The old adage goes that you can't step in the same river twice, but as Hunter writer Scott Bevan has found, it's not always the river that changes.
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The former Newcastle Herald reporter has revisited his 2012 tome, The Hunter, which charted a solo kayaking journey along the region's arterial waterway, appending an extended epilogue to the new edition titled The Return, which he will launch at the Maitland Regional Art gallery at 5.30pm this evening with noted film director and long-time friend Bruce Beresford.
In 2011, Bevan, having just returned from a correspondent's stint in Russia, was eager to reconnect with his regional roots in the Hunter, and charted a solo kayaking voyage along the then drought-ravaged Hunter River.
The voyage connected him with a cast of local characters who appear in the work and now, after almost a decade, and a sometimes-literal-sometimes-metaphorical flood of change in between, the writer set out to reconnect with the waterway and himself.
"It's a new, old book," he said yesterday, describing The Hunter as a love letter to the region and the colony that became the nation.
When the first edition went out of print, he said, it was the perfect excuse to revisit the work.
"I thought I would write an epilogue, and I just kept writing," he said after charting a second journey in 2021.
He describes the new edition as a study of change and constancy. After stepping away from his media career, and in the wake of the pandemic, he said he felt the same urge to reconnect that he had when he arrived home in 2011.
"A river gives the impression that it's not changing at all, but of course it does," he said, "Paddling down the river in 2011, some of the people who had helped me and who I got to meet had moved away, sadly some had died, but so many were still there. I got to meet new people who were as hospitable and generous as those who I met in 2011, and this was the constant.
"There are those cornerstone of the Hunter - one of them is the river and as far as I'm concerned another is the generosity of the people. And if you want to explore that all you have to do is plonk a kayak in the river and start paddling - it's beautiful that that hadn't changed."
The book is two stories in one, with The Hunter reprinted in full and the additional section, The Return.
The book will be available for purchase at the launch and at Hunter bookstores. Tickets for the event are free and details are available via the MRAG website.
Simon McCarthy
Simon McCarthy is a journalist working at the Newcastle Herald in NSW. He writes news and features, and produces video and multimedia, for the Herald and Herald Weekender magazine. He contributes regularly to the Newcastle Herald’s daily Topics column, and is the co-creator and producer of the Toohey’s News podcast. McCarthy has worked as a journalist in regional NSW since 2013. He joined the newsroom of the Newcastle Herald in 2017 from the Northern Daily Leader in Tamworth where he worked from 2015 to 2016.
Simon McCarthy is a journalist working at the Newcastle Herald in NSW. He writes news and features, and produces video and multimedia, for the Herald and Herald Weekender magazine. He contributes regularly to the Newcastle Herald’s daily Topics column, and is the co-creator and producer of the Toohey’s News podcast. McCarthy has worked as a journalist in regional NSW since 2013. He joined the newsroom of the Newcastle Herald in 2017 from the Northern Daily Leader in Tamworth where he worked from 2015 to 2016.
