Australian Wetland Cultures: Swamps and the Environmental Crisis (Environment and Society) [Illustrated] 149859994X, 9781498599948

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Australian Wetland Cultures

Environment and Society Series Editor: Douglas Vakoch As scholars examine the environmental challenges facing humanity, they increasingly recognize that solutions require a focus on the human causes and consequences of these threats, and not merely a focus on the scientific and technical issues. To meet this need, the Environment and Society series explores a broad range of topics in environmental studies from the perspectives of the social sciences and humanities. Books in this series help the reader understand contemporary environmental concerns, while offering concrete steps to address these problems. Books in this series include both monographs and edited volumes that are grounded in the realities of ecological issues identified by the natural sciences. Our authors and contributors come from disciplines including but not limited to anthropology, architecture, area studies, communication studies, economics, ethics, gender studies, geography, history, law, pedagogy, philosophy, political science, psychology, religious studies, sociology, and theology. To foster a constructive dialogue between these researchers and environmental scientists, the Environment and Society series publishes work that is relevant to those engaged in environmental studies, while also being of interest to scholars from the author’s primary discipline.

Titles in the series Australian Wetland Cultures: Swamps and the Environmental Crisis, edited by John Charles Ryan & Li Chen Motor Vehicles, the Environment, and the Human Condition: Driving to Extinction, by Hans A. Baer

Australian Wetland Cultures Swamps and the Environmental Crisis

Edited by John Charles Ryan and Li Chen

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom Copyright © 2020 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available ISBN 978-1-4985-9994-8 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4985-9995-5 (electronic) ∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Dedicated to Philip Jennings

Contents

List of Figures

ix

Acknowledgmentsxi Creditsxiii PART I: AUSTRALIAN WETLAND CULTURES

1

The Swamp Nandi Chinna

3

Racecourse Lagoon, Uralla, New South Wales John C. Ryan

5

1 Introduction to Australian Wetland Cultures: Thinking About (and with) Swamps John C. Ryan and Li Chen

7

2 Rainbow Serpent Anthropology, or Rainbow Spirit Theology, or Swamp Serpent Sacrality and Marsh Monster Maternity? Rod Giblett

33

3 Artist and Swamp: Wetlands in Australian Painting and Photography51 Rod Giblett 4 Poet and Swamp: Wetlands in Australian Verse John C. Ryan

71

5 Plant and Swamp: The Biocultural Histories of Five Australian Hydrophytes99 John C. Ryan vii

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Contents

PART II: WESTERN AUSTRALIAN WETLAND CULTURES

139

Beeliar (December 6, 2016) Nandi Chinna

141

Three Wetland Poems (Dedicated to J. P. Quinton) John Kinsella

143



Poem for the Gathering

143



The Trees alongside Bibra Drive

143



Resisting from within the Green Tent at Bibra Drive, Beeliar (for James)

144

6 Environmental Activism and Wetlands Conservation in Western Australia Philip Jennings 7 Where Fanny Balbuk Walked: Re-imagining Perth’s Wetlands John C. Ryan, Danielle Brady, and Christopher Kueh

147 163

8 The Cultural Significance of Wetlands: Perth’s Lost Swamps to the Beeliar Wetlands Danielle Brady and Jeffrey Murray

175

9 Swamp-philia and Paludal Heroism: The Passion of Wetland Conservationists in Australia and Elsewhere John C. Ryan and Li Chen

195

Power of Deluge Glen Phillips

225

10 Epilogue: Twenty-Five Years of Wetland Studies in the Humanities227 Rod Giblett Index241 Contributor Biographies

251

List of Figures

Figure 3.1 Eugene von Guérard, “Mount William and part of the Grampians in West Victoria 1865,” Oil on Cardboard, 30.3 x 40.6 cm Figure 3.2 Arthur Streeton, “Near Heidelberg 1890,” Oil on Canvas, 53.7 x 43.3 cm Figure 3.3 Arthur Boyd, “Irrigation Lake, Wimmera (1950),” Resin and Tempera on Composition Board, 81.4 x 121.9 cm Figure 3.4 Arthur Boyd, “The Waterhole, Central Australia (1954),” Enamel Paint on Composition Board, 91.2 x 122.4 cm Figure 5.1 Beaded Glasswort (Sarcocornia quinqueflora) at Sydney Olympic Park Figure 5.2 Marsilea or Nardoo Fern Leaves, Fitzroy River Floodplain in Coastal Central Queensland, Australia Figure 5.3 Australian Water Lily (Nymphaea gigantea) at Kew Gardens, England Figure 5.4 Melaleuca quinquenervia Leaves and Flowers (Woolgoolga, NSW) Figure 5.5 River Sheoak (Casuarina cunninghamiana) at Boorolong Creek, Yarrowyck, NSW, 2017 Figure 7.1 Determination of Fanny Balbuk’s Journey between Yoonderup (Heirisson Island) and Lake Kingsford Traversing What is Now the Central Business District of Perth on the Swan River (2014). Image Background Prepared by Dimitri Fotev. Track Interpolation by Jeffrey Murray ix

53 57 58 59 104 107 112 116 121

166

x

List of Figures

Figure 8.1 Plan of Town Site of Perth, Western Australia, 1838 by Colonial Draftsman, A. Hillman, and Surveyor General, John Septimus Roe Figure 8.2 (a) South-west View Across Central Perth from the Swan River at East Perth. Re-imagined View of Perth, circa 1827. (b) Contemporary View, 2014 Figure 8.3 Heritage Norfolk Island Pine Trees at Bibra Lake in 2017. (a) left: Fenced in the Roe 8 Reserve; (b) right: Lopped Figure 8.4 Non-Violent Direct Action by Roe 8 Protestors at the Beeliar Wetlands 2017

178 179 187 188

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the traditional Noongar custodians of the land where this book was conceived, researched, and written. Like many books, Australian Wetland Cultures has been long in the making. The idea for a follow-up to Rod Giblett and Hugh Webb’s landmark Western Australian Wetlands (1996) grew intially out of the project Re-imagining Perth’s Lost Wetlands (2013–14). Detailed in chapters 7 and 8, the collaboration included contributors to this volume—Danielle Brady, Nandi Chinna, Rod Giblett, Christopher Kueh, Jeffrey Murray, and John C. Ryan—as well as Dimitri Fotev of the City of Perth, Noel Nannup of Edith Cowan University (ECU), and Susanna Iuliano also then of ECU. As editors, we extend our sincere thanks to the interdisciplinary project team. We acknowledge Douglas Vakoch, editor of Lexington Books’ Environment and Society series, for his encouragement from the beginning as well as Michael Gibson and Mikayla Mislak of the same press for their support of the project. Thanks also to Nandi Chinna, Glen Phillips, and John Kinsella for contributing wetlands poetry to the volume. John C. Ryan’s work is supported by the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (HASS) at the University of New England, Australia, and the Department of English and Cultural Studies at the University of Western Australia in Perth. Li Chen thanks her PhD supervisors who encouraged her to combine contemporary environmental humanities methodologies with classic Chinese philosophies as part of her doctoral research at ECU. For chapter 3, Rod Giblett thanks Philip Jennings, Emeritus Professor of Physics and Energy Studies, for drawing his attention to Arthur Boyd’s painting “Irrigation Lake, Wimmera,” as well as to Albert Tucker’s and Albert Namatjira’s paintings and for his emails about them. He is also grateful to xi

xii

Acknowledgments

Jennings for contributing chapter 6 of this volume reflecting on more than half a century of wetland conservation in Western Australia. For chapter 8, Danielle Brady and Jeffrey Murray acknowledge funding and collaboration for the Reimagining Perth’s Lost Wetlands project from ECU, Landgate, and the City of Perth. They also wish to acknowledge the project team. Finally, this book is dedicated to Philip Jennings who has worked unwaveringly for more than three decades to protect Western Australian wetlands as natural and cultural heritage.

Credits

Eugene von Guérard’s “Mount William and part of the Grampians in West Victoria 1865” (oil on cardboard, 30.3 x 40.6 cm., National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Collier Bequest, 1955 (1562-5)) is included on the cover with the generous permission of the gallery. The complete poem “The Swamp” and excerpts from “Fong Gow” are reprinted from Swamp: Walking the Wetlands of the Swan Coastal Plain by Nandi Chinna © 2014 with the kind permission of Fremantle Press. Chapter 7 is reprinted from John C. Ryan, Danielle Brady, and Christopher Kueh, “Where Fanny Balbuk Walked: Re-imagining Perth’s Wetlands,” M/C Journal 18, no. 6 (2015): online. Chapter 8 appeared originally as Danielle Brady and Jeffrey Murray, “Reimagining the Cultural Significance of Wetlands: From Perth’s Lost Swamps to the Beeliar Wetlands,” Coolabah 24 & 25 (2018): 292–307. doi: 10.1344/ co201824&25292-307.

xiii

Part I

AUSTRALIAN WETLAND CULTURES

The Swamp Nandi Chinna

When the first rains have percolated through sand and stone, sponge and bone, and the frogs have hatched from their tombs of mud and are singing in the sedge grass; we turn to look east where the bleached limbs of melaleucas make ghosts of time; suburbs fall away and we forget our urgent imperatives; our feet sink into the lake’s edge giddy with the sky’s reflection, dugite curled up around its appetite, on the edge of winter when the earth is regurgitated as water.

3

Racecourse Lagoon, Uralla, New South Wales John C. Ryan

I can only believe that it was caused by a meteorite. —Uralla settler Morris Melvane, circa 1880 The mares, gone, the hounds, no longer      Yelping, marsupial shadows, now, sheltering    Inside sanctorum of lagoon shallows. Spring seep moistening this hollow from      Beneath—no meteorite, no heavenly origin,    Only immeasurable forbearance of waterkin. Queen Anne’s lace filigrees fringes here,      A hacked-at conifer stands stout afront wire    Fence—a strange bonsai in mullein hurled in From distant provinces. In soft swamp abdomen,      Clover leaves of nardoo float, spores round    As peas gathered, ground, baked for damper. I see myself ambling along the ice-age-old lunette      Who is he? Bucket hat slunk low, stray stitches    Blowing in tableland wind—breathing out, in. From the periphery, nothing gleams yet, even so,      The lagoon is a mirror of me, doppelgänger,    Our aqueous bodies, our bogheartbeat.

5

Chapter 1

Introduction to Australian Wetland Cultures Thinking About (and with) Swamps John C. Ryan and Li Chen

Among the most fertile and biodiverse ecosystems on the planet, “comparable to rain forests and coral reefs,” wetlands are integral to sustaining human and more-than-human lives.1 As a catchall designator for swamps, marshes, sloughs, bogs, billabongs, and other highly mutable water bodies, a wetland is “a place that has been wet enough for a long enough time to develop specially adapted vegetation and other organisms.”2 The indispensable functions performed by wetlands include filtering debris and pollutants from water, protecting human settlements from storm surges, and providing habitat for birds, animals, plants, and other organisms. Often likened to “biological supermarkets”3 in popular science writing, some wetlands generate ten times the biomass of an average wheat field.4 Indeed, the largest wetlands complex in the world, the Pantanal of Mato Grosso in Brazil, comprises 200,000 square kilometers (or 77,000 square miles), comparable in area to the entire United Kingdom (see chapter 9 of this volume). Acting as a “natural switchboard” between the La Plata and Amazon River basins, the Pantanal has a remarkable range of faunal, floral, and fungal species.5 In addition to their ecological values, as Australian Wetland Cultures argues, wetlands are cultural, social, political, artistic, and literary nexuses. The literary resonances of wetlands are expressed in the following excerpt from Australian writer Archie Weller’s short story “Cooley”: A small clump of old gnarled paperbark trees, looking as if they had been there since the earth’s creation, guarded the dark pool’s secrets carefully. Covering the ground around the pool were clumps of wild couch grass and bushes that had stunted, fleshy leaves with a salty taste. The paperbarks looked like beggars in 7

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their ragged, scruffy coats, but they held their heads up in pride. An even older body of a huge white gum dipped into the still waters.6

Weller’s narrative underscores that wetlands are intrinsically cultural environments. In a broad historical sense, hydrologist Edward Maltby observes that “great civilisations were born out of wetlands in the floodplains of the Nile, the Tigris-Euphrates and the Indus.”7 Yet, although essential to interlinked natural and cultural flourishing, wetland ecosystems remain among the most vulnerable. In Australia and beyond, they have been impacted severely by urban development, reclaimed extensively for agricultural expansion and stigmatized broadly “as places of darkness, disease and death.”8 With attention to Australian contexts and situated within the transdisciplinary environmental humanities, Australian Wetland Cultures positions wetlands as biocultural agents.9 On the whole, the volume argues that wetlands cannot—and, indeed, should not—be reduced to quasi-mechanical formations acted upon one-dimensionally by culture and in service to human telos. Instead, as “response-able nature cultures inhabited by accountable companion species,” swamplands affect human being and becoming—and human-non-human bodies and thinking—while mediating communication and interaction between living things.10 The term wetland culture postulated in this introduction, then, functions dually as a noun (denoting nature-culture assemblages) and a verb (signifying the complex culturing of the human by the swamp over time). But just how do wetlands culture humanity? What do we think about wetlands, and what do wetlands think about us? What would be the implications of swamping our thinking and learning to think with wetlands? In response to such provocations, Australian Wetland Cultures presents chapters on the integral role of wetlands in Aboriginal Australian cosmologies; in painting and photography; in prose and poetry; and in contemporary environmental activism and biocultural heritage conservation. Toward these ends, chapter 1 contextualizes Australian Wetland Cultures vis-à-vis previous humanities-based studies of wetlands in Australia and internationally. We argue for the value of a wetland turn within the environmental humanities as a countermeasure to the field’s prevailing emphasis on rivers, lakes, and oceans.11 This chapter introduces readers to the cultural agencies of swamplands through a focus on the city of Perth, Western Australia. We discuss traditional perceptions of, and interactions with, wetlands among the Noongar—the Aboriginal people of Southwest Australia—before presenting a case study of wetland cultures among the Chinese diasporic community in Perth. A chapter-by-chapter overview is provided at the end of the introduction. It has been twenty-five years since the inauguration of the wetland humanities with cultural theorist Rod Giblett’s early calls for the decolonization of swamps (see also chapter 10).12 Giblett remains a luminary in the wetland

Introduction to Australian Wetland Cultures

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humanities who has advocated transdisciplinary approaches that deconstruct the patriarchal discourses denigrating swamps and underlying their ruination. With Hugh Webb, he later edited Western Australian Wetlands, the first publication of its kind to interweave traditional Aboriginal Australian narratives of swamplands with analyses of Anglo-Australian cultural texts representing wetlands as objects of conquest.13 Their book features poems by Indigenous writers Alan Jacob, Lilla Snowball, and Joyce Yikawidi as well as stories by Mudrooroo and Sally Morgan. In the introduction “Living Water or Useless Swamps?,” Giblett and Webb contend that the ontological liminality of wetlands—as neither land nor water, and lacking stable demarcations—defies the binarism of Western thinking.14 The authors underscore that wetlands have been perceived historically as loci “of horror and the uncanny, or melancholy and the monstrous—in short, as ‘black waters’” rather than as “living black waters” that can be, at once, “life-giving and death-dealing.”15 Giblett’s critical work in the wetland humanities provides an optic for appraising recent ecopolitical events, notably the Roe 8 campaign in Perth’s southern suburbs, predicated on conflicting cultural valuations of swamps. As articulated in Never Again: Reflections on Environmental Responsibility after Roe 8, edited by Andrea Gaynor, Peter Newman, and Philip Jennings, the $550-million project centered on a highway extension of five kilometers (three miles) that would have linked the industrial precinct of Perth to coastal areas via the Beeliar Wetlands.16 Following a sizeable public protest coinciding with the 2017 transition from Liberal to Labor governments in Western Australia, Roe 8 was “suspended” but not terminated.17 AUSTRALIAN WETLAND CULTURES: CONTEXT AND THEORY The Roe 8 campaign underscores the exigency of revaluing—and reveling in—wetlands as nexuses of natural-cultural heritage in a world ever more beset by ecological degradation and anthropogenic climate change. Semantic reconfiguration, we argue, is a crucial element of the process of learning to think with—instead of in opposition to—swamplands. On this point, Maltby elaborates that “words like marsh, swamp, bog, and fen imply little more than dampness, disease, difficulty, and danger.”18 Regarded predominantly throughout Western history as wastelands, rather than “wet landscapes,” swamps have been the mute objects of reclamation.19 This pernicious neocolonialist euphemism gentrifies the ecological brutality and callousness fundamental to the conversion of wetland habitats to building or agricultural sites. Linguistic violence, cultural theorist Daniel Silva maintains, “tends to obliterate precisely the contexts that undergird meaning-making, mutual

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intelligibility, and engagement.”20 Not just “mere words,” language (metaphors, tropes, turns of phrase) with antagonistic intent—including towards more-than-humans and the ecosystems we share with them—fractures context, disrupts orientation, and impedes relationality.21 Conceptualizing language, in its broadest sense, as vital to both the generation and fragmentation of Australian wetland cultures, Australian Wetland Cultures attends to the semantics of linguistic, textual, and visual representations of swampland habitats. The contributors to the volume interrogate the construction of wetlands in fiction, non-fiction, historical documents, scientific discourses, paintings, photography, poetry, and ethnographic texts such as interviews with Western Australian conservationists. This methodology of “decolonising wetlands,” in Giblett’s terms, identifies the semantic modes (and codes) that constrain human orientation and, thus, inhibit deeper empathy and advocacy. Grounded in attention to language, this process of critique at the same time yields possibilities for new forms of relationality with the wetlands of the earth on which all lives depend. Thus developed in the Australian context, Australian Wetland Cultures constitutes a humanities-based response to the escalating impacts of climate change on wetlands around the world. Human-caused climate disturbance is known to alter the composition, function, and boundaries of paludal systems.22 The Swan Coastal Plain, in which Perth is located, contains a variety of wetland types—from large lakes to small basins, from fresh to brackish to saline water.23 Factors of geomorphology, hydrology, soils, climate, and local ecological processes determine the composition of Swan Coastal Plain wetlands. With less rain, larger water bodies turn into sumplands and damplands with higher salinities, before disappearing altogether.24 Colonial legacies of reclamation, moreover, exacerbate the decline of Perth swamplands in the present. In less than 200 years of urban and peri-urban development, around 80 percent of Swan Coastal Plain wetlands have been obliterated.25 Notwithstanding heightened international awareness of the biocultural importance of wetlands, especially as enshrined in the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance, many swamplands in Perth—Beeliar Wetlands included—still face ongoing threats.26 Another example is Lake Claremont, a landlocked coastal wetland around eight kilometers (five miles) south-west of Perth’s central business district. The shallow, ephemeral lake arose between the Quindalup and Spearwood dune systems as ground water became trapped, producing a wetland chain parallel to the coastline of the Indian Ocean.27 Typified by banksia and eucalypt species, the highly modified wetlands shelters some of the only old-growth tuart (Eucalyptus gomphocephala) communities in Perth.28 Hence, to think about (and with) swamps is also to think about (and with) their more-than-human denizens—the plants, animals, birds, insects, and other creatures that populate them.

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The cultural implications of wetlands loss in Perth are considerable, particularly for Noongar communities whose practices and beliefs depend on wetlands.29 To be certain, coastal wetland protection in Australia has historically prioritized fisheries and biodiversity. Greater emphasis, however, should be placed on Aboriginal biocultural heritage for promoting wetland conservation and mitigating against climate change while preserving traditional ecological knowledge.30 As a case in point, the Gnangara Mound north of Perth is a dunal network comprising permanent and ephemeral wetlands that have been heavily impacted by diminishing groundwater reserves. Ecological perturbations have precipitated cultural change among Aboriginal communities. Noongar people express anxiety over the continued extraction of Gnangara groundwater for pine plantations and the ongoing ruination of wetlands, creeks, lakes, and other water bodies. From a Noongar perspective, wetlands are sacred sites produced as the Waugal—the principal Creation Being or Rainbow Serpent of the Southwest region—traversed the landscape.31 In Noongar narratives, the movement of the Waugal above and below the ground creates water bodies and signifies hydrological interconnectivity (see chapter 2 of this volume). Wetland decline, moreover, has disrupted Indigenous adaptation to peri-urban expansion in Perth, as an anonymous Noongar Elder in one report explains: “We used to travel all through there [the Gnangara Pine Plantation] and we could get water from the swamps. Those swamps are all dry now.”32 The degradation of swamps precipitates the dwindling of traditional food resources: “It’s the way our ancestors lived. They were able to get jilgies [crayfish] out of the creek, turtles, everything. They were able to get the wild onion and potatoes, the wild carrot. Everything they needed they knew where it was.”33 Another respondent in the study likened a wetland to a living body: “Well it’s like your heart, isn’t it? The heart keeps you alive, keeps the spirit alive.”34 Participants, furthermore, collectively regarded ecosystemic loss as the principal factor in the decline of amphibians and, consequently, in the upsurge in mosquito-borne illnesses.35 As the comments of the Noongar interviewees reveal, wetlands are vital natural-cultural mediators that have become alarmingly devitalized in Perth and around the world. The premise elaborated in Australian Wetland Cultures involves the reenvisioning of swamps as multispecies assemblages with endemic forms of agency and telos. We derive this principle from posthumanist theorizations of vibrant matter,36 intra-action and the entanglement of matter and meaning,37 and material ecocriticism38 in conjunction with biosemiotics.39 As a noun, wetland culture denotes things, phenomena, events, places, transactions, traditions, art forms, literary expressions, philosophical modes, and other interpenetrations of swamplands and culture. As a verb, wetland culture signifies the multidimensional processes, by which swamplands instigate, provoke, generate, nurture, mediate, and sustain cultural forms over time. For

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example, when writer-activist Rebecca Solnit points to “the swampy midsection” of Thoreau’s “Walking,” she calls out the felt presence of the wetland in the substance of the text as well as the embodied immersion in swamps that instigated Thoreau’s writing of the essay back in the nineteenth century.40 The swamp cultured the text and the writer when Thoreau authored it; and cultures the text and reader when we engage with it now. Despite the biocultural resonances of wetlands and the critique of human exceptionalism central to the “posthuman turn,” however, wetland cultures remain essentially absent from the fields of ecocriticism, environmental ethnography, and the environmental humanities.41 Consider, as a case in point, the recent essay collection Downstream: Reimagining Water, emphasizing the interconnections between story, knowledge, and water but alluding to wetlands and, more specifically, Canadian muskegs, only a few times in passing.42 The scholarly volume Environmental Humanities: Voices from the Anthropocene,43 moreover, gestures toward “oceanization” as the figuration of seawater in social theory44 but makes no mention of paludalization. Other publications in the environmental humanities—Rivers of the Anthropocene is indicative—likewise exhibit swampy blindspots.45 Offering an intervention into the privileging of flowing water bodies—oceans, rivers, lakes, and others—and extending Giblett’s work over twenty-five years, Australian Wetland Cultures brings wetlands to the fore as legitimate subjects of critical inquiry and invites readers to swamp their thinking about paludal nature-cultures. WETLANDS IN NOONGAR CULTURE: PERSPECTIVES AND TRADITIONS Media coverage of Roe 8, particularly between 2015 and 2017, often included Whadjuck Noongar perspectives on Perth wetlands as milieux of biocultural heritage, longevity, and sustenance. The Noongar nation comprises fourteen dialect groups whose collective boodjar—or Country—extends from Geraldton to Esperance, Western Australia.46 The Whadjuck are the Noongar of the Perth area. Traditional Indigenous values predicated on wetlands contrasted sharply to the technocratic ideologies propounded by the Western Australian government under Liberal Premier Colin Barnett and which underpinned the Perth Freight Link scheme. In an interview on NITV (National Indigenous Television) about the campaign to save Beeliar Wetlands, Noongar Elder Noel Nannup expressed a sense of anxiety over preserving the “spiritual flow that runs through that area. [. . .] It’s really, really, really important to us not just from a point of view of saving the site but also getting a one up on our Premier who has very little sympathy for what we’re doing.”47 For a story on Vice News, moreover, Whadjuk Noongar activist Corina Patricia Abraham

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elaborated the ancestral meaning of the Beeliar Wetlands for local Indigenous communities: Our history there goes back over thousands of years. My ancestors lived and gathered on country around here, and our mythological significance to the area is through our Dreaming, our spiritual connection to country. And that’s the important thing. Bibra Lake is the resting area for our Wagyll, so that connects us to the Country as well. And we continue that through our stories and our song lines and in person. [. . .] It’s a birthing area for women, it’s a men’s area, it’s an area where many clans congregated for corroborees, it’s an area where ceremonial gatherings have occurred over thousands of years.48

Nannup and Abraham concur that swamplands are “not a construction”— neither an abstract formulation dissociated from everyday life nor the instrumentalized substratum for urban development—but “a way of being, a way of feeling, a way of being part of a true cultural narrative.”49 To be precise, although Noongar people discern between land and water, these two elements intersect as Country and through the Dreaming.50 Indeed, wetlands have been integral to Noongar culture for more than 50,000 years. While spiritually resonant, Perth’s swamps “have long provided a variety of food, medicinal and manufacturing resources.”51 Archaeological evidence from the Swan Coastal Plain indicates intensive, short-term, and seasonal occupation of wetland areas.52 Yam grounds (Dioscorea spp.) were usually situated in proximity to swamps—where people supplemented their diets with reeds, crustaceans and turtles—or to lagoons with access to plentiful fish and fowl.53 Swamps served as gathering points for communities who harvested the Typha rhizome as a vegetable staple.54 In addition to ensuring nourishment, wetlands connect closely to the Noongar Dreaming, a term invoked by Corina Abraham in the above excerpt to denote “creation stories about events within and beyond the living memories of Aboriginal people.”55 Held sacred, the water bodies of the Swan Coastal Plain are the Dreaming traces of the Waugal.56 Determining the shape of Country, the Waugal: came out of the earth. Sometimes it went kardupboodjar (under the earth) and sometimes it went yiraboodjar (over the earth) and made bilya [beeliar] (river/s), the kaart (hill/s) and ngamar (the waterhole/s).57

The contours of the Beeliar wetland system, for instance, inscribe the “twisting up and down” of the Creation Serpent south to Mandurah and north to Fremantle during the Dreaming.58 Notwithstanding its deep time inflections, Noongar cosmology is not a relict of a distant past. Perth’s Indigenous people continue to uphold knowledge of Country by following the timeworn bidi— or paths—that weave individual wetlands into a biocultural whole.59

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Noongar perceptions of, and interactions with, wetlands collide with Anglo-Australian anti-ecological values in Archie Weller’s short story “Cooley” from Going Home, excerpted at the beginning of this chapter.60 Born in Cranbrook in the Great Southern region of Western Australia, about ninety kilometers north of Albany and King George Sound, Weller has been praised by literary critics for writing in a distinctive style reflecting Aboriginal vernacular, dialogue, and themes.61 The story centers on the social inequities faced by the young protagonist Reg Cooley who actualizes his Indigenous identity most fully when liberated from postcolonial violence at waterholes gathering crayfish or trapping rabbits. Known as Yolganup, the farm’s swimming hole is set aside for the privileged children of the white landowner Packer. The Noongar appellation is possibly a variant of Yoganup, a real locality outside of Jarrahwood, WA, between Busselton and Nannup. The waterhole is: cool, with fresh yellow-brown water and there were reeds all along the bank where wild ducks, swans and long-necked grey cranes made their nests. The banks were of sticky, warm, black mud that made good mud bombs, or, plastered over white bodies, prevented sunburn. The banks were riddled with gilgie holes and the trails of big tasty marrons or turtles.62

Not only a multispecies congregation of plants, birds, reptiles, crustaceans, and humans, the waterhole is also a multisensorial arena of “sticky, warm, black mud.” These sensory cues, however, chafe roughly against images of the plaster-white bodies of the Packer children afforded access to Yolganup in contradistinction to Indigenous families who “had to walk five kilometres to the pink clay dam.”63 What is more, the Packer teenagers lacked an ethics of wetland care as they “churned the water to mud and scared away all the nesting birds from the old waterhole whose name they couldn’t even pronounce and wouldn’t know what it meant anyway.”64 Weller’s “Cooley” underscores the biocultural dislocation of Noongar people from ancestral wetlands—an intergenerational trauma that, moreover, is palpable in the narrative of Whadjuck woman Fanny Balbuk (1840–1907) (see chapter 6). In a comparably biophilic spirit, the poem-stories of Gaagudju Elder Bill Neidjie (1920–2002) of the Bunitj clan of northern Kakadu also evoke the wetland cultures of Aboriginal Australians. Neidjie’s Story about Feeling portrays wetlands—and, more precisely, perennial billabongs—as loci of spiritual, corporeal, and community nourishment. The ancestors: They used to live all over, follow each billabong. Lilies, lily-roots and ordinary lily again, big mobs and long-neck turtle and this goose.65

