River and the Deities

The river valley sits shrouded in fog. Outside the valley the sun glows.

In other places, other cultures and other religions, the river is the Goddess. Likewise, the living spirits of rivers are depicted as deities, for instance, as snake, python, anaconda, dragon. Frequently, these deities are female perhaps because the element of water is regarded as a feminine essence embodying 'life, birth and rebirth, creation and creativity, but also with death and oblivion' (Parente-Čapková, 2006).

The question then arises, does the Brisbane River and the downstream embayment Moreton Bay, have a feminine or goddess quality? In a contemporary sense, and in relation to Goddess spirituality, practitioners might honour the River as a Goddess and through this honouring and ritualising, seek protection for the ecosystem and creatures who live along the watery terrain.

In India river Goddesses like the sacred Ganga and Yamuna are under severe threat. I have written previously in this blog about the insightful book with the difficult message by David Haberman, River of Love in an Age of Pollution (2006), which stories the Goddess Yamuna who flows in the upper reaches of the Ganges. The river is both a river of death - and a river of love.

Both the Ganges and the Yamuna are believed to be spiritually pure but both are in appalling physical shape with raw sewerage, industrial and agricultural runoff, toxics and heavy metals flowing through these vital waterways. These rivers are the Goddess. Spiritually they are divine, reverential, beautiful. Devotees worship the Goddess by immersing themselves in Her sacred flow or conducting ritual washing in Her sacred waters. Yet sadly, while doing so, they are facing serious waterborne diseases and the risk of contact with toxic chemicals.

Sathya Gosselin (nd) in her paper Pollution and Ganga Ma writes of the Ganges or Ganga, as the great mother who 'mercifully provides for the people each year with her swelling monsoon ... Indians receive her with great blessings and appreciation; village farmers benefit greatly from the fertile silt and soil that the great Ganga leaves behind. Seasonal flooding leaves small pools and lakes (jhils) that are diverted to irrigate crops in an otherwise dry land ...[She] speaks life, renewal, and fertility...'. But, says Gosselin, she is being assaulted.

Gosselin's article talks about the problems in India of first, defining the term 'pollution', second, explaining what's happened to the vast amounts of funding directed to the Ganges' clean up campaign, and third, the frustration of local residents not consulted about the river's management plans.

She says that the very term pollution is problematic when the river Herself is spiritually pure but suffering from impurities. Gosselin cites the anthropologist Kelly Alley (1994) who grapples with this dichotomy - the spiritual versus the westernised resource management approach. For devotees, 'the Ganga can never be impure' (1994:130). She is a powerful force and can carry the impurities and pollution 'away into the ocean'. In this comment Alley recognises that the Goddess is believed to have the power to transform impurities and offer absolution whether spiritual and/or physical and this includes body wastes. It has thus been so.

This cultural difference in ways of seeing (and revering) sacred water brings me back to the Brisbane River and the contemplation of Goddess spirituality. There are a number of possible modes of thought and action worth reflecting on. For instance, in a (post/most)modern world there is a view that anything (or almost anything) goes. So in this perspective it may not really matter what the river is called as long as it is cared for. Indeed, regarding the river as a Goddess might very well engender an ethic of greater care and concern among residents and if so, acknowledging the sacredness of the water's tidal flow and its downstream embayment can be seen as a positive move.

On the other hand there is the spectra of cultural appropriation. Goddess spirituality as it is practised in Australia is one of a number of emergent religions connected to the spread of interest in earth-based spirituality, feminism, Paganism and the New Age movement. But indigenous cultures including Native Americans and Aboriginal people have rejected these individualised New Age spiritual movements not only because they tend to romanticise indigenous cultures, particularly the spiritual and ecological lifeways, but also due to practitioners borrowing, stealing or misappropriating sacred rituals and sacred beliefs.

Christina Welch (2002) criticises New Agers for buying and selling these precious practices saying that they are simply reaffirming capitalist consumer culture. She comments that they lack an active political engagement in, and understanding of, the plight of indigenous peoples, while at the same time, she maintains that indigenous people should not be defined solely as the 'victims' of cultural appropriation concluding that: 'The colonialist presentation is refuted by indigenous agency in the dynamic of cultural growth' (2002:35).

My view falls somewhere in between. Embrace the River Goddess on one end of the spectrum or condemn cultural appropriation at the other. While I would find it difficult to overlay an indigenously-venerated waterway with a Goddess-inspired spirituality from ancient and/or distant lands, I can see that others might revere the local river with a spiritual demeanour which reflects their own cultural heritage.

For example, Bryne et al (2006) in their article 'Enchanted Parklands' cite a wonderful story of a Vietnamese-Australian living around the Georges River in SW Sydney who regards the river as the embodiment of a sacred dragon and defines locations along the river in terms of the dragon's anatomy.

In this light, the Brisbane River could be re-inscribed as Goddess and worshipped by those whose spirituality is defined as Goddess spirituality.

Reference
Alley KD, 1994, 'Ganga and gandagi: interpretation of pollution and waste in Benaras,' Ethnology, Spring, 33, 2.
Byrne D, H Goodall, S Wearing and A Cadzow, 2006, Enchanted Parklands, Australian Geographer, 37, 1, 103-115.
Gosselin S, nd, Ganga Ma, paper prepared for the Goddess Traditions in India and Tibet seminar at Vassar College, http://reli350.vassar.edu/gosselin/index.html
Haberman DL, 2006, River of Love in an Age of Pollution: The Yamuna River of Northern India. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Parente-Čapková V, 2006, Narcissuses, Medusas, Ophelias...Water Imagery And Femininity In The Texts By Two Decadent Women Writers, Wagadu, 3, Spring, http://web.cortland.edu/wagadu/Volume%203/Printable/capkova2.pdf
Welch C, 2002, Appropriating the Didjeridu and the Sweat Lodge: New Age Baddies and Indigenous Victims? Journal of Contemporary Religion, 17, 1, 21-36. http://www.wlu.ca/documents/6482/Appropriating_the_Did.pdf

Downstream, it's a long way down

Sylvie Shaw

The mouth of the Brisbane River was carefully hidden from the early explorers. The entrance was narrow, sheltered by Fisherman's Island, tangled rain forest, a tightness of mangroves and the huge spreading Moreton Bay Fig. It was as if, states one historical account of the river, '[n]ature herself seemed to have made certain that the river would never be found' (ABC, 2008).

It is said that the explorer John Oxley 'saw such beauty that it took his breath away.' Oxley was so staggered by the lushness and fecundity of flourishing colour that he wrote:

'From the giant trees hung vines and creepers of every description, staghorns by the thousands jostled for space with the wild passionflowers. And here and there extra dark green patches of palms and giant fern forests were sprinkled with the delicate colours of thousands of orchids. And on the river itself Oxley’s boat glided through millions of pink and white water lilies' (ABC, 2008).

The Fishing Monthly laments this spectacle of disappeared and disappearing beauty, saying: 'It's hard to believe that the Brisbane River, as recently as 170 years ago, was lined with rainforest, clear running creeks, and teemed with fish and wildlife beyond your imagination' (Lee, nd).

The results of such drastic environmental change can be seen in research on water quality. The SE Queensland Healthy Waterway study on ecosystem health of the Brisbane River estuary states that water quality is 'generally poor' due, in part, to the concentration of nutrients from sewage and stormwater runoff which flows straight into the precious mangrove-encased Moreton Bay.

Along with the damage to the Brisbane River and Moreton Bay ecosystems, many of Australia's rivers, estauries and embayments are in trouble, none more so than the Murray Darling Basin and the end of its long and seemingly arduous flow, the wondrous Coorong on Australia's southern shore.

In 2006 The Age newspaper declared the Coorong 'dead'. The article began:

'To witness the death of a beautiful, wild creature would be torture enough for most lovers of nature. To witness the decline of a beautiful, wild ecology along a fabled stretch of Australia's coast has been the excruciating duty of biologist David Paton for 20 years' (Chandler 2006).

It's hard to imagine that a river can stop flowing. That birds now stroll across the mud where once a sacred river ran. This situation was highlighted in a recent blog from Angry Pengiun (April 2008) who documented the sad plight of waterbirds as well as other deleterious effects along the Coorong.

'The swans were walking in the river. Yes, walking. In fact I walked in the river – quite a long way across dry mud to photograph a group of perplexed-looking ducks and pelicans sitting on an island that did not used to be there.'

In contrast, early settler accounts of the Coorong described 'vast flocks of waterfowl [that] once blackened the skies over this world-renowned South Australian wetland' (Chandler, 2007). But now water bird numbers have dwindled. Fish species are missing. Extinct perhaps.

Coorong researcher David Paton says that a major cause is the lack of environmental flows. 'Sure,' he says, 'you’ll have a Coorong with water in it, but it … isn’t going to go back to what it was.' (Chandler, 2007). Elsewhere he says: 'Wetland systems deteriorate without environmental flows... [The] Coorong had capacity to cope with drought – but not an extended period of no flow.'

