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ARTWORK: Maddy Brown
renaturalising sullivan’s creek NICK BLOOD EDITED BY SAI CAMPBELL
Dedicated to my Dad. During Semester 1, 2021, a group of ANU students was formed to work with local community organisation SEE Change on the topic of “renaturalising” Sullivan’s creek. The ‘SEE’ in SEE Change stands for Society, Environment, and Economics and these are the “three pillars” of sustainability that underpin the framework used by our group. Our task was to create a report that considered key issues and explored a broad range of ways to approach the idea of “renaturalisation.” What does renaturalisation mean? Simply put, it means to return a place to its natural state. One area we focused on were the sections of the creek with concrete beds. How might we go about returning them back into soil and plants, and what are the potential benefits of doing so in terms of biodiversity, human wellbeing, economics, and community sustainability? These are all important areas we wanted to address,
but there’s something largely absent in these sorts of considerations: First Nations peoples and perspectives. I had the privilege of speaking briefly about this project with Dr. Virginia Marshall, the Inaugural Indigenous Postdoctoral Fellow with ANU’s School of Regulation and Global Governance and the Fenner School of Environment and Society, and a Wiradjuri Nyemba woman. With respect to our focus on flooding, she noted that: “If we look at various concepts of living within an Aboriginal world view, the understanding of the benefits of floodplains and flooding is [that it is] nurturing to the entire environment. Why do we build near rivers that flood?” She pointed to research into the colonial history surrounding areas like Gundagai, Daly River, and Wingecarribee River – among many others – where Aboriginal people warned settlers not to set up camp near rivers. We at the ANU have certainly set up camp here at the creek.
