Yanma badhu (Dharug) – Water Walk
Tuesday 22nd October
As part of the current exhibition at UNSW, 'Living Waters: 75 years of water research at UNSW', CI Ilaria Vanni and RA Holly O'Neil attended the 'Yanma badhu (Dharug) – Water Walk'. A walk curated by Clare Britton and Troy Reid to invite audiences to consider "how water moves through and on Bidgigal and Kamaygal Land, as it winds its way under urban streets, pools in golf courses, and rises through ancient aquifers to flood "reclaimed" dyuwumba/ swampland."
The walk began in the exhibition, in the heart of the UNSW library. An exhibition which captured varying creative and valuable research into waters throughout Australia, conducted by researchers and creatives out of a multidisciplinary group from UNSW.
The walk began with a Welcome to Country by Aunty Rhonda Dixon Grovenor, a Gadigal/Bidgigal/Yuin Elder and Traditional Descendant from the Sydney (Warrane) and saltwater basin and the South Coast of NSW.
We continued down to some fig trees, sat amidst UNSW's modern campus, where Associate Professor, Bernadette (B) Hardy reflected on connecting to Country, and invited us to "seek permission" from these ancient figs – to consider both the trauma and joy these natural entities can hold space for. We were invited by walk facilitators to draw, in chalk, beneath the tree: capturing the ever-changing, dappled light on the pavement below.
Continuing on, we followed the water than would have made up the swamplands under UNSW, shifting "downstream" to the sports field, where a vast astroturf pitch, cafes, and a running track sit. Underneath these fields, lie stormwater tanks, holding vast amounts of water, but prior to this this area of the campus would flood to create a great lake. Showing us an image from the 70's of a group of students playing tug-of-war in the waters, the walk facilitators invited us to embody this image, walking onto the turf and enacting, in place, this moment in time. It was a performative and embodied way of re-living, in-situ, what had been before. A time travel of sorts.
We continued our walk down towards the UNSW Creative Lab, a basement level set of studios which, in recent years, have been prone to flooding. Due to concerns of damage, two separate systems were put in place to monitor water levels within the aquifer below the buildings foundations. These are equipped with sensors, that warn staff in the lab of flooding risks. However, these "portals" (Vanni), mean that by unscrewing the cover and reaching down and into the holes in the floor, one is able to touch the sandy aquifer and pull up sand from it. Aunty Rhonda reached down to take a handful of that sand in a moment, as B Hardy reflected, of connecting the original custodians of the land to the land after over 200 years. This immediate connection to the natural ground and Country beneath the foundations of the building, brought home the layers of time and space on which we walk and live our lives, and how physically close we are to these connections.