The Brisbane River flows. Slowly. Windingly. Tidally. Breathe the tides flowing in the water, salt to fresh, ocean to river, moon to ocean to river to flow.

Reference
Angry Penguin, 2008, Coorong so wronged, http://angrypenguin.blogspot.com/2008/04/coorong-so-wronged.html, April 7, 2008.
Australia's Centenary of Federation, 2001, Oxley's Discovery Of The Brisbane River, ABC, April 19, 2001.
Chandler J, 2006, The Coorong is dead. What's taking its place? The Age, Jan 21, 2006.
Chandler J, 2007, The Great Coorong – A Biological Barometer, The Age, Jan 29, 2007. Found on: www.aph.gov.au/SENATE/COMMITTEE/rrat_ctte/traveston_dam/submissions/sub149.pdf
Lee M, nd, The Brisbane River, Fishing Monthly, http://www.fishingmonthly.com.au/AreaArchives/qldarchives-ft/southernqld/Brisbane/98Feb-Lee.html
Paton D, nd, Lessons Learned from the Coorong. Powerpoint presentation, http://media.litfuse.com.au/2007/paton.pdf

Wild, Rivers and Reciprocal Flow

Sylvie Shaw

The wild is a place, a way to be, a process (i.e. to go wild) and a perception about what happens when wild land and wild waters are paved over, smothered or pulverised. This blog touches on some of the integral viewpoints of the effects of wild and wilderness.

Drastic changes along the river, and to the river's ecosystem, have been largely directed by developers responding to government strategies for the need to house the growing population in, and migration to, S.E. Queensland. In this action drama, the Brisbane River and its environs take centre stage as the target for transformation. Bushland, mangroves, water quality and water flow are affected, while river creatures, fish, snakes, birds, bats and insects, are forced to make way for a human population, many of whom are increasingly seeking river views, or even 'river glimpses' (quote from recent real estate advertisements).

The actors in this river drama are the residents, water users and water policy makers for whom the river seems not to have rights outside of human use, not even the right to its own water. These actors define water in anthropocentric terms, as a resource and development magnet that bypasses intrinsic value and extends storey after concrete storey high into the sky and along the river edge. As a result, the river, its tidal flow and its wild heart are covered with an economically-driven canopy.

Thus, in this era of rapid growth, there is little room for salvation of beauty, redemption of aesthetics, preservation of natural capital or for holding onto biodiversity outside of human use. Sustainable development seems a forgotten concept.

To explore these notions a little further, I have recently re-visited the work of wonderful Native Canadian novelist Jeanette Armstrong. In her article in Roszak, Gomes and Kanner (1995) titled 'Keepers of the Earth', Armstrong describes the image of non-indigenous people portrayed by her grandparents. They saw white settlers as being out of place, wild and insane, similar concepts to the way that early settlers regarded indigenous people.

For example in Australia, colonialists referred to Aborigines as ‘indolent in the extreme, squalid and filthy in their surroundings’, as well as ‘disgustingly impure amongst themselves’ (in Reynolds, 1987:108). Overtones of this attitude still exist today. Aboriginal people continue to be shown in the media as either drunk and violent (wild), sitting in the dirt surrounded by mangy dogs (dirty), or painted up and dancing for tourists (marginal objects). They remain in this picture, a people without agency compelled to live in a static past.

To illustrate the impact of these changes place and person, the anthropologist Deborah Bird Rose (1988) cites an Aboriginal elder and one of her Yarralin informants, Daly Pulkara, as saying that once white settlers arrived and began to irrevocably alter the land, it became 'wilderness', i.e. man-made, cattle-grazed, mined, desacralised. It became a place, in Aboriginal eyes, where 'life is absent'.

These examples highlight the difference between the way indigenous cultures perceive wild land and wild people and the way non-indigenous western cultures construct notions of the wild and wilderness. For an indigenous culture which has lost sacred land, or has been removed from country, there is a parallel between the dismemberment and despiriting of the land and the despiriting of identity.

Aboriginal people are born into an obligatory relationship with the land where caring for country is part of their reciprocal responsibility to place and community. In light of this sacred relationship, Rose (in another article) comments:‘To be in connection is to take care and to be cared for’ (Rose, 2006). Re-memorializing and resacralizing the land through ritual and other community-spiritual processes might create a re-memorying of sacred connection between people and place.

Taking care and being cared for are also qualities which have emerged from research into non-indigenous wilderness experiences. Although there are a number of studies into the significance and spirituality of wilderness experiences, particularly on the role of wilderness in therapy, self-development and revitalisation of youth 'at risk' (e.g. the TV series Brat Camp), there is little research on the emotional and spiritual effects of nature engagement in urban areas, such as along the Brisbane River, and limited studies on how people connect with nature in their daily lives, whether in urban or rural areas.

This research is crucial as without it planners, officials and developers can cover over green spaces and lop down suburban trees leaving less opportunity in the cityscape for nourishing the human spirit (physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual).

In comparison with a generation ago, urban dwellers have less everyday contact with the natural world. This is driven by an increasing involvement in the virtual world, widespread consumerism, intensification of the built environment, and a decline of public open spaces. Accompanying this external change, there may be a corresponding shift in consciousness and attitudes about the environment.

By this I mean that if city dwellers are removed from nature, if they don't know the intricacies of seasonal changes, if they have not fallen for the tidal movements, the glittering water, the delicate bird song, or tuned into the nuances along the river for instance, how and why would we expect them to want to protect this place?

Without solid Australian research on spiritual and psychological effects of nature connectedness and nature disconnection there is only limited evidence from which to argue for the preservation and expansion of wild city spaces. And without regular and direct sensual engagement with the natural world, people may not make the link between the lack of nature in their lives and their own wellbbeing and the wellbeing of the environment.

Nature in city environments is so familiar we may take it for granted. But it is being whittled away little by little, so we may not notice the change until it is too way late. Get out into nature and help save the earth.

References
Armstrong J, 1995, 'Keepers of the Earth,' in T. Roszak, ME Gomes, & AD Kanner, Eds., Ecopsychology. Restoring the Earth. Healing the Mind. San Francisco: Sierra Club.
Bird DB, 1988, 'Aboriginal Land Ethic,' Meanjin, 47, 3, 378-387
Bird DB, 2006, 'What if the Angel of History were a Dog?', Cultural Studies Review: Environments and Ecologies. 12, 1, 67-78.
Reynolds H 1987, Frontier: Aboriginal Settlers and Land. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.

Place: The Sense of Spiritual Home

Knowing place reflects an intimacy with the elements of that place, the trees, the animals, the human visitors and, in the case of this blog, the Brisbane River. American nature writer, novelist and preservationist Wallace Stegner (1992) says that: 'Your province is not the wilderness, where the individual makes contact with the universe, but the farm, the neighborhood, the community, the town, the memory of the past, and the hope of the future—everything that is subsumed for you under the word 'place'.

Along the river, away from the road and signs of the city, the tall trees shimmer with the song and dance of birds. Flashing past overhead, in colours of red and green, the King Parrots are being pursued by a small gang of Noisy Mynahs. Miniscule pardalotes parade daintily on narrow branches above the water, while the blue-winged Forest Kingfisher fossicks among the leafy bushes, purring and gurgling as it searches for tasty treats. And right in front of me, the jauntily-dressed black and white Willie Wagtail wiggles its tail feathers back and forth as it hops from branch to branch as if leading the way. Watch out! The Brush turkeys scatter as runners zip past. Dogs bark, straining on their leashes to follow them. The river is brimming with life and movement.

Getting to know place is a joyous adventure. It involves making friends with the locals, human and animal, observing the changes in the light, the colour of water, the shifting seasons, the cycle of flowers and seeds, and the changing tapestry of hues. All these events, sights and sounds effectively bring me home to place.

Steven Galliano and Gary Loeffler are landscape architects in the US who have studied the connection between sense of place and attitudes to the ecosystem. In their paper Place Assessment: How People Define Ecosystems (1999), they recognize the significance of place attachment, saying it acts as a link between human and ecosystem as well as between social experiences and geographical regions (bio-regions).

According to Galliano and Loeffler, the concept of sense of place is individualistic, a subjective yet shared experience at once emotional and symbolic, which can define an individual, a community or a culture. Sense of place brings meaning to the lives of visitors and residents alike, affecting them in various ways from the physical to the spiritual. Feelings of attachment, allurement and love emerge as people engage with local places, reflect on their memories of place, tell stories of their childhood connections - the cubbies they built, the fish they caught, the trees they climbed, and track their life changes through the changes to place.