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Many Indigenous narratives—in Western Australia, the Northern Territory, and elsewhere—feature swamps and their dwellers. Wetlands actively culture human and more-than-human bodily habitus, engendering specific modes of eating, drinking, perceiving, cogitating, and behaving. The phenomenon of intercorporeality resonates in Neidjie’s story of the jabiru, or stork (Jabirumycteria), and brolga, or crane (Grusrubicunda), consisting of a dialogue between a father and child.66 Elsewhere in Story about Feeling, however, Neidjie communicates apprehension comparable to the ecological anxiety expressed by the Noongar of the north (Gnangara Mound) and south (Beeliar Wetlands) of Perth. Mining degrades the bodies and toxifies the blood flows of billabongs, triggering malaise among people.67 Neidjie’s poem-stories remind us that intercorporeality between humans, more-than-humans, and wetlands is more than narrative flourish or rhetorical trope. The wetland is a living presence and cultural agent in Aboriginal Australian cosmologies (see also chapter 2). PERTH WETLAND CULTURES AND THE CHINESE DIASPORA: A CASE STUDY Australian wetland cultures also exemplify the dialogical relationship between swamp nature and the global diaspora. In this section, we offer a case study of Chinese market gardening to enlarge understanding of human adaptation and environmental change. In nineteenth-century Australian life, vegetable gardening served as an important means of livelihood for migrants and settlers.68 Although seen initially as an adjunct to mining, market gardening became an integral part of the agricultural economy due to the increasing demand for fresh products. Chinese market gardening highlights the mobilities of southern Chinese migrants who brought traditional horticultural techniques and knowledge with them. The practice shows how the mobilization of their agricultural knowledge across time and space has been influenced by traditional Chinese perceptions of wetland nature-cultures and the environment more generally. These views, we suggest, become more significant in light of the continuing loss of wetlands in Australia and internationally. Indeed, historical studies of Chinese diaspora in Perth frame horticultural practices in polarized terms of either opposition to wetlands or mutuality with them.69 Today, however, backyard gardening has become widespread among Chinese diasporans. Many growers are freed from earning a living from vegetables and, what is more, have no prior gardening experience. Their principal reasons for cultivating gardens include a concern for personal and environmental health as well as a desire to maintain a sense of their home country. Through experiments in ecological and technical adaptation, they

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begin to appreciate their surroundings and attribute the loss of habitats, such as wetlands, to suburbanization, fertilizer overuse, and groundwater scarcity due to irrigation demands.70 It is widely acknowledged by scholars that Chinese market gardeners have contributed to agricultural and economic development in Western Australia.71 Research into Chinese gardening practices in Australia emphasizes the use of introduced plant species, cultural adaptation to natural conditions, the application of traditional technologies, the development of irrigation skills, and the relationship between gardening and local ecological limits. Jan Ryan and Ann Atkinson discuss the history of early Chinese settlement in WA and Chinese migrant gardeners’ contributions to local agriculture. By 1891, many Chinese gardeners in Perth and Fremantle concentrated their activities around the Swan River as well as local lakes and drainage systems. Gardens boomed in southern areas such as “Lake Henderson, Lake Poulett (First Swamp), Bibra Lake, and the South Perth, Mount Eliza, and Peninsular (Maylands) foreshores, extending to the upper reaches of the Swan River.”72 Chinese gardeners moved to the southern reaches of the fledgling city not only to meet the demand for fresh produce but also because of favorable natural conditions including moderate weather, fertile soil, abundant waterways, and drainage suitable for traditional Chinese farming methods.73 Atkinson summarizes the dominant features of Chinese market gardening at the time as small scale, conducted on leased land, requiring little investment, and labor intensive with “high rate of owner/operator management and low level of division of labour.”74 Frost, furthermore, argues that it is not appropriate to consider Chinese gardening as “an intact import” from China because migrants “created a Chinese-Australian culture [and] a Chinese-Australian style of farming.”75 The history of Chinese gardening represents an important phase of land use, particularly as it involved metropolitan wetlands.76 As the previous section explained, Perth wetlands have been essential to Aboriginal communities, who have camped on swamp margins, gathered plant foods, hunted wildlife, and procured water.77 In the mostly dry and sandy coastal environment of Perth, the wetlands also provided amenable conditions for vegetable gardening. Inheriting a sustainable pragmatism from Confucianism, early Chinese market gardeners aimed to generate a harmonious human-nature interchange in their host land, while also matching the demands of economic growth to small-scale production. For instance, farming according to the lunar calendar, with its references to climatic conditions and prescription of agricultural activities, was one of the reasons for their success in vegetable cultivation.78 The dominant Confucian ethic stresses an anthropocentric view of nature as a resource to be reshaped by human desire.79 The methods of gardeners, however, often corresponded with Chinese traditional Taoist principles of feng shui that position nature as a vitalizing force. The basic

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focus of feng shui is to accumulate qi, or “the vital energy that is believed to support all life,” through the elements of wind and water.80 Feng shui is the Chinese science of elements, landforms, and the arts aimed at maintaining an equitable and balanced relationship between humans and nature. Employing principles of feng shui in gardening, early Chinese settlers facilitated a deep sense of local inhabitation through practices of livelihood predicated, in part, on thinking with wetlands. Western Australian poet Nandi Chinna provides a portrait of an early Chinese gardener in Perth in her poem “Fong Gow,” which begins: At night I hear a horse galloping through the garden. Panic needles my ribs. I imagine tended rows Trampled to pieces under its hooves. When I run onto the allotment the vegetables are intact, mutely squatting in the swampy turf; the horse is a shadow dozing in its yard.81

In the second half of the nineteenth century, drawn from their homeland as “coolies,” or cheap laborers, Chinese gardeners appeared in Australian history as a faceless and nameless contingent in a highly Anglo-centric nation. The dominant impression of Chinese market gardeners was as “little men crossing the bridge on the willow-patterned plates.”82 Anglo-European settlers drained the wetlands for market gardens. From the late 1890s to the interwar years, Chinese gardeners rented land on the city outskirts for cultivation, especially along the foreshores of the Swan River, and on the margins of swamps and lakes.83 The small number of Chinese were regarded as “exceptionally good cultivators of the land.”84 They honed their agricultural abilities on the edges of these wetlands. Most indentured Chinese laborers, however, arrived with little possessions, “scant understanding of the language or customs of their new land, totally isolated from family and friends, and lacking the mutual support networks available to many of their countrymen who settled in the eastern colonies.”85 Chinna continues: In the other country my wife be planting rice, the daughter I begat but have never seen, strapped to her back. Every five years a visit home and another child is introduced; this is your daughter.86

In the long and bitter years, early Chinese gardeners struggled with nostalgia under poor material and political conditions. A famous heritage site of Chinese market gardening is located in North Perth and bears the Europeanized

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name Robertson Park. The place was a seasonal site for Noongar people, but was drained for market gardens in 1829 by some of the first European settlers in the Swan River Colony. The wetland was then leased to Chinese gardeners from the 1800s until the mid-1900s.87 The gardeners built stables and two houses “at the corner of Randell and Palmerston Streets.”88 After the garden fell into disuse, with the decline of Chinese labor in Perth, the land was turned into a grassy parkland. In the present urban park and heritage site, the gardener Lee Hop’s cottage remains “a representative example of a simple Federation Bungalow style cottage, restored and put to an adaptive re-use.”89 Despite the lack of early Western Australian Chinese in previous historians’ writings, Chinna’s poem is a sensitive sketch of early Chinese gardeners’ lives: Forty five summers; I tear strips of bark to shade seedlings, shoulder yoke and watering cans; the sun bakes the earth into a black scab, burning the last traces of Quangdong from the soles of my feet. My long queue is grey. All night a horse gallops through the field of my body, chasing my blood through arteries and organs, through the bind of two countries, never arriving home.90

The poem echoes Jan Ryan’s description of how Chinese gardeners modified the wetland along the South Perth foreshore: “the land was crisscrossed with hand-dug canals, and pitted with wells. Vegetables, varying seasonally, made a changing kaleidoscope of color, their organized rows contrasting starkly with the unruly bamboo which flanked the gardens.”91 Chinna’s verses preserve memories of Chinese vegetable gardens, diasporic adaptation of local environment, and, saliently, the pull between homeland and hostland. Although they helped to reclaim Perth’s wetlands, nineteenth-century Chinese diasporans also had to learn how to adjust to, and live with, them. Guided by the increasing concerns about environmental protection, contemporary Chinese diasporic growers have shifted from a focus on market demands to a Taoist view of human-nature integration. The Chinese amateur vegetable growers seldom follow in the footsteps of their ancestors in making a living from market gardening. Yet, their attachment to the land has not changed for centuries and their practice of backyard gardening incorporates traditional beliefs and methods. In Chinese traditional culture, people value

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farmers, who rank “below the scholar and before the merchant or artisan.”92 Throughout Chinese history, agriculture has been recognized as the economic lifeblood of the nation. This understanding is also relevant to the development of overseas Chinese communities. In fact, backyard gardening has become an integral part of their lives in Perth. Working the land on a small scale results in an edible landscape infused with memories of the homeland.93 In their backyards, Chinese people become connected to the distant landscapes of their birth country through physical, immersive, and multisensorial participation in gardening with soil, air, weather, and seasons. Gradually, more young educated Chinese diasporans emphasize a self-conception derived from traditional Chinese understandings of nature.94 Head and Muir argue that the backyard is “our window onto contemporary Australian interactions with nature.”95 Cultivating plants provides diasporans “balance and a sense of perspective about life.”96 In addition to social and ecological adaptation, an awareness of the local environment deepens engagement with places through practices such as rainwater storage for irrigation, although some of their views are more folkloric and might not conform to scientific evidence.97 For instance, some gardeners add organic chicken manure to their backyard gardens, but this soil amendment is considered a major source of land and water pollution.98 Incorporating Confucian views of sustainable agriculture, the Taoist belief in an “all-embracing nature”99 among Chinese immigrants in Perth reflects the notion that humans and more-than-humans “on which they depend for a livelihood” should be considered part of a common assemblage—a world of multispecies agents, including the wetlands themselves.100 Encompassing the livelihoods of Noongar people, early European settlers and early Chinese market gardeners, the history of Perth shows the imprints of human modification and development. Notwithstanding differing traditions and cultures, as well as histories of wetlands reclamation, new practices of gathering and growing might lead the way forward. All people—both diasporan and nondiasporan—share in “a rural subsistence background in which humans are embedded in their environment through physical labour.”101 CONTEMPORARY WETLAND CULTURES: OVERVIEW OF CHAPTERS Part I of Australian Wetland Cultures presents cultural, artistic, and philosophical perspectives on Australian wetlands. Chapter 2, “Rainbow Serpent Anthropology, or Rainbow Spirit Theology, or Swamp Serpent Sacrality and Marsh Monster Maternity?,” by Rod Giblett investigates the positive association between wetlands and vital, life-giving, death-dealing creatures, as made

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in and by Australian Aboriginal cultures. In his chapter, Giblett discusses this creature and its manifestations and implications in, and beyond, anthropology and theology. Giblett’s analysis provides context about Indigenous relationships to wetlands—of the past and present—that are crucial to the elaboration in subsequent chapters of the view of swamps as both natural and cultural milieux. Chapter 3, “Artist and Swamp: Wetlands in Australian Painting and Photography,” also by Giblett, maintains that swamps have been subjected to the conventions of the European landscape aesthetic in Australian painting and photography. The sublime and the picturesque were pressed into service to portray Australian wetlandscapes by early colonial painters, such as Eugene von Guérard. Modernist painters, including Arthur Boyd and Albert Tucker, invoked the counter-aesthetic of the uncanny to portray Australian wetlandscapes. Aboriginal painters, such as Albert Namatjira and Shane Pickett, depict wetlands as living black waters. The chapter delineates these differing and competing renderings. Chapter 4, “Poet and Swamp: Wetlands in Australian Verse,” by John C. Ryan develops around the contention that swamps in Australian poetry run the full gamut—from objects of horror and disgust to scenes of delight and euphoria. The chapter considers the representation of wetlands in Australian poetry including Henry Kendall (1839–82), Harley Matthews (1889–1968), Judith Wright (1915–2000), and contemporary authors Samuel Wagan Watson and John Kinsella. Ryan’s analysis looks toward ecopoetic practices, such as Watson’s and Kinsella’s, that reassert the biocultural value of swamps. Chapter 5 “Plant and Swamp: The Biocultural Histories of Five Australian Hydrophytes,” also by Ryan, argues that the biocultural value of hydrophytes (water-loving plants) in Australia has received much less consideration than their ecological functionality. The chapter examines how hydrophytic flora has been essential to Aboriginal Australian societies as food, fiber, medicines, and totems. During the nineteenth century, hydrophytes also provoked the botanical imaginations of Anglo-European artists, writers, naturalists, travelers, and settlers. In the era of global biodiversity degradation known increasingly as the Anthropocene, aquatic plants inspire Australian culture as embodiments of adaptability and sustainability. Part II shifts toward Western Australian contexts through a focus on Perth. Chapter 6, “Environmental Activism and Wetlands Conservation in Western Australia,” by Philip Jennings begins with the observation that, like many cities in Australia, Perth was founded on wetlands that have significantly influenced its history and culture. With a settlement agenda in mind, early cartographers erased the city’s wetlands from maps. Since the colonial era, inner-Perth’s swamps have been extensively reclaimed for urbanization. Jennings has been a leader in wetlands conservation for more than thirty years as the founding President of the Wetlands Conservation Society in Western

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Australia. His chapter for Australian Wetland Cultures updates his contribution to Western Australian Wetlands.102 Jennings looks back at the past triumphs and failures—and at current struggles—and considers the future challenges for wetlands conservation. He suggests that a deeper appreciation of swamps as biocultural agents is key to ensuring their protection and enhancing broader public understanding of their values. Chapter 7, “Where Fanny Balbuk Walked: Re-imagining Perth’s Wetlands,” by John C. Ryan, Danielle Brady, and Christopher Kueh gives an overview of an innovative wetlands heritage conservation project. In 2014, an interdisciplinary team in Perth developed a digital visualization process to re-imagine the city prior to European colonization. Depicting the city’s topography, hydrology, and vegetation, the images became the centerpiece of an exhibition titled “Reimagining Perth’s Lost Wetlands.” The display included the narrative of Fanny Balbuk, a Whadjuck Noongar woman, who voiced her indignation over the appropriation of her boodjar by flouting property lines and walking through private residences to reach places of biocultural importance, including the swamps of present-day West Perth. Beginning with Balbuk’s story and the digital tracing of her route through the colonial-era urban landscape, chapter 6 discusses the project in the context of contemporary pressures on the city’s extant wetlands. The authors suggest that the re-imagining of Perth through historically, culturally, and geographically grounded digital visualization methods can inspire the conservation of its swampy heritage. Chapter 8, “The Cultural Significance of Wetlands: From Perth’s Lost Swamps to the Beeliar Wetlands,” by Danielle Brady and Jeffrey Murray begins by characterizing the history of Perth as a function of the incremental loss of its wetlands. While disputes about conservation are often framed narrowly in terms of ecological values, wetlands remain places of cultural significance too. The extensive swamps of central Perth—food gathering and meeting places for Noongar people—are now expunged from the landscape. Urban dwellers of Perth are largely unaware that the seasonal water bodies of the city were the larders, gardens, hideouts, dumps, and playgrounds of previous generations: both Noongar and Settler. The loss of social memory of these lost natural-cultural nexuses continues to result in the depiction of wetlands as aberrant. The loss, moreover, influences Perth’s at times unbridled development as well as its inhabitants’ sense of place. Re-imagining the past enables the forging of connections to the remaining wetlands in the wider metropolitan area. Brady and Murray argue that the campaign to protect the Beeliar system in southern Perth as a natural-cultural site illustrates the changing value of wetlands through the activation of social memory. Chapter 9, “Swamp-philia and Paludal Heroism: The Passion of Wetland Conservationists in Australia and Elsewhere,” by John C. Ryan and Li Chen focuses on interviews with Western Australian wetland conservationist and

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local naturalist, David James, President of the Friends of Forrestdale in Perth. For more than thirty years, David has been the champion and unsung hero of wetland conservation in the Forrestdale area where he has lived for more than sixty years. Ryan and Chen characterize James as a Thoreauvian hero of swamps. Their analysis draws from audio and video interviews Ryan conducted with James since 2009 and delineates an oral history-based approach to documenting environmental heroism. The authors argue that James’story is not an isolated example of a life spent devoted to wetland conservation but, instead, connects to other paludal heroes passionately committed to swamps around the world. Chapter 10, “Epilogue: Twenty-Five Years of Wetland Studies in the Humanities,” by Rod Giblett offers a reflection on the author’s central role in establishing wetland criticism within the environmental humanities. In the epilogue, Giblett asks: How far has Western society come in valuing wetlands as cultural agents in their own right?

CONCLUSION: EMBRACING WETLAND NATURE-CULTURES Although essential to all life, wetlands have been degraded linguistically and corporeally—and have been deprived of a life of their own in technocratic discourses. They are also distressingly absent from the very fields of research predicated on the critique the nature-culture binary, particularly, ecocriticism, multispecies ethnography, and the environmental humanities. Through a spectrum of textual, visual, and ethnographic content, Australian Wetland Cultures postulates the leading term wetland culture—dually as a noun and a verb—and advocates a swampy turn within the humanities. Thinking about wetlands also involves learning to think with wetlands, allowing their inundated (and inundating) form of intelligence to pervade our epistemological, ontological, relational, bodily, and semantic modes. Digesting, recirculating, restoring, and reconstituting, therefore, become more than postmodern figurations of social embeddedness. In contrast, wetland processes are materialsemiotic expressions of interconnectedness between human-non-human beings. On this basis, we can begin to imagine possibilities for the wetland cultures of the future in Australia and elsewhere. NOTES 1. EPA, 2018, “Why Are Wetlands Important?,” United States Environmental Protection Agency, para. 2, accessed May 27, 2019, https​://ww​w.epa​.gov/​wetla​nds/w​ hy-ar​e-wet​lands​-impo​rtant​.

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2. Edward Maltby, Waterlogged Wealth: Why Waste the World’s Wet Places? (London: Earthscan, 2009), 28. 3. EPA, “Why Are Wetlands Important?,” para. 3. 4. Maltby, Waterlogged Wealth, 9. 5. F.D. Por, The Pantanal of Mato Grosso (Brazil): World’s Largest Wetlands (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995), 1–2. 6. Archie Weller, Going Home: Stories (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1986), 190. 7. Maltby, Waterlogged Wealth, 10. 8. Rod Giblett and Hugh Webb, “Living Water of Useless Swamps?,” in Western Australian Wetlands: The Kimberley and South-West, ed. Rod Giblett and Hugh Webb (Perth, WA: Black Swan Press and Wetlands Conservation Society, 1996), 1. 9. Robert S. Emmett and David E. Nye, The Environmental Humanities: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2017); Rod Giblett, Environmental Humanities and Theologies: Ecoculture, Literature and the Bible (London: Routledge, 2018); Serpil Oppermann and and Serenella Iovino, eds., Environmental Humanities: Voices from the Anthropocene (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017). 10. Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016), 125. 11. See, for example, Robyn Bartel, Louise Noble, Jacqueline Williams, and Stephen Harris, eds., Water Policy, Imagination and Innovation: Interdisciplinary Approaches (London: Routledge, 2018). 12. Rod Giblett, “Cities and Swamp Settling: Decolonizing Wetlands,” Span: Journal of the South Pacific Association of Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies 36, no. 1 (1993): 285–301; “Kings in Kimberley Watercourses: Sadism and Pastoralism,” Span: Journal of the South Pacific Association of Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies 36, no. 2 (1993): 541–59. 13. Rod Giblett and Hugh Webb, eds., Western Australian Wetlands: The Kimberley and South-West (Perth, WA: Black Swan Press and Wetlands Conservation Society, 1996). 14. Giblett and Webb, “Living Water.” 15. Ibid., 1. 16. Andrea Gaynor, Peter Newman, and Philip Jennings, eds., Never Again: Reflections on Environmental Responsibility After Roe 8 (Crawley, WA: University of Western Australia Publishing, 2017). 17. Main Roads, “Roe Highway Extension – Roe 8,” 2018, accessed May 27, 2019, https​://pr​oject​.main​roads​.wa.g​ov.au​/roe8​/page​s/def​ault.​aspx.​ 18. Maltby, Waterlogged Wealth, 9. 19. Giblett and Webb, “Living Water,” 1. 20. Daniel Silva, “Investigating Violence in Language: An Introduction,” in Language and Violence: Pragmatic Perspectives, ed. Daniel Silva (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2017), 1. 21. Philosopher Anthony Weston critiques Eric Katz’s use of the term swamp as a denigrative metaphor for “subjective realism” and defends the intrinsic value of wetlands as “enormously complex and creative ecosystems—think of the Everglades—and they are places that we can make our way around quite well if we are sufficiently careful, respectful of their powers, and appropriately equipped.” See

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Anthony Weston, “Unfair to Swamps: A Reply to Katz,” in Environmental Pragmatism, ed. Andrew Light and Eric Katz (London: Routledge, 1996), 321. 22. Neil Saintilan, Kerrylee Rogers, Jeffrey Kelleway, Emilie-Jane Ens, and D. Sloane, “Climate Change Impacts on the Coastal Wetlands of Australia,” Wetlands: The Journal of the Society of Wetland Scientists (2018): 1–10 [1], doi: 10.1007/ s1315701810167. 23. Christine Semeniuk and Vic Semeniuk, “The Response of Basin Wetlands to Climate Changes: A Review of Case Studies from the Swan Coastal Plain, Southwestern Australia,” Hydrobiologia 708, no. 1 (2013): 45–67 [51], doi: 10.1007/ s10750-012-1161-6. 24. Ibid., 64–65. 25. Greg Simpson and David Newsome, “Environmental History of an Urban Wetland: From Degraded Colonial Resource to Nature Conservation Area,” Geography and Environment 4, no. 1 (2017): 1–18 [1], doi: 10.1002/geo2.30. 26. Ramsar Convention Secretariat, “The Global Wetland Outlook,” 2014, accessed May 27, 2019, https​://ww​w.glo​bal-w​etlan​d-out​look.​ramsa​r.org​. 27. Simpson and Newsome, “Environmental History,” 2. 28. Ibid., 3. 29. Saintilan et al., “Climate Change Impacts,” 2. 30. Ibid., 8. 31. Edward McDonald, Bryn Coldrick, and Will Christensen, “The Green Frog and Desalination: A Nyungar Metaphor for the (Mis-)Management of Water Resources, Swan Coastal Plain, Western Australia,” Oceania 78, no. 1 (2008): 62–75 [64, 66]. 32. Ibid., 69. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid., 71. 36. Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010). 37. Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 33. 38. Serenella Iovino and Serpil Oppermann, eds., Material Ecocriticism (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2014). 39. Wendy Wheeler, Expecting the Earth: Life, Culture, Biosemiotics (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2016). 40. Rebecca Solnit, Savage Dreams: A Journey into the Landscape Wars of the American West (New York: Penguin Random House, 1994), 111. 41. Bruce Clarke, “The Nonhuman,” in The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Posthuman, ed. Bruce Clarke and Manuela Rossini (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2017). 42. Dorothy Christian and Rita Wong, eds., Downstream: Reimagining Water (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2017). 43. Oppermann and Iovino, Environmental Humanities. 44. Stefan Helmreich, “Nature/Culture/Seawater: Theory Machines, Anthropology, Oceanization,” in Environmental Humanities: Voices from the Anthropocene, ed. Serpil Oppermann and Serenella Iovino (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), 219.

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45. Jason Kelly, Philip Scarpino, Helen Berry, James Syvitski, and Michel Meybech, eds., Rivers of the Anthropocene (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2018). 46. Francesca Robertson, Noel Nannup, Glen Stasiuk, and Stephen Hopper, Nyoongar Boodja Koomba Bardip Kooratan = Nyoongar Land Long Story Short: A History of Ancient Nyoongar Land and People (Batchelor, NT: Batchelor Institute Press, 2017). 47. Tara Callinan and Noel Nannup, “Noongar Traditional Owners Will Continue Their Legal Action Against the Row 8 Highway Extension through Perth’s Billiard [sic] Wetlands,” NITV News, aired December 22, Sydney: SBS TV, 2017, seconds 35–53. 48. Katherine Gillespie, “Classic Perth: Let’s Build a Highway Over a 5,000-YearOld Sacred Site,” Vice, May 1, 2017, paras. 11 and 13, accessed May 27, 2019, https​ ://ww​w.vic​e.com​/en_a​u/art​icle/​nz5wd​q/cla​ssic-​perth​-lets​-buil​d-a-h​ighwa​y-ove​r-a-5​ 000-y​ear-o​ld-sa​cred-​site.​ 49. Hugh Webb, “Aboriginal Country: Not a Construction, a Way of Being,” in Western Australian Wetlands: The Kimberley and South-West, ed. Rod Giblett and Hugh Webb (Perth, WA: Black Swan Press and Wetlands Conservation Society, 1996), 74; emphasis in original. 50. Ibid., 69. 51. Len Collard and Clint Bracknell, “Beeliar Boodjar: An Introduction to Aboriginal History in the City of Cockburn, Western Australia,” Australian Aboriginal Studies 1 (2012): 86–91 [88]. 52. Sylvia J. Hallam, “Plant Usage and Management in Southwest Australian Aboriginal Societies,” in Foraging and Farming: The Evolution of Plant Exploitation, ed. D.R. Harris and G.C. Hillman (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 147. 53. Ibid., 139–40. 54. Ibid., 143. 55. Collard and Bracknell, “Beeliar Boodjar,” 87. 56. Laura Stocker, Leonard Collard, and Angela Rooney, “Aboriginal World Views and Colonisation: Implications for Coastal Sustainability,” Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability 21, no. 7 (2016): 844–65 [848], doi: 10.1080/13549839.2015.1036414. 57. Traditional Owner Leonard Collard qtd. in Collard and Bracknell, “Beeliar Boodjar,” 87. 58. Ibid., 87. 59. Ibid., 88. 60. Weller, Going Home, 136–213. 61. Adam Shoemaker, Black Words, White Page: Aboriginal Literature 1929– 1988, 3rd edn. (Canberra: ANU E-Press, 2004), 160–61. 62. Weller, Going Home, 139. 63. Ibid. 64. Ibid. 65. Bill Neidjie, Story About Feeling, ed. Keith Taylor (Broome, WA: Magabala Books, 1989), 50. 66. Ibid., 133.

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67. Ibid., 157–58. 68. Jean Gittins, The Diggers from China: The Story of Chinese on the Goldfields (Melbourne: Quartet Books Australia, 1981); Cathie R. May, Topsawyers: The Chinese in Cairns 1870–1920 (Townsville, Qld: James Cook University, 1984); Barry McGowan, “Chinese Market Gardens in Southern and Western New South Wales,” Australian Humanities Review 36 (2005), accessed May 28, 2019, http:​//aus​ trali​anhum​aniti​esrev​iew.o​rg/20​05/07​/01/c​hines​e-mar​ket-g​arden​s-in-​south​ern-a​nd-we​ stern​-new-​south​-wale​s/; Barry McGowan, “Ringbarkers and Market Gardeners: A Comparison of the Rural Chinese of New South Wales and California,” Chinese America: History and Perspectives 31, no. 16 (2006): 31–46. 69. See, for example, Rod Giblett, Postmodern Wetlands: Culture, History, Ecology (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996); Jan Ryan, Ancestors: Chinese in Colonial Australia (South Fremantle, WA: Fremantle Arts Center Press, 1995). 70. Li Chen, “Chinese Diaspora and Western Australian Nature (Perth Region): A Study of Material Engagement with the Natural World in Diasporic Culture” (PhD diss., Edith Cowan University, 2017). 71. Ann Atkinson, “Chinese Labour and Capital in Western Australia, 1847–1947” (PhD diss., Murdoch University, 1991); Eric Rolls, Citizens: Flowers and the Wide Sea, vol. 2 (St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 1996); Ryan, Ancestors. 72. Ryan, Ancestors, 77. 73. Ryan, Ancestors, 61. 74. Atkinson, “Chinese Labour,” 135. 75. Warwick Frost, “Migrants and Technological Transfer: Chinese Farming in Australia, 1850–1920,” Australian Economic History Review 42, no. 2 (2002): 113–31 [128], doi: 10.1111/1467-8446.t01-1-00007. 76. Oline Richards, O, “Chinese Market Gardening: A Western Australian Postscript,” Australian Garden History 13, no. 1 (2001): 19–21 [21]. 77. Ibid., 19. 78. Gittins, The Diggers from China, 114. 79. Judith Shapiro, Mao’s War Against Nature: Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 212–13. 80. Wann-Yih Wu, Oliver H.M. Yau, and Hsiao-Yun Lu, “FengShui Principles in Residential Housing Selection,” Psychology and Marketing 29, no. 7 (2012): 502–18 [502], doi: 10.1002/mar.20538. 81. Nandi Chinna, Swamp: Walking the Wetlands of the Swan Coastal Plain (Perth, WA: Fremantle Press, 2014), 37, lines 1–7. 82. Peter Charles Gibson, “Dark Dragon Ridge: Chinese People in Wollongong, 1901–39” (MA thesis, University of Wollongong, 2014), 45. 83. Richards, “Chinese Market Gardening,” 19. 84. Gittins, The Diggers from China, 113. 85. Ryan, Ancestors, 40. 86. Chinna, Swamp, 37, lines 8–11, emphasis original. 87. Claise Brook Catchment Group, “Robertson Park Wetland,” Claise Brook Catchment Group, 2015, accessed May 28, 2019, http:​//www​.cbcg​.org.​au/pr​oject​ s_rob​ertso​n.htm​l.

