ABSTRACT
Current understandings of water have an imaginative history that influences how Australians understand water in the landscape, and by corollary, how these imaginative habits can act to constrain the design of creative water policy. The process of reforming water policies and institutions is fundamentally path-dependent – past governance and policy choices in this domain limit current options, just as present choices will constrain the set of future reform options. Literature has a long historical relationship with the water in the landscape, a testament to the imaginative pull of both the reality and idea of water – its myth-inspiring power in fact. Known to most Australians for generations, taught widely in schools and re-imagined in song, film and art, the imagery of 'My Country' is deeply embedded in Australia's cultural memory. In literary terms, 'My Country' is essentially a poignant love poem, an elegy in the classical sense of the form, and herein lays its persuasive power.
