I Belong To The Rain — Aqua Nullius

Steve Mintern in conversation with Rachel Knepfer, and an interview with Maureen Jipiyilya Nampijinpa O'Keefe from OFFICE's new book Aqua Nullius. 

Map of Australian fresh water bodies. Data source Digital Atlas of Australia, drawn by OFFICE.

Aqua Nullius is a book about water. It plays on the same lie of terra nullius—that the continent of Australia was empty and unowned—but applies it to rivers, wetlands and sea. Across more than 20 interviews, it brings together First Nations voices from all over Australia talking about storytelling, water injustice, First Nations water management, and what it means to overturn aqua nullius for good. As editor Jack Mitchell puts it, "This book is a body of water. In these pages lies a collection of words, printed onto paper, pooling together here like the confluence of a river. Each stream of vibration carrying meaning, from thoughts, to sounds, to shapes, arriving through their respective Country and the bodies, hearts, blood and mind of each custodian. Each speaker has held this knowledge in relationship to kin and community for thousands and thousands of years in an unbroken stream. Unbroken until very recently."

We caught up with Steve Mintern, co-founder of OFFICE and co-editor of the book, to talk about how it all came together.

Rachel Knepfer: Let’s start with a little personal history. 

Steve Mintern: Well, I’m a landscape architect—connection to the landscape is what I'm trained to do. If you think about what our profession is meant to do: Country is the medium we work with, you know? Plants, soil, water, all of those things. 
That's a part of your practice. There is that connection. 
What we do at Office, the idea is to work for the public good, and with climate change being one of the most pressing things of our time, we're thinking about how we potentially live better, or differently, in a changing climate—we’re interested in what that means as designers.

Which is just a beautiful way to approach what you're doing. Were there places that you grew up in, around nature? Was that an early childhood thing for you? What made you go into landscape architecture? 

I wish there was some great origin story, but I didn't know what I was doing. I grew up in a little country town in west Victoria, a little farming town. We didn't have landscape architects or architects or anything like that. So, no, it was definitely a bit of a guess. But obviously, growing up in the country, I was a lot closer to the landscape. 

So what drew you & OFFICE to the Aqua Nullius project? 

Again, it's this idea of working for the public good that drives everything we do. 
The majority of our work is with Aboriginal communities. Typically that work focuses on built outcomes—designing things with them.
We were previously engaged by the National Gallery of Victoria, as a part of the Reimagining Birrarung exhibition, to make a film about the future of the Birrarung (or the Yarra River)—the main river here in Melbourne. There were maybe eight landscape architecture firms that were asked to put forward a proposal. 
We were one of them, and our proposal was pretty simple—it just focussed on: what would it look like if you handed water rights back to the Traditional Owners for the vast majority of the Birrarung? What would it do for the river?

We already do a bunch of work with the Wurundjeri. We know some of the Elders pretty well—we have three projects with them at the moment. And so we made a short film called Aqua Nullius.
And we visualised: what would it mean for the river and the water to be allowed to move and flood and basically breathe again across those floodplains? So that showed in the NGV last summer, which was pretty great. And then through that, we were able to get some funding from Creative Australia and Creative Victoria.
That allowed us to expand the work or research or approach, into the publication. Which was pretty amazing—to be able to give it the time. Money just buys you time, essentially. 

Could you please give us a brief rundown of some key stories in the book: the people, the places. 

This isn't a survey of every Aboriginal person's relationship to water. It's interviews with 20 Aboriginal people and their relationships to water. And within that, we were interested in a diversity of places, a diversity of Country and ecologies across the continent, and a diversity of experiences and positions within the world. 

We spoke to Troy McDonald, who's the CEO of Gunaikurnai Aboriginal Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation. They've just got a big water right handed back to them. So it's finding out, what does that mean for GLaWAC ecologically, but also in terms of economic sovereignty—there is, you know, a money story related to that. 

There's also Norman Frank Jupurrurla, who's a friend of ours, who we recently designed a house for with Wilya Janta. He spoke about a really deep cultural connection to water. He’s on Warumungu Country up in the Tennant Creek area. He speaks about that cultural relationship really powerfully. You know, in Desert Country, it's pretty important to know water: to have that relationship with water, to know where it is, to know the stories—and those things are interweaved as well. 

And then there's people like Virginia Marshall, the person who's sort of popularised the term aqua nullius, who's this incredible academic from ANU. She wrote this fantastic book called Overturning Aqua Nullius, which really brings to the fore a lot of the issues and was really informative to the work that we're doing.

Also Tony Birch, who's a renowned author, Melbourne local—very local too, he lives very near our studio. He's not a Wurundjeri person, but living on Wurundjeri Country, and he has a really close connection to the river. 
He's written a book, a novel, based around the Birrarung, and we were able to interview him at Deep Rock swimming hole, which is probably 500 metres to a kilometre from where we are now. It’s wonderful—just that depth and closeness to Country, when it's not your Country necessarily, and that respect for it. 

So, it's a very diverse set of people. 

Let's discuss the book, the physicality of it. I think we both agree that there's a real importance in making these things. Can you talk to us about the physicality of the book, please? 

We worked with Samson Ossedryver—a graphic designer up in Sydney who works on most of our books. We knew that we wanted people to be able to connect with the different landscapes, different Countries, so the scale of the book allows us to have images that are pretty large and vibrant.