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88. Heritage Council of Western Australia, Register of Heritage Places – Assessment Documentation: Robertson Park and Archaeological Sites (Perth, WA: Heritage Council of WA, 2007), sect. “History,” accessed May 28, 2019, http:​//inh​erit.​state​ herit​age.w​a.gov​.au/A​dmin/​api/f​i le/6​594e9​58-66​e4-8a​05-b9​bb-43​c3301​48fbd​. 89. Ibid. 90. Chinna, Swamp, 37, lines12–23. 91. Ryan, Ancestors, 11. 92. Rolls, Citizens, 63. 93. Chen, “Chinese Diaspora,” 204. 94. Ibid., 223. 95. Lesley Head and Pat Muir, Backyard: Nature and Culture in Suburban Australia (Wollongong, NSW: University of Wollongong Press, 2007), 155. 96. Susan Davis Price and John Gregor, Growing Home: Stories of Ethnic Gardening (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), x. 97. Chen, “Chinese Diaspora,” 198–99. 98. Dan Nosowitz, “Solving One of Maryland’s Biggest Problems: Chicken Poop,” Modern Farmer, April 2, 2015, accessed May 21, 2019, https​://mo​dernf​armer​ .com/​2015/​04/so​lving​-one-​of-ma​rylan​ds-bi​ggest​-prob​lems-​chick​en-po​op/. 99. Wei-Ming Tu, “The Continuity of Being: Chinese Visions of Nature,” in Nature in Asian Traditions of Thought: Essays in Environmental Philosophy, ed. J. Baird Callicott and Roger T. Ames (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1989), 68. 100. Tim Ingold, The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill (New York: Routledge, 2000), 87. 101. Head and Muir, Backyard, 103. 102. Philip Jennings, “A Decade of Wetland Conservation,” in Western Australian Wetlands: The Kimberley and South-West, ed. Rod Giblett and Hugh Webb (Perth, WA: Black Swan Press/Wetlands Conservation Society, 1996).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Atkinson, Ann. “Chinese Labour and Capital in Western Australia, 1847–1947.” PhD diss., Murdoch University, 1991. Barad, Karen. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007. Bartel, Robyn, Louise Noble, Jacqueline Williams, and Stephen Harris, eds. Water Policy, Imagination and Innovation: Interdisciplinary Approaches. London: Routledge, 2018. Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010. Callinan, Tara, and Noel Nannup. “Noongar Traditional Owners Will Continue Their Legal Action Against the Row 8 Highway Extension through Perth’s Billiard [sic] Wetlands.” NITV News. Aired December 22. Sydney: SBS TV, 2017.

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Chen, Li. “Chinese Diaspora and Western Australian Nature (Perth Region): A Study of Material Engagement with the Natural World in Diasporic Culture.” PhD diss., Edith Cowan University, 2017. Chinna, Nandi. Swamp: Walking the Wetlands of the Swan Coastal Plain. Perth, WA: Fremantle Press, 2014. Christian, Dorothy, and Rita Wong, eds. Downstream: Reimagining Water. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2017. Claise Brook Catchment Group. “Robertson Park Wetland.” Claise Brook Catchment Group. 2015. Accessed May 28, 2019. http:​//www​.cbcg​.org.​au/pr​oject​s_rob​ertso​ n.htm​l. Clarke, Bruce. “The Nonhuman.” In The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Posthuman, edited by Bruce Clarke and Manuela Rossini, 141–52. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Collard, Len, and Clint Bracknell. “Beeliar Boodjar: An Introduction to Aboriginal History in the City of Cockburn, Western Australia.” Australian Aboriginal Studies 1 (2012): 86–91. Emmett, Robert S., and David E. Nye. The Environmental Humanities: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2017. EPA. 2018. “Why Are Wetlands Important?” United States Environmental Protection Agency. Accessed May 27, 2019. https​://ww​w.epa​.gov/​wetla​nds/w​hy-ar​e-wet​ lands​-impo​rtant​. Frost, Warwick. “Migrants and Technological Transfer: Chinese Farming in Australia, 1850–1920.” Australian Economic History Review 42, no. 2 (2002): 113–31. doi: 10.1111/1467-8446.t01-1-00007. Gaynor, Andrea, Peter Newman, and Philip Jennings, eds. Never Again: Reflections on Environmental Responsibility After Roe 8. Crawley, WA: University of Western Australia Publishing, 2017. Giblett, Rod. “Cities and Swamp Settling: Decolonizing Wetlands.” Span: Journal of the South Pacific Association of Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies 36, no. 1 (1993a): 285–301. ———. “Kings in Kimberley Watercourses: Sadism and Pastoralism.” Span: Journal of the South Pacific Association of Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies 36, no. 2 (1993b): 541–59. ———. Postmodern Wetlands: Culture, History, Ecology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996. ———. Environmental Humanities and Theologies: Ecoculture, Literature and the Bible. London: Routledge, 2018. Giblett, Rod, and Hugh Webb. “Living Water of Useless Swamps?” In Western Australian Wetlands: The Kimberley and South-West, edited by Rod Giblett and Hugh Webb, 1–9. Perth, WA: Black Swan Press and Wetlands Conservation Society, 1996. ———., eds. Western Australian Wetlands: The Kimberley and South-West. Perth, WA: Black Swan Press and Wetlands Conservation Society, 1996. Gibson, Peter Charles. “Dark Dragon Ridge: Chinese People in Wollongong, 1901– 39.” MA thesis, University of Wollongong, 2014. Gillespie, Katherine. “Classic Perth: Let’s Build a Highway Over a 5,000-Year-Old Sacred Site.” Vice, May 1, 2017. Accessed May 27, 2019. https​://ww​w.vic​e.com​/

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en_a​u/art​icle/​nz5wd​q/cla​ssic-​perth​-lets​-buil​d-a-h​ighwa​y-ove​r-a-5​000-y​ear-o​ld-sa​ cred-​site.​ Gittins, Jean. The Diggers from China: The Story of Chinese on the Goldfields. Melbourne: Quartet Books Australia, 1981. Hallam, Sylvia J. “Plant Usage and Management in Southwest Australian Aboriginal Societies.” In Foraging and Farming: The Evolution of Plant Exploitation, edited by D.R. Harris and G.C. Hillman, 136–51. London: Unwin Hyman, 1989. Haraway, Donna. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016. Head, Lesley, and Pat Muir. Backyard: Nature and Culture in Suburban Australia. Wollongong, NSW: University of Wollongong Press, 2007. Helmreich, Stefan. “Nature/Culture/Seawater: Theory Machines, Anthropology, Oceanization.” In Environmental Humanities: Voices from the Anthropocene, edited by Serpil Oppermann and Serenella Iovino, 217–35. London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017. Heritage Council of Western Australia. Register of Heritage Places – Assessment Documentation: Robertson Park and Archaeological Sites. Perth, WA: Heritage Council of WA, 2007. Accessed May 28, 2019.​http:​//inh​erit.​state​herit​age.w​a.gov​ .au/A​dmin/​api/f​i le/6​594e9​58-66​e4-8a​05-b9​bb-43​c3301​48fbd​. Ingold, Tim. The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. New York: Routledge, 2000. Iovino, Serenella, and Serpil Oppermann, eds. Material Ecocriticism. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2014. Jennings, Philip. “A Decade of Wetland Conservation.” In Western Australian Wetlands: The Kimberley and South-West, edited by Rod Giblett and Hugh Webb, 149–66. Perth, WA: Black Swan Press/Wetlands Conservation Society, 1996. Kelly, Jason, Philip Scarpino, Helen Berry, James Syvitski, and Michel Meybech, eds. Rivers of the Anthropocene. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2018. Main Roads. “Roe Highway Extension – Roe 8.” 2018. Accessed May 27, 2019. https​ ://pr​oject​.main​roads​.wa.g​ov.au​/roe8​/page​s/def​ault.​aspx.​ Maltby, Edward. Waterlogged Wealth: Why Waste the World’s Wet Places? London: Earthscan, 2009. May, Cathie R. Topsawyers: The Chinese in Cairns 1870–1920. Townsville, Qld: James Cook University, 1984. McDonald, Edward, Bryn Coldrick, and Will Christensen. “The Green Frog and Desalination: A Nyungar Metaphor for the (Mis-)Management of Water Resources, Swan Coastal Plain, Western Australia.” Oceania 78, no. 1 (2008): 62–75. McGowan, Barry. “Chinese Market Gardens in Southern and Western New South Wales.” Australian Humanities Review 36 (2005). Accessed May 28, 2019. http:​// aus​trali​anhum​aniti​esrev​iew.o​rg/20​05/07​/01/c​hines​e-mar​ket-g​arden​s-in-​south​ern-a​ nd-we​stern​-new-​south​-wale​s/. ———. “Ringbarkers and Market Gardeners: A Comparison of the Rural Chinese of New South Wales and California.” Chinese America: History and Perspectives 31, no. 16 (2006): 31–46. Neidjie, Bill. Story About Feeling, edited by Keith Taylor. Broome, WA: Magabala Books, 1989.

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Nosowitz, Dan. “Solving One of Maryland’s Biggest Problems: Chicken Poop.” Modern Farmer, April 2, 2015. Accessed May 21, 2019. https​://mo​dernf​armer​ .com/​2015/​04/so​lving​-one-​of-ma​rylan​ds-bi​ggest​-prob​lems-​chick​en-po​op/. Oppermann, Serpil, and Serenella Iovino, eds. Environmental Humanities: Voices from the Anthropocene. London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017. Por, F.D. The Pantanal of Mato Grosso (Brazil): World’s Largest Wetlands. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995. Price, Susan Davis, and John Gregor. Growing Home: Stories of Ethnic Gardening. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. Ramsar Convention Secretariat. “The Global Wetland Outlook.” 2014. Accessed May 27, 2019. https​://ww​w.glo​bal-w​etlan​d-out​look.​ramsa​r.org​. Richards, Oline. “Chinese Market Gardening: A Western Australian Postscript.” Australian Garden History 13, no. 1 (2001): 19–21. Robertson, Francesca, Noel Nannup, Glen Stasiuk, and Stephen Hopper. Nyoongar Boodja Koomba Bardip Kooratan = Nyoongar Land Long Story Short: A History of Ancient Nyoongar Land and People. Batchelor, NT: Batchelor Institute Press, 2017. Rolls, Eric. Citizens: Flowers and the Wide Sea, vol. 2. St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 1996. Ryan, Jan. Ancestors: Chinese in Colonial Australia. South Fremantle, WA: Fremantle Arts Center Press, 1995. Saintilan, Neil, Kerrylee Rogers, Jeffrey Kelleway, Emilie-Jane Ens, and D. Sloane. “Climate Change Impacts on the Coastal Wetlands of Australia.” Wetlands: The Journal of the Society of Wetland Scientists (2018): 1–10. doi: 10.1007/ s1315701810167. Semeniuk, Christine, and Vic Semeniuk. “The Response of Basin Wetlands to Climate Changes: A Review of Case Studies from the Swan Coastal Plain, SouthWestern Australia.” Hydrobiologia 708, no. 1 (2013): 45–67. doi: 10.1007/ s10750-012-1161-6. Shapiro, Judith. Mao’s War Against Nature: Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Shoemaker, Adam. Black Words, White Page: Aboriginal Literature 1929–1988, 3rd edn. Canberra: ANU E-Press, 2004. Silva, Daniel. “Investigating Violence in Language: An Introduction.” In Language and Violence: Pragmatic Perspectives, edited by Daniel Silva, 1–29. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2017. Simpson, Greg, and David Newsome. “Environmental History of an Urban Wetland: From Degraded Colonial Resource to Nature Conservation Area.” Geography and Environment 4, no. 1 (2017): 1–18. doi: 10.1002/geo2.30. Solnit, Rebecca. Savage Dreams: A Journey into the Landscape Wars of the American West. New York: Penguin Random House, 1994. Stocker, Laura, Leonard Collard, and Angela Rooney. “Aboriginal World Views and Colonisation: Implications for Coastal Sustainability.” Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability 21, no. 7 (2016): 844–65. doi: 10.1080/13549839.2015.1036414.

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Tu, Wei-Ming. “The Continuity of Being: Chinese Visions of Nature.” In Nature in Asian Traditions of Thought: Essays in Environmental Philosophy, edited by J. Baird Callicott and Roger T. Ames, 67–78. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1989. Webb, Hugh. “Aboriginal Country: Not a Construction, a Way of Being.” In Western Australian Wetlands: The Kimberley and South-West, edited by Rod Giblett and Hugh Webb, 61–76. Perth, WA: Black Swan Press and Wetlands Conservation Society, 1996. Weller, Archie. Going Home: Stories. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1986. Weston, Anthony. “Unfair to Swamps: A Reply to Katz.” In Environmental Pragmatism, edited by Andrew Light and Eric Katz, 319–22. London: Routledge, 1996. Wheeler, Wendy. Expecting the Earth: Life, Culture, Biosemiotics. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2016. Wu, Wann-Yih, Oliver H.M. Yau, and Hsiao-Yun Lu. “Feng Shui Principles in Residential Housing Selection.” Psychology and Marketing 29, no. 7 (2012): 502–18. doi: 10.1002/mar.20538.

Chapter 2

Rainbow Serpent Anthropology, or Rainbow Spirit Theology, or Swamp Serpent Sacrality and Marsh Monster Maternity? Rod Giblett

The Rainbow Serpent is a well-recognized figure in Australian Aboriginal culture, or at least in the study of it by “white-fellas,” though there is no unitary or homogeneous Australian Aboriginal culture, but diverse and heterogeneous Australian Aboriginal cultures. This is certainly the case with the Rainbow Serpent. While many Australian Aboriginal cultures have a water-being in their ongoing creation or dreaming stories, this being is not necessarily rainbow-colored. In addition, the idea of “the Rainbow Serpent” supposedly common to many Australian Aboriginal cultures is an invention or generalization by anthropologists from stories told and beliefs held in “widely separated parts of Australia.” Similarly, “the Rainbow Spirit” is an invention or creation by Australian theologians (Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal) who seem to want to deflect the negative biblical connotations of Satan, the serpent in the book of Genesis as an evil figure, and of water beings more generally in the Bible as evil figures, by sublimating or transubstantiating the Rainbow Serpent into the Rainbow Spirit. Despite its problematic nature, “the Rainbow Spirit” and its theology come out of a worthwhile desire to be, and act as, a creative figure engaged in cultural dialogue between black and white peoples, Aboriginal and nonAboriginal Australians, about caring for country or the land from within a cross-cultural ecotheology. I am not an Aboriginal person so I do not speak, or claim to speak, with any cultural authority about Aboriginal cultures. I rely on published sources. I am just a “white-fella” trying to learn from and, engage in dialogue with, Aboriginal peoples via the written word and to share that learning with non-Aboriginal peoples. 33

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Jasmine Corowa’s colorful and exquisite illustrations of the Rainbow Spirit in the written texts devoted to Rainbow Spirit Theology depict it as a snake or serpent.1 In the Rainbow Spirit literature, the association of the rainbow spirit/snake/serpent with the evil serpent or snake of the biblical story of the fall is acknowledged briefly and the relationship with the Rainbow Serpent is also discussed briefly. In the present chapter, I do both more extensively by introducing the Rainbow Serpent and the anthropological literature around it, then moving on to discuss the Rainbow Spirit and the theological literature around it. This chapter proposes a rapprochement between the two figures— serpent and spirit—and between the three -ologies in order to produce a dialogic anthropo/eco/theo/logy, or even better sacrality, between spirituality and materiality that cares for earth. Rather than these -ologies that privilege the logos or word and the -isms in general that exploit and destroy earth (industrialism, capitalism, neo-liberalism, etc.), and sanctuarism in particular that only cares for special places, while the rest of earth goes to hell in a hand-basket, the -ities in general and sacrality in particular care for earth and all earthly places.2 This chapter concludes by arguing for marsh monsters and swamp serpents as figures that embody and express this earthly sacrality. They, and earth, should be treated with respect and reverence by living bio- and psycho-symbiotic livelihoods in bioregional home habitats of the living earth where they and all living creatures live. The politics and practices of sacrality and symbiosis are exemplified today in Australian Aboriginal Country. Here there is no landscape to be culturally constructed or greedily consumed, no discourse to produce an object and a subject, but a loving union of people and place, culture and country. As Hugh Webb eloquently and powerfully puts it: there is no emotional or intellectual need to stand outside of the land (wet or dry) to see it as something to be regarded aesthetically, something to be developed, something to be tamed. For lands are the sites—in some senses, the “meanings”—of very important cultural stories.3

Aboriginal Country is not a construction, so it cannot be deconstructed. It is not a discourse, an institutionalized way of seeing, saying and doing, but a symbiosis, an intimate and intuitive way of being. Aboriginal Country is outside history (white chronological history); it is (in) prehistory, it is (in) the Dreaming; it is not in the past, but in the past, present, and future, the now, the now time. It precedes and refuses the colonization of time. It is what could be called a “natural cultural landscape” to oppose the “cultured natural landscapes” of the gentleman’s park and enclave estate, national park, wilderness, mining, pastoralism, the bush, and the city.4

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RAINBOW SERPENT ANTHROPOLOGY Josephine Flood in her classic book, The Archaeology of the Dreamtime: The Story of Prehistoric Australia and Its People, notes that “the appearance of the Rainbow Serpent belongs to the years between 9,000 and 7,000 years ago which would make the Rainbow Serpent myth the longest continuing religious belief documented in the world.”5 It comes out of the longest continuing cultures in the world dating from at least 80,000 years ago. As an aside, the order of priority in the subtitle of Flood’s book renders Indigenous people a subset of, object of ownership by, and appendage to the land or country or nation and writes “native title” out of history. Why not The Story of Prehistoric Australian People (and Their Lands)? The land is the people’s, and the people are the land’s. The concept of “the Dreamtime” is also problematic because, as the Rainbow Spirit elders put, “it suggests that [a spiritual dimension of] reality only existed at the time of creation; we Aboriginal people know that this reality continues to exist in the present.”6 The term “Dreaming” is preferred, referring to “Dreaming sites, stories, and totems.” This myth or religious belief was first noted formally by an anthropologist in 1926 when A. R. Radcliffe-Brown announced to his fellow anthropologists that “there is found in widely separated parts of Australia a belief in a huge serpent which lives in certain pools or water-holes. This serpent is associated, and sometimes identified, with the rainbow.”7 This serpent could also be regarded as a “dreaded monster” that was “at times tricky and malignant. But he could do a good turn to men already possessed of some magical quality.”8 In other parts of Australia, Radcliffe-Brown noted that the serpent “swallows human beings whole” and is even in one place “endowed not with huge teeth only, but also with a special craving for the black-fellow.”9 The Serpent could be regarded as an orally sadistic monster and so a bringer of death. But the Serpent is the protector of water-holes and so of water with its life-giving properties. Indeed, the “Rainbow Serpent,” Charles Mountford argued, “is essentially the element of water.”10 Or, as RadcliffeBrown argued in a follow-up article on the subject, the Serpent even “represents the element of water which is of such vital importance to man in all parts of Australia.”11 Water is both life-giving and death-dealing in Australia as the land “of droughts and flooding rains,” to cite a famous line of Dorothea MacKellar’s jingoistic poem, “I Love a Sunburnt Country.” The Serpent seems to represent simultaneously the powers of life and death, the former of which is so vulnerable and the latter of which is such a constant threat in most of Australia. As the element of water, the Rainbow Serpent cannot be identified with any particular water-hole, but only as inhabiting the water-holes of a region. Such

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is the case with the Waugal, the Rainbow Serpent in, or of, the wetlands and rivers of south-western Australia where: Waugal beliefs are widespread [. . .] and refer to a water-creative force with a serpentine physical manifestation. [. . .] The Waugal is not just a mythic serpent, an Australian version of the Loch Ness Monster. The Waugal is not just a totemic ancestor. The Waugal is not just a spiritual being, a semi-deity. The Waugal is indeed all of these but is, more fundamentally, a personification, or perhaps more correctly animalisation, of the vital force of running water. As such, the question “does this permanent river (or creek, or spring, or other water source) have (or belong to, or be associated with) a Waugal (or the Waugal)?” becomes, from an Aboriginal view point, meaningless and condescending. The presence of ‘living water’ bespeaks Waugal immanence.12

Mircea Eliade has traced how “living water, the fountains of youth, the water of life [. . .] is guarded by monsters.”13 And the Waugal is no exception. In the case of Forrestdale Lake, one of the internationally important wetlands in the Perth metropolitan area in Western Australia, O’Connor, Quartermaine, and Bodney point out that disturbance of the native reeds (Baumea articulata) around the lake’s edge is forbidden as this could unleash the Waugal’s destructive power. Yet, Waugal beliefs are not merely of mythological and anthropological interest as an exotic curio or quaint kind of kid’s story. They are indicative of a fundamental cultural difference in the perception and positioning of Western Australian wetlands.14 One of the iconic tourist lakes around Perth, Western Australia, is called Loch Ness so the association that O’Connor, Quartermaine, and Bodney make with that monster is neither arbitrary nor tenuous. It is also one that artist Shane Pickett seems to deliberately evoke in one of his paintings of the Waagle now held by the City of Fremantle in Western Australia.15 In this painting, the Waagle rises out of the water against a backdrop of a stratified landscape that could also be the stratigraphic layers of the land. This water could equally be an aquifer, or an underground river, or an overground river, or a rain cloud, thus indicating that for Aboriginal people there is no distinction between waters under, on, or above the earth, in the air, or in the sky. They are all waters. There is no grotesque lower earthly (and bodily) strata, no nether lands of the slimy swamps and marshes, no monumental upper earthly (and bodily) strata, no upper heights of the surmountainous sublime. There is one living body in which one strata is not privileged over any another, but all strata go to make up, and function as, a living whole. This painting portrays (it is not a landscape) the earthly sacrality of marsh monsters and swamp serpents as a belief in, and as a way of living, bio- and psycho-symbiotic livelihoods in bioregions of the living earth in what Glenn Albrecht calls the Symbiocene.16 This painting portrays the Symbiocene as

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the geological age of the laying and layering up and down of bodies of land, waters, air, and living beings in biogenic and non-biogenic strata (discussed in greater detail and differentiated from the Anthropocene below). In a vivid discussion of Western Australian Aboriginal attitudes to their rivers and wetlands, Hugh Webb cites the Seaman inquiry into Aboriginal lands which refers to “people who have country in the sea.”17 This led to the assertion by a number of groups that Aboriginal people should be able to own the beds of rivers if they run across or through the surface of their land. Presumably, this would also extend to aquifers, or underground rivers, that run through (rather than merely under) the depths of their land too. Pickett’s painting does not draw a distinction between land and water under ground and that above ground. Land and water are one—contiguous on the surface and in the depths. Janice Lyndon brilliantly illustrates this contiguity and continuity in a recent kids’ book about the Wagarl.18 By attempting to exclude water-rights from Native Title, the then prime minister John Howard was not only dealing a cruel and savage blow to reconciliation. He was also demonstrating his ignorance that water and land cannot really be separated out in this way for both Anglo and Indigenous Australian cultures and for the Australian continent (and its shelf). Water is the lifeblood of land, and land is people—both Anglo and Indigenous. Pickett’s painting of the Waagle painted twenty-five years ago and now housed in the Art Gallery of Western Australia illustrates this by showing the Waagle rising out of a river of blood-bearing people on its (or his or her) back.19 This painting portrays the Symbiocene as the inter-corporeal relationship between the layers of land, water, air, and living beings in which healthy bodies, minds, lands, and waters can and do flourish. A river of blood in European culture and for their settler diasporas, such as Anglo-Australians, is typically horrific. It has been associated with menstrual flow, massacre, war, sacrifice, and abattoirs. So horrific is this association that menstrual flow was censored from the first published discussion of this topic by the prestigious, yet squeamish, Melbourne University Press,20 and reinstated in a subsequent publication by the equally prestigious, but less squeamish Palgrave Macmillan.21 In pondering the Judeo-Christian significance of blood, I referred to my thirty-five-year-old Bible dictionary (as one does) and found that the first comment under the heading of “blood” is that “the point chiefly to be determined is whether ‘blood’ in biblical usage points basically to life or to death.” Like wetlands, blood points to both life and death. By contrast, biblical binarism and moralism separate life and death, and so construct blood as associated with either life or death. Regarding water as both life-giving and death-dealing means that the Waagle is not a monstrous swamp serpent who only kills and consumes, but is both the bringer of death/ taker of life, and the giver of new life as well.

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Rather than rainbow-colored, Mudrooroo22 maintains that the Waugal of Southwest Australia is black and furthermore suggests that the idea of a Rainbow Serpent common to all Australian Indigenous cultures is an anthropologist’s invention: Watjelas [white-fellas] have studied us and have found that Aborigines all over Australia respect snakes, and they have joined up all these stories about snakes and made something called a Rainbow Serpent. They say and even tell us that Waugal is a rainbow serpent, whatever that is. But he isn’t. He is a big, hairy snake that made the rivers and hills and valleys and then, after he had done this, went to sleep in the deep part of the river. If he is any colour, he is black, but when we tell them this, they say he is a Rainbow Serpent and refuse to listen.23

The myth of the Rainbow Serpent could thus be seen as having developed out of a drive to unify and homogenize the heterogeneous, even to imply that there must be some sort of originary and unitary ur-myth (a là Casaubon’s illusory “the key to all mythology” in George Eliot’s Middlemarch) from which contemporary stories are derived, and of which they would be mere vestiges. Such a drive seems to be the product of a quest for origins, rather than the result of a desire to understand the geographical richness and contemporary relevance of Australian Aboriginal cultures. The living water of the wetland in Aboriginal cultures is worlds away and cultures apart from the dead water of the marsh, swamp, and slough, in patriarchal culture. But out of dead water, living water comes and without the latter the former would not be possible. Out of old life, the death and decay of the swamp, new life springs, the blossoms, fruits and foliage of the swamp, and the animals that feed on them. The “Rainbow Serpent,” Radcliffe-Brown concludes, “may be said to be the most important representation of the creative and destructive power of nature, principally in connection with rain and water.”24 The “Rainbow Serpent” is not a monstrous swamp serpent which only kills and consumes, but the Great Mother/Goddess of new life as well. The “Rainbow Serpent” is, in the words of the Noonuccals, “the giver and taker of life.”25 Swamp waters are both life-giving and death-dealing—living black waters. The combination of the giving and taking of life represents the mixing of birth and death in the swamp’s ecology. Radcliffe-Brown argued earlier that the function of the Rainbow Serpent is “to maintain at their full power the forces of nature”: the processes of nature, the changes of the seasons, the growth, flowering, and fruiting of plants, the multiplication of animal species and of the human species itself, are not considered as just happening, but must be produced or provided by the society itself by means of the co-operative efforts of the various totemic

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groups amongst whom the various realms of nature are distributed. Now the ‘Rainbow Serpent’, whether regarded as a rainbow or a serpent, or species of serpent that lives in water-holes, is just as much a part of nature as the kangaroo or the sun or cold weather, and is therefore just as necessarily an object of ceremonies as these in any well-organised system.26

The Rainbow Serpent, as Kenneth Maddock puts it, “in the water, but also in the sky” (and in the earth, I would add, hence all the strata in Pickett’s painting) is not only “responsible for female fecundity, but [also] responsible for destructive forces.”27 Indeed, the Rainbow Serpent combines productive and destructive forces into one force, “unites opposites in a totality,” just as occurs in the swamp’s ecology. The Rainbow Serpent is “both male and female” and “both benignant and malicious,” even malignant. But not exclusively the malignant marsh monsters and swamp serpents of patriarchal and filiarchal Western culture. RAINBOW SPIRIT THEOLOGY In the mid-1990s, a group of Australian Aboriginal Christians calling themselves “the Rainbow Spirit Elders,” together with some non-Aboriginal theologians, set out to develop “an indigenous Aboriginal theology” from the “starting point [of] the land as a central spiritual reality.”28 In order to do so and to flesh out this theology, they identified the Rainbow Spirit as a profound and “universal symbol for an indigenous Aboriginal theology.”29 In particular, as “the Creator, the Rainbow Spirit gave life to all our ancestors and all the creatures—the trees, plants, animals and birds—and to the landscape itself.”30 In addition, “our people have been entrusted by the Creator Spirit with the care of the land” as co-creators, caretakers, and trustees.31 The Rainbow Spirit elders acknowledged right up front the tradition of the Rainbow Serpent within which they were working (without mentioning it per se, or citing any of the anthropological sources discussed above). They also addressed some of the problems the Rainbow Spirit/Serpent might present for traditional Christians steeped in biblical theology. They relate how the Rainbow Spirit as the Creator is: Often portrayed by our Aboriginal artists as a powerful snake who emerged from the land, travelled the landscape leaving trails of life, and then returned to the land through caves, waterholes and other sacred sites. Early Christian missionaries associated this snake with Satan and the story of the Fall in Genesis 3. They saw the snake as a pagan symbol of fertility religion and condemned it as evil. [. . .] For a long time, Christian Aboriginal people have accepted the teaching of the missionaries that the Rainbow Spirit is a symbol of evil. We believe it

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is time to return to this symbol in our culture to help us rediscover our spiritual identity as Christian Aboriginal people. We believe that the Rainbow Spirit is not the source of evil but of life.32

This list of beliefs refuses point-blank and head-on the pejorative association that the rainbow serpent of creation may have for Christian Aboriginal people with the satanic serpent of the fall. Yet, these beliefs raise a number of questions and problems that simply cannot be ignored or passed over lightly without comment. For instance, where do these beliefs leave non-Christian Aboriginal people? Could not the Rainbow Spirit/Serpent also help them to rediscover their spiritual identity as Aboriginal people? Why would they need to take on the cultural baggage of Christianity as well (especially given its problematic record in Australia as the elders state)? What about non-Christian non-Aboriginal people too? Could not the Rainbow Spirit/Serpent also help non-Christian, non-Aboriginal people to (re)discover their/our spiritual identity as creatures and carers of the earth? Are not all people entrusted with the care of the land? What is wrong with the snake as “a pagan symbol of fertility religion”? Can it not be praised and celebrated as good? The ‘Rainbow Serpent’ is a figure of creation of life and good, and clearly not the satanic serpent of the fall who introduced evil and death into the Paradise of the Garden of Eden. Indeed, the elders later point out that “in many of our traditions the Rainbow Spirit is depicted as a massive snake whose creative powers transform the earth. [. . .] The Rainbow Spirit is the life-giving power of the Creator Spirit active in the world.”33 And not the exclusively death-dealing evil serpent of the Fall. Earlier, the Rainbow Spirit theologians in their reading of Genesis 1 slip from “the Rainbow Spirit” to “the Rainbow Snake.”34 The back cover blurb of The Rainbow Spirit in Creation equates them. The Rainbow Spirit elders do not tackle and discuss the figure of the serpent in the story of the fall in Genesis 3 and its pejorative associations. Who or what could embody evil and be the tempter of Eve in the Garden of Eden to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in disobedience of God’s commandment not to do so? If the Rainbow Spirit/Snake is the creator, who is the destroyer? If the black snake is good, who is evil? Perhaps it is white robber barons—industrial (factory owners), pastoral (squatters), mineralogical, and metallurgical (mining magnates). The Rainbow Spirit theologians seem to be perpetuating a number of anthropological and theological myths (unexamined assumptions, accepted truths, everyday verities lived by): first, the myth of the universality of the Rainbow Spirit/Serpent among Aboriginal cultures throughout Australia (when we have seen that the Waugal/Waagle for some is a black serpent and Corowa depicts the Rainbow Spirit/Snake as black in her first three paintings

