Is landscape Memory? An Ever-Changing Journey Kings Billabong Wildlife Reserve Ruby Turner // A1825809
Indigenous Roots The pure forms of the landscape, that once stood as an abundant and reliable source of life for those who once lived in the natural, untouched forms. The indigenous ‘Latjij Latjij’ people who once knew the site as Yerre Yerre land, also knew the site as home, just some of the qualities listed below of the landscape allowed life to be created for individuals but also allowed for larger traditional communities and families where a constant presence throughout the landscape was established, the river red gums that spread across the land used for tools and utensils, the rush plantings in the moist soils used to craft baskets, buckets and trays, while the river and adjacent water bodies down low provided a reliable source for food.
While the landscape was explored in its entirety, from high to low, characters of the land are remembered as only being touched by the indigenous individuals to support their livelihood, to create shelter, to be able to capture food to eat and more. The landscape was found and left more than less the same, the values of the indigenous individuals and community of families, were those that valued the landscape and its potential for life, for survival and for connection, with different beings and nature itself whereas a result, a range of memories would be conceived and retained.
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Notion of Change For those who came before us and invested life into the billabong, are purely now a memory of the past, the evolution of time and society and acts of European settlement have progressively influenced a greater developed and transformation of landscape- with change to the landscape form as a whole, change to the experience of the landscape and change to the types of memories created of and within the land. The reality of constantly living on the site in its raw form is something of an earlier time where different values shaped experience and memories created. The values of constant connection to natures raw features and communities throughout the site -
from the past are no longer seemingly recognised as the first highlight of experience as they once were, with works of additional manmade structure/s to the landscapes form, create a returned influence to how exploration is conducted through the redevelopment, where natural features that once attracted those throughout the form first, are delayed by the interventions of manmade design structures. What once was a landscape for living and survival, has undergone an influential notion of change in which realities, values and experiences which have reformed leaving the memory of the site and its past operation something in reservation.
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