The format also gives a bit of space to the drawings by “Yugi” or Joseph Williams Jungurayis—a fellow from Tennant Creek, and one of the members of the Tennant Creek Brio [an artist collective]. He did the front cover and illustrations all throughout the book. We sent him Norman Frank Jupurrurla’s text, and then he drew all the different types of water that Norm spoke about. Norman and Joseph Williams are from the same Country; they’re cousins and they both live in Tennant. 

How many did you print, and where is it available? 

We printed a thousand copies and it's available on our online store and in lots of bookshops across the country

Has it been taken outside of Australia? I'm always curious about where we sit within the whole of the Earth, and with a project like this, it feels like it would be of great interest, to some people at least, in other parts of the world. 

Hopefully we will get an international distributor. Our other books have been distributed internationally, predominantly throughout Europe. I think that it can go one of two ways—Australia is just not a part of the world that most people think about, because we're so isolated. So it either means that people are really interested, because it's a curiosity, or they have no relationship to it. 

But the idea is that we want the book to be something that's engaging. If you see it in a bookshop, it's something you would pick up and engage with.

So it's designed in a way not to make it feel too bleak or too dry and it's edited that way as well.. These are all conversations you should feel—feel the vibrancy of the stories that people have to tell. Samson's done a great job of capturing all of that. 

Totally. Totally beautiful. That kind of leads us into the next question, about the importance of beauty and hope. I just think that's so key right now, just to keep on making beautiful things, and to me, this book does that. It takes it outside of the bleakness, and someone might pick it up and go: this is beautiful. I want to know more about it and I want to connect with it. 
Do you approach these things with beauty fitting in somewhere into the picture? It's a tricky question, but in the end, does it make things better? With design, particularly. 

The book is designed to make something that could potentially seem challenging—the title is confronting in a way, potentially, to some people—engaging and accessible. 

We want as many people as possible to hear these stories because we think these stories are important for people to hear. 

And design aesthetics play a part in how we do that. We’ve probably thought about that more in this book than we have in any of our previous ones.

I think there's just a level of care that you need to take—that we definitely take—especially when working with First Nations stories: making sure they're displayed in a way that's appropriate, that people are happy with, that have some form of truth. 

Could you tell us about Maureen’s painting (we open the Journal with this painting) that she's made for the book? How did this come to be, this painting? 

We'd spoken to Maureen. She told us the amazing and devastating story that's in the book: what’s happening on Kaytetye Country. And we asked the art centre manager in Ali Curung, who we know, if there were any (existing) artworks that we could license or buy—just let us know, we'd love to include something that grounds the story and represents that Country. And he wrote back and just said: Maureen wants to paint the story.  Which is pretty, pretty incredible. So we ended up commissioning and purchasing that work, which is in the book. Now it’s in our studio, which is pretty cool. 

The painting itself essentially tells the whole story, the whole interview—or more than the whole interview, really—through that artwork. 

Is there a place that you love, a place in nature that you go to replenish? A place that you'd like to highlight. 

I don't know if replenish is the right word, but we do spend a lot of time in Jurnkkurakurr, which is Tennant Creek. Yugi did the artwork for the book, and we were very lucky to be invited by that community and be taken to pretty special places. In the interview we did with Norm, there's photos there of us at the waterhole swimming, where the two ancestral snakes are—the dream story of Tennant Creek, Jurnkkurakurr Warumungu Country. 

And just having the time and space to have that: a deeper connection, a closer connection than sometimes is possible for non-Indigenous people to have. Culture is very present in Tennant Creek. 

Do you think that art and the human imagination have a place, alongside science and politics, in protecting the future of our natural world?

I think for sure. With the interviews, some of them are very technical or in that sort of vein—and some of them are very cultural and poetic, and I think that the relationship between those things is important. 

And being a designer—design sits squarely in between those two poles. That's what we do. 

Kaytetye-Warlpiri Alekarenge [Ali Curung] Northern Territory

Maureen Jipiyilya Nampijinpa O'Keefe talks about water and life in an interview with OFFICE, drawn from the book Aqua Nullius.

"I belong to the rain, my ancestors are the rainmakers"

Maureen Jipiyilya Nampijinpa O'Keefe is an artist, writer, storyteller, and storykeeper. Her family comes from the Devils Marbles area also known as Karlu Karlu, and she is a Kaytetye-Warlpiri woman born and raised in Ali Curung, south-east of Tennant Creek. Maureen is involved in the Water Justice Project, and directed the community-led storytelling video It’s from the beginning. 

OFFICE: Maureen, could you describe what water means to you?

Maureen O'Keefe: I belong to the rain. My ancestors are the rain makers. They used to perform ceremonies for rain.

It's part of my heritage, you know, water. There are stories about water, and all belong to the water. In songs we got told about water and the little animals that live in the water. Lots of animals will come to drink water, the frogs that live in the water and fish.

Could you tell us about the Singleton Station water license that you're campaigning against? In the video you made for the Water Justice Project (linked below), you explained that the NT government had granted Australia’s largest groundwater license to Singleton Station in Kaytetye land, which will extract up to 40 billion litres every year over a 30-year agreement. 

It's a really big one, it's for free! They gave away the size of Sydney Harbour, they think. And over the next 30 years, it'll never come back and it'll destroy our land. 

They're going to extract it for agriculture. They need all that water to farm. These Chinese investors grow for an investment, they make a profit. And everything goes back overseas, and we get nothing. The people that live on the land and what's been extracted from our land, we get nothing for that. We never benefit from that. 