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of the Genesis creation story35; second, the myth of the exceptionalism of a group of God’s chosen people with a manifest God-given destiny to save themselves (variously Jews, Christians, Americans, commodity consumers, even the human species36 and, in this case, Christian Aboriginal people), or the earth, or both; thirdly, the myth of a hard and fast distinction between good and evil, and between the spirit world and the material world with beings in the latter used as moralized symbols of qualities in the former (when for Aboriginal cultures, as one of the Rainbow Spirit elders points out elsewhere [as discussed below], the two worlds are intertwined, not moralized and the relationship between them not merely symbolical); and fourthly, the myth of a hard and fast distinction between Judeo-Christianity and paganism which many Christian missionaries certainly perpetuated, but which neither the Bible nor the Christian cultural tradition supports (think of the similarities between Judeo-Christian and non-Christian creation stories, and of Christmas and Easter with their “pagan” symbols of fertility, such as eggs, trees, rabbits, etc.). The Rainbow Spirit/Serpent is a being that can be used to deconstruct and decolonize the pagan/Christianity divide and the colonization of the former by the latter. Like snakes in general, the Rainbow Spirit/Serpent is not necessarily benign (as we have already seen). The Rainbow Spirit elders go on to point out that “the Rainbow Spirit is an important being in our ancient stories of the beginning. In these stories, the Rainbow Spirit swallowed young people and regurgitated them as young adults.”37 In other, traditional anthropological words, the Rainbow Spirit/Serpent is an important being involved in initiation rituals and rites of passages from childhood to adulthood. This can be a painful, but necessary process. It is not necessarily good or bad, it is neither good nor bad, but a part of life, of growing up and of becoming a full adult member of a culture with all the pleasures, privileges, and responsibilities that that involves. The material and spiritual worlds are intertwined for one of the Rainbow Spirit elders who said, “Aboriginal culture is spiritual. I am spiritual. Inside of me is spirit and land, both given to me by the Creator Spirit [. . .] the land, too, is spiritual [. . .] The land owns me.”38 Land is not something outside this Elder, but inside him or her. He or she is spiritual, like the land. The land is thus not something that can be owned, but the land is the owner of the person. Nor is the Rainbow Spirit a symbol of something spiritual, such as of a spiritual or moral quality, like good (or evil). The Rainbow Spirit is spiritual (as the name implies). The material rainbow (and the serpent for that matter) for the Christian Rainbow Spirit elders is “a symbol of our spiritual unity in Christ.”39 It can also be a spiritually unifying force in the land for all people (without being a symbol [of anything]). One of the elders claimed in the second edition that Rainbow Spirit Theology: Towards an Australian

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Aboriginal Theology is “the foundation text for the vision of an Australian spirituality.”40 Indeed, it might be the vision of an Australian spirituality for all Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, Christian and non-Christian Australians alike and be pertinent in other countries for other people too. After all, it is the oldest documented spiritual belief in the world. And many countries and cultures have stories of marsh monsters and swamp serpents. They could also be regarded as figures of reverence and worship. One aspect of this vision of an Australian spirituality for all people is that the land for Aboriginal people, including the Rainbow Spirit elders, is not a passive object, but an active agent; not a thing, but a being; not dead, but alive. The land for the Rainbow Spirit elders is “alive within. [. . .] The land is itself alive, dynamic and creative.”41 Patrick Dodson, a noted Aboriginal leader and now an Australian Labor Party Senator, is quoted as saying that the land “is not a thing—it is a living entity.”42 The land as living entity can be summed up in one word—mother. The land is mother who gives life out of her womb and who receives death into her womb, out of which new life is created. One of the Rainbow Spirit elders stated that “when a person dies, the land, as mother, opens her womb and takes the body. But the spirit is not in the land. Only the shell, the body, stays in the land; the spirit goes to [. . .] the Rainbow Spirit.”43 The land is not a tomb, but a womb, and not only of life, but also of death. The body is not made out of dust (unlike Genesis 2: 7), nor does it return to dust (unlike Genesis 3: 19), but is made out of land and dies into land. The body is the shell for the spirit. The spirit is the seed within the nutshell from which new life springs. The land reveals the law as the law for the Rainbow Spirit elders is “revealed in the land.”44 It also revealed for them in the scriptures of the Bible. The land for the elders is “like the Scriptures—sacred stories [such as the Rainbow Spirit, the Rainbow Serpent and the Waugal/Waagle] and signs are inscribed on the landscape, and readily available for those who can read them.”45 Secular stories and signs, such as highways, mines, cities and farms, are also inscribed on the land: highways have crossed the land and erased the trails of our ancestors. Mines have been dug deep into the land and desecrated our home countries. Cities have been constructed on sacred places where our stories once gave us strength and meaning. Farms have torn up the land where the Creator Spirit once provided plants and animals for our livelihood.46

Highways, mines, cities and farms (not to mention railway lines, power-lines, runways, roads, drains, fences, etc.) can be read by all as colonizing inscriptions in the landscape, as wounds inflicted on the living body of the earth, and not as markers of “progress,” or “development,” or “nation-building.”

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The inflicting of these wounds on the land produces cries of pain and anguish that can be heard by all who have ears to hear them, but so many have blocked their ears so that they cannot hear these cries or anybody else’s. For the Rainbow Spirit elders, “the Creator Spirit is crying because the deep spiritual bonds with the land and its people have been broken. The land is crying because it is slowly dying without this bond of spiritual life.”47 The land is also crying because it is “in slavery to Western forms of exploitation and control,”48 such as colonization. The land needs liberation in a land liberation theology. Unlike the stories of scripture inscribed in written words of dead black ink on dead white paper, sacred stories are traced in spoken words and painted depictions of/in the trails of ancestral beings (“song lines”) and “life-forces” across the living land49 and from the land crying beneath highways, mines, cities, farms, railway lines, power-lines, runways, drains, and fences. They are there for all to see and hear them. The stories of the Rainbow Serpent and the Rainbow Spirit tell a powerful, single story of the land and water, life and death, of ancient and modern ways, of seeing both ways together at the same time in a binocular and microscopic vision that sees two cultures together and what is above and below together, that does not merely see what is on the dead surface of the earth—landscape, private property—but also see what is below the surface—land, commons—its depths of geology, history, and archaeology and its living flows and processes in biology. Both the Rainbow Serpent and the Rainbow Spirit are also problematic in ways already discussed: the Rainbow Serpent for the way in which it imposes a unitary, homogeneous, and anthropological ur-myth on culturally diverse and geographically dispersed Aboriginal cultures, and; the Rainbow Spirit for white-washing the negative, pejorative connotation of the biblical serpent out of Aboriginal theology. Achieving a rapprochement between the two figures—serpent and spirit—and between the three -ologies could produce a dialogic anthropo/eco/theo/logy, or even better sacrality, between spirituality and materiality that cares for earth. Rather than the -ologies that privilege the logos or word and the -isms in general that exploit and destroy earth (industrialism, militarism, capitalism, neo-liberalism, etc.), and sanctuarism in particular that only cares for special places while the rest of earth goes to hell in a hand-basket, the -ities in general and sacrality in particular cares for earth and all earthly places.

THE SYMBIOCENE Marsh monsters and swamp serpents are figures that embody and express earthly sacrality. They should be regarded as figures of reverence and respect

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that can instil and nurture earthly sacrality and develop ways of living bioand psycho-symbiotic livelihoods in bioregions of the living earth in the Symbiocene. They are deities to believe in. They are not gods in the Western sense of beings above and outside of earth, but deities in the Eastern sense of beings below and of earth who embody, or body forth, forces, principles and virtues of living and loving. The Symbiocene is the paradigm of mutuality posed against the failed paradigm of mastery of the anthropocentric and the hoped-for age embracing and following the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene can be defined as the geological age of the laying and layering up and down of anthropogenic strata in the pollution of land, waters and air, and the heating up of all three in the new, disrupted (and disruptive) arrangement of the four elements and the four or six seasons.50 These anthropogenic strata are what Michel Serres calls “plaque tectonics” in which “a great many humans form a ‘plaque’, a formation that disturbs [the] functioning [of physical communality] [. . .] plaques of physical scoria of humans [. . .] are encrusted upon and overlap the globe.”51 These plaques of humanity are reshaping the globe, like plate tectonics, and “the Earth is quaking anew,” as Serres puts it,52 in feral quaking zones.53 The Anthropocene came out of the economic politics of mercantile capitalism, industrial capitalism, enclosure of the commons, private property, the commodity market, and the feral quaking zone. The Anthropocene came out of its drive for, and the failed paradigm of, mastery. The anthropogenic stratigraphic layers of the Anthropocene gave rise to what Bruno Latour calls “the New Climate Regime” in which “there is no longer any question of ‘mastering’ nature.”54 Rather, “nature” is mastering, or monstering. The new, anthropogenic climate regime rules—and it is not okay. The Symbiocene can be defined as the geological age of the laying and layering up and down of bodies of land, waters, air, beings, and things in biogenic and non-biogenic strata, and the inter-corporeal relationship of loving union between them in the feral and native quaking zones55 and as portrayed in Shane Pickett’s paintings. The Symbiocene comes out of the economic politics of the commons, compassion for all beings, mutual aid, the carnivalesque marketplace and the native quaking zone. The Symbiocene comes out of its love for and paradigm of mutuality. As ever, Thoreau was there before anyone else when he wrote in the midnineteenth century with stunning prophetic insight (foresight) in Walden, the old testament of conservation, that: The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit—not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic.56

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The earth is not an object to be studied by geologists alone who preside over the dead strata of the Anthropocene and by antiquaries, such as John Muir, who study the dead strata of the fossil earth like leaves in a book holy or otherwise. Rather, the earth is a symbiotic body with a trunk and palms like leaves of a trees, a living poem in the Symbiocene. The symbiotic body of the earth comes out of the traditional cultures in which earth is body and/or the body is earth. It supersedes the machine body of modern Western medicine, the battlefield body of illness narratives, the grotesque body of the lower strata, the monstrous body of the slimy depths, the Fascist body of the war machine, the textual body of the surface of inscription, the sporting body imprisoned in the time-machine, and the cyborg of the body-machine of the civilian soldier. The Symbiocene embraces these bodies in the body of the earth in which healthy bodies, minds, lands, and waters can and do flourish in their bioregional and local home place of the living earth.57 The Symbiocene also cuts across the biosphere, the ecosphere, the public and private spheres, the electro-magnetosphere that makes wireless telecommunication possible and the extra-terrestrial sphere where the communication satellites orbit. Transportation and communication technologies function in these spheres. They are the greater ambit of the earth home.58 Making a connection to local place, its plants, animals, and their seasonal changes, is a necessary response, and antidote, to the globalized world in which many people now live and work and which impacts on our lives in numerous ways. It is important to think and act locally as well as globally. Connecting to local place can be a reclusive retreat into a smaller, narrower, and safer world away from the incursions of the bigger, badder global world. But it is also a way of acknowledging and respecting the interconnectedness of all life from the local to the global and back again. Our lives are lived locally (if not also globally) and are dependent on local air, water, and food mainly supplied from within and by our bioregional home-habitat. We have aerials and cables, but we also have roots—however shallow or transient they may be. We feed off nutrients in the soil and although we may up roots and change soil occasionally or frequently, we are still putting down them into a soil, drinking local water, breathing the air around us, and largely eating local food. That air and soil has a history, a human and a natural history. Knowing its composition enriches our lives and helps to connect us to the other living beings living in the same soil. That sense of mutuality between people and place is vital to conserving a place and the planet.59 All living creatures—plants and animals, human and nonhuman—live in a bioregion, a catchment or watershed, and an air-shed with its unique suite of plants and animals. The bioregion is the place of home, the home place. All creatures are dependent and impact on their bioregion to greater or lesser extent, with longer or shorter term damaging and/or rehabilitating effects. The relationship between creatures and their bioregion (and ultimately the

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earth and the biosphere) takes place on a continuum from the parasitic to the symbiotic through the inquilinistic (in which one party shares the home of another without significant disadvantage to the home-owner, such as normally the embryo in utero60). This continuum is not only biological and biogeographical, but also psychological and spiritual.61 The bioregion is home not only to biological creatures, but also to spiritual, even mythological, creatures who are emanations and expressions of the place and its processes. They are the spirits of the place, the genii loci. The “spirit of a place” is a being, not a feeling; it is a way of being, and a way of living. Marsh monsters and swamp serpents and other monstrous figures, such as fiery dragons and earthy/watery alligators and crocodiles, are such creatures. Rather than regarding them with horror and demonizing them as evil beings, they should be respected and revered as creatures of the sacred earth. Long may they live; long may other creatures live with them. Please help conserve them and their homes of places on, under, and above the earth. After all, it is their—and our—only home. NOTES 1. The Rainbow Spirit Elders, The Rainbow Spirit in Creation: A Reading of Genesis 1, ed. and trans. Norman Habel (Collegesville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000); The Rainbow Spirit Elders, Rainbow Spirit Theology: Towards an Australian Aboriginal Theology, revised 2nd edn. (Adelaide: Australian Theological Forum Press, 2007). 2. For the “-isms” and “-ities,” see Rod Giblett, People and Places of Nature and Culture (Bristol: Intellect Books, 2011), especially figure 2, 32–34. 3. Rod Giblett and Hugh Webb, “Living Waters or Useless Swamps?” in Western Australian Wetlands: The Kimberley and South-West, ed. Rod Giblett and Hugh Webb (Perth, WA: Black Swan Press/Wetlands Conservation Society, 1996), 5, emphases original. 4. For a discussion of all of these topics, see Giblett, People and Places. 5. Josephine Flood, Archaeology of the Dreamtime: The Story of Prehistoric Australia and Its People, revised ed. (Sydney: HarperCollins, 1995), 171. 6. Rainbow Spirit Elders, Rainbow Spirit Theology, xi and 38. 7. A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, “The Rainbow-Serpent Myth of Australia,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 56 (1926): 19. 8. Ibid., 20. 9. Ibid., 21. 10. Charles Mountford, “The Rainbow-Serpent Myths of Australia,” in The Rainbow Serpent: A Chromatic Piece, ed. Ira Buchler and Kenneth Maddock (The Hague: Mouton, 1978), 23. 11. A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, “The Rainbow-Serpent Myth in South-East Australia,” Oceania 1 (1930): 342.

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12. Rory O’Connor, Gary Quartermaine, and Corrie Bodney, Report of an Investigation into Aboriginal Significance of Wetlands and Rivers in the Perth-Bunbury Region (Leederville, WA: Western Australian Water Resources Council, 1989), 47. 13. Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, trans. Rosemary Sheed (London: Sheed and Ward, 1958), 193. 14. See Giblett and Webb, “Living Waters.” 15. See Shane Pickett, “Waagyl and Yondock Story,” in Walyalup Dreamings (Fremantle, WA: City of Fremantle, 2004), 9. I retain these and varying spellings of the Waugal/Waagle/Wagarl from the sources I cite partly out of respect for them and partly to stand as testament to a living, non-alphabetic culture. They can all be pronounced as “woggle.” 16. Glenn Albrecht, “Symbiocene,” Healthearth, May 19 (2011), accessed May 17, 2019, http:​//hea​lthea​rth.b​logsp​ot.co​m/201​1/05/​symbi​ocene​.html​; “Exiting the Anthropocene and Entering the Symbiocene,” Psychoterratica, December 17 (2015), accessed May 17, 2019, https​://gl​ennaa​lbrec​ht.co​m/201​5/12/​17/ex​iting​-the-​anthr​ opoce​ne-an​d-ent​ering​-the-​symbi​ocene​/; Earth Emotions: New Words for a New World (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019). 17. Hugh Webb, “Aboriginal Country: Not a Construction, a Way of Being,” in Western Australian Wetlands: The Kimberley and South-West, ed. Rod Giblett and Hugh Webb (Perth, WA: Black Swan Press/Wetlands Conservation Society, 1996), 67 and 70. 18. Lorna Little, The Mark of the Wagarl, illus. Janice Lyndon (Broome: Magabala, 2004), 6. 19. See Shane Pickett, “Waagle—Rainbow Serpent 1983,” in South West Central: Indigenous Art from South Western Australia 1833–2002, ed. Brenda Croft with Janda Gooding (Perth, WA: Art Gallery of Western Australia, 2003), 54. 20. See Rod Giblett, “Black and White Water,” in Fresh Water: New Perspectives on Water in Australia, ed. Emily Potter, Alison Mackinnon, Stephen McKenzie, and Jennifer McKay (Carlton, Vic: Melbourne University Press, 2007), 37. 21. See Rod Giblett, Landscapes of Culture and Nature (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 185. 22. The Aboriginal Noongar people of Southwest Australia have in general rejected Mudrooroo’s identity as an Aboriginal person. By quoting from his work I do not accept (or deny) his Aboriginality. It is not up to me to decide. I do not cite his work in this book as that of an Aboriginal writer or person, or not. I quote his work as it is invaluable and as his contribution to cross-cultural dialogue and understanding is enormous. 23. Narogin Mudrooroo, “A Snake Story of the Nyoongah People: A Children’s Tale,” in Western Australian Wetlands: The Kimberley and South-West, ed. Rod Giblett and Hugh Webb (Perth, WA: Black Swan Press/Wetlands Conservation Society, 1996), 33 and 36. 24. Radcliffe-Brown, “The Rainbow-Serpent Myth,” 347. 25. Kabul Oodgeroo and Oodgeroo Noonuccal, The Rainbow Serpent (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1988), unpaginated. 26. Radcliffe-Brown, “The Rainbow-Serpent Myth,” 23–24.

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27. Kenneth Maddock, “Introduction,” in The Rainbow Serpent: A Chromatic Piece, ed. Ira Buchler and Kenneth Maddock (The Hague: Mouton, 1978), 2 and 8. 28. Rainbow Spirit Elders, Rainbow Spirit Theology, vii and viii. 29. Ibid., ix. 30. Ibid., 14. 31. Ibid., 5; see also 3 and 35. 32. Ibid., 13–14. 33. Ibid., 31; see also 56. 34. Rainbow Spirit Elders, Rainbow Spirit in Creation, commentary on “Painting One,” unpaginated. 35. Ibid. 36. Paul Kingsnorth has recently referred critically to “our manifest destiny as a chosen species.” See his Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist (London: Faber and Faber, 2017), 272. 37. Rainbow Spirit Elders, Rainbow Spirit Theology, 14. 38. Ibid., 12. 39. Ibid., 7. 40. Ibid., xix. 41. Ibid., 31–32. 42. Cited ibid., 32. 43. Ibid., 34. 44. Ibid., 11. 45. Ibid., 20. 46. Ibid., 44; see illustration on 43. 47. Ibid., 42. 48. Ibid., 53. 49. Ibid., 38 and 39. 50. See Rod Giblett, Black Swan Lake: Life of a Wetland (Bristol: Intellect Books, 2013), chapter 18. 51. Cited in Verena Conley, Ecopolitics: The Environment in Poststructuralist Thought (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), 65; see also Michel Serres, The Natural Contract, trans. Elizabeth MacArthur and William Paulson (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press 1995), 16, emphasis in original. 52. Serres, Natural Contract, 86. 53. See Rod Giblett, Landscapes of Culture and Nature (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2009), chapter 1. 54. Bruno Latour, Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climate Regime (Cambridge: Polity, 2017), 111–15. 55. See Giblett, Landscapes, chapter 1. 56. Henry David Thoreau, Walden (Boston: Beacon, 1997), 289. 57. See Rod Giblett, Forrestdale: People and Place (Bassendean: Access Press, 2006); The Body of Nature and Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); Landscapes, chapter 8. 58. See Rod Giblett, Sublime Communication Technologies (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); People and Places, chapter 2.

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59. For my bioregional connection to the local place where I lived for thirty years, see Giblett, Forrestdale; Black Swan Lake. 60. See Giblett, People and Places, chapter 12. 61. See also ibid.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Albrecht, Glenn. “Symbiocene.” Healthearth, May 19 (2011). Accessed May 17, 2019. http:​//hea​lthea​rth.b​logsp​ot.co​m/201​1/05/​symbi​ocene​.html​. ———. “Exiting the Anthropocene and Entering the Symbiocene.” Psychoterratica, December 17 (2015). Accessed May 17, 2019. https​://gl​ennaa​lbrec​ht.co​m/201​5/12/​ 17/ex​iting​-the-​anthr​opoce​ne-an​d-ent​ering​-the-​symbi​ocene​/. ———. Earth Emotions: New Words for a New World. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019. Conley, Verena. Ecopolitics: The Environment in Poststructuralist Thought. London and New York: Routledge, 1997. Eliade, Mircea. Patterns in Comparative Religion, translated by Rosemary Sheed. London: Sheed and Ward, 1958. Flood, Josephine. Archaeology of the Dreamtime: The Story of Prehistoric Australia and Its People. Revised ed. Sydney: HarperCollins, 1995. Giblett, Rod. Forrestdale: People and Place. Bassendean: Access Press, 2006. ———. “Black and White Water.” In Fresh Water: New Perspectives on Water in Australia, edited by Emily Potter, Alison Mackinnon, Stephen McKenzie, and Jennifer McKay, 31–43. Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2007. ———. The Body of Nature and Culture. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. ———. Sublime Communication Technologies. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. ———. Landscapes of Culture and Nature. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. ———. People and Places of Nature and Culture. Bristol: Intellect Books, 2011. ———. Black Swan Lake: Life of a Wetland. Bristol: Intellect Books, 2013. Giblett, Rod, and Hugh Webb. “Living Waters or Useless Swamps?” In Western Australian Wetlands: The Kimberley and South-West, edited by Rod Giblett and Hugh Webb, 1–8. Perth, WA: Black Swan Press/Wetlands Conservation Society, 1996. Kingsnorth, Paul. Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist. London: Faber and Faber, 2017. Latour, Bruno. Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climate Regime. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2017. Little, Lorna. The Mark of the Wagarl, illustrated by Janice Lyndon. Broome, WA: Magabala, 2004. Maddock, Kenneth. “Introduction.” In The Rainbow Serpent: A Chromatic Piece, edited by Ira Buchler and Kenneth Maddock, 1–21. The Hague: Mouton, 1978. Mountford, Charles. “The Rainbow-Serpent Myths of Australia.” In The Rainbow Serpent: A Chromatic Piece, edited by Ira Buchler and Kenneth Maddock, 23–97. The Hague: Mouton, 1978.

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Mudrooroo, Narogin. “A Snake Story of the Nyoongah People: A Children’s Tale.” In Western Australian Wetlands: The Kimberley and South-West, edited by Rod Giblett and Hugh Webb, 33, 36–37. Perth, WA: Black Swan Press/Wetlands Conservation Society, 1996. Noonuccal, Oodgeroo and Kabul Oodgeroo. The Rainbow Serpent. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1988. O’Connor, Rory, Gary Quartermaine, and Corrie Bodney. Report of an Investigation into Aboriginal Significance of Wetlands and Rivers in the Perth-Bunbury Region. Leederville, WA: Western Australian Water Resources Council, 1989. Pickett, Shane. “Waagle—Rainbow Serpent 1983.” In South West Central: Indigenous Art from South Western Australia 1833–2002, edited by Brenda Croft with Janda Gooding, 54. Perth, WA: Art Gallery of Western Australia, 2003. ———. “Waagyl and Yondock Story.” In Walyalup Dreamings, 9. Fremantle: City of Fremantle, 2004. Radcliffe-Brown, A.R. “The Rainbow-Serpent Myth of Australia.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 56 (1926): 19–25. ———. “The Rainbow-Serpent Myth in South-East Australia.” Oceania 1 (1930): 342–47. Rainbow Spirit Elders. The Rainbow Spirit in Creation: A Reading of Genesis 1, edited and translated by Norman Habel. Collegesville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000. ———. Rainbow Spirit Theology: Towards an Australian Aboriginal Theology, 2nd edn. Adelaide: Australian Theological Forum Press, 2007. Serres, Michel. The Natural Contract, translated by Elizabeth MacArthur and William Paulson. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1995. Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. Boston: Beacon, 1997. Originally published in 1862. Webb, Hugh. “Aboriginal Country: Not a Construction, a Way of Being.” In Western Australian Wetlands: The Kimberley and South-West, edited by Rod Giblett and Hugh Webb, 61–76. Perth, WA: Black Swan Press/Wetlands Conservation Society, 1996.

Chapter 3

Artist and Swamp Wetlands in Australian Painting and Photography Rod Giblett

Wetlands are generally not objects worthy of depiction in Australian colonial painting and photography as they do not conform to the conventions of the European landscape aesthetic of composition and depth from a masterly point of view. Nor are they easily amenable to being depicted in the three main European aesthetic modalities of the sublime, the beautiful, and the picturesque that address the sense of sight. Wetlands are much more suited to the anti- or counter-aesthetic modality of the uncanny that addresses primarily the sense of smell and so cannot readily be addressed in painting and photography. Wetlands upset, if not defy, the privileging of sight in modern Western cultures and its technologies and modalities of representation, such as landscape painting and photography. The problem of how to depict or represent the uncanny wetland in visual terms is one several Australian colonial painters in the nineteenth century, such as Eugene von Guérard and W. C. Piguenit, tackled and negotiated with greater or lesser successful nods to, and/or departures from, the conventions of European landscape aesthetics. In this chapter, I trace some prominent exemplars, instances, and exceptions and argue that these artists play around not only with aesthetic conventions, but also with cultural assumptions about water, land, fertility, decomposition, desolation, and destruction. Some of these qualities can be found in the landscape painting and photography not only of what could be called the native quaking zone of wetlands home to Aboriginal people and relatively untouched by industrial agriculture and warfare, but also of the feral quaking zone of artificial wetlands ruined by industrial agriculture and warfare.1 By contrast, in the twentieth century, Australian Aboriginal painters, such as Albert Namatjira and Shane Pickett, and Australian modernist painters, such as Arthur Boyd and Albert Tucker, were 51

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much more attuned to wetlands and dealing with them in environmentally sensitive ways (as discussed below). What constitutes the Australian landscape in Australian colonial landscape painting and photography is limited in range, scope, and subject matter. For most colonial landscape painters, and, indeed, for colonial landscape writers and their successors, the landscape photographers, as Tim Bonyhady puts it, “the Australian wilderness was made up of mountain ranges and forests, waterfalls and lakes.”2 For most of them it was not made up of swamps, marshes, bogs, or sloughs, or where it was, they were aestheticized in the terms and style of the traditions of European landscape aesthetics. PAINTING The first painting by a European painter of an Australian wetland may be Frederick Clause’s painting of the lagoon named after him on the Swan River (now “Claisebrook Cove”) in Perth, Western Australia, painted in 1828.3 The painting depicts the Darling Range (really a scarp) in the background inaccurately depicted as hills (“the peaks are invented,” as Bill Gammage says4). It shows some black swans in flight with absurdly elongated necks and some other black swans at rest with equally absurdly curved necks. Clause’s painting depicts, as Gooding puts it, “exotic flora and fauna contained in a landscape bearing resemblance to an English country estate.”5 The country estate contains and transforms the aberration of the black swan into an exotic curio gracing a lake and the equally aberrant kangaroo into a pastoral animal grazing safely and peacefully like docile sheep.6 The pleasing pastoral prospect, even without the pastoral animals of sheep and cattle and with native animals depicted in pastoral terms, is the stock in trade of the European landscape painter, even of Australian wetlands. Eugene von Guérard is a case in point. He is regarded as “arguably Australia’s, and certainly [the state of] Victoria’s most important colonial landscape painter.”7 Swamps and marshes may be viewed close up in the foreground or mid-ground of the picturesque pleasing prospects in some of von Guérard’s paintings, or viewed from a distance in the background as in his “Tower Hill” of 1855.8 The wetland depicted in this painting is a water-filled, dormant volcanic crater now in the Tower Hill Wildlife Reserve in the Warrnambool area of south-western Victoria. Ten years later, von Guérard painted a painting of another wetland area in western Victoria, “Mount William and part of the Grampians in West Victoria” (see Figure 3.1). According to one writer on this painting, “although this scene was on Mount William Station, von Guérard chose to paint it as a primeval landscape.”9 In other words, although the scene was part and parcel

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Figure 3.1  Eugene von Guérard, “Mount William and part of the Grampians in West Victoria 1865,” Oil on Cardboard, 30.3 x 40.6 cm. Source: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Collier Bequest, 1955 (1562–5). Accessed September 6, 2018. www.n​gv.vi​ c.gov​.au/e​xplor​e/col​lecti​on/wo​rk/56​80/

of pastoral land use, von Guérard chose to paint it as a primeval hydrological wetlandscape of marsh and slime in the fore- and mid-ground, and as a primeval geological dry landscape of rock and the sublime in the background. The horizontal, supine wetlandscape is countered by the vertical, erect dry landscape in the background in a classic, masculinist gendering of the land. Mountainous clouds surmount the scene and shroud the top of Mt. William as an emblem of God’s overarching omnipotence, if not beneficence. The sublime in the European landscape aesthetic has generally been concerned with vertical, if not vertiginous, landscapes. Von Guérard’s painting with its strong horizon in the mid-ground and with placid water and marshy vegetation in the foreground could be called a depiction and evocation of the slime in the horizontal of wetlandscapes (as distinct from the sublime in the horizontal of desert landscapes (as identified and discussed by Rudolf Otto10)). Sheep and cattle are not grazing safely in this pastoral landscape and no damage by their hard hooves is evident in the exposed foreground. Rather, native waterbirds wade and browse placidly in the water or fly smoothly above the water, emus congregate convivially in the marshy vegetation and a lone