Even if we've never visited a particular place we can still value it for its symbolic resonance, its wilderness quality and its spiritual attributes and join with others to fight for its protection and survival. Yet these values are often bypassed in resource management practices as such practices are geared to defining places as 'resources' rather than, or in addition to, places which have meaning and can make meaning.

Galliano and Loeffler call for a different way for resource managers to make decisions about place. Place management and place attachment seem poles apart when development, mining or logging intervene. Different groups of stakeholders value places from differing and often clashing worldviews but it's not worldviews that are weighed up in resource management decisions. Their focus is on the physical, the objective, the measurable. Thus concepts like affinity and attachment to place which embrace emotional, symbolic and spiritual dimensions are neglected, and in many cases, rejected as being unscientific, subjective and weak.

As a consequence, the social and spiritual impacts of decisions can result in a strengthening of social/community capital as whole communities may decide to join together to defend what they regard as their place, or our place. Shared meanings about place become shared meanings about attempts to despoil that place.

Meanings about place can be classified in four main ways: (i) scenic-aesthetic; (ii) activity-goals, based on conventional resource management practices (iii) cultural-symbolic, representing emotional and spiritual dimensions; and (iv) individual-expressive, reflecting personalised or individualised meanings about place. Galliano and Loeffler suggest these themes can be used to better qualify management decisions and the likely impacts of those decisions. Using holistic principles, resource managers can more effectively map 'the interactive unity of people and place' (Clark, 1971), taking into account the multiplicity of values about places, not only the economic and/or the ecological.

Resource management processes and environmental impact assessments as they are currently structured often fail to address the intangible non-empirical values and shared experiences of individuals and communities. Galliano and Loeffler mention that one of these unmeasurables is compassion for both natural and cultural qualities of the place.

The Brisbane River and its natural environs is a place of values in conflict where management practices are based on conventional rather than holistic methodologies. I call such approaches 'neo-conservationist' as they attempt to conserve with conservativism. Rather than applying the precautionary principle of first do no harm, the neo-conservationist stance conserves use values over their counterpart, the intrinsic, aesthetic, symbolic and spiritual values, even if these values are founded on scientific evidence, indigenous ecological knowledge or archeological research.

What matters most? Biodiversity or a river view? A place to fish or a place where fishers are repelled? A place to clear or a place to log sustainably and look after? Techno-managerial solution oriented approaches may overlook the nuances inherent to these questions. A sustainable community can have both biodiversity and aesthetics, fishing and rivercare, urban forests and sustainable development.

Knowledge and understanding are key characteristics of resource management but perhaps, following Galliano's and Loeffler's research into place attachment, qualities of wisdom, insight and compassion should be added, to forge a holistic method that embraces the interactive unity of people with place.

References
Galliano SJ and GM Loeffler, 1999, Place assessment: how people define ecosystems. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-462, Portland, OR, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station. (Quigley, TM, Ed., Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project: Scientific assessment), http://www.treesearch.fs.fed.us/pubs/2980
Stegner W, 1992, The sense of place, a letter to Wendell Berry. In: Where the bluebird sings to the lemonade springs: living and writing in the West. New York, Random House, Inc.

New Moon over the River

The crescent hangs in the pale evening sky. The river breathes. The last carrolling of the Magpie and the laughter of the Kookaburra fade as darkness falls. Flying Foxes perform their sunset exodus up from the river valley and out across the rooftops, flying fast in search of blossoms and fruit. At dusk, the environs of the Brisbane River are indeed alive with movement and sound as night descends.

Being part of the river and connecting with its flow and the life of creatures who dwell here has been a significant factor in getting to know place. Being immersed within its ecosystem, though, has brought mixed feelings - as this beautiful valley makes way for ever-expanding and frequently unthinking development. Sustainable growth is possible, sustainable housing is practical - but both require a determined mindset that brings nature and the needs of the ecosystem as active players into government planning and decision making.

Perhaps too, it requires an awarenss of the benefits of nature connecting or nature-based experience in enhancing (human) physiological and psychological health.

There is a growing body of evidence that being in nature, connecting with green and blue places, from hiking to gardening, from wilderness excursions to sitting in the local park, correspond to increased mental health outcomes and psychological development (Davis, 2004). Active engagement in the outdoors provides opportunities for exercise and other activities beneficial for healthy living (Burton et al, 2007). So a reduction in green space amenity can affect a community's health and wellbeing, and certainly, all around this river city, green and treed spaces are being squeezed.

The benefits of nature-based experiences are felt holistically - touching the physical, emotional and spiritual health and wellbeing of individuals. In particular they are seen to have a formative effect on childhood and adolescent development (Kaplan and Kaplan, 1989; Kellert, 2007). In fact, Stephen Kellert maintains that 'children have an inherent need for nature' for development, learning and stimulation, while Richard Louv (2005), in his book 'Last Child in the Woods', has postulated that children are suffering from 'nature deficit disorder'.

Nature deficit disorder is not only an issue for children. As lifestyles change, as gardens disappear, as trees are cut, as people move into apartments or homes without surrounding green space, the city too suffers along with its citizens (including the animals, insects, frogs and birds), from nature deficit disorder.

If meaningful experiences in nature, even in inner-city spaces, can give rise to improved mental and physical health, then a reduction in green spaces, by extension, could be seen to give rise to decreased opportunities for those improvements to take place. If the society values interior experiences more than those taking place in the exterior, to what extent will this impact on the physical and mental health outcomes for the community?

This is especially relevant in childhood where increasing time spent in indoor activities (e.g. computer games) may deleteriously impact physical health (Thomas and Thompson, 2004). A lack of exercise is already an apparent factor in increasing childhood obesity.

On the spiritual level, nature experiences can trigger peak experiences (Davis, 2004), defined as 'experiences of optimal mental health... characterized... by a sense of tranquility and serenity', personal transformation and insight. Wilderness guide and transpersonal (eco)psychologist John Davis states that it is experiences in the wilderness especially that promote the feeling 'that the world is enchanted, alive, whole and meaningful'. This gives rise, he says, to the realization that nature and wilderness encounters can lead us (humans) 'to feel more enchanted, alive, whole, and meaningful'.

With this feeling in mind, the River is calling.

References
Burton NW, B Oldenburg, JF Sallis and G Turrell, 2007, Measuring Psychological, Social, and Environmental Influences on Leisure-Time Physical Activity among Adults,
CJC Consulting, K Willis and L Osman, 2005, Economic Benefits of Accessible Green Spaces for Physical and Mental Health: Scoping Study, CJC Consulting, Oxford, UK.
Davis J, 2004, Psychological Benefits of Nature Experiences: An Outline of Research and Theory. With Special Reference to Transpersonal Psychology. http://www.johnvdavis.com/ep/benefits.htm
Kaplan R and S Kaplan, 1989, The Experience of Nature: A Psychological Perspective. New York: Cambridge.
Thomas G and G Thompson, 2004, A Child's Place: Why Environment Matters to Children. London: Green Alliance/DEMOS.

At the Watershed

In the US the term watershed is equivalent to the expression water catchment used in Australia and elsewhere. Watershed is also a term used metaphorically or figuratively to indicate a dividing line - a watershed issue - a line of division.

The word watershed came into use around the beginning of the 19th century. Then it represented the boundary between two river systems. It also referred to the surrounding hills and ridges and indicated the side of the hill or ridge where the rain fell and the water flowed. But in the US it has a wider meaning and refers to the wider river catchment, or river valley, that 'catches' the water drawing it towards the river.

Political editor from the Australian Newspaper, Dennis Shanahan(2006), put the issue quite differently when speaking about Australia's water crisis and water shortage.

'...at the heart of this crisis of water management is a complex web of conflicting and warring political and governmental interests, where states such as South Australia suffer at the mouth of the Murray while Queensland allows huge water harvesting for cotton at the head of the Darling system, and the Federal Government funds water initiatives without any power to force action.'

Water sources have become a political and ecological watershed.

Using the term watershed in its figurative sense, let's look at the watershed issue of logging the water catch-ments. The water or hydrological cycle is very clear, especially in the drawings of the cycle from primary school science classes. The rain is shown as falling onto the side of the hill which is treed or forested. The trees and land catch the water, channelling it to the ground water and eventually to the creeks, tributaries and flowing water.

A New Zealand report by Haikai Tane (2004) states that: 'Australia and New Zealand are caught in an intractable cultural dilemma.' The report declares that the continued industrialisation of water catchments for timber as well as surrounding development has 'led local communities in watershed catchments ... to believe that the long term degradation of watershed catchments is normal and natural. The degradation of watershed catchments in Australia and New Zealand will continue unabated so long as communities impose activities and infrastructure that destroys ecostructure.'

The issue is one of division and values, economic versus ecological, aesthetic versus industrial, spiritual versus profitability and resource use. Tane write 'that key cosmic roles have reversed, for industrial society sets goals like Gods, and Nature becomes its maid and servant.' This is so reminiscent of the issues raised in Carolyn Merchant's 1980 ground-breaking work, The Death of Nature as well as Val Plumwood's Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (1993).

