"One book leads to another; one book grows out of another; one book flows out of others. Flowing is a fitting figure for a book about a river, creeks, wetlands and water. The present volume grew out of a brief discussion of two paintings of wetlands in mid-western Victoria by the nineteenth-century colonial landscape painter Eugene von Guérard. This discussion was part of a chapter on wetlands in Australian painting and photography (Giblett 2020a). It was included in John Ryan's and Li Chen's edited collection Australian Wetland Cultures (Ryan and Chen, eds 2020). I also contributed a chapter to this volume on Aboriginal wetland cultures, their sacral water beings and their refraction in Rainbow Serpent anthropology and Rainbow Spirit theology (Giblett 2020e). I take up and develop this discussion in the present volume in relation to particular Aboriginal peoples and places in mid-western Victoria, their practices of wetland cultures and their stories about and images of them, including the Rainbow Serpent."

Contents

• Introduction to the Hopkins River, Its Basin, People and Places 13
• Chapter 1. The Cast of Characters and A Companion of A Captain of Conservation. 35
• Chapter 2. Where The River Rises: The Upper Hopkins, Its Creeks and Lake Bolac. 57
• Chapter 3. Wetlands of 'Australia Felix': Between 'The Grampians' and The Upper Hopkins 77
• Chapter 4. A Ramble Along The River: Through Colonial Places On The Middle Hopkins 103
• Chapter 5. People and Place of Hissing Swan: Wetlands On The Middle Hopkins 125
• Chapter 6. Framlingham and Hopkins Falls: Aboriginal Places and People On The Lower Hopkins 147
• Chapter 7. Where The River Meets The Sea: The Hopkins Estuary 167