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pelican floats magisterially in the air above. In the sense of being a benign, prelapsarian landscape of God’s good earthly creation, the scene depicted is pastoral; in the sense of being a scene of chaos, it is also a primeval wetlandscape before the fall into evil, into wetland drainage and into agricultural and pastoral damage. The wetland on Mount William Station in von Guérard’s painting was called (unoriginally) “Mount William Swamp” or ”Big Swamp” and is now believed to be under cultivation.11 The scene depicted is also a primeval wetlandscape before the fall into evil and land abuse. It is a precursor of Arthur Boyd’s painting, “Irrigation Lake, Wimmera,” of 1950 depicting the other side of the Grampians (as discussed below). Thirty years after von Guérard, W. C. Piguenit created a painting similar in composition to von Guérard’s “Mount William,” painting with a strong horizon in the mid-ground and with placid water and marshy vegetation in the foreground, without mountains in the background, but with mountainous clouds that signify equally the sublime.12 For one critic writing in 1895, “the scene is one of silent desolation.”13 It is also a scene of woeful devastation and joyful rejuvenation typical of floods and wetlands that demonstrates that in wetlands are destruction and recreation, life and death. It depicts destruction and creation occurring in the life-giving and death-dealing waters of wetlands in which one cannot occur without the other. I saw this painting and von Guérard’s “Tower Hill” (but not his Mount William swamp painting) in a major exhibition of American and Australian landscape paintings in Melbourne twenty-one years ago in 1998. This blockbuster exhibition comprising works from American and Australian galleries brought together the work of the leading landscape painters and their works “during one of its most exciting eras of development—the 19th century.”14 Included also in the exhibition was an American depiction of a wetland by Martin Johnson Heade.15 If von Guérard’s painting of Mount William swamp depicts a primeval wetland before the fall and drainage, Heade’s paintings depict a wetland after the fall, drainage, and cultivation. If von Guérard’s painting of Mount William swamp evokes the slime in the horizontal of wetlandscapes with the sublime in the vertical of mountainscapes, Heade’s painting is evocative of what Ellis calls “the contemplative sublime.”16 It is of a dyked and drained preindustrial agricultural landscape depicted in contemplatively sublime ways, unlike an undyked and undrained wetland that could be contemptuously dismissed as slimy and horrible. Included also in the 1998 exhibition was Henry James Johnstone’s painting, “Evening Shadows, Backwater of the Murray, South Australia,” of 1880 with its play of dark and shade producing a gloomy scene of the arches of swampy trees framing the reflection in still water of the light sky producing a scene of tranquillity imbued with romantic nostalgia for “man (albeit

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indigenous) and nature” in harmony with the setting sun seeming to signify for Johnstone the twilight of Aboriginal people in their native home and habitat. Only rarely, as in this painting, does a nineteenth-century Australian painting take the close-up point of view in a swamp, and show its Aboriginal owners and inhabitants, albeit romanticized here as “noble savages.” Von Guérard preferred the distant point of view of both (as we have seen). On a visit to Adelaide in May 2017, I saw this painting for the third time. I noticed during my most recent viewing that the painting includes the moon at the stage of almost complete waning, or just commencing waxing, signifying, like the setting sun, for Johnstone the decline or eclipse of Aboriginal people. This fingernail slither of a white moon against the background of a not-so-white sky is difficult to discern in reproductions. I take the white moon to signify a kind of allegorical whitewashing of the black waters of the back water of the river with its black people under the black sun of melancholy. I also take the possibility of the waxing, rather than waning, moon to signify hope for a new phase of respectful dialogue, meaningful recognition, and negotiated reconciliation between black and white waters and peoples. Not included also in the 1998 New Worlds from Old exhibition was James Ashton’s “Where Reeds and Rushes Grow” also housed in the Art Gallery of South Australia like Johnstone’s painting.17 The broad, panoramic sweep of this painting is arguably a colonizing device as it sets up the wetlandscape as an object of visual consumption for the viewing subject. Yet, the open water winding its way from the immediate foreground into the mid-ground invites the viewer to enter the scene. The water opens up a passageway through which the viewer might travel into the place on its surface by boat or canoe, or by entering into its depths by foot, or by immersing oneself bodily in it, becoming part of the wetland and not standing outside of it as a viewer. I take the receding horizon of this painting as opening up the horizon of possibility of a new mythology of old wetlands around Aboriginal mythology (as outlined in the preceding chapter and discussed further below in this chapter). By contrast, Henry Gritten’s two paintings of “Melbourne from the Botanical Gardens in 1867,” both housed in the State Library of Victoria, one on permanent display in the Cowen Gallery, do not allow the viewer to enter the wetlands they depict. They show billabongs along the serpentine course of the Yarra River adjacent to the Royal Botanic Gardens with the city of Melbourne in the background.18 In 1867, Gritten painted another painting with the same title clearly showing the billabongs.19 Coote describes this painting as depicting “an Arcadian paradise.”20 This is the next step in the divine process of creation after the watery chaos of von Guérard’s primeval landscape. Like the biblical paradise, there is a serpent in the garden, specifically in, or as, the serpentine billabong. The lagoon or billabong depicted in the painting is the habitat for the slimy serpent Satan. The modern city initially keeps the

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monstrous marsh (and the marsh monster, such as Satan) at bay on its outskirts, and even contains it within a landscaped garden (both of which this painting depicts). The Yarra River, as Morrison puts it, “in those days meandered considerably south of its present course.”21 “The main lagoon,” as Pescott (1982), the Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens from 1957 to 1970, describes it in his history of the Gardens, “in essence was part of the main course of the river.”22 The “marshy lagoon or swampy ground” as Morrison variously calls it,23 was more precisely a billabong in Australian terms, or an ox-bow lake in terms from elsewhere.24 The most recent account of Melbourne parks and gardens by Freeman and Pukk describes how “three lakes [. . .] were natural billabongs of the Yarra River.”25 Bolin Bolin Billabong is still a natural billabong of the Yarra River in Melbourne, or at least half of it still is. In the late nineteenth century, Arthur Streeton might have depicted Bolin Bolin Billabong, but chose instead on two occasions to place it firmly in the mid-ground beneath a clump of trees and to subsume it within either a sweeping panorama of a pleasing pastoral prospect in “Still Glides the Stream, and Shall Forever Glide.”26 Or over the brow of a hill in the depths of a portrait of the country and as the backdrop for the recreation of the human figures engaging in leisure as in Streeton’s “Near Heidelberg, 1890” (see Figure 3.2). Streeton is an artist not in swamp. Twentieth-century depictions of Australian wetlands have been much less aestheticized than their nineteenth-century counterparts, much less tied to the conventions of European landscape aesthetics. Wetlands in outback Australia untouched by agriculture (though not necessarily by pastoralism) receive an environmentally sensitive, if not also romantic, depiction in the work of Albert Namatjira working across the traditions of Aboriginal and European painting (and building a bridge across the great divide between the two creating cross-cultural dialogue and sometimes getting shot down by both sides as not being Aboriginal enough for using conventions of European landscape painting, or not being European enough for using conventions of Aboriginal painting).27 The shimmering surface of the water not only reflects the trees and rocky land beyond, but also makes the shallow depths of the water below the surface into a living, moving being with a protean life of its own. Similarly, in one of a series of central Australian landscapes, Namatjira depicts water as not a passive object or mere reflective surface, but as an active agent (private collection). Philip Jennings describes these paintings as “very romantic portrayals of pristine wetlands in central Australia and quite a contrast to the early European portrayals.”28 Yet, they are not romantic in European terms of being pleasing prospects. Perhaps they are romantic in the sense of being idealized portrayals of pristine wetlands. Early European

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Figure 3.2  Arthur Streeton, “Near Heidelberg 1890,” Oil on Canvas, 53.7 x 43.3 cm. Source: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Felton Bequest, 1943 (1223–4). Accessed 6 September 2018. www.n​gv.vi​c.gov​.au/e​xplor​e/col​lecti​on/wo​rk/30​55/

portrayals of Australian wetlands, such as those of von Guérard, were romantic in European terms. In a painting titled “Illara Creek, Western James Range” painted in 1945 the surface of the water is also not a pure reflective surface but a shimmering surface reflecting trees, rock, and sky.29 This painting seems to make an acerbic comment on the white man’s fencing of a boundary across a gorge that would presumably be susceptible to flooding, which would wash away the fence and the white man’s attempt to corral and enclose the commons of water in a pastoralist cattle station. Other twentieth-century Australian painters depart from their nineteenthcentury counterparts in their depiction of wetlands. The primeval swamp in

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Figure 3.3  Arthur Boyd, “Irrigation Lake, Wimmera (1950),” Resin and Tempera on Composition Board, 81.4 x 121.9 cm. Source: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Purchased, 1950 (2331–4). Accessed September 6, 2018. www.n​gv.vi​c.gov​.au/e​xplor​e/ col​lecti​on/wo​rk/29​28/

von Guérard’s painting of Mount William swamp becomes the devastated and desolate pre-industrial agricultural landscape of a blighted and droughtstricken farm in Arthur Boyd’s painting “Irrigation Lake, Wimmera” painted in 1950 (see Figure 3.3). The billabong subsumed in and by the park and garden in the city in Grittens’ paintings is contrasted with the dam on the farm in the country. The ruined wetland hell is depicted as just that, as hell. Boyd’s “Irrigation Lake, Wimmera” could not be included in the 1998 exhibition as it was not painted in the nineteenth century, nor is it a heroic landscape painting depicting land relatively untouched by agriculture. This painting depicts a desolated wetlandscape and tree graveyard on a farm in the Mallee/Wimmera region of western Victoria west of the Grampians with trees in a dam dying from salination or inundation or both. The lake looks like it is well on its way to becoming irredeemably saline caused by the clearing of native trees and stripping of the topsoil. Crows peck in the mud in the foreground while white cockatoos hover above the dying, skeletal trees stripped of almost all their foliage. Waterbirds are absent compared to their abundant presence in von Guérard’s painting of Mount William swamp. A huddled figure in a horse-drawn buggy drives by subsumed in the immensity of the landscape apparently oblivious to, or ignoring, or shielding themselves from, the desolation of the scene in whose creation or destruction they may have participated.

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Mountains (the Grampians, including Mount William) rise imperturbably in the background unaffected by and invulnerable to the white farmer’s destruction of the wetland and its conversion into an “irrigation lake” (a euphemism and an acerbic comment), or dam. Wetland ecologist Philip Jennings describes this painting as “a stark portrayal of what farmers have done to many wetlands.”30 The living wetland is transformed into a dying wetlandscape, a landscape painting of it, and a stark portrait of a once living being. This wetland that was once living is now a ghost swamp. Land is transformed into landscape and portrait. Boyd also produced other works of arts in which water bodies feature, such as a waterhole in a painting of 1954 in central Australia (see Figure 3.4). The title of “The Waterhole” suggests that what was probably a thriving, biodiverse ecosystem and habitat has become a mere receptacle or vessel to hold water, presumably for white men’s stock animals—cattle, horses, and sheep. A swamp features in a sketch of 1954 catalogued as “not titled four black swans atop a swamp strewn with dead trees.”31 Boyd’s notes scrawled on the sketch seem to contrast the black swans with the “white dead trees”

Figure 3.4  Arthur Boyd, “The Waterhole, Central Australia (1954),” Enamel Paint on Composition Board, 91.2 x 122.4 cm. Source: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Purchased, 1954 (3068–4). Accessed September 6, 2018. www.n​gv.vi​c.gov​.au/e​xplor​e/ col​lecti​on/wo​rk/30​17/

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in a Melvillean meditation on black and white (Boyd did paint a picture called “Moby Dick Hill” in 1949).32 Twenty-five years later, Boyd was still fascinated with water bodies and water birds. In 1979–1980, he painted a picture titled “Ibis and River Swamp.” The title notwithstanding, the painting depicts a brolga, not an ibis. Boyd was possibly following in the footsteps of Albert Tucker who depicted ibises in a swamp in a series devoted to them. Australian twentieth-century depictions of wetlands in paintings much less aestheticized than their nineteenth-century counterparts reach their greatest expression in Albert Tucker’s paintings of ibises in swamps, as well as of “Brolga in Swamp” and of “Barmah Swamp.” Rather than landscape paintings, these paintings are portraits of brolgas and ibises in situ, in their home habitat. Tucker is the artist in swamp par excellence. Tucker was a major modernist and a member of the Heide Circle of painters in the Heidelberg area of north-east Melbourne where Streeton had also lived and painted (as we have seen). Rather than wetlands subsumed in Streeton’s sweeping panorama of a pleasing pastoral prospect or in the depths of a portrait of the country, Tucker accepts Ashton’s invitation and enters the wetland to paint the scene and one resident species up close. The Art Gallery of NSW describes Tucker as “one of the most important Australian artists from the decades following the Second World War, responsible for reinvigorating and re-mythologizing the Australian landscape through an uncompromising modernist approach.”33 In the series of paintings in which Tucker painted portraits of ibises in swamps in the 1960s, the sacred ibis, mythological bird of Egyptian religion who represented the god Thoth, god of wisdom, knowledge, and writing, and was considered the herald of the flood, becomes the re-mythologised bird of the black waters of Australian wetlandscapes. The ibis in the swamp might become the Australian god of wisdom, knowledge, and writing, and herald the flood (or at least drought-breaking rain) in the driest, continually inhabited continent on earth.34 Tucker also painted two paintings in the following year with the title of “Ibis in Swamp.”35 This is another scene of apparent desolation, certainly of darkness.36 John Kinsella wrote a poem about this painting called “On Albert Tucker’s Ibis in Swamp”: What action prevails in the miasma of swamp? The mummified ibis reflects/reflected in the crescent of its black moon beak. Life almost crisp amongst decay makes decay necessary even muted flowers

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become profoundly beautiful Sacred Ibis wades green light thick with shadows, the stilled eye accepts the dark heart welling in its hollowed log.37

Miasma refers to the bad air, or ‘mal-aria,’ that arise from swamps and other decomposing wet matter. Little, or nothing, happens in miasma, and in this swamp. The swamp is the place par excellence of the Taoist concept/metaphor of wu-wei, of non-action, the non-ado, the effortless, the non-striving. The crescent-shaped black beak of the ibis reflects its own shape. This swamp is located beneath the sign of the black moon of melancholy. The heart of darkness and dankness gives birth to strange and beautiful flowers. Out of dark decay and decomposition, new life and hope springs eternal. Tucker also painted an ibis in a light-filled swamp.38 Philip Jennings describes this painting as: a sunset scene in which the water has glowing colours of red and yellow. I think it is very powerful as it shows some of the beauty and the mystery of the wetlands. The dominant presence of the Ibis portrays the crucial role of the wetland as a habitat for wildlife. This is a modern understanding that was not a part of the culture of the early European settlers, although the Aboriginal people clearly understood it. [. . .] Tucker clearly embraces our modern appreciation of wetlands.39

Landscape is not habitat; landscape is not land which is home; it is land to be looked at, not lived in.40 Habitat is not landscape, land to inhabit and live in; it is home. Perhaps the ibis in an Australian swamp might become the Australian god of wisdom, knowledge, and writing about caring for country, including wetlands. Alternatively, Australian Aboriginal people already have, and have had for tens of thousands of years, such a “god” in the Rainbow Serpent and/or Rainbow Spirit (see chapter 2 of this volume). In southwestern Australia, the Noongar people call this sacred figure the Waagle/Waugal/Wagyl/Wagarl, and so on, in various spellings. In one of Shane Pickett paintings now held by the City of Fremantle41 the Waagle rises out of the water against a backdrop of a stratified landscape which could also be the stratigraphic layers of the land so this water could equally be an aquifer, or underground river, as it is an over-ground river thus indicating that for Aboriginal people there is no distinction between waters under the earth and those above the earth. They are all waters.

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By attempting to exclude water-rights from Native Title, the then prime minister, John Howard, was not only dealing a cruel and savage blow to reconciliation, he was also demonstrating his ignorance that water and land cannot really be separated out in this way for both Anglo-Australian and Aboriginal Australian cultures. Water is the life-blood of land, and land is people—both Anglo and Indigenous. Pickett’s painting of the Waagle painted more than thirty-five years ago and now housed in the Art Gallery of WA shows the Waagle rising out of a river of blood-bearing people on its (or his or her) back.42 A river of blood for European Australians is typically horrific. It has been associated with menstrual flow, massacre, war, sacrifice, abattoirs, and so on. Like wetlands, blood points to both life and death. By contrast, biblical binarism and moralism separates life and death, and so constructs blood as associated with either life or death. Regarding water as both lifegiving and death-dealing means that the Wagyl is not a monstrous swamp serpent who only kills and consumes, but is both the taker of life, and the giver of new life. PHOTOGRAPHY Landscape photography of Australia, and by Australian photographers of other places, has played an important role in the formation and maintenance of Australian national and cultural identity. Australian landscape photography has been, and still is, central to how Australia and many Australians see and define Australia, and themselves. The Australian landscape, though, was not just Australian lands, but also the lands on (and wetlands in) which Australians had fought and died. The tempering of Australian nationhood on, and in, the battlefields of World War I was documented by Frank Hurley and many other Australian photographers.43 The Australian national landscape was not just the rural landscape of Australia ‘at home’ as in Streeton’s and the other Australian ‘impressionists’ paintings, but also the landscape of European trench warfare abroad photographed in an Australian nationalistic style. What Willis calls “a more aggressively nationalist style of ‘Australianness’ [was] equivalent to bright sunlight.”44 This could be depicted at home, or away as in Hurley’s concocted sunburst through the clouds over the battlefield in his composite photograph, “Morning after the Battle of Paschendale.”45 The battlefield scene (lower half) depicting a waste wetland and feral quaking zone,46 and not the composite, made it into the official history of the war as Bean distinguished between “photographs for the historical record, and the taking of them for propaganda or for the press, [which] were to some extent conflicting activities. Captain Hurley devoted himself to the latter work.”47 Hurley cast himself in the grander role of the purveyor of nationalistic sentiment. His

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devotion to this work was not without conflict with Bean and ‘Authorities’ as Hurley records in his diary that he: had a great argument with Bean about combination pictures. [I] am thoroughly convinced that it is impossible to secure effects, without resorting to composite pictures. [. . .] Our Authorities will not permit me to pose any pictures or indulge in any original means to secure them. They will not allow composite printing of any description, even though such be accurately titled, nor will they permit clouds to be inserted in a picture.48

Perhaps with good reason as Hurley’s composite, with what Willis calls “its sublime backlit clouds rising over a scene of death and devastation,”49 aestheticizes the landscape of trench warfare, or more precisely, the artificial wetland and feral quaking zone of the Western Front.50 For Hurley, as Ennis argues, “the battlefield was sublime,” perhaps the last thing “Authorities” wanted.51 Yet, rather than a field of battle, this scene is a depiction after the event of the battle, showing what Willis calls “fields of mud,” “a flattened, rubblestrewn, burnt-out, and ravaged landscape.”52 This landscape of destruction is the mud and slime of the feral quaking zone of the wet wasteland of trench warfare commented upon so often by World War I writers, such as Henri Barbusse in Under Fire and Ernst Jünger in Storm of Steel,53 and photographed by Australian photographers too (and described by Hurley in his diary).54 By contrast, in Hurley’s composite photograph of Passchendaele, the sublime and the slime counterpose each other in one composition and show their complementarity encapsulated in the portmanteau word s(ub)lime in which, as Sofoulis (as the deviser of the portmanteau) argues, slime is the secret of the sublime.55 In Hurley’s composite, the slimy land dominates the photo as it takes up two-thirds of its area (and so conforms to the pictorialist rule of thirds),56 but this is surmounted and transcended by the sublime sky in the top third. The overall effect for Willis of this and other photos by Hurley is “to glorify war.”57 The slime and mud of the depths of the earth and the waste wetland of the hell and gore of trench warfare below are sublimated into the heavens and glory of heroism above. Slime is indeed the ‘dirty secret’ of the sublime. The wasteland of trench warfare is anti-aesthetic and an industrial waste product (the product of industrial technology), similar to the wasteland of mining. Both are feral quaking zones where the uncanny rears its ugly, monstrous head, though Hurley also sublimates it into the heights of clouds and sunshine. Several photographers have photographed the native quaking zone of Australian wetlands. These photographers include Wayne Lawlor and Simon Neville. Arthur McComb and Sam Lake’s 1990 book Australian Wetlands is

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the standard popular environmental science coffee table book on the topic. It is graced with photographs by Wayne Lawlor and others that not only show Australian wetlands in an aesthetically pleasing light, but in an unaesthetically displeasing way. One photograph shows “a wetland being used as a rubbish dump”58 with car tires in the foreground, scummy water in the midground, and sundry discarded white goods in the background, the detritus of consumer capitalism. The wetland is used here as the endpoint and dumping place for the commodities of industrial capitalist production and consumption produced by the carbinoferous fuels that came from the swamp in the first place. “Sanitary land-filling” fills up the empty and low places of the earth to create level playing fields, often quite literally as they are unsuitable (because unstable) for housing. In the 1990s, Hugh Webb and I collaborated on a project to present the conservation values of wetlands in Western Australia. In order to present and promote these values, we engaged a photographer, Simon Neville, to take aesthetically pleasing photographs of some wetlands. This collaboration resulted in the book Western Australian Wetlands: The Kimberley and South-West.59 At the same time as I was engaged in this project, I was also deconstructing and decolonizing aesthetics in relation to wetlands.60 Simon’s photographs and others included in Western Australian Wetlands depict wetlands by and large as aesthetically pleasing. The framing of the photograph to include suitable subject matter, excludes other unsuitable, subject matter. Simon’s photograph of the internationally important Mandora Swamp, a raised, classical peat bog, shows a muddy wetland framed by trees and rushes. Perhaps it is not the most pleasant of places, but certainly it is not the most unpleasant place either, except that the photograph is deliberately framed to exclude the carcasses of decomposing cattle. Simon took photographs of them to document them and to give us the option of including them in the book, but they were not included. I commented in writing, though, about the presence of decomposing cattle carcasses outside the photographic frame.61 The written word and the visual image can work in concert to provide context and illustration (or not). Another of Simon’s photographs of Lake Preston is reminiscent of Ashton’s painting as it shows a kind of watery path between rushes and reeds that invites the viewer to wade out into the water of the wetland, to feel sand, slime, and rock beneath one’s feet and between one’s toes, to feel the water lapping against one’s legs, to become part and parcel of the wetland and not remain aloof and outside of it, mastering it from a distance as in traditional landscape, and wetlandscape, paintings, such as von Guérard’s. It opens up the horizon of possibility of a new mythology of old wetlands around Aboriginal mythology.

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NOTES 1. See Rod Giblett, Landscapes of Culture and Nature (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), chapter 1. 2. Tim Bonyhady, Images in Opposition: Australian Landscape Painting 1801– 1890 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1985), 63. 3. Holmes à Court Gallery, “Frederick Rushbrook Clause, ‘Setting Camp of the Naval Survey Expedition, Clause’s Lagoon (Detail),’ 1828,” accessed September 6, 2018, http:​//www​.holm​esaco​urtga​llery​.com.​au/ar​ticle​/fred​rick.​ 4. Bill Gammage, The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2011), 64. 5. Janda Gooding, “Sights Un-seen,” in South-West Central: Indigenous Art from South Western Australia 1833–2002, ed. Brenda Croft with Janda Gooding (Perth, WA: Art Gallery of Western Australia, 2003), 9. 6. For the natural and cultural history of the black swan, see Rod Giblett, Black Swan Lake: Life of a Wetland (Bristol: Intellect Books, 2013), chapter 13. 7. Carolyn McDowall, “Eugene von Guérard—Colonial Artist, Nature Revealed,” 2014. 8. National Gallery of Victoria, “Eugene von Guérard, ‘Tower Hill,’ 1855,” accessed September 6, 2018, www.n​gv.vi​c.gov​.au/e​ssay/​eugen​e-von​-guer​ard-n​ature​ -reve​aled/​3/. 9. National Gallery of Victoria, “Eugene von Guérard, ‘Mount William and Part of the Grampians West Victoria,’ 1865,” accessed September 6, 2018, https​://cv​.vic.​ gov.a​u/sto​ries/​creat​ive-l​ife/e​ugene​-von-​gu%C3​%A9ra​rd/mo​unt-w​illia​m-and​-part​ -of-t​he-gr​ampia​ns-we​st-vi​ctori​a-186​5/. 10. Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of The Divine and its Relation to the Rational, 2nd edn., trans. John W. Harvey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1950), 69. 11. Carole Mules, email to author, June 5, 2017. 12. Art Gallery of New South Wales, “W.C. Piguenit, ‘The Flood in the Darling 1890,’ 1895,” accessed September 6, 2018, www.a​rtgal​lery.​nsw.g​ov.au​/coll​ectio​n/ wor​ks/61​05/. 13. Qtd. in Andrew Sayers, “W. C. Piguenit 1836–1914,” in New Worlds from Old: 19th Century Australian and American Landscapes, ed. Elizabeth Johns, Andrew Sayers and Elizabeth Kornhauser (Canberra: National Gallery of Australia/ Hartford: Wadsworth Atheneum, 1998), 185. 14. Elizabeth Johns, Andrew Sayers, and Elizabeth Kornhauser with Amy Ellis, eds., New Worlds from Old: 19th Century Australian and American Landscapes (Canberra: National Gallery of Australia and Hartford: Wadsworth Atheneum, 1998), accessed September 6, 2018, https​://ng​a.gov​.au/e​xhibi​tions​/neww​orlds​/inde​x.cfm​. 15. Wikimedia, “Martin Johnson Heade, ‘View of Marshfield,’ 1866–1876,” accessed September 6, 2018, https​://up​load.​wikim​edia.​org/w​ikipe​dia/c​ommon​s/6/6​c/ Vie​w_of_​Marsh​field​_by_M​artin​_John​son_H​eade.​jpg. 16. Amy Ellis, “Martin Johnson Heade 1819–1904,” in New Worlds from Old: 19th Century Australian and American Landscapes, edited by Elizabeth Johns,

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Andrew Sayers, and Elizabeth Kornhauser (Canberra: National Gallery of Australia/ Hartford: Wadsworth Atheneum, 1998), 190. 17. Art Gallery of South Australia, “James Ashton, ‘Where Reeds and Rushes Grow,’ 1899,” accessed September 6, 2018, www.a​rtgal​lery.​sa.go​v.au/​agsa/​home/​ Colle​ction​/deta​il.js​p?acc​No=0.​326. 18. National Gallery of Victoria, “Henry Gritten, ‘Melbourne from the Botanic Gardens in 1867,’ 1867,” accessed September 6, 2018, www.n​gv.vi​c.gov​.au/e​xplor​e/ col​lecti​on/wo​rk/75​820/.​ 19. National Library of Australia, “Henry Gritten, ‘Melbourne from the Botanic Gardens,’ 1867,” accessed September 6, 2018, https​://tr​ove.n​la.go​v.au/​work/​17767​ 1583?​q&ver​sionI​d=193​45270​8. 20. Maree Coote, The Art of Being Melbourne (Melbourne: Melbournestyle Books, 2012), 54–55. 21. Crosbie Morrison, Melbourne’s Garden: A Descriptive and Pictorial Record of the Botanic Gardens, Melbourne, 2nd edn. (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1957), 21. 22. R.T.M. Pescott, The Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne: A History from 1845 to 1970 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1982), 92. 23. Morrison, Melbourne’s Garden, 21, 28. 24. Kristin Otto, Yarra: A Diverting History (Melbourne: Text, 2005), 61n; see also William de Buys, “Oxbow Lake,” in Home Ground: Language from an American Landscape, ed. Barry Lopez (San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 2006), 255. 25. Kornelia Freeman and Ulo Pukk, Parks and Gardens of Melbourne (Melbourne: Melbourne Books, 2015), 62. 26. Art Gallery of New South Wales, “Arthur Streeton, ‘Still Glides the Stream, and Shall Forever Glide,’ 1890,” accessed September 6, 2018, www.a​rtgal​lery.​nsw.g​ ov.au​/coll​ectio​n/wor​ks/85​9/. 27. Art Gallery of New South Wales, “Albert Namatjira, ‘Palm Valley,’ 1940s,” accessed September 6, 2018, www.a​rtgal​lery.​nsw.g​ov.au​/coll​ectio​n/wor​ks/93​.1986​/. 28. Philip Jennings, email to author, July 7, 2017. 29. Artnet, “Albert Namatjira, ‘Illara Creek, Western James Range,’ 1945,” accessed September 6, 2018, www.a​rtnet​.com/​artis​ts/al​bert-​namat​jira/​illar​a-cre​ek-we​ stern​-jame​s-ran​ge-bx​qfmUx​_nIzJ​YdSbF​ajVLw​2. 30. Philip Jennings, email to author, May 11, 2017. 31. National Gallery of Australia, “Arthur Boyd, ‘Not Titled Four Black Swans Atop a Swamp Strewn with Dead Trees,’ 1954,” accessed September 6, 2018, https​:// cs​.nga.​gov.a​u/det​ail.c​fm?ir​n=841​41. 32. For Melville and others on black and white, see Giblett, Black Swan Lake, chapter 14. 33. Art Gallery of New South Wales, “Artist Profile, ‘Albert Tucker, 1914–1999’,” accessed September 6, 2018, https​://ww​w.art​galle​ry.ns​w.gov​.au/c​ollec​tion/​artis​ts/tu​ cker-​alber​t/. 34. Deutscher and Hackett, “Albert Tucker, ‘Ibis,’ 1963,” accessed September 6, 2018, https​://ww​w.deu​tsche​randh​acket​t.com​/auct​ion/l​ot/ib​is-19​63. 35. Gould Galleries, “Albert Tucker, ‘Ibis in Swamp,’ 1964,” accessed September 6, 2018, https​://ar​t.bas​e.co/​produ​ct/85​7-alb​ert-t​ucker​-ibis​-in-s​wamp-​1964.​

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36. Artnet, “Albert Lee Tucker, ‘Ibis in Swamp 1965,’ 1965,” accessed September 6, 2018, http:​//www​.artn​et.co​m/art​ists/​alber​t-lee​-tuck​er/ib​is-in​-swam​p-196​5-Sl8​ WRfKY​OaPHX​C6Y4r​NMcA2​. 37. John Kinsella, “On Albert Tucker’s Ibis in Swamp,” in Eschatologies (Fremantle, WA: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1991), 59. 38. Menzies Fine Art Auctioneers & Valuers, “Albert Tucker, ‘Ibis and Forest,’ 1964,” accessed September 7, 2018, www.m​enzie​sartb​rands​.com/​items​/ibis​-and-​ fores​t. 39. Philip Jennings, emails to author, July 7 and 11, 2017. 40. See Rod Giblett, People and Places of Nature and Culture (Bristol: Intellect Books, 2011), chapter 3. 41. Australian Museums and Galleries, “Shane Pickett, ‘Waagle and Yondock Story,’ 2004,” accessed September 6, 2018, http:​//aum​useum​s.com​/wa/c​ity-f​reman​ tle-a​rt-co​llect​ion. 42. Art Gallery of Western Australia, “Shane Pickett, ‘Waagle—Rainbow Serpent,’ 1983,” accessed September 6, 2018, http:​//www​.artg​aller​y.wa.​gov.a​u/col​lecti​ ons/A​GWA-W​A-Unl​imite​d.asp​. 43. See Charles Bean, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918: Volume XII: Photographic Record of the War (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1923). 44. Ann-Marie Willis, Picturing Australia: A History of Photography (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1988), 146. 45. National Library of Australia, “Frank Hurley, ‘The Morning After the First Battle of Paschendaele [Paschendale], Australian Infantry Wounded Around a Blockhouse Near the Site of Zonnebeke Railway Station, 12 October, 1917,’” accessed September 6, 2018, http:​//nla​.gov.​au/nl​a.obj​-1598​95021​/view​?sear​chTer​m=Mor​ ning+​After​+the+​Battl​e+of+​Pasch​endae​le#se​arch/​Morni​ng%20​After​%20th​e%20B​ attle​%20of​%20Pa​schen​daele​. For the two images that make up this composite see Martyn Jolly, “Australian First-World-War Photography: Frank Hurley and Charles Bean,” History of Photography 23, no. 2 (1999), figs. 3 and 4. 46. See Giblett, Landscapes, chapters 1 and 4. 47. Bean, Official History, vii and fig. 403. 48. Frank Hurley, My Diary, Official War Photographer Commonwealth Military Forces (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 1917), Ms 883, 52 and 58–59; see also Jolly, “Australian First-World-War Photography.” 49. Willis, Picturing Australia, 184. 50. See Giblett, Landscapes, chapters 1 and 4. 51. Helen Ennis, Intersections: Photography, History and the National Library of Australia (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2004), 143. 52. Willis, Picturing Australia, 187. 53. See Giblett, Landscapes, chapter 4. 54. See, for example, “The Swamps of Zonnebeke on the Day of the First Battle of Passchendaele,” Bean, Official History, fig. 400; and other “swamps,” figs. 372, 394, 396. 55. See Rod Giblett, Postmodern Wetlands: Culture, History, Ecology (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996), chapter 2. 56. Willis, Picturing Australia, 142.

