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All the rivers run red: the blood-soaked Gulf Country and its McArthur River is sacred land.

Article Excerpt
A river is a powerful presence to anyone who has grown up with it, its local culture and economy. It follows one around, lifelong. It runs through one's being. The Aboriginal river land- and waterscapes of the southern and south-western Gulf of Carpentaria are powerfully evoked in the opening section of Alexis Wright's new novel, Carpentaria. The book begins:

The ancestral serpent, a creature larger than storm clouds, came down from the stars, laden with its own creative enormity. It moved graciously ... It came down those billions of years ago, to crawl on its heavy belly, all around the wet clay soils in the Gulf of Carpentaria.

There is no such lyricism or feeling in the minds of McArthur River Mining/Xstrata minions. Their December 2005 public relations 'fact sheet' on riverine environments begins:

As part of McArthur River Mining 's Environmental Management Plan, regular tests are done of the riverine...

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