Leading Australian water researcher Professor Peter Cullen makes the issue clear: 'Catchment land use is an important driver of river health, and river health seems commonly to be impaired when agricultural activities cover more than 30 per cent of a catchment area; although distance from the river and the health of the riparian vegetation can mediate these effects. The removal of native vegetation can markedly alter the hydrologic behaviour of a catchment.'

'As trees are removed, runoff commonly increases, as does the amount of water flowing below the root zone and entering groundwater, and this may lead to consequent waterlogging and salinity, although there may be a lag of 20 to 50 years before these impacts are obvious.'

'River and wetland health is assisted if the connections between a river channel and its floodplain and wetlands are maintained, allowing recovery from stress events. Deeper pools and wetlands may be important refuges that allow organisms to survive extreme high or low flow events. This is called resilience: the capacity to recover. The riparian zone has a profound impact on stream ecosystem processes.'

Re-making wetlands and deep pools, developing programs aimed at ecological resilience, regeneration of riparian zones, removal of noxious weed species and revitalization of native plant species - it seems all these things can help on the eco-front, but on the socio-political front, Haikai Tane declares we need a deeper understanding and a regeneration and revitalization of awareness, values and actions.

'What post-industrial society urgently needs is a new paradigm for understanding watershed catchments based on the integrity and connectivity of catchment habitats and landscape ecosystems.'

References
Cullen P, 2007, The Ecological Challenge of Water Reform, ATSE Focus, 145, http://www.atse.org.au/index.php?sectionid=1007
Merchant C, 1980, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution, San Francisco, Haper and Row.
Plumwood V, 1993, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, New York: Routledge.
Shanahan D, 2006, A Watershed on the Water Front, The Australian, Sept 26, 2006.
Tane H, 2004, Catchment Habitats and Landscape Ecosystems, Watershed Systems Ltd,Center for Catchment Ecology, http://watershed.net.nz/fpeandwm.htm

EcoFlows and Spirit of Place

At the big international river event in 2007, a highly significant declaration was made to protect waterway flows along global river systems to ensure freshwater ecosystem health and human well-being.

The initial statement from the Riversymposium and International Environmental Flows Conference, acknowledges that 'freshwater ecosystems are the foundation of our social, cultural, and economic well-being.'

This is a massive change. The Declaration recognises the need for healthy freshwaterways to ensure the ongoing sustainability of society and culture as well as the economic bouyancy of the planet. The flourishing of the economy is inextricably linked to the ecology of rivers, lakes, floodplains, wetlands and estuaries. To me, this is a revelation but will it be enacted when governments are planning development, dams, mines, inappropriate agriculture, or wholescale logging?

While the government's ecological sustainable development (ESD) policy involves a balance beween the environment, the economy and the social, government decisions seem to prefer the economic over the ecological and the social. But not always, as the spread of marine protected areas (MPAs) in Australia has shown. Sadly action around MPA implementation is not a global change.

Of the three components that comprise ESD, the social seems to have the least action and interest directed to it. Thus a declaration that links social wellbeing with freshwater ecosystems is a real highlight from Brisbane's annual River Symposium.

Social impacts are well recognised as part of government planning and social impact assessments are often undertaken before development or policy implementation, but concern and action around potential social impacts after the event may be overlooked while social problems may be relegated to the welfare sector.

Yet one vital feature but one often neglected in ESD frameworks is the spiritual impact of decisions. Government decisions may follow the precautionary principle of when in doubt, don't. They may consider social concerns and likely social problems but they ignore the spirtual, and the impact on a community's, family's or individual's spirit.

An understanding of spiritual impacts might be incorporated into Aboriginal land rights cases or be included in projects affecting indigenous cultures and communities in developing nations and peasant or shamanic societies, but spiritual issues are not usually part of environmental or social impact assessments related to projects affecting non-indigenous cultures in the developed world.

An inclusion of the spiritual looks holistically. It embraces the spiritual as part of social health and wellbeing as well as ecological reverence. It honours the evironment and the fresh and saltwater ecosystems as 'persons' in their own right.

Psychological distress through loss of place, through upheavals in ecosytems from development, clearfelling, pollution of rivers and oceans, inappropriate agricuture, depletion of fisheries, loss of land and even natural disasters, has been demonstrated. I find it paradoxical that counselling may be offered after natural disasters but trauma around human-created loss of place and the effect on people's spirit, their resilience, their health and wellbeing, may neither be recognised nor acted upon.

The Brisbane River offers solace and peace. It's an icon for the city. At the moment its dark brown muddy colour is a reminder that the drought of a couple of weeks ago may now be a memory. The rain is flushing out the river and rushing through stormwater drains, local creeks and steep gutters and sadly causing flooding along its way. Wetlands, floodways, billabongs were once part of this vibrant river system but since European settlement these essential habitats have been over-channelled, filled in and changed - with a consequent loss of water quality in what was once a place of clear clear water.

The spirit of this city is related to environmental flows.

The River Symposium Declaration states that: 'Freshwater ecosystems are seriously impaired and continue to degrade at alarming rates. Aquatic species are declining more rapidly than terrestrial and marine species. As freshwater ecosystems degrade, human communities lose important social, cultural, and economic benefits; estuaries lose productivity; invasive plants and animals flourish; and the natural resilience of rivers, lakes, wetlands, and estuaries weakens. The severe cumulative impact is global in scope.

'Flow alteration imperils freshwater and estuarine ecosystems. ...The goal of environmental flow management is to restore and maintain the socially valued benefits of healthy, resilient freshwater ecosystems through participatory decision making informed by sound science. Ground-water and floodplain management are integral to environmental flow management.'

The Declaration concludes:
'Climate change intensifies the urgency. ... The progress made to date falls far short of the global effort needed to sustain healthy freshwater ecosystems and the economies, livelihoods, and human well-being that depend upon them.'

Whipbirds

The river trail was filled today with the glorious song of the Eastern Whipbird, the hooping of the pheasant-like Coucal and the chattering of flycatchers, wrens and other LBBs (Litte Brown Birds). The Whipbird's sonorous whistle echoes across the valley. Mostly, says the birdbook, they are heard but not seen so it was a special moment watching a pair of these smalll birds hop through the branches, chattering and singing (Frith, 1976).

The clever musicality of the Whipbird is created by both male and female singing together. The male starts off with his characteristic smooth 'Whip!', then the female completes the call with a high-pitched, drawn-out and beautiful 'choo-eeeeeee'. And here they were, the two of them, looking splendid, their head crests raised slightly, their olive feathered backs blending into the leafy canopy, and their fan-like tail swishing back and forth dancing among the branches.

Whipbirds are very active but shy. They forage in the leaf litter and logs lying on the ground searching for insects and larvae. And the birdbook reveals something else that's special about the Whipbird - they are 'an ancient group of species that are found no where else' (Frith, 1976: 396).

There's been a lot of rain lately. It's flooding in many locations across southern Queensland causing havoc. Here the river is running high, fast and brown. Lots of people are out and about jogging, rowing, walking their dogs, and as their dogs splash in the shallows between the Mangroves, we talk about the height of the river, the very high tidal flows and the return of the wet.

Looking up at what were sad and seemingly dead trees a few weeks ago, clumps of new shoots have begun sprouting from the branches, while the birds heralding the rain, the new growth and the revitalised life along the riverbank.

Reference
Frith HJ, 1976, Reader's Digest Complete Book of Australian Birds, Surry Hills, Reader's Digest Services Pty Ltd.

Black, White and Bountiful

I heard a kind of bark from up in the eucalypt trees. There it is again. I look up bewildered; can't see anything by leaves. Then suddenly, from the canopy, an Ibis lifts off and flies down the river. An Ibis is no small bird but this bird was invisible in the tree as if its black and white feathers merged into the leafy cover.

So I began to think about all the black and white birds along the riverbank - Magpies, Mudlarks, Willie Wagtails, Currawongs, Butcher Birds - and wondered how being black and white creates the illusion of camouflage and blurs the creature into the background. Fiona Sunquist (1996) had the same thought. In an article entitled 'The colorful world of black white - black and white animals', she points out that many animal and bird species throughout the world wear black and white costumes. First, it's to grab attention and tell potential predators that danger awaits them if they tackle the black and whites. Second, it's to hide; the colours act as a disguise so the creature can't be seen against the undergrowth or leafy canopy. Sunquist says:

'Such concealment is all a matter of context. Jays and magpies have black-and-white feathers that are highly conspicuous in the open. But when a bird dives for cover, its outline vanishes, and the white bars and patches look more like splashes of sunlight among the leaves.' My experience exactly.

