathy from her neighbor William T., what she really needs must come from within herself — a release of what’s been welling up inside. Heartrending, honest, and ultimately hopeful, this is the tale of a teenager overwhelmed by trauma and loss, yet steadied by loyal friendship and the solace of first love.

An early observer remarked that it was doubtful that organic life was anywhere more exquisitely adjusted to its environment "than in the marshes of the ocean shore." Yet through most of American history, coastal wetlands have been viewed as noxious regions, some good for recreation but most fit only for dredging and reclamation. Recently, however, ecologists have recognized the diversity and biotic fecundity of the nation's tidelands. Joseph Siry carefully traces the interplay among scientific knowledge, popular values, legal frameworks, and public policy in the development of a wetlands ecological ethic. He demonstrates how the 1968 National Estuary Protection Act reflects the fruition of a vision first expressed by Adam Seybert in 1798 and developed by such luminaries as Frederick Law Olmstead, George Perkins Marsh, Aldo Leopold, and Rachel Carson. Since 1945, Siry argues, growing anxiety over destructive industrialism, loss of wild seashores, and the need for coastal resources have produced wetlands protection. He describes, in language appealing to the lay enthusiast as well as the specialist, the nationwide estuarine sanctuary system that exists today as the result of a new ecological awareness.

Maia, orphaned at 13, is unhappy to be staying with relatives hundreds of miles up the Amazon. She becomes friends with an English boy who lives with the locals. They are forced to flee upriver, pursued by an assortment of eccentric characters.

Where River Meets Ocean is the poetic junction of love, politics, creative action, and self-discovery.