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A couple of us [bumped into] some government workers in the foyer of this plush hotel...The workers were having a chat, and we stopped to say hi, and have a bit of a yarn.
One of the Natural Resources workers, a bureaucrat, but a friendly one, shook her head, saying: 'You guys are mad. You're taking on Goliath. It's impossible.' I remember laughing, and saying, 'But didn't David win?' - Genevieve Fitzgerald, Snowy River Campaigner.
When the residents of Dalgety, a tiny town on the Snowy River, learnt that their caravan park was to be closed, they were appalled. For them, it would mean the death of their town, which had been in slow decline since the Snowy Hydro dammed the river in the 1950s. The townspeople decided they would not stand for it. But to save the town, they had to save the river.
In The Snowy River Story, Claire Miller recounts the stirring David and Goliath tale of the grassroots campaign that took on the massive power of the Snowy Hydro in an attempt to restore the flow to the river and by doing so, save their communities and the Snowy River itself from a slow death.
This fast-moving, beautifully written narrative documents the infighting and tension of a grassroots campaign, as well as offering fascinating insights into the political wheeling and dealing within both state and federal governments.
This campaign caught the imagination of city dwellers, politicians, bureaucrats, and the wider Australian community as the fight progressed through local state and federal politics until, amazingly, the Snowy River MP held the balance of power in a hung parliament and made a deal that was to go down in history. |
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