Then there's the enticing black and white striped Carpet Snake but their vanishing perhaps has more to do with them eating the poisonous cane toads rather than being in hiding, waiting to pounce. And animals from Pandas to Lemurs, Shunks to Zebras, Orcas to Colubus Monkeys, many of them serioiusly endangered in their wild, use their colour scheme to deceive.

Other birds use their colour to attract. The other birds along the river today displayed a feast of colour. Rainbow Lorikeets. Galahs pink and grey, Red Wrens. White Cockatoos, Brush Turkeys showing off their red and yellow. Male birds dress in feathered finery to attract a mate. Bower birds build wee nests and decorate them. Spendid plumage and sexuality go hand in hand.

Black and white birds, and the glossy black Raven, have something in common. Perhaps it is that they are more fearsome and their colour scheme is a marker to beware. Today when the whole gang arrived for their breakfast, Butcher Birds + brown baby, Currawongs, Magpies + babies, Raven + baby, I thought how wonderful it is to have these beautiful beautiful creatures visiting and how sad, that even walking back from the river, aborists were cutting down more and more trees.

Reference
Sunquist F, 1996, 'The Colorful World of Black White - Black and White Animals,' International Wildlife, May-June.

Water Rights

David Groenfeldt is the Executive Director of the Santa Fe Watershed Association in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Santa Fe River he cares for has recently been declared the most endangered river in the US.

When I first spoke to David Groenfelt he told me something amazing. It was a different way of seeing a river system and the relationship between humans and the water.

Humans believe they have rights to river water. For drinking, sewerage, irrigation, and recreation. They think this becuase they pay for access to water in the form of water rights. They have a right to the flowing stream's water or the meandering river's water. But what happens when their use rights drain the river and the surrounding ecosystem of its lifeblood? The outcome, a drying or dried up river and a paradox where the river has no rights, even to its own water.

Taking this outcome to its extreme - how much would a river pay for access rights to its own water? As can be seen in many areas across the globe, the river pays with its life.

Over the weekend the media reported two damaging river stories. The first in The Australian newspaper told the terrible story of how the parts of Murray River have turned to acid. The effect - an acid river that brings death to animals, birds, fish, frogs and insects that drink from and live in its hazardous waters. River Red Gums and other riverbank vegetation is also slowly dying. There is no relief in sight.

The acidic water is caused by the drought and over-irrigation taking the precious flow. The article says acid waters occur in areas that used to flood regularly but now these areas have become dry. The low river levels have allowed the iron pyrite in the soil (a by-product of decaying organic matter) to come into contact witih oxygen. This process acts like a chemical reaction forming sulphuric acid. The solution? Rain and stronger river flows.

The second media story focused on the Darling River. The ABC Landline journalist stood in the heart of the river, in sand and stones, sadly not flowing water, and spoke about its plight. Interviewees on the program not only mentioned the huge economic losses to the farming and tourism sectors, they also talked about the disappearance of water birds to the area. And their loss of place.

A dried up river, once the life-bringing waterway of inland Queensland and NSW, is suffering from an over-abundance of irrigation licences for inappropriate agriculture. One of the inteviewees put it this way:

'In the years before 2006 we had what I call the cotton drought. The irrigators upstream took so much water out of the river that we just didn't get the flows through that we should have got, and we didn't get the small floods through that are essential for the flood plains.' (Barney Stevens, Darling River Action Group, 2007).

Other farmer interviewees simply said the river is dying. A huge huge cost when humans do not recognise this simple need: that rivers need rights to their own water.

Reference
Wallace R, 2008, 'River of death where water turns into acid,' The Australian, Jan 12, 2008
Willacy M, 2007, 'Community rallies to save the Darling River,' ABCTV Landline, Jan 13, 2008, originally aired on June 17, 2007.

Life for Rivers

Rivers for Life is a very insightful book covering the need for global care of water and river systems for both people and nature. Written by Sandra Postel and Brian Richter (2003) from the Global Water Policy Project, Rivers of Life's first chapter is titled: Where Have All the Rivers Gone? It documents the impact wrought by human development through changing infrastructure (such as dams, hydro-projects, dredging etc.) on rivers, wetlands and other freshwater ecosystems, so much so that the health of the river and the plant and animal species that dwell in and along the river are threatened. The authors estimate that worldwide that 'a significant proportion of fresh water species ...including 20 percent of freshwater fish species ... are at risk of extinction or are already extinct.' (2003:3)

Healthy river systems are fast disappearing. But at the same time there is a host of activists, river and wetlands restorers who are working to re-create river health and wellbeing. Postel and Richter advise rivers should be valued for their own sake not only for the services they provide the human community. They comment: 'Rivers are more than conduits for water. They are complex systems that do complicated work.' (4)

What's needed for the restoration of river systems is all the scientific research that's being done as well as great encouragement for people to care for local waterways. One suggestion is to tell river stories from the present and the past, e.g. stories from indigenous communities and from the early days of white settlement when cotton growing, sugar cane farms and cattle stations spread out along the river. People may become more aware, more engaged and perhaps more motivated to take action to protect the river environs.

Talking to people I meet on the trail teaches me so much about the river and its history. We discuss the birds we've seen, the experiences of flood times, how tough it was for the early settlers in clearing the luscious rainforest for farmland and more generally, about the threat of encroaching development. And we work together to care for the precious bushland. Each day I pull up a number of noxious weeds but with the recent fantastic rain, the weeds are growing faster and taller than my ability to rip them up them; it seems impossible to combat their spread.

Postel and Richter are optimistic that people will learn to appreciate the natural environment including rivers and so might replicate the 'complicated work' that rivers do by lobbying for river education and river health. To this end the authors make a serious plea:

'Unless human communities begin to adapt to natural cycles and coexist with aquatic communities, those natural communities will disappear and the ecological work they perform will be lost.' (202).

They call for an ethic of stewardship which respects 'the beauty and mystery' of the natural world while at the same time demanding from governments a more aware, community-embedded active rivercare program.

One of the case sudies from Rivers of Life is the Brisbane River and its deteriorating health. Postel and Richter point to the extent of land clearing where now only 14 percent of the whole river catchment area where most people live 'remains uncleared' (133). They document a litany of river impacts that have severely affected the river flow, from construction of dams to changes in waterway vegetation which interferes with 'shading and temperature controls' raising the likelihood of 'algal blooms and lowering dissolved oxygen levels.' (135, citing Arthington et al, 2000).

The list of concerns continues with the loss of biodiversity and subsequent loss of habitat for bird, animal and fish species, including the platypus.

To combat these problems (or are they horrors?), a number of counter strategies are suggested. It requires concerted and combined action among all stakeholders and residents but of course, such suggestions to restore healthy river systems may (or invariably do) bring conflict, as ecological demands can disturb policy and development desires and outcomes. Postel and Richter (2003:137) write:

'This conflict between managing the Brisbane River for human purposes versus meeting the river's own needs for water is one that arises on virtually every river. ... Complete restoration of the Brisbane's natural flow regime would likely cause too much disruption to landowners and water users to be publicly acceptable.'

In the end such conflict is played out between humans and nature where nature's voice is rarely heard. At the moment the Butcher Bird is sitting on the verandah singing the most glorious chorus and sounding, on occasion, like the Magpie, the Kookaburra and of course, itself. I love that. The very melodic refrain of the Butcher Bird reminds me how important it is to value local river systems and trees and get involved in that complicated work of the ecosystem of which, we humans too, are part.

References
Arthington AH et al, 2000, Environmental Flow Requirements of the Brisbane River Downstream from Wivenhoe Dam, Brisbane, Queensland: South East Queensland Water Corporation, and Centre for Catchment and In-Stream Research of Griffith University.
Postel S and B Richter, 2003, Rivers For Life: Managing Water for People and Nature, Washington, DC: Island Press.

From Drought to Flooding Rain

Just a couple of weeks ago the whole area was in the midst of a long-term drought. Now there is severe flooding throughout SE Queensland and northern NSW. Today the rain pelted down in thick sheets; visibility was almost non-existent, and although the river level here is slightly higher that it has been recently, the Brisbane River has not experienced the widespread damage and disruption felt in other regions. Fierce storms, wild winds, massive rainfall and chaotic seas have created havoc. Rivers have become lakes, hectares of farmland and scrubland have been inundated, and beaches have been washed away.

In contrast all is quiet along the river. As I walked among the chittering of cicadas and other insects, the splendour of bird call and the sound of Brush Turkey chicks scurrying through the undergrowth, it was hard to imagine that not so far away the SES Emergency Services are hard at work rescuing people and animals caught by the unexpected floods.