We’ve got to fight to keep our water, it’s for the lives of everybody else who lives here. That's my strong message to the government: not to take this water from us, because we need it.

Could you tell us about the community of Ali Curung? 

It's five hours north of Alice Springs. And maybe two hours south of Tennant Creek. It's in between Tennant Creek and Devils Marbles, lytwelepenty / Davenport Ranges National Park. The reason why Ali Curung was built in the first place was because of water shortages. 

The people who actually built that place, they came from Phillip Creek Mission. They ran out of water there at the mission. 

They decided to look for water somewhere else. And they found an abundance of water at Ali Curung, and that's where they decided to settle and raise families and build the community. The Warumungu and Warlpiri people, who built Ali Curung, were Coniston massacre survivors.

That's why some of them ran away to live in Phillip Creek. They're the massacre survivors that actually built Ali Curung, and they left the descendants that built a home for the kids to stay there. They raised the family there and thought: this is the home where family will live and grow.

Are you going to make us a refugee again from our own land? You are giving our water away—means you don’t care for us. We understand what happened in the past and now we are listening. 

What will that mean for the land and the animals, when the water gets taken?

Everything will be gone, the animals and insects, and everything will be gone. And it'll be a dry land. It's like a wasteland—once all the water is gone, all our trees will die. Old and big trees will die, and all our bees will go away too. Groundwater table will drop 50 metres, and over 40 of our sacred sites will suffer, including soaks, swamps and sacred trees. We need to protect Country, and right now water on our Country is in serious danger. 

The biggest damage the government will ever create, this government. And once it is done there is no way to fix it. Once it's gone it's gone. No food anymore for us to survive. And maybe all the animals will die too. 

"For us, our Country is like a book. It is the most important storykeeper of all."

Stories and knowledge are encoded into Country; into every living thing. If our sites on Country are destroyed or damaged, it is like ripping pages out of an ancient book. We cannot let them be desecrated or lost. 

And the water in Ali Curung is all groundwater, is that right? 

It is all just soakage country, apart from a big billabong that fills up when it rains. I don't know who monitors the water if the table drops, that's what we really want to know about. How much water is left underground?

And you are currently based in Alice, but you grew up in Ali Curung? 

I was born and raised in Ali Curung, and my family is still there. 

My grandparents were Kaytetye people. My grandparents, my mom's parents and my family, built Singleton Station from hard labor back in the day. They weren’t paid money, they were just paid rations. 

So your family built the station for the same company that is now being given the water by the government? 

Yes, if it wasn't for them there would be no Singleton Station. It's the reason why I'm talking about Singleton Station, because of my family who built that station with hard labor. You know, and there was blood, sweat and tears for that Country. And that's part of my history, that's where my parents met. They met at Singleton. 

There's also some burial sites around that way. Most of our old people got buried somewhere around there. That's why I have this strong connection to that land—because if it wasn't for my family, Singleton Station would not be there. It's hard labor, how they work for that Country, you know? They were the massacre survivors, who built Singleton and Ali Curung. 

If you go back to history of how Ali Curung came to be, it’s because of water shortages. And who built that community is the massacre survivors. And this is the truth I'm telling. I can't hide the truth anymore. People need to know the truth. Why we're there at Ali Curung now it's because our family, who were looking for water, the massacre survivors, built that community today, and today it stands. 

And the reason why we're fighting, we want to stay, then we want water. We want to have access to this water, and we can't be denied our human rights too. We all need to drink water, every living thing you know. 

They can’t deny us that access. And that land was never bought or sold, and why are they telling us that Aboriginal people need to buy that water? We can't buy that water, it was free. Before the white man, we didn’t buy that water, because it is ancient water.

Could you tell us a bit about the Water Justice Project that you're part of?

We're trying to fight for water to keep it there for the next generation to come. And we’re starting to look like a third world country—you know how they run out of water. It's shame job Australia and what the government is doing, destroying an environment—they shouldn't do that. 

Because of greed, money to build up the economy, while the people who live on the land suffer. We live in poverty, Aboriginal people. We been working with Running Water Community Press, Arid Lands Environment Centre and Arlpwe Art Centre who came together to help with the Water Justice Project. It is good that we have a partnership with each other to raise awareness about this water business at Singleton Station.

"We must protect our Country, our water, our home. Otherwise we’ll become homeless. We will be refugee in our own Country, with no safe water to drink and nowhere to go."
 

What has the campaign looked like for the Water Justice Project? 

We’ve been getting the community together, talking together, we've been doing that. But the government defunded us. 

Water is life. How stupid can they be, these white people!

And you’ve got all different mob coming together to fight for the water? 

We all come together because that water is underground. It runs through everybody's land, you know—yeah, we have to come together. That water runs underground on any of everybody's land, and the land is on top.

I miss my home. I grew up there on that land, walking around. And Singleton was built by hard labor for my family. They were blood, sweat and tears for that Country. They made it happen. If it wasn't for my family, then Singleton Station would not be there today. Now we want the land to stay. We don't want to go nowhere. It's a true story how Ali Curung was built in the first place because of water shortages. It's got a history of water shortages. They were looking for water. 

What about the quality of drinking water in Ali Curung?

Water's been contaminated by cattle and by horses. You know, they are the biggest threat to our land: the wild horses and feral animals. They will destroy all our springs, and all the creek is contaminated. We can't drink the water anymore. We are all living in a water crisis right now, then everything's swept under the carpet, and the government don't actually talk about our water crisis in some communities that are facing water crisis. 