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57. Ibid., 184. 58. A.J. McComb and P.S. Lake, Australian Wetlands (Sydney: Angus & Roberston,1990), 225. 59. Rod Giblett and Hugh Webb, eds., Western Australian Wetlands: The Kimberley and South-West (Perth, WA: Black Swan Press/Wetlands Conservation Society, 1996). 60. Giblett, Postmodern Wetlands, chapters 1 and 2. 61. Giblett and Webb, Western Australian Wetlands, 56.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Art.com. “Henry James Johnstone, ‘Evening Shadows, Backwater of the Murray, South Australia,’ 1880.”Accessed September 6, 2018. www.a​ rt.co​ m/pro​ ducts​ /p369​85957​313-s​a-i96​01440​/henr​y-jam​es-jo​hnsto​ne-ev​ening​-shad​ows-b​ackwa​ ter-o​f-the​-murr​ay-so​uth-a​ustra​lia-1​880.h​tm. Art Gallery of New South Wales. “Albert Namatjira, ‘Palm Valley,’ 1940s.”Accessed September 6, 2018. www.a​rtgal​lery.​nsw.g​ov.au​/coll​ectio​n/wor​ks/93​.1986​/. ———. “Arthur Streeton, ‘Still Glides the Stream, and Shall Forever Glide,’ 1890.” Accessed September 6, 2018. www.a​rtgal​lery.​nsw.g​ov.au​/coll​ectio​n/wor​ks/85​9/. ———. “Artist Profile, ‘Albert Tucker, 1914–1999’.” Accessed September 6, 2018. https​://ww​w.art​galle​ry.ns​w.gov​.au/c​ollec​tion/​artis​ts/tu​cker-​alber​t/. ———. “W.C. Piguenit, ‘The Flood in the Darling 1890,’ 1895.” Accessed September 6, 2018. www.a​rtgal​lery.​nsw.g​ov.au​/coll​ectio​n/wor​ks/61​05/. Art Gallery of South Australia. “James Ashton, ‘Where Reeds and Rushes Grow,’ 1899.” Accessed September 6, 2018. www.a​rtgal​lery.​sa.go​v.au/​agsa/​home/​Colle​ ction​/deta​il.js​p?acc​No=0.​326. Art Gallery of Western Australia. “Shane Pickett, ‘Waagle—Rainbow Serpent,’ 1983.”Accessed September 6, 2018. http:​//www​.artg​aller​y.wa.​gov.a​u/col​lecti​ons/ A​GWA-W​A-Unl​imite​d.asp​. Artnet. “Albert Lee Tucker, ‘Ibis in Swamp 1965,’ 1965.”Accessed September 6, 2018. http:​//www​.artn​et.co​m/art​ists/​alber​t-lee​-tuck​er/ib​is-in​-swam​p-196​5-Sl8​ WRfKY​OaPHX​C6Y4r​NMcA2​. ———. “Albert Namatjira, ‘Illara Creek, Western James Range,’ 1945.” Accessed September 6, 2018. www.a​rtnet​.com/​artis​ts/al​bert-​namat​jira/​illar​a-cre​ek-we​stern​ -jame​s-ran​ge-bx​qfmUx​_nIzJ​YdSbF​ajVLw​2. Australian Museums and Galleries. “Shane Pickett, ‘Waagle and Yondock Story,’ 2004.” Accessed September 6, 2018. http:​//aum​useum​s.com​/wa/c​ity-f​reman​tle-a​ rt-co​llect​ion. Bean, Charles. The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918: Volume XII: Photographic Record of the War. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1923. Bonyhady, Tim. Images in Opposition: Australian Landscape Painting 1801–1890. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1985. Buys, William de. “Oxbow Lake.” In Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape, edited by Barry Lopez, 255. San Antonio, TX: Trinity University Press, 2006. Coote, Maree. The Art of Being Melbourne. Melbourne: Melbournestyle Books, 2012.

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Deutscher and Hackett, “Albert Tucker, ‘Ibis,’ 1963.” Accessed September 6, 2018. https​://ww​w.deu​tsche​randh​acket​t.com​/auct​ion/l​ot/ib​is-19​63. Ellis, Amy. “Martin Johnson Heade 1819–1904.” In New Worlds from Old: 19th Century Australian and American Landscapes, edited by Elizabeth Johns, Andrew Sayers, and Elizabeth Kornhauser, 190. Canberra: National Gallery of Australia/ Hartford: Wadsworth Atheneum, 1998. Ennis, Helen. Intersections: Photography, History and the National Library of Australia. Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2004. Freeman, Kornelia and Ulo Pukk. Parks and Gardens of Melbourne. Melbourne: Melbourne Books, 2015. Gammage, Bill. The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2011. Giblett, Rod. Postmodern Wetlands: Culture, History, Ecology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996. ———. Landscapes of Culture and Nature. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. ———. People and Places of Nature and Culture. Bristol: Intellect Books, 2011. ———. Black Swan Lake: Life of a Wetland. Bristol: Intellect Books, 2013. Giblett, Rod and Hugh Webb, eds. Western Australian Wetlands: The Kimberley and South-West. Perth, WA: Black Swan Press/Wetlands Conservation Society, 1996. Gooding, Janda. “Sights Un-seen.” In South-West Central: Indigenous Art from South Western Australia 1833–2002, edited by Brenda Croft with Janda Gooding, 9. Perth, WA: Art Gallery of Western Australia, 2003. Gould Galleries. “Albert Tucker, ‘Ibis in Swamp,’ 1964.” Accessed September 6, 2018. https​://ar​t.bas​e.co/​produ​ct/85​7-alb​ert-t​ucker​-ibis​-in-s​wamp-​1964.​ Holmes à Court Gallery. “Frederick Rushbrook Clause, ‘Setting Camp of the Naval Survey Expedition, Clause’s Lagoon (Detail),’ 1828.” Accessed September 6, 2018. http:​//www​.holm​esaco​urtga​llery​.com.​au/ar​ticle​/fred​rick.​ Hurley, Frank. My Diary, Official War Photographer Commonwealth Military Forces. Canberra: National Library of Australia, 1917, Ms 883. Jolly, Martyn. “Australian First-World-War Photography: Frank Hurley and Charles Bean.” History of Photography 23 no. 2 (1999): 141–48. Kinsella, John. “On Albert Tucker’s Ibis in Swamp.” In Eschatologies, 59. Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1991. Little, Lorna. The Mark of the Wagarl, illustrated by Janice Lyndon. Broome, WA: Magabala, 2004. McComb, A.J., and P.S. Lake. Australian Wetlands. Sydney: Angus & Roberston, 1990. McDowall, Carolyn. “Eugene Von Guérard – Colonial Artist, Nature Revealed, 2014.” Accessed September 6, 2018. www.t​hecul​turec​oncep​t.com​/nati​onal-​galle​ ry-eu​gene-​von-G​uérar​d-nat​ure-r​eveal​ed. Menzies Fine Art Auctioneers & Valuers. “Albert Tucker, ‘Ibis and Forest,’ 1964.” Accessed September 7, 2018. www.m​enzie​sartb​rands​.com/​items​/ibis​-and-​fores​t. Morrison, Crosbie. Melbourne’s Garden: A Descriptive and Pictorial Record of the Botanic Gardens, Melbourne, 2nd edn. Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1957. National Gallery of Australia. “Arthur Boyd, ‘Not Titled Four Black Swans Atop a Swamp Strewn with Dead Trees,’ 1954.” Accessed September 6, 2018. https​://cs​ .nga.​gov.a​u/det​ail.c​fm?ir​n=841​41.

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National Gallery of Victoria. “Arthur Boyd, ‘Irrigation Lake, Wimmera,’ 1950.” Accessed September 6, 2018. www.n​gv.vi​c.gov​.au/e​xplor​e/col​lecti​on/wo​rk/29​28/. ———. “Arthur Boyd, ‘The Waterhole, Central Australia,’ 1954.” Accessed September 6, 2018. www.n​gv.vi​c.gov​.au/e​xplor​e/col​lecti​on/wo​rk/30​17. ———. “Arthur Streeton, ‘Near Heidelberg,’ 1890.” Accessed September 6, 2018. www.n​gv.vi​c.gov​.au/e​xplor​e/col​lecti​on/wo​rk/30​55. ———. “Eugene von Guérard, ‘Mount William and Part of the Grampians West Victoria,’ 1865.” Accessed September 6, 2018. https​://cv​.vic.​gov.a​u/sto​ries/​creat​ive-l​ife/ e​ugene​-von-​gu%C3​%A9ra​rd/mo​unt-w​illia​m-and​-part​-of-t​he-gr​ampia​ns-we​st-vi​ctori​ a-186​5/. ———. “Eugene von Guérard, ‘Tower Hill,’ 1855.” Accessed September 6, 2018. www.n​gv.vi​c.gov​.au/e​ssay/​eugen​e-von​-guer​ard-n​ature​-reve​aled/​3/. ———. “Henry Gritten, ‘Melbourne from the Botanic Gardens in 1867,’ 1867.” Accessed September 6, 2018. www.n​gv.vi​c.gov​.au/e​xplor​e/col​lecti​on/wo​rk/75​820/.​ National Library of Australia. “Frank Hurley, ‘The Morning After the First Battle of Paschendaele [Paschendale], Australian Infantry Wounded Around a Blockhouse Near the Site of Zonnebeke Railway Station, 12 October, 1917’.” Accessed September 6, 2018. http:​//nla​.gov.​au/nl​a.obj​-1598​95021​/view​?sear​chTer​m=Mor​ning+​After​+the+​ Battl​e+of+​Pasch​endae​le#se​arch/​Morni​ng%20​After​%20th​e%20B​attle​%20of​%20Pa​ schen​daele​. ———. “Henry Gritten, ‘Melbourne from the Botanic Gardens,’ 1867.” Accessed September 6, 2018. https​://tr​ove.n​la.go​v.au/​work/​17767​1583?​q&ver​sionI​d=193​45270​8. Otto, Rudolf. The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational, 2nd edn. Translated by John W. Harvey. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1950. Otto, Kristin. Yarra: A Diverting History. Melbourne: Text, 2005. Pescott, R.T.M. The Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne: A History from 1845 to 1970. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1982. Pickett, Shane. “Waagle—Rainbow Serpent 1983.” In: South West Central: Indigenous Art from South Western Australia 1833–2002, edited by B. Croft with J. Gooding, 54. Perth, WA: Art Gallery of Western Australia, 2003. Pickett, Shane. “Waagyl and Yondock Story.” In Walyalup Dreamings, 9. Fremantle, WA: City of Fremantle, 2004. Sayers, Andrew. “W. C. Piguenit 1836–1914.” In New Worlds from Old: 19th Century Australian and American Landscapes, edited by Elizabeth Johns, Andrew Sayers, and Elizabeth Kornhauser, 185. Canberra: National Gallery of Australia/ Hartford: Wadsworth Atheneum, 1998. Webb, Hugh. “Aboriginal Country: Not a Construction, a Way of Being.” In Western Australian Wetlands: The Kimberley and South-West, edited by Rod Giblett and Hugh Webb, 61–76. Perth, WA: Black Swan Press/Wetlands Conservation Society, 1996. Wikimedia, “Martin Johnson Heade, ‘View of Marshfield,’ 1866–1876.” Accessed September 6, 2018. https​://up​load.​wikim​edia.​org/w​ikipe​dia/c​ommon​s/6/6​c/Vie​ w_of_​Marsh​field​_by_M​artin​_John​son_H​eade.​jpg. Willis, Ann-Marie. Picturing Australia: A History of Photography. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1988.

Chapter 4

Poet and Swamp Wetlands in Australian Verse John C. Ryan

Ecopoetry—which I define as the practice of writing, reading, and critiquing poetic works that thematize the natural world and issues of sustainability—is limited by one conspicuous shortcoming: its usage of the term environment as an undifferentiated category. As typically invoked in the field, the designator tends to cover ecology, nonhuman life, oceans, rivers, rocks, animals, plants, forests, fungi, and so on without distinguishing adequately between these diverse animate and inanimate elements in the context of their interrelationships. In this regard, J. Scott Bryson, for instance, characterizes ecopoetry as a poetic mode that “while adhering to certain conventions of traditional nature poetry, advances beyond that tradition and takes on distinctly contemporary problems and issues.”1 Leonard Scigaj, moreover, highlights ecopoetry’s prevailing emphasis on “human cooperation with nature conceived as a dynamic, interrelated series of cyclic feedback systems.”2 These assessments and others, however, often skim over the specific forms of nature that engender the making—the poiesis—of specific forms of poetic expression. Nonetheless, with the emergence of critical studies of animals3 and plants4—coupled to theoretical advances in the geo-humanities5 and, broadly, the environmental humanities6— a movement toward greater nonhuman heterogenization within ecopoetic scholarship is emerging slowly. Encouraging precision beyond nature and environment as catch-all descriptors, these frameworks have compelled recent formulations of zoopoetics,7 phytopoetics,8 and bioregionalist poetics9 that aim to particularize the natural phenomena and subjects narrativized in poetry. Can a poem become a swamp? The homogenization of the non-human world (as nature, landscape, environment, setting) in the ecopoetic paradigm is one possible explanation for the relative deficit of analyses of wetlands poetry or—following the terminology adopted in chapter 9 of this volume— what I will call paludal criticism (or, alternately, swamp criticism), of which 71

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only a few in-depth precedents exist.10 Rod Giblett, for instance, develops a cogent reading of the poetry of Charles G. D. Roberts (1860–1943) and Douglas Grant Lochhead (1922–2011) on the Tantramar Marshes of New Brunswick, Canada. He concludes that both poets “are concerned with the sense of sight and the surface of a place and not with its processes and depths, nor with its address to the other senses. Both subscribe to the dominant cultural paradigm and its hierarchies of senses, sights, and sites [emphasis added].”11 In comparison, Anandashila Saraswati underscores the imbrications between wetland habitats and poets who walk as an integral part of sensorially nuanced compositional practices.12 Addressing the swamp gap within ecopoetic theory and practice, this chapter explores a range of poetry depicting Australian wetlands, from the nineteenth century to the contemporary—from Henry Kendall’s “The Hut by the Black Swamp”13 (1869) and C. J. Dennis’ “Up ‘Long the Billabong”14 (1913) to Samuel Wagan Watson’s sequence “Boondall Wetlands”15 (2004) and Nandi Chinna’s relatively recent wetland collection Swamp (2014).16 As the chapter will strive to make clear, one of the methodological challenges in deploying a swampy lens to navigate Australian ecopoetry is nomenclatural variance. Not only are wetlands exceedingly mutable environments—characterized by highly temporal transactions (tides, currents, droughts, drainage, reclamation)—the language used to specify swamp habitats changes according to historical, cultural, geographical, and ecological contexts. A case in point is the term swamp itself, applied in many English-speaking cultures as a broad-sweeping designator for wetland communities of all types.17 Another illustration of cultural differences in naming wetlands is the term billabong of Aboriginal derivation and denoting areas of open freshwater on riverine floodplains known outside Australia as oxbows.18 Is the poem about a wetland or some other environment? Considering the issue of terminological variability yet aiming to grasp the extent to which wetland habitats figure into Australian poetry, the discussion will bring scientific frameworks—classification schemes, terminologies, and conservation concerns—to bear on swamp criticism.19 Rather than organizing the wetlands writing chronologically according to, for example, the colonial era (1829–1901), the early twentieth century (1901–45), and the contemporary period (1988– present), my approach will involve reading each poem in relation to one of three wetland types. To the extent possible, I will aim to elucidate the specific wetland habitat and region narrativized by the poet. Following Finlayson and Von Oertzen’s analysis of northern (tropical) wetlands,20 Jacobs and Brock’s review of southern (temperate) wetlands,21 and the Directory of Important Wetlands in Australia,22 three wetland categories will provide the scaffolding for my discussion. These categories are marine and coastal wetlands (estuaries, inlets, lagoons, deltas, bays, straits, aquatic beds, intertidal marshes, freshwater marshes, and mangrove swamps); inland wetlands (seasonally inundated

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floodplain lakes, billabongs, freshwater swamp forests, peatlands, and alpine and tundra wetlands), and human-made wetlands (reservoirs, canals, and dams). Based in the transdisciplinary environmental humanities, my approach to wetlands as poetic agents (rather than mere settings), therefore, draws from current ecological science to enhance understanding of Australian environmental-literary praxis.23 The historical range of poems, furthermore, will point to the gradual emergence of an ethics of conservation alongside increased attention to the unique phenomenological affordances of wetlands as complex olfactory, gustatory, tactile, auditory, and visual nexuses. What work does a wetland-poem do in the world? In the mediation of swamp ecologies through the senses, emotion, memory, and language, poetry can reshape the still-dominant negative discourse of wetlands as unproductive, disease-infested wastelands deficient in aesthetic value.24 As the chapter demonstrates, the poetry contributing most effectively to the reshaping of discourse is that which remains attentive to the “processes and depths” of wetlands and resists the entrenched cultural hierarchies of “senses, sights, and sites.”25 The proximate senses of taste, smell, and touch provoke intimate experiential narratives of wetlands. Focusing on processes and depths, for instance, Watson’s “Poem 9” from Smoke Encrypted Whispers considers the possibility of mud experiencing pain with the weight of footsteps upon it while the vegetal inhabitants of the Boondall wetlands gesture toward the human speaker with “a touch of recognition.”26 Comparable to “Poem 9,” Dorothy Porter’s “Mangroves” from her collection El Dorado foregrounds “that high / rotting salty mud / smell” of the wetlands as the poem’s addressee, Cath, breaks through her anxiety over swampy unknown depths by submerging her hand “in the warm snake-eyed yellow / water.”27 These ecopoetic narratives and others encourage the reader to consider the longterm ecological well-being of swamps, mangroves, estuaries, lagoons, and billabongs while confronting the biocultural implications of constructing dams, reservoirs, and other artificial wetlands in Australia. What’s more, approaching environmental poetry from a wetlands perspective enables us to appreciate, for instance, Watson as a poet of Brisbane’s Boondall Wetlands,28 Robert Adamson as a poet of Hawkesbury River mangroves,29 and Jack Davis,30 Andrew Taylor,31 and Nandi Chinna as poets of the Swan River tidal swamps of Western Australia.32 UNDERSTANDING AUSTRALIAN WETLAND CULTURES THROUGH POETRY The present volume, Australian Wetland Cultures, explores the concept of wetland culture through a diverse set of materials including literary and historical accounts (chapters 2, 6, 7, and 8), paintings (chapter 3), digital artifacts

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(chapters 7 and 8), and interviews with environmental activists (chapter 9). Understanding wetlands syncretically, the volume asserts, necessitates thinking about nature and culture in ongoing dialogue with—rather than in polar opposition to—each other. Australian Wetland Cultures claims that wetlands are more than passive settings acted upon for human cultural production (paintings, novels, poems). Instead, wetlands are agentic biological systems contributing to the very genesis of culture. Rather than narrowly denoting a wetland environment cultured by us, the idea of wetland culture expansively refers to a confluence of beings—a “mesh of interconnection” or locus of entangled things33—in which the wetland actively cultures those humans and non-humans who interact with it. Endowing the natural world with the potential for agency, this premise heralds a shift away from wetlands as commodities, obstructions, or objects and toward a worldview intimated in Shane Pickett’s painting “Waagle and Yondock Story” from 1983 (see chapter 3).34 In Pickett’s painting, the Noongar Creation Serpent, known as the Waagle, protects underground and aboveground water sources as well as the strata of earth associated with them. Pickett’s painting “Bunuroo Drying of the Wetlands,” moreover, depicts wetlands as highly temporal ecosystems changing throughout the traditional six Noongar seasons.35 During Bunuru, the hottest part of the year, wetlands undergo a process of drying before filling with rain. Not a consequence of climate change or related anthropogenic disturbance, drying, as rendered in “Bunuroo Drying of the Wetlands,” is a cycle endemic to the Southwest Australian landscape (see also chapter 3 of this volume for other artistic representations of wetlands). How might poetry articulate and enlarge the cultural value of wetlands and other threatened habitats? To be sure, views of wetlands as culturally and historically resonant—comparable to views evident in Pickett’s works—appear in the poetry of Lionel Fogarty,36 Jack Davis,37 Samuel Wagan Watson,38 and others. Some Australian poetry emphasizes the changeability of wetlands as threshold zones existing between earth and water—and, more generally, between nature and culture. In addition to paintings, digital artifacts, interviews, and literary-historical accounts, poetry furnishes a medium for explicating the culturing of humans and non-humans by wetlands (see chapter 1). At times, the process of culturing implicates the politics of wetlands conservation. In this regard, an article titled “Can Poetry Stop a Highway? Wielding Words in the Battle Over Roe 8” contends that “poetry draws its power from its ability to thrust language out of the gridlock of everyday discourse” (for more about Roe 8, see also chapter 8).39 The article invokes the legacies of Judith Wright and Oodgeroo Noonuccal as representative of poetry’s capacity to instigate environmental and social transformation. I maintain that ecosocial transformation, nevertheless, is predicated upon a shift in our understanding of the complex interrelationship between wetlands and other-than-human languages and agencies. Accordingly, a number of theoretical cornerstones can help support the

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conceptualization of swamp poetry as the culturing of language by the wetland. These cornerstones include ecocultural studies, the environmental humanities, posthumanist theory, and theories of biocultural heritage. In brief, the first cornerstone is the field of ecocultural studies, committed, as Adrian Ivakhiv argues, to “supporting the conditions for pluralism and difference in human-human and human-extrahuman relations” and, more broadly, to thinking nature and culture in complement—rather than contradiction—to one another.40 Green theory emphasizes the cultural dimensions of human-non-human relations as well as the concerns of environmental activism and politics.41 Closely related to ecocultural studies is the environmental humanities, which, as Robert Emmett and David Nye explain, “consider the environment and humanity to be inextricably connected and refuse to preserve an unproductive hierarchy among forms of knowledge.”42 In the context of human-extrahuman intergradations, Donna Haraway’s neologism “nature cultures” foregrounds the impossibility of conceptualizing nature, culture, and the world in isolation from one another.43 Reflecting an actor-network orientation, the term has been applied widely in recent theories of posthumanism, new materialism, and political ecology.44 A fourth cornerstone is biocultural heritage, defined as cultural heritage that derives from—and is contingent on—natural heritage, and vice versa. This integrative approach to heritage underscores the “interplay of humanity with nature” and the “longterm, intimate interactions between people and ecologies.”45 I view wetlands and poetry as interlinked expressions of biocultural heritage. Wetlands are always already poetic; poetry is always already ecosystemic. The challenge ahead for humankind in the proposed epoch of the Anthropocene is to learn to conceive of the natural world, including wetlandscapes, as inherently poetic—as intrinsically poietic—as characterized by change and emergence, intention and sentience, address and polylinguism. My conceptualization of swamp poetry as the culturing of language by the wetland, however, depends on a practical appreciation of wetland categories, types, species, ecologies, and conservation issues, particularly in Australia. Wetlands can be defined as: land permanently or temporarily under water or waterlogged. Temporary wetlands must have surface water or waterlogging of sufficient frequency and/or duration to affect the biota. Thus, the occurrence, at least sometimes, of hydrophytic vegetation or use by waterbirds are necessary attributes.46

Based on the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance, the above definition is integral to reading wetlands poetry because it calls attention to the “hydrophytic vegetation” and “waterbirds” that prominently appear in many poems, notably John Kinsella’s “On Albert Tucker’s Ibis In Swamp”47 and Barry Hill’s “Truth.”48 Characteristically intermittent and

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seasonal, Australian wetlands are distinctive for periods of dryness triggered by a combination of low rainfall and high evaporation rates.49 On the whole, Australian wetlands are divided into northern (tropical) and southern (temperate) areas. Northern Australia encompasses both permanent and seasonal wetlands north of the Exmouth-Pilbara region of Western Australia as well as most of the Northern Territory north of Alice Springs and all areas north of the coastal city of Rockhampton, Queensland.50 The Arafura Swamp, for example, is an extensive, permanent wetland in the northern region of the Northern Territory.51 Temperate Australia, in contrast, lies south of the Tropic of Capricorn and includes the major urban areas of Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane where extensive clearing of wetlands has occurred historically and contemporarily.52 Indeed, the preponderance of wetland poems surveyed in this chapter takes temperate wetlands as its subject. Can poetry stop a highway? Can poetry save a swamp? The loss of Australian wetlands since British settlement is estimated at 55 percent nationally with a 75 percent rate of loss on the Swan Coastal Plain, 75 percent in coastal New South Wales, 33 percent in Victoria, and 35 percent in the Murray Darling Basin of south-east Australia.53 Apart from issues of clearance—or what is known euphemistically as reclamation in bureaucratic parlance—many existing Australian wetlands have declined in health due to aggressive water usage policies, agricultural intensification, and exponential urban and suburban expansion.54 Anthropogenic climate change, additionally, will contribute to the deterioration of inland wetlands while sea level changes will disrupt coastal wetlands. Some of these changes will take place before the real extent of wetland distribution in Australia can be identified and addressed. In fact, no exhaustive survey of Australian wetlands has been conducted while the monitoring of these environments throughout the country remains alarmingly incomplete.55 As a case in point, the Department of Environment and Energy’s Directory of Important Wetlands in Australia has not been updated since 2005.56 At the last count, this inventory included over 900 wetlands comprising an area of more than 50 million hectares with about sixty Ramsarlisted wetlands representing 7 percent of all wetlands.57 If poetry is a form of knowing,58 then swamp poetry as a form of knowing wetlands becomes ever more imperative in the context of widespread loss. “A TOUCH OF RECOGNITION”: MARINE AND COASTAL WETLANDS POETRY Coastal and marine wetlands comprise dune lakes, estuaries, flood plains, intertidal mudflats, lagoons, mangroves, marshes, non-tidal freshwater swamps, and other classes of swamp ecosystems.59 This category, for instance, includes

