Tuesday, 13 May 2008

Reporter Eric Campbell travels to Cambodia to investigate secrets from the past and present.

(L-R) Trevor Bormann, Eric Campbell and Mark Corcoran of Foreign Correspondent.


Foreign Correspondent
Lenny Ann Low, reviewer
May 12, 2008

Reporter Eric Campbell travels to Cambodia to investigate secrets from the past and present. He meets Sydney University archaeologist Damien Evans who, along with colleagues from France, Cambodia and Australia, has spent years researching the kingdom of Angkor, the building of the magnificent temple Angkor Wat and what made this powerful and hugely populated city disappear in the 15th or 16th century.

The team has concluded that Angkor was the largest city in the pre-industrial world with an extraordinarily complex system of irrigation. As Evans explains, the land could not sustain such a system and it collapsed, leaving Angkor crippled.

Campbell lucidly parallels this with modern-day Cambodia, where those controlling the thriving tourism industry at Angkor Wat are being criticised for corruption. Angkor Wat receives 2 million visitors every year yet little of the tourism revenue is fed back into preserving the area's heritage.

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