We need to do something about this government. About this water—water is life, you know. It's what sustains us and the whole land and everything.

Our drinking water all comes from that underground water now.

We need to talk about our human rights too. They can’t treat us like that forever.

How do you feel about the future of communities in that Country? 

That's a really big worry. The impact, after they’ve gone over 30 years, what the impact will bring in. All the kids will be lost, all their family, everybody’s homes. We won't have a home, because it will be destroyed. And what is left, there will be no water. And people are moving to the town where there's so much crime, they need to stay in the community. It was built by the massacre survivors for their descendants, and the white people can't come and take this away again, because it just brings back that awful history about what happened to us mob in the first place.

People on dialysis—they need to stay on Country. If they come live in the town, it's really hard for them, they need to stay home. And we gotta talk about the dialysis machine, which is important to try to keep our people alive. The health of the people, that's what it's about.

And you need that water for dialysis as well?

Yes, there's a little dialysis machine in Ali Curung. Then some families stay home, you know. And they don't want to come into town, because there's so much trouble in there. 

There's no accommodation for renal patients in Alice Springs, and they lonely for family. They want to be back home with family.

What needs to change for the future? 

We just need more support from everyone. We need access to water. We can't be denied that because we don't have water rights. The First Nations of this country don't have water rights. We were denied that back in the colonial laws; they denied the water rights for us in the first place.

And they keep denying them.

And this is our land, you know. They can’t take it away; it is part of our heritage. White people look at water for business, for agriculture. But we look at it as part of our culture, part of our heritage. 

Then it's really worrying for me. I'll just worry about the future, where my family will live, where will they go once everything's been damaged. The government is damaging every environment in the country, in the land. The future doesn’t look good. 

All they need to do is not extract that much water from our land. We need our land, and we need water to survive. 

"Water is Country; it is heritage."

We just need support from some other people around Australia, to support us in this fight against Singleton for our water. It's important and water is life. We all need water. It's been a struggle for me and for my people. We don't have the power, but we need some kind of power to fight and get the water back.

“It's from the beginnning” - a film directed by Maureen Jipiyilya Nampijinpa O’Keefe.

Produced by Running Water Community Press in collaboration with Arid Lands Environment Centre, working in partnership with Arlpwe Art and Culture Centre, Ali Curung.

Rachel Knepfer: Well, where can readers of Wilderness Journal learn more about this project? 

Steve Mintern: The Aqua Nullius project, broadly, is a few different things. 

It's the film that we made, which you could find on our website and on the NGV's website. The book you can buy in lots of bookshops—also on our website. 

And then there's some future work on a project called Rainmakers. 

There's links to fundraising campaigns and things like that—to try and support what’s come out of this project. It’s not a finished thing. This sort of work continues, is ongoing. 

What can we do to help? What's next and what's most urgent right now? 

The work we're trying to do at the moment with Maureen and the community in Ali Curung to continue to support their campaign against the Singleton water license. There's a crowdfunder to help pay for that work. 

We'll be up in Ali Curung in three weeks or so, kicking off that project. We've generously had some support on that, which is cool—just to cover flights and TO fees and food for everyone and all that sort of stuff. 

We're really interested in how our skills as landscape architects and designers can then be used to support this community campaign and storytelling. 

There's a link to a crowdfunder to help support that work, but it's also going to be an ongoing project. So, we will keep everyone updated on that. 

The Arid Land Environment Centre also have a petition, there’s links to other ways that you can support the community in Ali Curung, fighting against Singleton. 

Thank you to Steve Mintern and OFFICE for this story—words and pictures. 

Thank you to Maureen Jipiyilya Nampijinpa O'Keefe and her community. 

To explore further, visit the water justice project.

Breaking and welcome news as we send this Journal into the world:
From Arid Lands Environment Centre: "ALEC call for Singleton Water Licence to be binned for good following Native Title Holders win in High Court.
A historic decision has just been handed down in the High Court to quash the granting of the groundwater licence to Fortune Agribusiness at Singleton Station, 350km north of Mparntwe Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. The controversial project was one of Australia’s largest groundwater licences, with the void licence issuing up to 40 billion litres of groundwater.”
Read more here

On the road with Glen Klatovsky

Glen Klatovsky has dedicated 30 years of his life to climate and environmental activism. 

Among other things, he has been the CEO for 350.org, a strategist for Climate Action Network Australia and worked as Conservation Director for WWF Australia. Through it all, Glen has been a steadfast voice of the Wilderness Society campaigns team—starting out as a Forest Campaigner in the 90s and working for the organisation in a variety of roles over the years, including as a National Campaigner. 

In the 2010s, Glen campaigned on one of the Wilderness Society’s biggest wins: protecting Walmadany / James Price Point from industrialisation and the massive Browse LNG hub.

Rachel Knepfer corresponded with Glen from the road, as he travels across Australia and continues to work alongside the Wilderness Society to protect wild places.

Rachel Knepfer: Where did your love of—and connection with—nature begin?

Glen Klatovsky: I grew up in rural / regional NSW, the son of a Czech refugee. I think my love of Australia's natural beauty began with my grandparents talking about how much they loved Australia. After having survived Hitler and then Stalin, they saw Australia as safe, wealthy and wildly beautiful. Living in a country town, I was interacting with nature every day—from walking or riding to school to running around the local bush to going to friends’ farms. I loved my garden patch. I also did things that were not particularly environmental: shooting rabbits and kangaroos on friends’ farms and spear fishing down the coast. But I was having fun.

