Teeming with Life The Wongaloo Project

In 2014 Pamela Griffith was invited to spend time at the Wongaloo Wetlands, a former cattle station south of Townsville that has been set aside as a regional park, managed for its rich animal life. Like the federal, state, local governments, businesses and individuals that contributed to the purchase of the station, and the Wetlands and Grasslands Foundation that championed the initiative, Griffith was seduced by the abundance of life and keen to assist with the park’s promotion and protection. Camped in a caravan, she began research for a series of paintings. During breaks at Cromarty homestead, she discussed what she saw with host Mark Stoneman AM, Co-Founder of the Foundation, the wetlands’ most passionate advocate.

On that first visit the dry season was progressing and the water lagoons were shrinking, concentrating the waterbirds. Griffith drew and photographed the large groups of swans, pelicans and ducks on the water as magpie geese flew in and out to graze in freshly harvested cane fields. Egrets and herons patrolled the waters’ edges and brolgas were gradually arriving for their annual winter get-together, the largest congregation anywhere in Australia. Among the dense beds of bulkuru (water chestnut), the jabirus tended the last chicks of the year. As the days ended, more birds poured in to roost and feed overnight. From their lofty perches, a pair of sea-eagles lorded over the scene.

Over the next three years, Griffith returned several times to view the many moods of the wetlands and their inhabitants. As part of the natural cycle, the swamplands dry down to clay every year, leaving only the deepest lagoons. From the drying mud, the brolgas and jabirus dig nutritious bulkuru tubers. Estuarine crocodiles, the largest of living reptiles, bask on the mudflats as the waters retreat. As the waters retreat even further, around July the large aggregations of birds slowly breakup as some disperse near and far to dry season refuges. The bare clay provides a stage for the brolga’s courtship dances as the next wet season arrives and there begins a period of growth and renewal as life returns to the shallow floodplains. After the floods peak in February, many of the waterbirds breed among the dense vegetation. At this time the wetland noises are strangely subdued.

These ephemeral freshwater wetlands also offer refuge to internationally migratory shorebirds and act as a filter between land and sea, buffering the Great Barrier Reef. The surrounding woodlands and grasslands offer habitat for another suite of animals, including the endangered black-throated finch. As wallabies watch, cattle graze discrete areas to remove the introduced invasive grasses that would otherwise choke the wetlands. There was so much life to capture and such a vibrant tropical palette to portray. But Griffith was more than equal to the task. She has spent much of her long and successful career pursuing iconic Australian landscapes.