Bad River

Backyard adventurer Beau Miles takes on four of Australia’s most human-impacted rivers to ask the uncomfortable question: why do we destroy the very thing that keeps us alive?

When filmmaker Beau Miles was thirty-six years old, he had a mid-life adventure crisis. Instead of buying a sports car or having an affair, he decided to kayak the length of his boyhood river. The three-day journey was one of utter despair; he lost his voice from swearing at how badly the river had been battered by farmers, tourists, town planners and old blokes spraying weed killer. He was horrified to realise that a river he thought he knew well was, in fact, very sick.

And so the Bad River project was born: expeditions down four major rivers, each telling a new story of the havoc humans have wreaked upon them. From Sydney to Tasmania, and from Alice Springs to Victoria, Beau kayaks, runs, canoes and rafts in search of meaning – and a way forward – within these endangered waterways.

Original, insightful and eternally self-aware, Bad River follows Beau into the currents of desolation and hope that course through the backwaters of Australia, revealing the surprising lessons these rivers can teach us.