What first motivated you to work for the protection of our natural environment?

I knew I cared about nature. I was horrified by Chernobyl, the Exxon Valdez disaster and images of baby seal culling. I believed humanity should care for nature more and do a better job. I also kept an eye on things like the Brundtland Report leading up to the 1992 Rio Summit. But I did not conceive of activism or advocacy for nature. My grandfather had been an activist in the anti-Stalin underground, but he did not speak about it much. I had a theoretical knowledge of Australia's political system, but very little about being active in it (although I had an English teacher who had played for the Wallabies once, then refused to play against South Africa and his rugby career went with that). The truth is, I was dragged into a Wilderness Society meeting in uni by my girlfriend, and the rest is history. I eventually left uni, joined in forest blockades, worked in Parliament House, and became the activist I am now.

And what motivates you now?

Lots of things: my granddaughter, my kids, everyone's kids. My son is autistic and gets incredible support from the government—I like that kind of society, where there is a fundamental commitment to helping people. I fear that our future will destroy the wonderful society we live in today. My real motivation is that I truly believe we can fix these enormous problems—we just have to find the path. Humans are unbelievably adaptable, smart and ruthless.

How has this motivation changed—and why?

After 30+ years of advocacy, I have learned an enormous amount about how change occurs. So my motivation—which was always human-focused—has not changed so much as my knowledge and understanding.

During your time with the Wilderness Society, you campaigned hard to protect places like James Price Point in WA from destructive fossil fuels. The threat of fossil fuel exploration and extraction still looms large along the coastline and waters of Western Australia. Can you tell us about the history of campaigning there, and what must happen next? 

Extracting fossil fuels from the ground, or from the deep sea, is an incredibly ugly industry. At its most basic, it means huge infrastructure, drilling, leaks, the escape of toxins and dangerous chemicals, decimation of the area, pipelines across often pristine environments (e.g. Scott Reef), spills—and then infrastructure usually being left behind to rot and rust away, with further risk of continued leakage of greenhouse gases. Often all of this work degrades cultural and aesthetic values as well.

Add to that the fossil fuel is then burnt as part of the primary cause of human-induced climate change. This is the ultimate destructive force—changing every part of the planet, every community, every life.

Off the WA coastline, in the north-west, are some of the most eligible gasfields on Earth for exploitation. With the Walmadany / James Price Point campaign the Wilderness Society worked on, the Browse Basin gas deposit was going to be tapped, and processing was planned for the Kimberley coast. This project would have severely impacted many pristine marine habitats like Scott Reef; while on land, the enormous processing facility would have cut right through an ancient songline, damaged the local environment and changed the west Kimberley forever—socially, environmentally and culturally. 

Can you tell us about a loss? Did anything good come from it? 

We ran a huge campaign to stop broadscale land clearing in Queensland and NSW. I was working with WWF and the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, alongside many other organisations and individuals including the Wilderness Society. We gained huge wins in both states, with new legislation and commitments by governments to stop broadscale clearing. I started focusing more on the Murray-Darling Basin and water reform, and others moved on as well. We had won.

However, the reforms were not being implemented very well. There was lots of wiggle room in the regulatory system which was being exploited. Within a decade, those wins were reversed. Clearing continues across vast hectares every year.

The good bit: I will never again be involved in a campaign where we don't ensure that the win is secured over the long-term.

Let’s talk about the power of hope and beauty.

That is a huge question.

I worked in the climate change advocacy space for most of the last 15 years. In that sector, we saw a shift in the PR campaign by the fossil fuel industry. It shifted from climate denial strategies to a despair approach. The message for average people around the world: it is too late, governments and corporations are incapable of shifting to a safer approach to energy, therefore we are going to cook the planet. And it is an effective strategy.

Therefore one of our primary tasks is to provide hope (and hold hope in ourselves). Hope comes from many things. It comes from sitting by a river flowing through a gorgeous rainforest, or swimming in the ocean. It also comes from watching your autistic adult son visit his oldest friend who moved away to another state a few years ago. Or driving around the country with incredible internet reception everywhere. These things all have beauty and provide hope. 

But the greatest antidote to despair is to act. That is our job: to show people that acting instead of sitting on the couch is liberating as a person, and impactful.

Please describe a place you love, and why.

The Dampier Peninsula, north of Broome. Truly gorgeous: turquoise ocean, white beaches, deep red cliffs, scrubby green and olive bushland. But even more is the deep cultural history of the land and the people. Tens of thousands of years of custodianship. There is a 9-day walk following an ancient songline. 

And Broome is amazing. It’s the only place in Australia that was excluded from the white Australia policy—so huge First Nations communities mixed with Asian and white—a truly unique cultural experience.

Where do you go to replenish, to seek comfort in nature.

Redhead Beach in Newcastle.

Do you think that art and the human imagination have a place alongside the science and the politics in protecting the future of our natural world? If so, what’s an example of this?

One example close to my heart is the book Dirt Music by Tim Winton. It charts a long journey by a young family up the WA coastline. The descriptions of the landscapes, the people and the emotional impact on the characters is transformative.

Please tell us a favourite song, book, poem, painting.