While all was calm along the Brisbane River today, it has not always been the case. Early explorers reported heavy rains and flooding of the river on numerous occasions throughout the 1800s. For instance, in 1857 a report in the local Brisbane newspaper reported:

'The flood ... was the result of eight weeks' continuous, but not heavy, rain. There had been a strong fresh in the river for several weeks, and ... all vehicular traffic between North and South Brisbane was suspended as the horse-punt at Russell-street was unable to cross on account of the strong current ... Rowing boats were plying in Margaret, Mary, and Charlotte streets ... and the whole of the low-lying ground from Elizabeth-street to the river was a muddy lake. At South Brisbane one could stand on a hill ... and see an unbroken sheet of water...'

1867: 'The rain continued to fall incessantly until daylight. In consequence of this heavy rain the river rose, and never within the last twenty years have the indications of a flood shown themselves within so short a period ...A strong current was running down the river all Sunday, carrying with it large quantities of drift timber in single logs and rafts as well as other debris ... The temporary bridge linking north and south Brisbane acted as a dam and collapsed ... as a result of the debris piling up against it.'

1893: 'Disastrous floods in the Brisbane River ... Numbers of houses ... washed down the rivers. Seven men drowned...' 'Crowds lined the high grounds near the river bank or wherever a good view was obtainable; and the roar of the water as it rushed along at a speed of from 8 to 10 miles an hour, carrying with it scores of houses, furniture and household articles in endless variety...'

Floods continued to be reported over the next 100 years. January 26, 1974 was recorded as the wettest day since 1887:

'The Brisbane River ... reached the highest level this century ... 14 lives were lost, some 8,000 householders were affected, many totally destroyed, others damaged to the tune of thousands of dollars as a result of inundation and battering from both strong currents and water borne debris.'

The Brisbane River is described as 'flood-prone', with 11 major floods recorded since the 1840s. But since those early days of white settlement, the way that media reports have covered the floods has shifted from evocative and scenic descriptions of the devastation to the human toll, the impact on buisiness, and especially, the estimated costs of the inundation. That's why reading a personal account of the 1996 floods on the river makes for fascinating reading. Local resident Scott Balson reported the river's rise over a number of days as he watched he water creep up the garden towards the house.

Friday, May 3, 1996: 'As I write this the rain pours incessently and hard outside. We had 2" of rain in the last 12 hours and it pours harder now. And all this before the great Wivenhoe dam lets forth a path of destruction which must follow later tonight. Now the dam was built to stop the devastation that the 100 year flood of 1974 caused. Could it cause more damage than if natural flow had been allowed...?'

Saturday May 4: 'I walked down to the rivers edge - now working its way up the garden stairs that used to look down on the river several metres below. The water inched its way higher and higher, noticeably now moving up the slope. The massive gum tree, once high above the water, had now surrendered its base to the rising water which now stood just a few feet under the grassy platform just 12 metres below our home.'

Sunday May 5: 'The water continues its climb up the slope, it has now started to cover our deck 15 metres above the normal level of the river... We have just heard that the Brisbane River is expected to rise at least 8 (YES EIGHT) more metres in the next few days based on current rainfall ... We can now hear the quiet roar of the river at its centre - the noise is indescribable, almost peaceful but obviously powerful and restrained. As the level rises the full fury of the water becomes more apparent. I no longer have to look down from where I sit in the global office, I look across and see the water flooding the bank on the other side of the river.'

Tuesday May 7: 'The sun has once again come out and the skies are now blue, blue as they have ever been.'

A couple of months later Balson reflects on his special relationship with the Brisbane River. It is dawn as he watches the mist spread across the river at the bottom of the garden.

'The mist swirled around my feet as the low tide revealed the protruding rocky ridges of the river floor along which I walked. Nearby, the still waters flowed deep and little eddies drew all that floated above into their grasp. Otherwise all was still. Not even the birds stirred. This was a special time. I squatted transfixed by the beauty of the evolving day as the sun's rays broke the hold of the mists and revealed the true nature of the water's emotions below. Emotions that held the soul of the valley together. ... my river fantasy land was now revealing her life and living as the birds woke and shared in an experience lost to man in the walls that we call home and civilisation.'

Blue Faced and Pugnacious

The bird book says the Blue-faced Honeyeater is pugnacious, especially when it is caught stealing twigs from other birds' nests (Frith, 1976:468).

It was raining lightly as I walked towards the river. It has been raining on and off for a few days now which has brought life-giving moisture to this very dry region in SE Queensland. Out of the corner of my eye I felt a presence in the bush beside me and turned to see a splendid bird, wearing an eye patch of irridescent cobalt blue and a golden-olive feathered cloak. Yet as I read the description of this bird I discovered that not everyone has that opinion. Blue-faced Honeyeaters are also known as the 'Banana Bird' because of their predilection for fruit and as a consequence can damage crops and are regarded as pests. But in the riverine undergrowth this bird looked magnificient.

Sometimes drizzle, sometimes downpour, the rain is delicious. The damp dull atmosphere has pervaded the river valley where the sound of bird song is intense as it pierces the grey morning. Sharper somehow. The very melodic Butcher Bird, the dramatic chatter of Wille Wagtail, the delicious carolling of Magpies, the haunting calls of Currawong and Raven, the river is a sound feast.

Ecophilosopher and eco-musician David Rothenberg has explored the history and practice of birdsong in his book 'Why Birds Sing: A Journey into the Mystery of Bird Song' (2005) and says they sing: 'Because they can and because they must.... Songs are used to attract mates and defend territories, but the form is much more than function. Nature is full of beauty, and of music.' Listen to his delighful musical partnership with these beautiful sounds especially the beautifully lyrical Lyre Bird Suite, where the Lyre Bird's display of myriad forest sounds is spectacular and blends charismatically with the human musicianship.

Rothenberg's musical relationship with birds is described as 'interspecies' but could there also be a 'sonorific' relationship of the interspecies kind between river and bird, rain and river, as well as human and nature? In an essay entitled 'Interspecies Music', Rothenberg reflecting on the process of partnering with nature quotes the long-time animal communications and whale song researcher Jim Nollman:

'Treat the music as an invitation. Visualize the bond of time and place as a sanctuary filled with music. Feel what it means to get on whale time. Don't try to communicate; remain humble to the fact that music — especially "beautiful music" — is a judgment call. That rare bird known as the interspecies musician learns to meet the animal halfway, two species willing to play in the same band, if but for a moment. It frolics with our basic conception of what it means to be both human and animal.'

The interconnection between human and nature is fluid, boundaryless, an intermerging of one in the other and the other in one resplendent in the magical symphony between Lyre Bird and David Rothenberg. Have a listen.

References
Frith HJ, 1976, Reader's Digest Complete Book of Australian Birds, Surry Hills, NSW, Reader's Digest Services Pty Ltd.
Rothenberg D, 2005, Why Birds Sing: A Journey into the Mystery of Bird Song, New York, Basic Books.

Sylvan Riverscapes

The Brisbane River is home to the Turrbal and Yugarbul-Jagarra peoples who created pathways along the river valley linking ceremonial sites known as 'bora'. According to Kerkhove (1985:4) these pathways ran the length of the river and 'early settlers remembered seeing Brisbane Aboriginals marching in hundreds along these, or saw them tracking along them in South Brisbane at night with a blazing torch in one hand.' (cited in To Travel is to Learn, 2004).

In a paper on Aboriginal history along the river valley, local historian Ros Kidd (2000) writes that the river and surrounding waters 'provided bountiful and beautiful environment', a 'sylvan' somewhat 'idyllic' existence prior to European settlement. Aboriginal people were depicted as:

'fishing from bark canoes made from broad sheets of stringy bark or casting their heart-shaped towrow nets to encircle shoals of mullet. Others used vines to climb the trees for possum and koala which were despatched with stone tomahawks. Women and children dived in lagoons for lily roots, dug yams and collected the edible fern roots. Some sat on the banks weaving their baskets and bags from the pink and green swamp grasses while youngsters frolicked in the shallows.'

Then the river terrain was thickly wooded, swampy in places with many creeks flowing into the river. Wild fowl, fish and eel were plentiful, Bush Turkeys patrolled the undergrowth, Parrots flocked overhead, Pelicans fished the shallows while 'Ducks and [S]wans in their hundreds trawled the waterways' (Meston, 1923 cited in Kidd, 2000).

This wondrous sight is a stark reminder of what has been lost. Kidd reports Aborigines in the mid-19th century being able to pull up fishing nets filled with fish in just 'a few minutes' (Bartley, 1896:247). This was the time when the river was clear, and even right up to the 1930s, there were accounts of being able to see the riverbed 5 to 6 metres below (Young 1990, in Gutteridge, Haskins & Davey, 1996).

The abundance and natural beauty of the river has been irrevocably changed although swathes of its beauty remains, even in the heart of the city such as along the Mangrove Walk. But similar riverbank green spaces have been and are being burried under roadways, high rise development and economic progress. The spirit of this flowing place has been paved over but its spirit still thrives - in the memories, stories and rituals of the original custodians of this riverland and in the beauty of the river itself that flourishes despite an pro-development attitude that longs to smother its natural beauty.