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the saline wetlands of the tidal bays and rivers of the Swan Coastal Plain where Perth is situated60 and of which the poets Nandi Chinna, Jack Davis, and Andrew Taylor have written. On the whole, coastal and marine wetlands exhibit the persistence of particular species of hydrophytic vegetation, water depths of less than one meter, and permanent, seasonal, or intermittent hydrological patterns.61 Due to a range of anthropogenic pressures on the coastal areas of temperate Australia, these wetland environments have been extensively impacted by urbanization, industrial activity (pollution), and changes in land-use patterns resulting in biodiversity loss and reclamation (see also chapter 8 of this volume).62 The Australian Bureau of Statistics estimates that 84 percent of the Australian population lives within fifty kilometers (thirty miles) of the coastline and, in Tasmania, for example, the figure reaches 99.5 percent.63 Recent analysis, moreover, indicates rapid population upturns in New South Wales and Victoria within thirty kilometers (eighteen miles) of the coast as a consequence of suburban extension from urban areas.64 To be certain, most Australian wetland poems, particularly of the postWorld War II era, take coastal and marine habitats as their subjects. These wetlands provide the biogeographical location for the cities or coastal towns that are either inhabited, frequented, or occasioned by the majority of swamp writers. A segment of these poems centralizes the long-term implications of anthropogenically driven alteration of wetland habitats. Such themes are expressly foregrounded, for instance, in Jack Davis’ “The Fight to Save Bennett Brook,”65 Robert Adamson’s “Phasing Out the Mangroves,”66 and throughout Nandi Chinna’s collection Swamp.67 Inflecting the science described earlier in this chapter, a classificatory approach reveals a broad range of Australian poetry on diverse coastal and marine wetland subjects. While some poems are undoubtedly about swamps as a generalized environmental form—and, accordingly, invoke the term either in the title or body of the poem—others attend more specifically to estuaries, mudflats, lagoons, mangroves, and, even, moors. There are poems in which the identity, location, and class of the wetland remain unknown or undisclosed and others in which the wetland in question shifts between multiple classes, exemplified by Boondall Wetlands’ combination of tidal flats, mangroves, salt marshes, and freshwater lakes. On dune lakes, as a case in point, Judith Wright composed “Sandy Swamp,” published originally in 1951.68 The poem depicts the coastal wetland as a lonesome freshwater dune lake or, in the poet’s phrasing, a “bitter and thorny moor.”69 Commonly denoting European wetlandscapes, moor is synonymous with peatland but derives from the Old Norse root signifying barren or dead land. In all likelihood, Wright is referring to a low moor or wetland in a basin or depression.70 On estuaries, we find Diane Fahey’s “Bathers at an Estuary,”71 Gwen Harwood’s “Estuary,”72 and Les Murray’s “Wallis Lake

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Estuary.”73 Dedicating the poem to her mother, Fahey evokes the kinesthetic memory of wading “through strands / of warmth and coolness” with “our hands trawling the river-bed.”74 Dorothy Hewett’s “The Frogs” takes place on an intertidal mudflat of the Swan Coastal Plain,75 whereas Watson writes about the intertidal flats of Brisbane.76 Lagoons feature in James McAuley’s “At Rushy Lagoon” with its tactile pastoral evocation of “wet mirrors covering soft peat.”77 What’s more, mangroves provide the non-human theme of Adamson’s Swamp Riddles78 and a multitude of later poems as well as Dorothy Porter’s poem “Mangroves”79 and Laurie Duggan’s collection Mangroves.80 Non-tidal freshwater swamps, additionally, are central to poems by Davis81 and Taylor.82 The latter narrates the tension between the paradoxical feeling of being simultaneously embraced and repelled by the swamp as the speaker kayaks on its surface: “I am being welcomed into the swamp / By this resistance.”83 While an exhaustive review of Australian marine and coastal wetlands poetry is beyond the scope of this chapter, close examination of three examples will point to common themes between poems. Adamson’s “Phasing Out the Mangroves,” Watson’s “Poem 9,” and Davis’ “The Fight to Save Bennett Brook” call attention to varying degrees of wetland subjects actively culturing language whereby the poet mediates between natural/paludal and cultural/ poetic domains. To say the least, mangrove swamps are dynamic contact zones subject to periods of seawater and rainwater inundation.84 Adamson’s swamps are the mangroves at the mouth of the Hawkesbury River at Broken Bay, New South Wales, where he has lived most of his life.85 The mangroves of the Hawkesbury continue approximately seventy kilometers (forty-three miles) up the main-stem of the river and include the grey mangrove (Avicenna marina) known for having the highest biomass of any temperate mangrove tree species.86 As Adamson elaborates, the extensive mangrove habitat of the poet is a mysterious, primal, instinctive, and “fascinating sourcing of the unseen” with its own language comprehended by human and nonhuman swamp-dwellers but largely misinterpreted by settler civilization.87 In his early collection Swamp Riddles from 1974, Adamson mythologizes the mangrove in images, for example, of an unnamed explorer breaking through swamps, “terrified— / shooting wild animals.”88 Although a locus of death, the mangrove is also a site of metempsychotic remembrance as the human soul perfuses the “tiny body of a kingfisher.”89 In Clean Dark from 1992, however, Adamson begins to draw greater attention to the actual human and non-human occupants of the Hawkesbury mangroves but without surrendering the strong mythological and metaphysical dimensions of his earlier wetland poetry. Published originally in Clean Dark, “Phasing Out the Mangroves” opens with:

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Now it has been drawn up and swamp will be filled, measurements have been taken.90

In its elegiac foregrounding of the mathematization and attendant instrumentalization of the swamp, the poem echoes the concerns of Harley Matthews’ “In the Swamp Now” first appearing in 1954 and presented in the next section as an early call for wetland conservation in Australian poetry. The callous euphemism of “phasing out” entails the substitution of the living swamp for “concrete geometry [. . .] bent glass and metal domes.”91 The post/colonial legacies of draining, clearing, filling, and disregarding wetlands pervade the present but also imperil the future prospects of the mangrove habitat. European settlement of the Australian landmass precipitated immense fragmentation and loss of wetlands, particularly of coastal floodplain areas.92 While surveying and classification advance conservation aims, these practices also have historically supplied the means to control and eradicate wetlands.93 The primordial interconnections between the mangroves and its resident birdlife disintegrate, leaving “the swamp children” with a language of imperial ascendency and globalized consumption.94 Using the mode of elegy to call out the imbrications between mangroves, humankind, avian life, and the legacies of empire, Adamson’s “Phasing Out the Mangroves” leaves little room for the culturing of human language by the wetland. Samuel Wagan Watson’s “Poem 9,” in contrast, takes the form of a series of questions mirroring the threshold ontology of the Boondall Wetlands Reserve, which encloses Brisbane’s largest swamp ecosystem.95 For Watson, the wetlands are a home-terrain for interrogating the nature of being, thinking, knowing, and doing while probing assumptions about non-human sentience, intelligence, and affect.96 A language of indeterminacy and open-endedness contrasts sharply to the reduction of Adamson’s “great hunched mangroves” to a techno-industrialized landscape populated by swamp children who have lost their mother tongue. The wetland environment, moreover, mediates the very possibility of truth and knowledge through questioning, which, in turn, enlivens an understanding of cross-species empathy and human-nonhuman identification: the tree that moves in the breeze its branches caressing your head maybe a touch of recognition?97

Marked by questioning rather than statement-making, the poem’s dialectical structure points to the potential for the non-human beings of the wetlandscape to be self-determining yet also satiated by human encounter. Through the poem, the swamp speaks of an omnipresent desire for relation and discourse.

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The reclamation of wetlands, therefore, is an ecological as well as epistemological and metaphysical loss.98 With its capacity for sentience and response, Watson’s wetland embodies the traditional knowledge of the Turrbal people to whom the Boondall area is known as Warra, a term denoting an expanse of water.99 Through its pattern of open-ended inquiry—the question mark is its only form of punctuation—“Poem 9” signifies the culturing of language by the wetland. The conceptualization I am formulating here diverges from an understanding of poetry as an aesthetic representation of something natural in the external world (a place, wetland, plant). Instead, an active integration—an equivalence or adequation—takes shape between wetland and language, prompting human-nonhuman co-vocalization. As such, the voice of the wetland infuses the poem and intergrades with the voice of the poet, resulting in polyphony and heteroglossia. In Jack Davis’ “The Fight to Save Bennett Brook” from his collection Black Life, swamp nature also voices itself through the poet as a mediating figure.100 Like Watson’s “Poem 9,” Davis’ poem embodies traditional Aboriginal Australian perceptions of wetlands and serves as a cultural record of the campaign in the 1980s to protect the Bennett Brook Catchment area north-east of Perth. In the mode of Oodgeroo Noonuccal and Lionel Fogarty, Davis’ poem is an expression of ecopolitical protest.101 Similarly political, Fogarty’s “Ecology” from Yoogum Yoogum from 1982 is an intersubjective poem narrated from the perspectives of lizards, pelicans, dugongs, termites, and other non-human beings. For Fogarty, wetlands are a sacred ecology that resists the distinction between animate beings and inanimate things: “You are tropic cycles / swamps got bad affinity / says who.”102 In Davis’ poem, a footnote explains that Bennett Brook “is one of the few sacred places left to the Aboriginal people of Perth. A company intends to build houses on the land and the Aborigines are fighting to retain it.”103 Originating in popular Whiteman Park in the Swan Valley, Bennett Brook is supplied by seepage from the Gnangara Mound, flows north-tosouth through human-made Mussel Pool, and discharges into the Swan River at Devil’s Elbow upstream of Success Hill near the suburbs of Bassendean and Guildford.104 The Bennett-Swan confluence, Success Hill, and all associated springs constitute the domain of the Wagyl—the serpent of the Noongar Dreaming who travels along and protects the water system.105 In the poem, the historical totalization of colonial name-granting opens the way for the land-moving machinery of the present, agitating the earth and rendering the still-sacred place unrecognizable to the eyes. The brook has: an alien name The sound of trucks and whorls of dust bring shame.106

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The sensory violence inflicted on Bennett Brook is mirrored in the poem’s complete absence of punctuation and usage of run-on sentences. The unease of the text, thus, becomes the unease of the wetland and the trauma inflicted on its Traditional Owners. Resilience and hope, nevertheless, emerge in the transfiguration of the human into the wetland. Knowledge of co-constituted corporeality and trans-species solidarity transcends the immediate threat of development, resulting in a sense of biocultural empowerment. As in “Poem 9,” bodily empathy with the swamp supplies a potent counter-measure to oppressive neocolonialist settlement regimes enacted under the pretense of technocratic growth. Put differently, the wetland stands as an exemplar of resistance to the hyper-rationalist myth of progress that threatens it.107 Davis’ declaration that “we are but swamp reeds” is more than a metaphorical flourish or what Ruskinian literary critics would brand, in pejorative terms, as affective fallacy. This crucial moment of denouement in the poetic narrative centralizes the affective resonances between wetlands and Aboriginal Australian (Noongar) people. Resistance in the poem is predicated on a temporally deep intercorporeal feeling for—and commitment to being-with—wetlands in the full extent of their mutability. “EARTH’S DESIGNS OR WATER’S FANTASIES”: INLAND WETLANDS POETRY The non-coastal category of wetlands includes alpine and tundra swamps, deltas, floodplains, freshwater ponds (seasonal or intermittent sloughs, potholes, sedge marshes, flooded meadows), oxbow lakes (billabongs), peatlands, and shrub and forest swamps.108 As an example of this wetlands category, billabongs are semi-permanent pools produced by overflowing river channels.109 Concentrated along the Murray and Darling Rivers in south-east Australia, billabongs provide crucial habitat for fish and birds, create areas of refuge for animals during the dry season, support numerous aquatic plants, and attract hydrophilic eucalypts, such as the red river gum (Eucalyptus camaldulensis), essential to controlling erosion.110 As oases in the dry inland landscape, oxbow lakes are supplied by local rainfall, water channels, overbank flows, and underground sources.111 In addition to their ecological value, billabongs have been integral to the Anglo-European cultural and literary traditions of inland Australia. For instance, written in 1895, Banjo Paterson’s tragic bush ballad “Walzing Matilda” alludes to billabongs, or waterholes extensively in lines such as “Oh! there once was a swagman camped in a Billabong [usually sung as ‘Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong’], / Under the shade of a Coolabah tree.”112 The transient laborer, or swagman, eventually drowns

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himself in the waterhole. Thus, the billabong, populated by the shade-giving riparian coolibah (Eucalyptus coolabah), is not only a source of human-nonhuman replenishment but a locus of the afterlife. To be certain, the inland wetlands of Australia face many of the same challenges as marine and coastal wetlands, namely land clearance, pollution, eutrophication, alterations of flow, salinization, aquatic weeds, and feral animals.113 An illustration of the ecological problems affecting alpine swamps is a natural wetland system at Thredbo resort village in Kosciusko National Park. The wetland received effluent discharged in an effort to minimize the levels of nitrogen and phosphorous entering the Crackenback River draining into Lake Jindabyne.114 As a result of the excessive nutrient input over time, the aquatic system became overrun by weed species that outcompeted local hydrophytic plants. Indeed, in wetlands are life and death—for us, for non-human others, and for the swamp itself as a living whole, as Paterson’s ballad and other swamp poems from different eras emphasize. In comparison to coastal and marine wetland poems, however, there are fewer evocations of inland wetlands in the body of Australian literature surveyed in this chapter. Among the poetry of inland wetlands, billabongs recur, especially in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century bush ballads, as emblems of the isolation of the Outback and the rugged lifestyle of the swagman. In this context, C. J. Dennis published “Up ‘Long the Billabong” in Backblock Ballads and Other Verses.115 Through colloquial Australian English, Dennis represents the waterhole as a refuge from city life, particularly in the line “times was slow along the billabong.”116 Moreover, a 1937 issue of the Jesus College magazine Chanticlere includes an untitled poem by David Campbell with references to river gums, swamp harriers, and curlews “beside the silent billabong.”117 Similar to Dennis’ waterhole haven, Campbell’s billabong affords quiet sanctuary. Of note within the poetry of inland alpine wetlands is Douglas Stewart’s “Mahony’s Mountain” from 1973 with its references to the characteristic plant species of the mountain swamp: “No rustle shaking the raindrops from rushes or flowers / —Greenhood and bulbine lily lighting the swamp.”118 “Greenhood” is the general vernacular name for Pterostylis orchids, some of which—P. paludosa and P. tenuissima specifically—grow in mountainous wetland zones. What’s more, Mark O’Connor’s “Hanging Swamp” from The Olive Tree from the year 2000 lyricizes careful observation of the peatland ecology of inland Australia, evoking a scene of vertical cliffs, sundews, and fern forests.119 The precipitously balanced swamp is a natural wellspring in a harsh aridic environment as well as an embodiment of abstract notions of equipoise, resilience, and elegance: “The hanging swamp feeds the waterfall / all the dry summer, an emblem of grace.”120 The principal themes of inland wetlands poetry surface in Henry Kendall’s “The Hut By the Black Swamp,”121 published originally in 1869,

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Harley Matthews’ “In the Swamp Now,”122 John Kinsella’s “On Albert Tucker’s Ibis in Swamp,”123 and Barry Hill’s “Truth.”124 This broad crosssection of Australian wetlands verse begins with the Outback swamp as a site of miasmic desolation (Kendall) but evolves toward ideas of conservation (Matthews), sacredness, and aesthetics (Kinsella), and biosemiosis and transmigratory consciousness (Hill). Published in his second collection Leaves from Australian Forests and republished in 1874 in The Queenslander, Kendall’s poem is one of the earliest examples of Australian wetlands verse in English. As the adjectival phrase “black swamp” signals, the mountain wetland is construed by the poet as inescapably forlorn and melancholy. As a consequence, “The Hut” has been read as “a Gothic eulogy to an abandoned homestead” and a requiem to the violence perpetrated on the interior of the country by nation-building.125 Over and above its metaphorical, colonial, and political dimensions, Kendall’s poem also recapitulates understandings of wetlands that prevailed in the late nineteenth century before the emergence of germ theory and, more specifically, ideas of miasma as a vector for physical diseases and psychological disorders. Giblett observes that “up until the 1890s it was thought that the miasmatic vapours that rose from stagnant pools caused malaria (which means literally ‘bad air’). The perception persisted from ancient times that miasma also cause melancholia or depression.”126 In a Gothic mode, the fourth stanza of “The Hut by the Black Swamp” narrates how: And, ringed and girt with lurid pomp, Far eastern cliffs start up, and take Thick steaming vapours from a swamp.127

Aside for introducing Gothic embellishment, the “thick steaming vapours” evoke the Western history of perceiving wetlands not only as impediments to settler progress but also as transmitters of miasma, or “bad air.” This diseasebased ideology supplied a rationale for draining and filling wetlands.128 Further in the poem, the swamp and its hut are associated with other uncanny tropes of environmental melancholia, including a menagerie of moss, dogs, owls, nettles, adders, centipedes, and bitterns.129 Kendall’s black swamp, of course, is more than a literary symbol of the disastrous consequences of colonization and the effects of outmoded medical theories on the environment body; it is a living nexus populated by beings in reciprocal exchange with it, as Samuel Wagan Watson’s “Poem 9,” discussed in the previous section, makes clear. The poem, therefore, is both pre-microorganismic as well as preecological. In fact, Johannes Eugenius Bülow Warming’s classic textbook on plant ecology, Oecology of Plants, would not be published in English until

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1909 and ideas of conservation in Australia would not emerge fully in the public domain until the mid-twentieth century.130 Appearing originally in 1954, farmer-poet Harley Matthews’ “In the Swamp Now” heralds a distinct movement away from the view of swamps as disease-ridden wastelands. In the form of an extended second-person address to a white-faced heron (Egretta novaehollandiae)—known in the poem as a blue crane—“In the Swamp Now” presents an unusually sensitive and distinctly prescient plea for wetlands conservation as well as a disquisition on the dangers of human interference in the natural order: They are surveying the swamp now, the surveyors Mapping its shores to minute and degree, Reckoning its expanse by link and chain.131

A gripping immediacy characterizes the poem—of being in the swamp now, of being swamped in the Thoreauvian sense of immersed physically and metaphysically, sensorially and psychologically, in the wetland (see chapter 9). The avian addressee bears witness to the speaker’s anxiety over the impending clearance of wetlands and provides a degree of consolation.132 As a natural cultural milieu, Matthews’ swamp is shaped by human recreation, labor, and livelihood and also by the non-humans (ducks, frogs, hawks, cranes) for whom it is a sanctuary. Matthews’ poem depicts the wetland as a place to actualize one’s livelihood through the sonic registers of “his gun’s report,” “the boy whipcracking home,” and “the women cooeeing.”133 The logo-centric practice of surveying, however, threatens to set in motion the disintegration of the biocultural whole, or “earth’s designs or water’s fantasies.”134 In his calling into question the mathematization of the wetland, Matthews’ verse prefigures Adamson’s “Phasing Out the Mangroves.” Although from different historical periods, both poets bring focus to the imperilment of the endemic language of the swamp by the unbridled desire of settler culture to exert control over wetland nature. By the conclusion of “In the Swamp Now,” the crane-addressee comes to personify swamp wisdom and wonder in acute contrast to the narrow-minded land surveying juggernaut the menaces the future of the wetland by attempting to diminish it through numbers.135 To be sure, the poem can be read as a wetland parable that elevates the knowledge of the crane and other non-humans but rebukes the foolishness of the nameless “they” who survey, map, draw, decree, reckon, and, ultimately, drain and destroy. Like Kendall’s “The Hut by the Black Swamp,” John Kinsella’s “On Albert Tucker’s Ibis in Swamp” invokes miasma but with a considerably different connotation.136 For the Western Australian poet-activist, miasma signifies an aesthetic-ecological network founded in cycles of growth and decay. As his

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prose reveals, Kinsella is no stranger to swamps. He recalls as a child venturing into “the bush surrounding Blue Gum Swamp—my primary school backed onto it […] the numerous bores, sunk throughout the surrounding suburbs, would lower the water table and take the swamp with them.”137 The ekphrastic slant of the poem involves reclaiming the aesthetic value of wetlands and their avian dwellers, as evoked in Australian artist Albert Tucker’s painting from 1964. Comparable to Watson’s “Poem 9,” Kinsella’s evocation opens with a question—“What action prevails / in the miasma of swamp?”138—and responds with a short meditation on the sacred ibis (Threskiornis aethiopicus). The poem, therefore, shares with Matthews’ “In the Swamp Now” an interest in avian life as the corporealization of swamp being-in-the-world: The mummified ibis reflects/reflected in the crescent of its black moon beak. Life almost crisp amongst decay makes decay necessary even muted flowers become profoundly beautiful. Sacred Ibis wades green light thick with shadows, the stilled eye accepts the dark heart welling in its hollowed log.139

Kinsella’s poem takes the form of an answer to the painting as a catalyst for rethinking wetlands. The poem centers on the visual integration of swamp, ibis, trees, and light at the threshold of the phenomenal and the noumenal. What is absent from the ekphrastic disclosure, however, is the impact of the sacred ibis as an exotic species escalating in population in both coastal and inland Australia.140 The extent to which an ecological understanding of a species—in this instance, the ibis—affects the aesthetic appreciation of wetlands is left unaddressed. Also involving art-poetry-nature dialogue, poet Barry Hill and artist John Wolseley’s collaborative book Lines for Birds, published in 2011, includes a section on “Wetlands and Shorelands.” In the section, Wolseley’s “Ephemeral Swamps: Milmed Rock Track” precedes Hill’s “Truth,” therein supplying vital geographical context for the poem. Situated in the Mallee district of inland Victoria, the Milmed Rock Track passes through Wyperfeld National Park and numerous remote ecological reserves studded by waterholes. In line with several other swamp poems discussed in this chapter, “Truth” sees the life of a wetland as expressed through its birds (ducks, finches, parrots, geese, spoonbills) and amphibians (frogs). Hill’s poem is about the (trans)migration

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of species and souls, as signaled in its invocation of the hoopoe (Upupa epos) found across Africa and Eurasia but rarely in Australia. This (trans)migratory effect is amplified through the epigraph—“my wits find water in the trackless waste”—from Persian poet Faridud-Din Attar’s The Conference of the Birds, written in the twelfth century. The migration of birds, thus, provokes the translocation of the poet’s mind to other desert landscapes: I expected to see the Hoopoe— its crest a swarm of honeybees its silly look a form of wisdom.141

Analogous to Kinsella and Watson’s poems, “Truth” resounds with more questions than answers about the nature of wetlands, especially in desert places. For Hill, the swamp is a semiosphere of human-non-human messages, invitations, exchanges, excuses, and, to be sure, flashes of wisdom and truth.142 Rather than a forbidding place impregnated with miasmic vapors, as in Kendall’s early poem, the desert wetland is the lifeblood of the arid interior of Australia. “GREEN HUMANIZED WATER”: ARTIFICIAL WETLANDS POETRY Human-made wetlands include bores, bore-drains, canal systems, channels, dams, drains, reservoirs, rice fields, and storage swamps.143 These structures conserve surface water, making it available for a variety of agricultural, industrial, and environmental conservation purposes.144 While impacting the preexisting environment, construction in certain instances can result in longterm viable habitat for waterbirds, mammals, invertebrates, and plants. Built in 1971 for a proposed irrigation development plan, Lake Argyle on the Ord River is one of the largest freshwater reservoirs in Australia. Rising east of the Durack Range in the semi-arid monsoonal Kimberley region, the Ord River flows north to Joseph Bonaparte Gulf and the Timor Sea near the town of Wyndham.145 The Ord River Irrigation Scheme (ORIS) was proposed as early as the 1930s as a means to establish irrigated agriculture in the northwest of Western Australia where the dry season lasts for nine months. A dam constructed at the intersection of the Ord River and the Carr-Boyd Range produced Lake Argyle with a surface area of about 1,000 square kilometers.146 Now listed as a Ramsar Convention site and included in the Directory of Important Wetlands in Australia, Lake Argyle, nevertheless, has resulted in the fundamental transformation of the original wetlandscape. Re-inscribing a northern Australian mythology of “empty land,” the ORIS largely minimized the presence of Aboriginal culture and resulted in the loss of sacred artifacts

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and areas.147 Mary Durack enshrined these concerns in her poem “Lament for the Drowned Country” told from the perspective of an Aboriginal woman, Maggie Wallaby, who witnesses the loss of her ancestral country.148 Another massive constructed wetland is the Snowy Mountains Scheme, a hydroelectricity and irrigation complex in southeast Australia completed in 1974 and extending over 7,000 square kilometers (1,729,738 acres).149 In contrast to these large-scale earth-moving projects, however, small artificial wetlands—such as Banksia Street Wetland near Canberra—have been installed in Australian urban areas to enhance wildlife habitat, improve water quality, and provide other biocultural values.150 Haiku in the Wetland was a small-scale community poetry initiative focused on Banksia Street Wetland. One of the participants, Lorese Vera, writes eloquently of: gravelled footfall crunch passing hands brushing mint bush urban wetland peace.151

In Vera’s haiku, the artificial swamp of suburban Canberra furnishes a haven of auditory, tactile, and olfactory gratification. A comparable tone of intimately knowing human-made wetlands is evident in some Australian poetry about dams. In closing this chapter on wetlands verse, I offer one evocative example in Les Murray’s “Water-Gardening in an Old Farm Dam.” The poem’s opening lines find the speaker immersed completely in the labor of tending the wetland: Blueing the blackened water that I’m widening with my spade as I lever up water tussocks.152

Keeping up the old waterhole demands physical interaction with tadpoles, flies, reeds, waterlilies, and fish. This work prompts a hard-won affection for “green humanized water.”153 Such exertions engender swamp-philia as the speaker comes to regard the waterhole as beautiful and appealing—notwithstanding its sometimes intolerable rigors—by the poem’s end.

CONCLUSION: TOWARD SWAMP CRITICISM This cross section of Australian poetry has outlined a transformation from Henry Kendall’s wetlands of desolation—doubly subjugated as objects of colonization reduced to Gothic tropes—to Samuel Wagan Watson’s sentient wetlands and Les Murray’s green-water dams. Put simply, the poems mark a shift from horror and fear to respect and love. In reading Australian wetlands

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verse, this chapter has investigated the idea of wetland culture as the insinuation of the swamp into culture, cultural production, and everyday life. Not reducible to objects of literary representation, wetlands are active subjects in their own right that give rise to culture as we know it. At the same time, wetlands are living expressions of biocultural heritage that resist—in their very being—our problematic demarcations between nature and culture, subject and object, self and world. As this discussion has demonstrated, wetlands are simultaneously ecological, cultural, historical, and literary phenomena. In culturing the human, the wetland asserts, to varying degrees, its agency—its voice, intelligence, and sentience—within the cultural artifact (poem). An understanding of poetry as a voicing, thus, deviates from the idea of environmental-literary representation as either the imaginative or realistic construction of the natural world by the writer. Framing wetlands in terms of agency and heritage contests the production of culture (poems) at the expense of nature (swamps, birds, trees). In its liberation of language from “the gridlock of everyday discourse,”154 poetry therefore becomes essential—not tangential—to wetland conservation insofar as it makes possible the recognition of wetlands as biocultural agents. NOTES 1. J. Scott Bryson, The West Side of Any Mountain: Place, Space, and Ecopoetry (Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press, 2005), 2. 2. Leonard Scigaj, Sustainable Poetry: Four American Ecopoets (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1999), 37. 3. Dawne McCance, Critical Animal Studies: An Introduction (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2013). 4. Monica Gagliano, John C. Ryan, and Patricia Vieira, eds., The Language of Plants: Science, Philosophy, Literature (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2017). 5. Michael Dear, Jim Ketchum, Sarah Luria, and Douglas Richardson, eds., GeoHumanities: Art, History, Text at the Edge of Place (New York: Routledge, 2011). 6. Robert Emmett and David Nye, The Environmental Humanities: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017). 7. Aaron Moe, Zoopoetics: Animals and the Making of Poetry (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014). 8. John C. Ryan, Plants in Contemporary Poetry: Ecocriticism and the Botanical Imagination (New York: Routledge, 2017). 9. Tom Lynch, Cheryll Glotfelty, and Karla Armbruster, eds., The Bioregional Imagination: Literature, Ecology, and Place (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2012).

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10. Rod Giblett, Postmodern Wetlands: Culture, History, Ecology (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996); Rod Giblett, Canadian Wetlands: Places and People (Bristol, UK: Intellect, 2014), 75–91; Anandashila Saraswati, “A Walk in the Anthropocene: Homesickness and the Writer-Walker” (PhD diss., Edith Cowan University, 2012). 11. Giblett, Canadian Wetlands, 77. 12. Saraswati, “A Walk in the Anthropocene,” 53–70. 13. Henry Kendall, Leaves from Australian Forests: Poetical Works of Henry Kendall, edited by Lloyd O’Neil (Hawthorn, Vic: Lloyd O’Neil Pty. Ltd., 1970). 14. C.J. Dennis, Backblock Ballads and Other Verses (Melbourne: E.W. Cole, 1913). 15. Samuel Wagan Watson, Smoke Encrypted Whispers (St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 2004). 16. Nandi Chinna, Swamp: Walking the Wetlands of the Swan Coastal Plain (Fremantle, WA: Fremantle Press, 2014). 17. C. Max Finlayson, and Isabell Von Oertzen, “Wetlands of Australia: Northern (Tropical) Australia,” in Wetlands of the World: Inventory, Ecology and Management, ed. Dennis Whigham, Dagmar Dykyjova, and Slavomil Hejny (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2010), 206. 18. S.W.L. Jacobs, and Margaret Brock, “Wetlands of Australia: Southern (Temperate) Australia,” in Wetlands of the World: Inventory, Ecology and Management, ed. Dennis Whigham, Dagmar Dykyjova, and Slavomil Hejny (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2010), 257. 19. C.M. Finlayson, J.A. Davis, P.A. Gell, R.T. Kingsford, and K.A. Parton, “The Status of Wetlands and the Predicted Effects of Global Climate Change: The Situation in Australia,” Aquatic Sciences 75, no. 1 (2013): 73–93, doi: 10.1007/ s00027-011-0232-5; Finlayson and Von Oertzen, “Wetlands of Australia: Northern”; Jacobs and Brock, “Wetlands of Australia: Southern.” 20. Finlayson and Von Oertzen, “Wetlands of Australia: Northern.” 21. Jacobs and Brock, “Wetlands of Australia: Southern.” 22. Commonwealth of Australia, “Directory of Important Wetlands in Australia,” 2005, accessed May 17, 2019, http:​//www​.envi​ronme​nt.go​v.au/​water​/wetl​ands/​austr​ alian​-wetl​ands-​datab​ase/d​irect​ory-i​mport​ant-w​etlan​ds. 23. Rod Giblett, Cities and Wetlands: The Return of the Repressed in Nature and Culture (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 4; Kate Wright, Transdisciplinary Journeys in the Anthropocene: More-Than-Human Encounters (London: Routledge, 2017). 24. Giblett, Postmodern Wetlands. 25. Giblett, Canadian Wetlands, 77. 26. Samuel Wagan Watson, Smoke Encrypted Whispers (St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 2004), 67, line 13. 27. Dorothy Porter, El Dorado (Sydney: Picador, 2007), 348, lines 2–4, 349, lines 21–22. 28. Watson, Smoke Encrypted Whispers. 29. Robert Adamson, Swamp Riddles (Sydney: Island Press, 1974); The Golden Bird (Melbourne: Black Inc., 2008).