Song (three, sorry): Caught a Long Wind by Feist, the Flower Duet by Leo Delibes and G3 N15 by Rosalia.

Book: Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders.

Poem: I am going to be cheeky and say The Ship Song by Nick Cave.

Painting: Blue Poles by Jackson Pollock.

Please name three people who have been important to you through your work with nature, and why.

Anthony Too: a fellow Wilderness Society volunteer when I first started. Just brought fun and joy to the activist experience.

Annie Coleman: another volunteer and then staff member who brought deep humanity to our work and my life as an activist.

Anne Poelina: a wonderful First Nations leader who is grounded in her community and her landscape.

Please tell us a story about Wilderness Society that is important to you.

Wilderness Society can be crazy-brave. My favourite reflection on this is the decision to not brand our work in James Price Point—one of the biggest campaigns the organisation had ever been involved in. This was to help ensure the campaign team could work closely with the local community, and ensure their work was amplified. And it worked.

Fifty years ago, 26 June 1976, Wilderness Society was established out in the bush at Liffey, Tasmania. A coming together, on the heels of the loss of Lake Pedder, that has had powerful consequences for nature and its protection. Imagine 50 years from now—the year 2076—what is it that you hope for?

A nation and a global community that functions. This means we need to manage the climate, we need to live with nature and we need to care for each other.

What do you feel is most urgent, right now, and how can we help?

We need to galvanise our organisations, our sector and the broader Australian community to act on the protection of nature and minimising the scale and impacts of climate change. Wilderness Society is an organisation that has an effective history of taking on huge challenges, and often winning. Let's have an ongoing conversation about that.

Thanks Glen for your words and work.

Australia's oceans are home to extraordinary wildlife and some of the world's most unique marine ecosystems. But they face growing threats from offshore oil and gas, industrial development and climate change. The Wilderness Society is working to protect these precious places by stopping new oil and gas projects, strengthening environmental protections and ensuring our oceans remain healthy for wildlife and future generations.

For information about the Wilderness Society's ongoing campaign to protect our oceans from fossil fuels, click here. 

Let It Flow

Words & pictures by Billy Rowe, with quotes from Gurridyula.

We meet up with Billy Rowe and hear about his latest wild adventure—as always, bringing his deep love of and concern for nature to the heart of this epic project.

Billy joins forces with Gurridyula, who’s been burning a fire of protest on his ancestral land on the edge of the Adani coal mine in outback Queensland for the past five years.

Billy and a crew of some of the world’s best highliners, with the invitation and guidance of Gurridyula, string a natural line across two volcanic plugs—the Pregnant Lady. They walk over a kilometre through the air, breaking a record for highlining and radiating attention to Gurridyula’s efforts to protect the ancient Doongmabulla Springs. 

Billy’s film Let It Flow records this epic. Watch it at the link below.

“All springs are sacred. Anywhere around the world you ask Indigenous people and they'll tell you that a spring is sacred, because it's the giver of life. I couldn't care about the politics of the day. They're all just background noise, in amongst trying to just destroy all this place. Sometimes you think they're just intentionally targeting these places, to destroy all of these sacred sites, to basically cut off whatever connection Aboriginal people had with Country.” – Gurridyula 
 

We enter landscapes because they are beautiful; we stay because they are worth defending. Gurridyula is a man who returned and has stood firm on his ancestors' lands, the Wangan & Jagalingou people. Since 2019, the Queensland Human Rights Act has enabled them to perform ceremonies on the Adani / Bravus Carmichael mining lease. On 26 August 2021, he did this in the way of a sacred fire. It has been burning for five years now, preventing the mine's expansion. 

The damage already done to the nearby Doongmabulla Springs is a deep wound. These springs have flowed for over 500,000 years. “When there was no water around, everybody would have come here” – Gurridyula. Fed by the Great Artesian Basin, the spring is a life-giving node to a much greater area. Mineral-rich water flows continuously in the middle of dry country, boasting an abundance of diverse fauna that would have visited for millennia. A sanctuary for all, yet government and industry avoid the obvious, continuing to pull out coal, depleting this sacred water resource. 

For many sun cycles his people lived in symbiosis here, under the stars, observing the animals, migratory patterns, geological features, encoded into nature. True to their song lines—or in today’s legal terms, their ‘intellectual property’. 

We embarked on an adventure to where most would consider the middle of nowhere, noticing a cluster of volcanic plugs protruding from flat mid-north Queensland (three hours inland from Mackay). As contentious as outdoor places have become, still so far from incorporating Aboriginal-led management, we decided not to notify National Parks of our endeavour. Instead, we sought permission from those whose Country we were entering. Knowing of their fight against Adani, we set out to raise awareness of the destruction through a balancing act of our own. 

Across Australia, this continual issue of severing ties is all too prevalent. If only there were improved cultural rights allowing all First Nations people to facilitate effective land management, prove songlines are their intellectual property, and to correct the current discourse. 

From my involvement in Lutruwita as a swift parrot researcher, I have delved deep into the birds' ecology, contributing to research papers, environmentalist intel networks, investigating industry breaches regardless of “within the law”, lived and breathed it, putting the parrots first. 

“If you can find water, if you can find what foods are edible, and you can map yourself through the stars, then... You could survive a comet impact, and keep going. That's why Aboriginal culture is still here because it was made to keep going. You can't stop it. It's an idea, of connection to Country, connection to nature, of being a part of nature.”
 