An example of the kind of thing that is happening along the river comes from a recent ABC Radio Eye program, 'Tree poisoning, weeds and Australian native plants: Watching the Trees'. The program explored the trend in some Sydney harbour-view suburbs of people poisoning trees that hinder residents' views of the water. As a result, local authorities have installed CCTV cameras to try to catch the tree vandals and erected signs warning of heavy financial penalties incurred for destroying local trees.

Compare this action of seeing tree poisoners as vandals to the action of the local councils along the Brisbane River valley which allow unfettered tree felling in the name of development. Shade, amenity and beauty are sadly not often incorporated into urban planning decisions that affect both natural and community capital. Notions of beauty are all to frequently left out of discussions on resource management and sustainability. So a development or environmental change might be deemed sustainable even if the natural beauty of a place is destroyed.

The sylvan riverscape continues to be threatened to some extent, perhaps, because non-Aboriginal resource users and managers may not take heed of river stories told by Aboriginal people and by the river itself. This frame of reverence is sadly outside the domain of non-indigenous concepts of sustainability and environmental and social impact assessment.

Reverence, honour, respect, beauty - the incorporation of these values would shift resource management practices on land and sea to a different kind of awareness and action.

A few years ago I did some research on what was happening in Cape York and realised that my lack of awareness of indigenous issues led me to search for a description of Queensland's north as beautiful in the belief that if it is so beautiful then it must be worth saving. But there was only one occasion (that I found) where Noel Pearson (1995), now Director of the Cape York Institute, actually described the landscape of Cape York in physical, western terms. He depicted it as 'teeming with mangrove swamps, towering dunes, long stands of whispering casuarinas and groves of rustling pandanus, the buttressed, fragrant rainforests, the jewel islands and shimmering beaches'. It sounds so beautiful but I realised that my desire to reveal how the landscape looks is culturally-determined. For Pearson the land holds a far deeper significance:

'There are incredibly detailed and subtle laws governing how people should behave in particular places: in what direction should one expectorate; in whose company can one talk; which dialect or synonyms to employ in the presence of certain people; which foods are forbidden in certain places at certain times of the year to certain people; how one should sit in specific places; ... one’s personal relationship with particular animals and land forms.'

These are essential truths. Sacred values are rooted in the land and in relationship with kin and country. These sacred values are embedded in the tidal exchange of fresh and salt waters in the flowing beauty that is the Brisbane River.

References
Bartley N, 1896, Australian Pioneers and Reminiscences together with portraits of some of the founders of Australia, Gordon and Gotch.
Gutteridge, Haskins & Davey Pty Ltd, 1996, Task M2 State of the Brisbane River and Moreton Bay and Waterways Brisbane River Management Group, Brisbane River and Moreton Bay Wastewater Management Study, Working Draft Version 1.4.
Kerkhove R, 1985, West End to Woollangabba: The Early Aboriginal History of the District, Brisbane, Foundation of Aboriginal and Island Research and Action.
Kidd R, 2000, Aboriginal History of the Princess Alexandra Hospital Site, Diamantina Health Care Museum Association.
Meston A, 1923, ‘100 Years - Black Man to White Settlement’, The Daily Mail, December 1, 1923.
Pearson N, 1995, 'Cape York Peninsula: the land needs its people,' Paper presented to the Wild Agendas Conference, Sydney University, July, 1995.

Potent Spirit

The Brisbane River has a potent spirit that winds from wild places to tamed urban spaces spreading its story through flow and tide, fish and frog, bird and snake, wind and rain. Listening to the river, being enticed by its spirit and attuned to its changing moods and colours, promotes a heightened sense of wellbeing and delight.

Studies into the effects of engagement with natural places, particularly beautiful and aesthetic places like the river, herald positive impacts in human health and wellbeing and quality of life. This has both short and long term physical, emotional and psychological benefits such as a reduction in stress and mental fatigue (Maller et al, 2005), an increase in relaxation and restoration (Hartig et al, 2003), an opportunity for exercise and weight reduction (Pretty et al, 2005), and a lessening of stressors related to poverty and housing density in inner-city environments (Kuo, 2001).

But green spaces are fast disappearing in Brisbane and Australian cities generally. Right across the country there has been a significant decline in green spaces (forests, bushland, riverbanks, parkland, urban trees and household gardens) and a consequent decrease in residents’ everyday nature connections, plus the ecological benefits that green spaces offer - shade, quiet places, tree houses for possums, birds and bats and fresh air, as well as enhanced psycho-spiritual effects spurting from intimacy with the natural environnment.

Despite growing research into beneficial physical and psychological health outcomes of nature encounters, few studies have been undertaken into the spiritual effects of either natural urban or river environments. For example, Dutcher et al (2007:409) suggest from their study on the relationship between environmental values and nature connectivity that ‘connectivity may be an essentially spiritual phenomenon’, yet most studies into the links between spirituality and nature have focused on wilderness rather than urban environments as a source of personal transformation, insight and experiences of the mystical and numinous (Heintzman, 2003; Stringer and McAvoy, 1992).

In another study of wilderness immersion, Kellert (1998) found that spending time in wild places gives rise to an enhanced physical, emotional, intellectual and moral-spiritual outlook, while Schroeder (1996) reported that encounters with wild river systems produced feelings of awe and wonder, an appreciation of the beauty of nature, an experience of serenity, and a deepening concern about encroaching development and its impact on the river and its surrounds. Thus, according to Schroeder's research, the sense of the spiritual and the sacred is bound up in nature connecting.

This study is one of the few that focuses on rivers. One UK study on public attitudes to local rivers showed that restored rivers were well used and highly valued by the local public (Tunstall et al, 2000). Similarly, in the US in Providence, Rhode Island, river reclamation and restoration projects have led to a revitalization of the city’s business district, heightened neighbourhood links through infrastructure and scenic walkways, created public access-inspired art programs and initiated a Waterfire Festival similar to Brisbane’s River Festival (McWilliams, 2003).

But there is no indication about whether these changes in natural and social capital have stimulated environmentally responsible behaviours although they have generated positive changes in community wellbeing, increased opportunities for exercise and improved physical fitness, and the outflowing of reciprocal and mindful relationship between river restoration and restoration of self and community.

References
Dutcher, D.D., J.C. Finley, A.E. Luloff, and J.B. Johnson, 2007, ‘Connectivity with Nature as a Measure of Environmental Values,’ Environment and Behavior, 39, 474-493.
Fox R., 1999, ‘Enhancing Spiritual Experience in Adventure Programs,’ in J. C. Miles and S. Priest, Eds., Adventure Programming, State College, PA: Venture Publishing, Inc.
Hartig T., G.W. Evans, L.D. Jamner, D.S. Davis, and T. Gärling, 2003, ‘Tracking Restoration in Natural and Urban Field Settings,’ Journal of Environmental Psychology, 23, 109-123.
Heintzman P., 2003, ‘The Wilderness Experience and Spirituality: What Recent Research Tells Us,’ The Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, 74.
Kals E., D. Schumacher and L. Montada, 1999, ‘Emotional Affinity toward Nature as a Motivational Basis to Protect Nature,’ Environment and Behavior, 31, 2, 178-202.
Kellert S.R, 1998, A National Study of Outdoor Wilderness Experience, School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University, Sept. 1998.
Kuo F.E., 2001, ‘Coping with Poverty: Impacts of Environment and Attention in the Inner City,’ Environment and Behavior, 33, 1, 5-34.
McWilliams B., 2003, ‘Providence Reclaims Rivers,’ Architecture Week, July 16,
http://www.architectureweek.com/2003/0716/design_3-1.html
Maller C., M. Townsend, A. Pryor, P. Brown, and L. St Leger, 2005, ‘Healthy Nature Healthy People: ‘Contact with Nature’ as an Upstream Health Promotion Intervention for Populations,’ Health Promotion International, 21, 1, 45-54.
Pretty J., M. Griffin, J. Peacock, R. Hine, M. Sellens, and N. South, 2005, A Countryside for Health and Wellbeing: The Physical and Mental Health Benefits of Green Exercise, Sheffield, Sheffield Hallam University, Countryside Recreation Network.
Schroeder H.W., 1996, ‘Ecology of the Heart: Understanding How People Experience Natural Environments’, in A.W. Ewart, Ed., Natural Resources Management: The Human Dimension, Boulder, CO, Westview Press.
Stringer L.A. and L.H. McAvoy, 1992, ‘The Need for Something Different: Spirituality and Wilderness Adventure,’ Journal of Experiential Education, 15, 1, 13-20.
Tunstall, S.M., Penning-Rowsell, E.C., Tapsell, S.M. and Eden , S.E., 2000, 'River Restoration: Public attitudes and Expectations, Water & Environmental Management, 14, 5, 363-370.

