Flood country

Jack Miller, former Sydney Morning Herald journalist, follows his instincts to rural Dawson to do a followup piece on a headline that read 'Angry farmer accuses bureaucrat of corruption'.

Little did he know what he was about to unleash as he set about helping the feisty old cattle farmer to expose corruption in the water industry—blatant water theft at the height of a ten year drought crippling the Australian farming landscape.

As Jack and his friends slowly unravel the web of deceit and corruption, which extends through the bureaucracy and into the corridors of political power and big business, they are confronted by an increasingly desperate enemy willing to do anything to stay above the law.

The story, while fiction, uses close to real life happenings as the context and this means it also touches on the tough, but little spoken of issues, of high rates of farmer suicide, the erosion of rural communities through misguided government policies and the buy-up of Australia's rural interests by multinationals. Accordingly, proceeds of this book are being donated to the not-for-profit organisations RiverSmart Australia and Beyond Blue.