Meeting Gurridyula switched a light bulb on in me, revealing how much more complex songlines are than any scientific paper we can compile today. And when all were intact, they created a culture that “could survive a comet impact, and keep going”—spans of time beyond our comprehension—rebuilding, if necessary, from shared knowledge. Like spiritual tracks, with neighbouring tribes holding their own unique sounds for the same animals at different times of year. This pieced together and provided navigation and passage to the triennial Bunya nut festival on the east coast of Australia—a gathering of tribes like no other—with feasting, trading and ceremony. It is these songlines that hold the proof of existence.  

Proving presence is something I learnt all too well from my work with the swift parrots. Modern society seems to require concrete evidence. Was it a swift parrot? Was it in a logging coupe? It should not be so difficult for First Nations people to prove their connection. There should be more recognition regardless of whether songlines are intact or not. Special places, flora and fauna remaining in these diminished ecosystems are without a doubt a part of the oral traditions passed down over time, across the country. They are remaining living proof of part of an extensive history and culture. 

Seeing firsthand the crime of what industry has done to vital ecosystems, to the Aboriginal way of life and its symbiosis with nature, I was obliged to document our time with Gurridyula. As Gurridyula says, “Wuni-Gu Wuni-Gu” (“Give to, Give to”). Give to nature and it will give back. Doongmabulla Springs has been thrown out of balance by a greedy globalised resource network for political and economic gain, benefiting nothing and no one. 

Gurridyula showed us the way: it's not what you know, it's who you know! 

Within his lands sit the so-called “Gemini Mountains”, with decent altitude to suit our particular adventure. It involved plenty of gear as we connected 17 segments of highline webbing to join a gap over a kilometre long. Campsite proximity to the project allowed for an enthusiastic team to settle in for the first evening. Gurri smoked us in and let the pregnant lady know we were there; a corrected vision on where we were. The side profile of these mountains reveal what looks like a pregnant lady laying down with head, belly and feet poking up out of the ground. This geological feature is very much integrated into the Wangan & Jagalingou songlines. She knew we were there, to raise awareness for the atrocities still occurring to the land and its people. 

A team climbed each side over multiple days during the rigging process. First we assessed anchors, implementing no fixed hardware, suiting the ethics of everyone involved to leave no trace. This is a common issue in outdoor sports of this kind, where sometimes bolts are drilled into the rock. Finding the right anchors took extra time and speculation, but is a great aspect of natural rigging, working in with the lay of the land. Next was getting a tag line across, which after a few attempts with a drone carrying fishing line, and a few moons later, worked! We implemented a system called a curtain rod, where each end of the 17 segments gets joined to a separate line spanning the gap, allowing for simple hauling of the webbing across the gap. 

Many beautiful days ensued and multiple highliners embraced the space. We had a few cross the entire gap without falling! Technically called a send. Vibes were high, an accomplishment in the sport and a new record for Queensland highlining. The longer these lines have become, the more time we spend in a unique meditative space, constant focus, embracing a view that generally only wedge-tailed eagles enjoy. 

An experience of a lifetime could be just setting foot on such an impressive highline. However it was beyond a lifetime with the company of Gurridyula, his partner Sunny and her daughter Karma, who made us feel so welcome. Insights and understandings that led us to connect even more. 

It was always an aim to document our adventure, but meeting them developed it into so much more, unveiling the darkness which is opposite the sacred fire. 

A second trip a month later to Doongmabulla was necessary, to gather wildlife footage and spend more time with Gurridyula. There were brolgas, critically endangered black-throated finches, red-winged parrots, red-backed fairy wrens, emus, and so much more. Truly a gathering around the opportunity the water brings. It was a great coincidence having my chainsaw onboard when Gurri mentioned the sacred firewood pile needed a top up. Clearing by the mining company had pushed over old growth gidgee trees, which now “get their last laugh” feeding the sacred fire. 

“Water / Gamu: It’s the only thing that’s omnipresent. It's what connects all of us together.”

Waddananggu is Gurridyula’s home, where the sacred fire displays its defiance, opposite a mine that still operates 24/7. If we don’t push these issues to the forefront, combining efforts with Traditional Custodians, we may lose these places forever. How quickly things have vanished already.

“In our language we say buri, Fire. So you spend a long time by fire. And it's almost like it talks to you after a while. And it's something that connects us into reality, I guess, for such a long time.” — Gurridyula
 

Highline crew and company: Aidan Williams, Alex Scholten, Arthur Pera, Art Ho Baily, Florencia Giacinti, Gabriel Camolesi, Gerard Kennedy, Gurridyula Gaba Wunggu, Isabel Assandri, John Young, Karma Hungerford, Sunny Hungerford, Lef Traru, Matthias Kervella, Patrick Mielcarz, Phil Baily, Akaysha Philip, Leon Namai, Billy Rowe, Kiewa & Fruit 

Dogs of Waddananggu: Wail, Lala, Burrumu, Galbul, Mida, Walu, Mufassa & Matilda

Huge thanks to Billy & his crew, and to Gurridyula. We invite you to watch the film Let It Flow above, and to follow @squintybill, @gurridyula and @letitflowdoco for updates as the fire continues to burn.

For more on Billy’s work with swift parrots, please read Journal issues #022 and #037.