Downpour and Outpouring

The torrential rain plummets heavily spreading its lush thick water across the parched earth. Soaked and soaking, we slosh through the puddles and celebrate the elusive wetness. And the birds do too. Butcher birds, the Magpie family and two shy Ravens come to visit; they're drenched, their feathers damp and droopy. A gang of squwarking parrots jet past as the river valley fills with the sight and sound of grey soggy showers and irridescence. The ecosystem is overflowing with renewal.

Connecting with local and wild places underlines the sprouting of what Mitchell Thomashow (1995) called 'ecological identity', or what the deep ecology pioneer Arne Naess termed 'ecological self'. These aspects of our nature selves are embedded in the ever-turning ecosystem processes of which humans too are part.

Naess' deep ecological philosophy is based on the assumption that once we connect with our ecological self, once we discover we are part of the interconnecting web of life, we will be more inclined to protect the earth. This requires a shift from an image of the self as separate, individualized and self-contained to one that is relational and mutually interactive with the rest of nature.

Sometimes I fear we live in a world oblivious to the ongoing deterioration. Today the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) made the startling revelation that climate change may bring 'abrupt and irreversible' impacts - including rapid glacier melting and species extinction (but here they mean species other than human). The Fourth Assessment Report from the Nobel Prize winning IPCC makes for difficult and serious reflection.

Scientific research needs to be coupled with broader psycho-social campaigns which question the economic imperative that charges across forests', oceans' and species' lives (where species also includes the human). According to the inspirational deep ecology practitioner and engaged Buddhist Joanna Macy (1991:13): ‘What is destroying our world is the persistent notion that we are independent of it, aloof from other species, and immune to what we do to them.'

Identifying with the earth in a very personal way means that what we do for the earth we do for ourselves. If the earth suffers people suffer. If people suffer, the earth suffers. I was made very aware of this point while attending a talk on saving seeds and organic gardening.

At a public meeting in Melbourne some time ago about the importance of saving heritage and heirloom seeds in light of the onslaught of genetic manipulation, we heard the disturbing story of people in North Africa who were at war for so long that their crops were not tended and the seeds that ensured the next generation of plantings could not be collected. This left the population wide-open, once the war was over, for the distribution of genetically-modified seeds.

One of the consequences of this agribusiness approach to small-scale farming is that the people can become locked into a costly farming system from which they cannot easily escape. In addition, it may also have the effect of distancing people from their religious obligations to the land, part of which involves harvesting and planting seeds and performing ritual to ensure the fertility of the land (Cross & Barker, 1992). This story brings the notion of ‘ecological self’ right into the heart of the politics of peace.

In the process of becoming grounded in place and expanding one’s self-identity, we become encased in an ecospiritual outpouring which is enhanced by direct engagement with nature and by taking part in environmental, social and peace-building actions. Or to put it another way, as Xavier Rudd so poignantly sings:

'Please stay in touch
Because I need you in my heart
Please stay in touch
I need your touch.'

References
Cross N and R Barker, eds. 1992, At the Desert’s Edge. London, Panos Publications.
Macy J, 1991, World as Lover. World as Self. Berkeley, CA, Parallax Press.
Naess A, 1995, 'Self-realization: An Ecological Approach to Being in the World,' in G. Sessions, ed., Deep Ecology for the 21st Century. Boston: Shambhala Publications Inc.
Thomashow M 1995, Ecological Identity. Becoming a Reflective Environmentalist, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press.
Tuan, Yi-Fu, 1974, Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values, Englewood Cliffs & London, Prentice-Hall.

Offering Flowers in Courtship

There was a flash of red dancing in the branches. Amidst the lush green under-growth, a Red-backed Fairy Wren was displaying his magnificent scarlet cloak. The birdbook tells me that his deep red feathers will fade after a few months of sun and rain and this has led to the suppostition that there are, in fact, two red-backed species - one wearing scarlet, the other a deep crimson. But these differences could be due, the birdbook says, to the condition of their plumage (Frith, 1976:416).

A couple of days earlier I'd found a small delicately-woven nest lying on the trail. The image of the Wren's nest from the birdbook looks remarkably similar. Wrens create an oval-shaped home from little strips of grass and that seems to be just the same as the empty nest that lay on the path.

According to Emu, the publication of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union, during the Wren's courtship, these brightly-frocked males carry pink or red flower petals, displaying them towards their chosen partner.

In an observational study of of this petal-carrying behaviour among both wild and avairy-reared birds, it was found that male birds display flower petals towards the fertile female. The researchers concluded that the petal-carrying behaviour is mainly an inter-sexual event to attract the female, although in 10 percent of cases, the male birds enacted the same behaviour towards other males, leading to the suggestion that it could also be an intra-sexual aggressive display (Karubian and Alvarado, 2003).

Along the trail I meet another riverwalker who's also taking photographs. As I stroke his graceful greyhound, we chat about the Brahminy Kite that just swooped low over the water and the abundant birdlife that dwells in this special and sacred place.

References
Frith HJ, 1976, Reader's Digest Complete Book of Australian Birds, Surry Hills, NSW, Reader's Digest Services Pty Ltd.
Karubian J and A Alvarado, 2003, 'Testing the function of petal-carrying in the Red-backed Fairy-wren (Malurus melanocephalus),' Emu, 103, 1, 87-92.

The Sacred Kingfisher

It seems death stalks the trail this week. Lying on the side of the path was a bunch of turquoise feathers. I picked up the small Sacred Kingfisher and held it in the palm of my hand admiring the exquisite bright blue green mantle then placed it in the earth. I'd been watching a pair of these birds for weeks. Often they'd sit on the electricity wires, the same spot every day, watching for prey. Now only one remained.

However the bird book tells me these creatures are usually solitary, only pairing up to breed. They build their nest in tree hollows or by burrowing into termite mounds or river and other earthen banks and can have three to six eggs.

Sacred Kingfishers are widespread across coastal Australia. Some migrate from New Zealand; others travel from northern Australia to Victoria and Tasmania. The result of one of these journeys to Brunswick, a Melbourne suburb, created great excitement and spawned an annual festival dedicated to The Return of the Sacred Kingfisher.

In the mid 1970s a group of dedicated environmentalists took over a rubbish tip on the edge of the Merri Creek in Brunswick. and CERES was born. There they created an oasis of community gardens, permaculture, alternative technology projects, environmental educational programs, an organic farm, native plant nursery and a haven of inspirational green activities. The creek was restored, replanted and restoried. And one day, back in 1992, a Sacred Kingfisher visited. They'd not been seen in the area for 20 years.

From then on the return of this tiny sacred bird has been celebrated at the end of November. Hundreds of school children, story tellers, dancers and songsters recreate the story of the Sacred Kingfisher's return to the Merri Creek. CERES says that the ceremony in homage of this tiny bird has 'become a symbolic community ritual, connecting people to place through the creative expression of our environmental, artistic and cultural significance.'

Maya Ward who has walked the Merri Creek (and the Yarra River) from sea to source has written 'The Story of the Sacred Kingfisher' (2006). She ends her watery journey along the Merri Creek with this poignant story of the Sacred Kingfisher and its very timely return to the CERES haven.

'Once upon a time, in a southerly land between mountains and bay, was the land of the Kulin, where the Wurundjeri lived. Their ancestors, Bunjil the Wedge Tailed Eagle and Branbeal the rainbow had created this land, and the people sang the songs to sustain the land, to thank the ancestors for creating this bountiful world. And when the people died, the Sacred Kingfisher in her clothes of sky and cloud flew away at the end of summer with the people’s spirit into the sky, while their body and soul returned to the earth. And in spring the Sacred Kingfisher returned, to nest and rest, to feed and breed on the banks of the Merri Merri, while the Wurundjeri harvested eels and blackfish, cumbungi and water ribbons.

But then one day strangers came to the land of the Kulin, who did not know lore or right behavior. The strangers stole the land from the Wurundjeri, and banished them to beyond the mountains. But the Wurundjeri walked back over the mountains, and so when the strangers had been in the land for many generations, and were starting to open their eyes and unblock their ears, to see and hear of the wrongs they had caused, the Wurundjeri were there with the stories of how this land came to be.

And so, after many many years unspoken, together the Wurundjeri and the strangers retold the story of Bunjil and Branbeal, and of how Waa the crow created a whirlwind to take them into the sky, so that they could view their creation. The people who were no longer strangers sang the song calling Branbeal to bring colour to the world. But she only comes after rain, so when the drenched singers had dried themselves, Branbeal the rainbow arced over the Village Green.

I know why she is called the Sacred Kingfisher.' (Ward, 2006).

Reference:
Ward M, 2006, The Story of the Sacred Kingfisher, http://www.freshwater.net.au/community/melbourne_freshwater_individuals.html#maya