There are few places more restful than a riverbank on a fine day, few sights more enticing than a disappearing river bend, few places more intriguing to follow than the tumbled rocks of a creek line. Following the water, to its source or destination, seems hard-wired into our psyche.

Simon Cleary’s latest book, Everything Is Water, takes this fascination to an extreme. Rivers are easy to take for granted, particularly in cities, where they often become integrated into the urban infrastructure. But they have a way of demanding attention, even from the most inattentive city-dweller, when they rise over their arbitrary banks, flowing across field, forest and mangrove, through streets, basements, and houses. When the Brisbane River flooded in 2011, it forced many people to reconsider their relationship with the waterway their city was built upon. Such floods make Cleary, who could never be described as inattentive, reflect on his lifelong relationship with the river, from his childhood mucking about in the headwaters, to his adult life living and working towards the mouth.