Peta Clancy

birrarung/kurrum ba birrarung/dirrabeen

I acknowledge the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation as the Traditional Custodians of Country where I live, created this artwork and where this exhibition is taking place. This always was and always will be Aboriginal land. I am a descendant of the Yorta Yorta people. To survive my family left our homeland on Yorta Yorta Country several generations ago eventually settling on Wurundjeri Country in Naarm in North Melbourne. birrarung/kurrum ba birrarung/dirrabeen explores beautiful Wurundjeri Country where the birrarung (yarra river) meets the kurrum (plenty river) and where the birrarung meets the dirrabeen (darebin creek).

European perceptions of land ownership were imposed on Wurundjeri Country when Robert Hoddle surveyed ‘the land’ around Naarm in 1837. What followed was the degradation of waterways and the disruption of cultural sites. Throughout the 1840s ‘land’ along the waterways of the birrarung and dirrabeen was carved up and purchased by property speculators.[1] In 1840 Thomas Wills (justice of the peace, a magistrate and trustee of the Savings Bank of Port Phillip) purchased 176 acres along the birrarung that took in the confluence with the dirrabeen. Wills immediately cleared the ‘land’ and built a bluestone mansion called Lucerne (which was pulled down in the 1960s to make way for the La Trobe Golf Club carpark). My contribution to The Conduit exhibition features a large-scale wall print of a 1931 photograph by artist Norman Macgeorge that features the Lucerne Farm and the dirrabeen in flood[2] from the University of Melbourne Archives.[3]

Photography in Australia has been used as a tool to colonise Aboriginal people and Country. birrarung/kurrum ba birrarung/dirrabeen continues my practice of revisiting and photographing places depicted in historic photographs that directly reference the impact of colonisation on Country. By returning and standing in the footsteps of the photographer I aim to make photographs with Country through non-extractive and Indigenous-centred ways.[4] Installed on the wall print featuring Lucerne are photographs I created of the birrarung in the same location. My relationship with Country through my practice involves returning to Country with photographs I had previously created at the same Place. Working on site I attach the photographic print to a frame, cut into it, and rephotograph it to create the final layered image exploring Country from multiple time frames, perspectives, and histories. This process of returning to Country with photographic prints is a performative and collaborative process and a way for me to connect more deeply with Country and to acknowledge its agency. Professor Brian Martin Bundjalung, Kamilaroi and Muruwari artist and scholar writes: Country assumes subjectiveness. It has agency. This agency of Country is opposed to the way in which objects are represented through a Western framework. In an Indigenous worldview, Country informs people of their identity and it is Country’s active role of informing us of our whole belief system that relays its importance to culture. It is the reciprocal relationship that people have to Country and its relationality that demonstrates Country as subject. Positioning oneself with Country is establishing agency of both people and Country, they are inseparable.[5]

I photograph at confluences where the Birrarung meets other waterways. Confluences are metaphoric for me to come together and collaborate with Country and to acknowledge the agency of Country. Furthermore, the new work birrarung/kurrum ba birrarung/dirrabeen explores the inaccessibility of large areas of Country for Traditional Custodians due to land ownership and the fundamental importance for Traditional Custodians to continue their care for Country and protection of our waterways before they’re damaged them further and loose them forever. birrarung/kurrum ba birrarung/dirrabeen imagines a place where the past flows into the future once more.

On a grey day in early spring 2023, the winter chill still in the air, I set out on a walk to find a publicly accessible place to experience the confluence where the birrarung meets the dirrabeen. I followed the dirrabeen/Darebin Creek Trail from Sparks Reserve. At every point along the way as I tried to access the confluence I was blocked by private landownership: golf courses and large private residences backing onto the birrarung and dirrabeen making these waterways inaccessible to me. Signs marking ‘private property’ were everywhere. Corridors of greenery which seemed to surround the waterway seemed visible on google maps, yet none of this was publicly accessible due to the private golf courses and residences that flank the waterways. As I walked that spring morning the hum of the Eastern freeway broke the air. At one point I felt I was getting closer to the confluence when the bike path I was walking along took an unexpected turn away from the junction where the two waterways meet. I found myself on a huge bridge towering metres above the birrarung. Initially I was overwhelmed by the enormity of the infrastructure. I was standing so high above the ground when all I wanted to do was ground my body in the soil. Yet as I spent more and more time, slowing down, waiting, experiencing the light changing from high above the birrarung I began to appreciate this position. The hum of the Eastern freeway became more muted, the fences, structures, bright colours and the people hitting the golf balls beneath me receded from my vision. I became more conscious of the beautiful birrarung flowing beneath my feet. Waiting and watching, slowing down… I noticed on a log in the river beneath me a long-necked turtle living, breathing, feeding. Earlier that morning along the dirrabeen creek trail I had read a sign indicating that I may see a long-necked turtle. I was surprised to read this as the habitat of the long-necked turtle has been decimated since colonisation. I thought of the descendants of the long-necked turtle that have lived here for thousands of years swimming in the birrarung below my feet and I began to imagine a place where the past flows into the future once more.

I would like to thank the following:

Wurundjeri Elders, Aunty Julieanne Axford and Aunty Gail Smith, Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation for yarning about the beautiful Wurundjeri waterways and for giving me permission to spend time with this beautiful part of Wurundjeri Country.

 My matriarchs Kittie, Rosey, Grace, Dolly, my grandmother Dorothy or Dar to us grandkids and Kaye, my beautiful mother, and my aunts Saras Mish and Annette, your strength, power, resourcefulness, and survival astound me.

[1] Broome, R (2001). Coburg Between Two Creeks, (Second Edition, Coburg Historical Society, Pascoe Vale South, 2001), 34.

[2] https://libraries.darebin.vic.gov.au/darebinheritage/places/suburbs/alphington, sited 29 May 2024

[3] https://digitised-collections.unimelb.edu.au/items/828dda44-307b-5482-9a32-4ace88e3fd47, sited 30 May 2024

[4] Thank you Dr Kirsten Lyttle, Professor Melissa Miles, Dr Jess Neath and Jahkarli Romanis for informing my practice through our collective work.

[5] Martin, B. (2017). Methodology is content: Indigenous approaches to research and knowledge. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 49(14), 1392–1400. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2017.1298034