The Murrumbidgee River system sustains ecosystems, towns, and a multibillion dollar agricultural industry as it flows from its birthplace in the Snowy Mountains, a thousand kilometres through farmland, wetlands, and the red-dirt interior of New South Wales towards the ocean.
But here, and globally, communities, farmers and the natural world are in competition for water. Climate change, politics, and global finance are putting pressure like never before on our planet’s freshwater arteries from the Murrumbidgee to California, Southern Europe to India. If we do not act, global demand for freshwater will outstrip supply by 40% by 2030, according to the UN. This hybrid impact documentary uses one river system, a touch of humour, and our host’s journey along the Murrumbidgee’s arteries and floodplains, to tell the story of the global challenges we face.
Hosted by science communicator, storyteller, and the daughter of NSW sheep farmers, Lee Constable, Murrumbidgee is a global-facing impact film on water which charts a path through Australia’s stunning landscapes to ask how we might better balance the competing demands on our water supplies across the world. It is a cinematic documentary interspersed with scripted, historical scenes which offers competing alternatives; ecosystem collapse, or change, assisted by new technologies and ways of thinking.
