In the dry continent, it is no accident that Australia’s state capitals all sit on a river. But only Sydney has five rivers and they course through our history like main arteries. Yet, we self-destructively neglect our humblest waterway.

The Cooks River is nearly ruined. The Parramatta, Georges, Nepean and Hawkesbury rivers are bigger and their catchments less developed so, in the contest between humans and the rivers, they have been harder to defeat.

The Cooks River was directly responsible for European settlement when James Cook sailed into Botany Bay in 1770 and noted: “I found a very fine stream of fresh water on the north side in the first sandy cove within the island before which a ship might lay land-locked and wood for fuel may be got everywhere.” Of course, the First Fleet sailed to Port Jackson, but the Cooks helped define Sydney, from its growth as a settlement. The river’s eventual fate was to be one of Sydney’s main drains.

Cooks River starts in Chullora and wends 23 kilometres to Botany Bay. Over the years it has been the subject of controversy as each generation tried to improve it. Dams were built; so, too, were rubbish dumps; the mouth was rerouted to make way for Sydney Airport and its wetlands have been concreted.

The Herald’s chief reporter Jordan Baker and photographer Brook Mitchell have spent months researching today’s article on how the Cooks River became Sydney’s most polluted river. They trace the evolution of the waterway from a system of wetlands, marshes and swamps, winding through Wangal, Cadigal and Gameygal lands and sketch how settlement and industrialisation turned it into a wasteland so that by the end of the 20th century, after a spate of catastrophic chemical spills, it was dubbed the river that “died of shame”.

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Yet despite the attention paid in recent decades to the health of the river, it appears that the gap between the rhetorical promises of successive generations of governments and the reality of a healthy river has not been bridged. Organisations such as the Cooks River Alliance, sponsored by councils and agencies responsible for the river, and local community groups have struggled on with little support for years. But, backed by a band of passionate supporters, which include some of the most powerful people in the country, the Cooks is fighting back.

Most of the politicians now representing electorates through which the Cooks River flows, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Employment Minister Tony Burke, have moved to government and a co-ordinated and disciplined approach to helping cure the river’s ills looks possible. Labor has pledged $10 million for the waterway, but more than money is required.

As today’s article reveals, the substantial issues here are the dangers when humans try to subvert nature, the lack of water testing and, perhaps most importantly, the need for an overall body to regulate the protection of rivers.