Antarctica is Melting

Distinguished photographer David Neilson is a longtime friend of Wilderness Society and a longtime champion of our beautiful wild places, beginning with his work photographing Lake Pedder. On the eve of a new exhibition of pictures made over three decades and six journeys, we celebrate his ongoing work. David tells his story below:

My first visit to Antarctica was in 1990. I was working for the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) and received a Humanities Program position from the Australian Antarctic Division. I spent a summer photographing in East Antarctica while based at Mawson Station. 

At the time, ACF was campaigning to prohibit mining in Antarctica and my photos were used in the final stages of this successful campaign.

In 2004, I received an Antarctic Arts Fellowship and spent another summer based at Mawson taking photographs for a new book project I was working on.

During my two summers at Mawson Station, I photographed the extensive wildlife around the coast and made three trips to the rarely visited Auster emperor penguin colony. Inland, I photographed the Framnes Mountains, the remote Prince Charles Mountains and the Vestfold Hills near Davis Station.

To get a wider geographic spread of images for the book project, my partner Karen Alexander [Ed: see our profile of Karen in issue #037] and I organised three yacht trips to the Antarctic and sub-Antarctic. In 2002, with a group of friends, we chartered the yacht Tooluka and sailed from Ushuaia in southern Argentina to the remote island of South Georgia in the South Atlantic. In 2006 and 2008, we chartered the yacht Australis and sailed to the Antarctic Peninsula—which has some of the most spectacular scenery anywhere on the planet. My final Antarctic trip was in 2009 with Aurora Expeditions to the Ross Sea region, south of New Zealand, where I photographed the Transantarctic Mountains, the active volcano Mount Erebus and the enigmatic McMurdo Dry Valleys. I also photographed several of the historic hut sites from the heroic era.

The first challenge to photographing in Antarctica is getting there—and, once there, getting around. Until recently this has meant a sea voyage varying from several days to several weeks, depending on which part of the continent is visited. A further obstacle is shortage of time. No matter the circumstances of one’s visit, there is never enough time to catch what are often fleeting moments. Photographing efficiently and quickly partly overcomes this problem, but many images remain untaken.

Dealing with the cold is a further challenge. The weather can be harsh and dangerous, with winter temperatures in the interior the coldest on the planet. However, all my six journeys were in the spring and summer when the temperatures around the coast are not extreme, often in the range –5°C to +5°C. These temperatures can still be a challenge. With my film cameras I had to change rolls with bare fingers, and if it was windy and below –5°C my fingers quickly got very cold. The coldest temperature I photographed in was -25°C.

About three-quarters of the photos in this exhibition were taken on film with a large format camera mounted on a tripod. This equipment provided exceptional image quality, but took time to set up and use. It provided a particular challenge when photographing wildlife such as penguins. The ‘decisive moment’ is a drawn-out ¼- or ½-second, and I could only take six images before I had to change the film. You have to anticipate what the penguins might do and work as quickly as the camera will allow.

Black & white photography has remained my favourite medium. The stripping away of colour can reveal shape and form with significant and timeless clarity. Many snow and ice scenes look their finest in black & white and it is thus an especially appropriate medium for Antarctica. Plus it provides distant echoes and a continuum back to the photographs taken during the heroic era of polar exploration.

My Antarctic photographs have been used in various books, calendars and posters. They were also used in the joint Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery and Museum of Victoria exhibition: Antarctica – Secrets of the Frozen World.

In 2012, my large-format book Southern Light: Images from Antarctica was published. In 2021, I was one of four Antarctic Arts Fellows to be featured on a set of Australia Post stamps. I was representing the photography discipline and the other artists were sound recordist Philip Samartzis, music performer Alice Giles and painter John Kelly. In 2022, a retrospective collection of my photos was published: Chasing the Mountain Light which included images from Antarctica. In 2024, I had an exhibition of my black & white Antarctic photos at the Gasworks in Albert Park. In 2026, several of my photos were exhibited in the Creative Antarctica exhibition held at the RMIT Gallery in Melbourne. 

Global warming is having a significant impact on Antarctica. It is melting at an average rate of 400 million tons of ice per day, and the Southern Ocean is getting warmer. These changes are having a major impact on the wildlife of the continent and surrounding seas. 

"Whilst it is difficult for still photographs to convey the magnitude of these changes, they can remind us of what will be lost if this melting continues and possibly accelerates."

David's exhibition Antarctica is Melting is open to the public at Maritime Museum Tasmania from 7 August to 1 November 2026.

To see more of David's work, visit Snowgum Press.

From the archives: Let The Franklin Run Free

As we celebrate the work of Wilderness Society in our 50th year, we continue to explore our unmatched visual history. Here are pictures from the Wilderness Society archives, from our landmark campaign that saved the wild Franklin River. Pictures that make evident the forceful currents on each side.

Photographs above from the Wilderness Society collection. 
If you are in any of these pictures, we would love to hear from you all these years later.

Signing off with a message from Bob Brown, co-founder of Wilderness Society, talking to us from beautiful Oura Oura on Sunday, 28 June 2026—50 years on from the gathering that formed the Wilderness Society in 1976.

(Video Rachel Knepfer)

Thanks to the campaigners, generations of activists, artists, designers, writers and photographers in this issue. If you have anything from your own archive to share, please get in touch. 

If you haven't signed up for the Journal, you can do so here. And take a look at past issues of the Journal below. We'd love you to forward this to any friends who you feel might enjoy it too.

We recognise First Nations as the custodians of land and water across the continent of Australia and pay our respects to Elders past and present. We acknowledge sovereignty was never ceded.