The Franklin: Not Just a River

While politicians and bureaucrats have waited for the defenders of the Franklin River to spend their meagre funds, give up and go home, the issue has grown far beyond Tasmania, and even beyond Australia.

In this book, novelist James McQueen traces the struggle of that union of private consciences called the conservation movement with those in charge of the bureaucracies and the bulldozers. He examines the passions of the people caught up in one of the greatest conservation campaigns in Australia's history.

To these people, the Franklin has become more than a river; it has become a symbol of the fight to save the precious, intimate places in our lives and in our landscape from those McQueen calls 'the expedient men'.