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30. Jack Davis, Black Life: Poems (St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 1992). 31. Andrew Taylor, “Swamp Poems,” Journal of Australian Studies 26, no. 73 (2002): 133–41, doi: 10.1080/14443050209387773. 32. Chinna, Swamp. 33. Timothy Morton, The Ecological Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 38. 34. See Shane Pickett’s painting “Waagle and Yondock Story” at Western Australian Museum, “Nyoongar,” Reimagining Perth’s Lost Wetlands, accessed May 17, 2019, http:​//mus​eum.w​a.gov​.au/e​xplor​e/wet​lands​/abor​igina​l-con​text/​noong​ar. 35. See Shane Pickett’s painting “Bunuroo Drying of the Wetlands” at Mossenson Galleries, “Bunuroo Drying of the Wetlands,” 2017, accessed May 17, 2019, http:​ //mos​senso​ngall​eries​.com.​au/ar​twork​/bunu​roo-d​rying​-wetl​ands/​. 36. Lionel Fogarty, Yoogum Yoogum (Ringwood, Vic: Penguin Books, 1982). 37. Jack Davis, Black Life: Poems (St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 1992). 38. Watson, Smoke Encrypted Whispers. 39. Tony Hughes-D’Aeth, “Can Poetry Stop a Highway? Wielding Words in the Battle Over Roe 8,” The Conversation, January 10, 2017, accessed May 17, 2019, https​://th​econv​ersat​ion.c​om/ca​n-poe​try-s​top-a​-high​way-w​ieldi​ng-wo​rds-i​n-the​-batt​ le-ov​er-ro​e-8-7​1005,​ para. 14. 40. Adrian Ivakhiv, “Ecocultural Critical Theory and Ecocultural Studies: Contexts and Research Directions,” Paper presented at Cultures and Environments: On Cultural Environmental Studies, Washington State University, June 20–22, 1997, accessed May 17, 2019, http:​//www​.uvm.​edu/~​aivak​hiv/e​co_cu​lt.ht​m, sect. 2, para. 6. 41. Ivakhiv, “Ecocultural Critical Theory,” “Introduction,” para. 1. 42. Emmett and Nye, The Environmental Humanities, 4. 43. Donna Haraway, When Species Meet (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), 16. 44. See, for example, Wendy Harcourt and Ingrid Nelson, eds., Practising Feminist Political Ecologies: Moving Beyond the ‘Green Economy’ (London: Zed Books, 2015). 45. Ian Rotherham, “Bio-Cultural Heritage and Biodiversity: Emerging Paradigms in Conservation and Planning,” Biodiversity and Conservation 24, no. 13 (2015): 3405–29 [3406], doi: 10.1007/s10531-015-1006-5. 46. Paijmans et al., in Finlayson and Von Oertzen, “Wetlands of Australia: Northern,” 200, emphasis added. 47. John Kinsella, Eschatologies (Fremantle, WA: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1991), 59. 48. Barry Hill and John Wolseley, Lines for Birds (Crawley, WA: University of Western Australia Publishing, 2011), 63. 49. Finlayson et al., “The Status of Wetlands,” 89–90. 50. Finlayson and Von Oertzen, “Wetlands of Australia: Northern,” 196. 51. Ibid. 52. Jacobs and Brock, “Wetlands of Australia: Southern,” 244, 251–52.

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53. William Mitsch and James Gosselink, Wetlands, 5th edn. (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2015), 50. 54. Finlayson et al., “The Status of Wetlands.” 55. Ibid., 74. 56. Commonwealth of Australia, “Directory of Important Wetlands.” 57. Finlayson et al., “The Status of Wetlands,” 77. 58. David Musgrave, “Poetry as Knowing: Philip Salom’s Keepers Trilogy,” Axon: Creative Explorations 6 (2014), accessed May 17, 2019, http:​//www​.axon​journ​ al.co​m.au/​issue​-6/po​etry-​knowi​ng. 59. Commonwealth of Australia, “Directory of Important Wetlands”; Jacobs and Brock, “Wetlands of Australia: Southern,” 251–52. 60. Mitsch and Gosselink, Wetlands, 90. 61. Finlayson and Von Oertzen, “Wetlands of Australia: Northern,” 203. 62. Graeme Clark and Emma Johnston, Australia State of the Environment: Coasts (Independent Report to the Australian Government Minister for Environment and Energy, Australian Government Department of the Environment and Energy) (Canberra: Department of Environment and Energy, 2017), vi; Jacobs and Brock, “Wetlands of Australia: Southern,” 254. 63. R.W. Edwards, Census of Population and Housing: Population Growth and Distribution, Australia, 2001 (Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2003), 1. 64. Clark and Johnston, Australia State of the Environment, 5. 65. Davis, Black Life, 61. 66. Adamson, The Golden Bird, 107. 67. Chinna, Swamp. 68. Judith Wright, Collected Poems, 1942–1970 (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1971), 89–90. 69. Wright, Collected Poems, 89, line 5. 70. Mitsch and Gosselink, Wetlands, 34. 71. Diane Fahey, Turning the Hourglass (Sydney: Dangaroo Press, 1990), 123. 72. Gwen Harwood, Collected Poems, 1943–1995, edited by Alison Hoddinott and Gregory Kratzmann (St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 2003), 173. 73. Les Murray, Subhuman Redneck Poems (Potts Point, NSW: Duffy & Snellgrove, 1996), 33. 74. Fahey, Turning the Hourglass, 123, lines 2–3, 5. 75. Dorothy Hewett, Peninsula (South Fremantle, WA: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1994). 76. Watson, Smoke Encrypted Whispers, 67–71. 77. James McAuley, Collected Poems, 1936–1970 (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1971), 223. 78. Adamson, Swamp Riddles. 79. Dorothy Porter, El Dorado (Sydney: Picador), 348–49. 80. Laurie Duggan, Mangroves (St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 2003). 81. Davis, Black Life. 82. Taylor, “Swamp Poems.”

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83. Ibid., 138, sect. 4, lines 6–7. 84. Finlayson and Von Oertzen, “Wetlands of Australia: Northern,” 212. 85. John Kinsella, Spatial Relations: Essays, Reviews, Commentaries, and Chorography, edited by Gordon Collier, vol. 1 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2013), 162. 86. Paul Boon, The Hawkesbury River: A Social and Natural History (Clayton South, Vic: CSIRO Publishing, 2017), 173. 87. Kinsella, Spatial Relations, vol. 1, 161. 88. Adamson, Swamp Riddles, unpaginated. 89. Ibid., unpaginated. 90. Adamson, The Golden Bird, 107, lines 1–3. 91. Ibid., lines 7, 11. 92. R.L. Pressey and P. Adam, “A Review of Wetland Inventory and Classification in Australia,” Vegetatio 118 (1995): 81–101 [82]. 93. Adamson, The Golden Bird, 107, lines 8–10. 94. Ibid., line 19. 95. Tim Dolby and Rohan Clarke, Finding Australian Birds: A Field Guide to Birding Locations (Collingwood, Vic: CSIRO Publishing, 2014), 144. 96. Watson, Smoke Encrypted Whispers, 67, lines 1–4. 97. Ibid., lines 11–14, emphasis added. 98. Ibid., 68, lines 23–25. 99. Daryl McPhee, Environmental History and Ecology of Moreton Bay (Clayton South Vic: CSIRO Publishing, 2017), 18. 100. Davis, Black Life, 61. 101. John C. Ryan, “ ‘No More Boomerang’: Environment and Technology in Contemporary Aboriginal Australian Poetry,” in Global Indigeneities and the Environment, ed. Karen Thornber and Tom Havens (Basel: MDPI, 2016). 102. Fogarty, Yoogum Yoogum, 91, lines 20–24. 103. Davis, Black Life, 61. 104. Government of Western Australia, “Local Water Quality Improvement Plan Bennett Brook Catchment,” 2011, accessed May 19, 2019, https​://ww​w.der​.wa.g​ov.au​/ imag​es/do​cumen​ts/ou​r-wor​k/pro​grams​/ligh​t_ind​ustry​/LWQI​P_Ben​nett_​Brook​.pdf.​ 105. Patricia Baines, “A Litany for Land,” in Being Black: Aboriginal Cultures in ‘Settled’ Australia, ed. Ian Keen (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 1994), 227. 106. Davis, Black Life, 61, lines 5–8. 107. Ibid., lines 14–18. 108. Commonwealth of Australia, “Directory of Important Wetlands.” 109. Mitsch andGosselink, Wetlands, 90. 110. Ibid. 111. Finlayson and Von Oertzen, “Wetlands of Australia: Northern,” 220–21. 112. Banjo Paterson, The Works of Banjo Paterson (Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Limited, 1993), 207. 113. Jacobs and Brock, “Wetlands of Australia: Southern,” 284. 114. Finlayson et al., “The Status of Wetlands.” 115. C.J. Dennis, Backblock Ballads and Other Verses (Melbourne: E.W. Cole, 1913), 47–48.

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116. Ibid., 47, line 16. 117. David Campell, qtd. in Phillip Mead, “An Early David Campbell Poem,” Southerly 62, no. 1 (2002): 134–36 [135, line 8]. 118. Douglas Stewart, Selected Poems (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1973), 104, lines 7–8. 119. Mark O’Connor, The Olive Tree: Collected Poems, 1972–2000 (Alexandria, NSW: Hale & Iremonger, 2000). 120. Ibid., unpaginated, lines 27–28. 121. Kendall, Leaves from Australian Forests, 21–23. 122. Harley Matthews, “In the Swamp Now,” in The Penguin Book of Australian Verse, ed. John Thompson, Kenneth Slessor, and R.G. Howarth (Mitcham, Vic: Penguin Books, 1958), 54–55. 123. Kinsella, Eschatologies, 59. 124. Hill and Wolseley, Lines for Birds, 63. 125. Ken Gelder, “Australian Gothic,” in The Encyclopedia of the Gothic, ed. William Hughes, David Punter, and Andrew Smith (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2013), 56. 126. Rod Giblett, Black Swan Lake: Life of a Wetland (Bristol, UK: Intellect Press, 2013), 187. 127. Kendall, Leaves from Australian Forests, 21, lines 16–20. 128. Giblett, Postmodern Wetlands. 129. Kendall, Leaves from Australian Forests, 22, lines 41–45. 130. Drew Hutton and Libby Connors, A History of the Australian Environmental Movement (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 131. Matthews, “In the Swamp Now,” 54, lines 1–6. 132. Ibid., lines 10–13. 133. Ibid., lines 14–16. 134. Ibid., lines 18–22, emphasis added. 135. Ibid., 55, lines 41–43. 136. Kinsella, Eschatologies, 59. 137. Kinsella, Spatial Relations, vol. 2, 16. 138. Kinsella, Eschatologies, 59, lines 1–2. 139. Ibid., lines 3–13. 140. Andrew Smith and Ursula Munro, “Seasonal Population Dynamics of the Australian White Ibis (Threskiornis molucca) in Urban Environments,” Emu 110, no. 2 (2010): 132–36, doi: 10.1071/MU09072. 141. Hill and Wolseley, Lines for Birds, 63, lines 3–6. 142. Ibid., lines 24–26. 143. Jacobs and Brock, “Wetlands of Australia: Southern,” 279. 144. Finlayson and Von Oertzen, “Wetlands of Australia: Northern,” 200. 145. John Pigram, Australia’s Water Resources: From Use to Management (Collingwood, Vic: CSIRO Publishing, 2006), 52. 146. Lesley Head, “The Northern Myth Revisited? Aborigines, Environment and Agriculture in the Ord River Irrigation Scheme, Stages One and Two,” Australian Geographer 30, no. 2 (1999): 141–58. 147. Ibid., 149–51.

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148. Mary Durack, “Lament for the Drowned Country,” in The Penguin Book of Australian Women Poets, ed. Susan Hampton and Kate Llewellyn (Ringwood, Vic: Penguin, 1986). 149. Donald Langmead and Christine Garnaut, Encyclopedia of Architectural and Engineering Feats (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2001), 313. 150. Commonwealth of Australia, “Wetlands Australia National Wetlands Update,” Wetlands Australia National Wetlands Update 20 (2012), accessed May 19, 2019, http:​//www​.envi​ronme​nt.go​v.au/​water​/wetl​ands/​publi​catio​ns/we​tland​s-aus​trali​ a/nat​ional​-wetl​ands-​updat​e-feb​ruary​-2012​-13. 151. Lorese Vera in Sarah St Vincent Welch, ed., Haiku in the Wetland (Canberra: Centre for Creative & Cultural Research and the International Poetry Study Institute, 2014), 14, lines 5–7. 152. Murray, Subhuman Redneck Poems, 45, lines 1–4. 153. Ibid., lines 24–25. 154. Hughes-D’Aeth, “Can Poetry Stop a Highway?,” para. 14.

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Murray, Les. Subhuman Redneck Poems. Potts Point, NSW: Duffy & Snellgrove, 1996. Musgrave, David. “Poetry as Knowing: Philip Salom’s Keepers Trilogy.” Axon: Creative Explorations 6 (2014). Accessed May 19, 2019. http:​//www​.axon​journ​al.co​ m.au/​issue​-6/po​etry-​knowi​ng. O’Connor, Mark. The Olive Tree: Collected Poems, 1972–2000. Alexandria, NSW: Hale & Iremonger, 2000. ———. “Hanging Swamp.” Australian Poetry Library, n.d. Accessed May 19, 2019. https​://ww​w.poe​tryli​brary​.edu.​au/po​ets/o​-conn​or-ma​rk/ha​nging​-swam​p-016​1067.​ Paterson, Banjo. The Works of Banjo Paterson. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Limited, 1993. Pigram, John. Australia’s Water Resources: From Use to Management. Collingwood, Vic: CSIRO Publishing, 2006. Porter, Dorothy. El Dorado. Sydney: Picador, 2007. Pressey, R.L., and P. Adam. “A Review of Wetland Inventory and Classification in Australia.” Vegetatio 118 (1995): 81–101. Rotherham, Ian. “Bio-Cultural Heritage and Biodiversity: Emerging Paradigms in Conservation and Planning.” Biodiversity and Conservation 24, no. 13 (2015): 3405–29. doi: 10.1007/s10531-015-1006-5. Ryan, John C. “ ‘No More Boomerang’: Environment and Technology in Contemporary Aboriginal Australian Poetry.” In Global Indigeneities and the Environment, edited by Karen Thornber and Tom Havens, 222–44. Basel: MDPI, 2016. ———. Plants in Contemporary Poetry: Ecocriticism and the Botanical Imagination. New York: Routledge, 2017. Saraswati, Anandashila. “A Walk in the Anthropocene: Homesickness and the Writer-Walker.” PhD diss., Edith Cowan University, 2012. Scigaj, Leonard. Sustainable Poetry: Four American Ecopoets. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1999. Smith, Andrew, and Ursula Munro. “Seasonal Population Dynamics of the Australian White Ibis (Threskiornis molucca) in Urban Environments.” Emu 110, no. 2 (2010): 132–36. doi: 10.1071/MU09072. Stewart, Douglas. Selected Poems. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1973. Taylor, Andrew. “Swamp Poems.” Journal of Australian Studies 26, no. 73 (2002): 133–41. doi: 10.1080/14443050209387773. Watson, Samuel Wagan. Smoke Encrypted Whispers. St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 2004. Welch, Sarah St Vincent, ed. Haiku in the Wetland. Canberra: Centre for Creative & Cultural Research and the International Poetry Study Institute, 2014. Western Australian Museum. “Nyoongar.” Reimagining Perth’s Lost Wetlands. Accessed May 17, 2019. http:​//mus​eum.w​a.gov​.au/e​xplor​e/wet​lands​/abor​igina​ l-con​text/​noong​ar. Wright, Judith. Collected Poems, 1942–1970. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1971. Wright, Kate. Transdisciplinary Journeys in the Anthropocene: More-Than-Human Encounters. London: Routledge, 2017.

Chapter 5

Plant and Swamp The Biocultural Histories of Five Australian Hydrophytes John C. Ryan

Many Australian plants are well adapted to the demands of swampy living. Tolerant of variable degrees of swampiness, these plants are indispensable to wetlands and other ecosystems. Permanent inundation, periodic saturation, and oxygen deficiency are the primary challenges negotiated by aquatic flora, or hydrophytes.1 The root hydro- denotes an individual plant specimen, botanical species, or vegetation community that lives in water or saturated earth. In their adaptation to the exacting yet changeable conditions of swamps, plants display substantial plasticity over time and from season to season. To be certain, many hydrophytes can also be found in non-wetland environments. In addition to soil and hydrology, floristic character provides a means to differentiate swamps from other types of habitats and thus to enhance the implementation of conservation strategies specific to wetlands.2 Nonetheless, whereas botanists and hydrologists have emphasized the ecological functionality of aquatic vegetation, the biocultural value of hydrophytes in Australia and elsewhere has received much less consideration by scholars. How has water-loving flora been integral to Aboriginal Australian societies as food, fiber, medicines, totems, and fellow-beings? During the nineteenth century, how did hydrophytes galvanize the botanical imagination of Anglo-European artists, writers, naturalists, travelers, and colonists? In what ways do aquatic plants continue to innervate Australian culture as emblems of adaptability in the era of global biodiversity degradation recognized increasingly as the Anthropocene? In response to these questions, this chapter will sketch the cultural histories of five Australian hydrophytes, namely, beaded samphire, nardoo, waterlily, broad-leaved paperbark, and river sheoak. The discussion will center on these five native plants—defined as those existing in the Australian environment 99

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in 1788 when the First Fleet under Captain Arthur Phillip arrived at Botany Bay and established the colonial settlement of Sydney Cove. The phytocentric (or plant-focused) approach developed in this chapter will build on increasing scholarly interest in plant biography—what could be described as phytography—or the life histories of botanical specimens (individuals), species (groupings), and ecosystems (communities).3 Ethnobotanist Anna Lewington, for instance, has recently traced the history of the birch tree as an agent shaping natural environments as well as the material cultures of people around the globe.4 Geographer Fred Gray, moreover, has detailed the significance of the palm tree in various cultural traditions over thousands of years.5 Unlike these and other phytographers, however, I approach botanical histories from the standpoint of affect theory in order to historicize hydrophytes while, at the same time, delineating the ways in which swampy vegetal life reciprocally has historicized—enculturated or, indeed, physically and metaphysically swamped—human beings. Toward this aim, I position these brief phytographical portraits within the emerging field of affective ecocriticism to foreground the primacy of affect—the interweaving of corporeality, emotion, habitus, and relationality—as it circulates through botanical texts.6 This affective approach enables me to emphasize the embodied affinities between hydrophytes, environments, elements, and organisms as represented in textual works of different kinds and eras. Before going more deeply into the biocultural intersectionalities of these five water-filiated plants, I will first consider the historical development of the hydrophyte concept in early plant ecology research. HYDROPHYTES: SUBMERGED, FLOATING, AND AMPHIBIOUS FLORA In his pioneering study of plant geography, Danish botanist Joakim Frederik Schouw invoked the term hydrophyta in reference to aquatic plants.7 Determined according to the amount and quality of water tolerated by plants, Schouw proposed four botanical groups, hydrophyta (high), mesophyta (moderate), xerophyta (low), and halophyta (saline).8 Schouw’s phytogeographical terminology, however, did not become widely accepted within scientific circles until the late 1800s and early 1900s with the publication of botanist Johannes Eugenius Bülow Warming’s landmark plant ecology textbook, initially, in Danish as Plantesamfund (1895) and, later, in English as Oecology of Plants (1909). Warming defined hydrophytes as “plants that exploit moist soil” and which have developed particular structural features in response to saturated environments.9 These anatomical adaptations include a reduced root mass, thin epidermis, water transport tubes, and air-filled organs

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for flotation. Warming further distinguished between hydrophytes as plants with organs entirely submerged in water and helophytes as marsh plants “which, like water-plants, develop their lower parts (roots, rhizomes, and, to some extent, leaves) in water or at least in soaking soil” but with other organs adapted to functioning in air.10 Warming even specified “lithophilous hydrophytes” as those aquatic plants attached to rocks.11 In Plant Succession and Indicators, moreover, American plant ecologist Frederic Clements characterized hydrophytes in various terms, for instance, as “amphibious plants,” “marsh-plants,” and “hygrophilous.”12 Clements understood that a hydrophyte “indicates deficient aeration as well as excessive water-content” and has evolved to the anaerobic conditions of wetlands.13 Derived from the Greek hygro for “water” and philos for “loving,” the less common synonyms hygrophilous and hygrophile underscore the affective affinities between aquatic plants and their paludal habitats. Like Eugenius Warming, Danish botanist Christen C. Raunkiær distinguished between hydrophytes and helophytes as part of his comprehensive typology of botanical life forms outlined in Planterigets Livsformer (1907) and later published in English as The Life Forms of Plants (1934).14 For Raunkiær, hydrophytes are the most adaptable kinds of plants. He circumscribed four principal types of botanical forms according to the position of buds: phanerophytes (buds on stems projecting into the air), chamaephytes (buds positioned close to the ground), hemicryptophyte (buds in the soil surface), and cryptophytes (buds fully concealed in soil or water).15 The fourth category, cryptophytes, includes “plants whose buds or shoot-apices destined to survive the unfavourable season are situated under the surface of the ground, or at the bottom of water.”16 The Danish botanist further divided cryptophytes into three types: geophytes (growing on dry ground), helophytes (resting on water-logged soil), and hydrophytes (existing underwater).17 The buds and shoots of hydrophytes are typically submerged whereas their flowers or inflorescences occur above the water in order to carry out pollination.18 In this early twentieth-century botanical schematization, hydrophytes are eminently robust and enduring: “Those Hydrophytes that survive the winter season by means of buds at the bottom of the water show the widest adaptation to periods unfavourable for growth.”19 Raunkiær’s systemization of botanical growth habit underscores the significance of aquatic plants within scientific typologies aimed at imposing order on the otherwise anarchic and unruly vegetal world.20 In their textbook Plant Ecology (1938), Clements and American botanist John Ernst Weaver conceptualized hydrophytes inclusively and, what’s more, etymologized the term: “Plants that live wholly or partly submerged in water or in very wet places are known as hydrophytes (Gr. hudor, water; phyton, plant). Plants of ponds, streams, and other bodies of water both fresh and

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salt, as well as those of swamps and wet meadows, belong to this group.”21 Accommodating a range of saturation levels, hydrophytes “grow in water, in soil covered with water, or in soil that is usually saturated.”22 The structural attributes of hydrophytes reflect the high water content and low oxygen supply of their habitats. Their physiological adjustments comprise a lack of tissues that characteristically protect against water loss and a discernible increase in the aeration of tissues in response to low oxygenation.23 The ecologists, additionally, delineated three hydrophytic groups: submerged (growing completely under water), floating (entirely free-floating or rooted in the soil with only their leaves and flowers floating on the surface of the water), and amphibious (capable of functioning partly in air and partly in water).24 In the Australian context, an example of a submerged hydrophyte is ribbon weed (Vallisneria spp.), a species forming dense underwater mats in freshwater up to twenty-feet deep and providing optimal habitat for a multitude of aquatic organisms.25 A floating hydrophyte is swamp stonecrop (Crassula helmsii), a bog plant with small, succulent foliage and prolific white flowers that has become an exceptionally invasive species outside of Australia and New Zealand.26 An example of the third category is the amphibious milfoil (Myriophyllum simulans), an aquatic or emergent herb with whorled, toothed leaves.27 Comparatively, recent elaborations of the concept of the hydrophyte reflect earlier principles developed by Clements, Weaver, Raunkiær, and Warming but, in contrast, emphasize that an aquatic habitus can be adopted by any plant in response to ecological constraints, specifically, excessive saturation and low oxygenation. In this regard, wetland ecologist Ralph Tiner offers a view of the hydrophyte predicated on “the potential for any individual plant to adapt to a wetland environment.”28 Tiner understands hydrophytes as vegetation “living in water or on a substrate that is at least periodically anaerobic due to excess water” or, put differently, plants found “growing in water or on wet soil.”29 Hydrophytes cannot live apart from their watery substrates for any significant length of time because most will desiccate swiftly upon exposure to the air.30 In other words, such plants are inextricably filiated with water and soggy terrain. Within the hydrophyte category, Tiner places nonvascular plants (marine and freshwater algae, mosses, and liverworts) as well as vascular plants, such as waterlilies, pondweeds, and naiads (or Najas, the water-nymph genus). Consequently, for Tiner and other contemporary wetland ecologists, a hydrophytic habitus is an inherent potentiality within the vegetal world. Although focused on classificatory parameters that differentiate forms of aquatic being-in-the-world, historical and current elaborations of the hydrophyte concept point to the possibility of an affective swamp ecology. Such a mode of paludal relationality recognizes—and, indeed, is innervated by—the corporeal entanglements between plants, water, organisms,

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land, and elements. The plant-wetland imbrication is thus predicated on affective registers in which the swamp becomes a milieu of feeling-being-felt and where human-non-human organisms continuously interchange. To be certain, wetlands are sites of affective assemblage—of feeling, emotion, attraction, responsivity—for all life, including plants (see also chapters 3, 4, and 9 of this volume). Accordingly, it becomes possible to read biocultural texts about Australian hydrophytes from the standpoint of “embodied capacities—phenomena that arise and circulate as intensities among assemblages.”31 From an affective position, I begin from the sodden ground up with the creeping, succulent hydrophyte known as beaded samphire. FROM MISERABLE COUNTRY TO CULINARY CULTURES: BEADED SAMPHIRE Native to Australia, New Zealand, and New Caledonia, beaded samphire is a common temperate salt marsh plant occurring in all coastal areas of the island continent except for the Northern Territory and northern Western Australia.32 Sarcocornia is a globally widespread botanical genus comprising sixteen plant species with three endemic to Australia, including S. quinqueflora.33 The succulent, halophytic (or salt-tolerant) perennial has fleshy, cylindrical, segmented, and green-to-reddish stems that spread horizontally and form pure stands that appear as dense mats (figure 5.1).34 Vital to the ecologies of coastal salt marshes as well as inland salt lakes, samphire provides habitat for mammals, birds, reptiles, and butterflies, maintains groundcover, protects against erosion, and performs other essential environmental functions.35 As a case in point, the critically endangered orange-bellied parrot (Neophema chrysogaster)—endemic to southern Australia and with wild populations in recent years as low as 180 birds—feeds on samphire seed at overwintering sites in Victoria.36 In March (early autumn in Australia) annually, seed development coincides with the arrival of parrots. One study concludes that salt marshes largely free from livestock grazing and with histories of frequent, short-term inundation yield the highest seed calorie content for migrating birds.37 However, the degradation of salt marshes from grazing, pollution, draining, reclamation, and the impacts of recreational activities has drastically reduced habitat for the endangered parrot. Beaded samphire is also known in vernacular terms as sarcocornia, beaded glasswort, bead weed, and sea asparagus. Although sometimes called “native spinach,” samphire should not be confused with a different species, Tetragonia cornuta, the leaves of which botanist Joseph Banks boiled and consumed in 1770.38 The German botanist Franz Baron Ungern-Sternberg assigned its taxonomic genus-species nomenclature, Salicornia quinqueflora, in his book

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Figure 5.1  Beaded Glasswort (Sarcocornia quinqueflora) at Sydney Olympic Park. Image Credit: Toby Hudson (Wikimedia Commons).

Versuch einer Systematik der Salicornieen (Attempt at a Classification of Salicornias) from 1866.39 Over 100 years later, botanist A. J. Scott revised the genus Salicornia as Sarcocornia but preserved the species designation, quinqueflora, to denote the five-flowered structure of many of its inflorescences.40 In the Australian context, the term samphire refers to either Sarcocornia or Tecticornia, a genus of succulent halophytes endemic to the landmass. The small shrub T. pergranulata, for instance, is known commonly as blackseed samphire and blackseed glasswort. Referring in Europe to a range of botanical species, samphire is etymologically a corruption of Saint Pierre and includes St. Peter’s wort (Hypericum tetrapterum), a herbaceous coastal plant used historically in pickling.41 Aboriginal Australian people have consumed samphire traditionally as a bush food due to the plant’s abundance, agreeable flavor, and nutritional profile, particularly its high levels of Vitamin A, calcium, and iron.42 Samphire seeds have been harvested to produce a flour for damper. Among the Adnyamathanha people of Flinders Ranges in South Australia, samphire is known as varpawarta, meaning “south wind bush” and denoting various species of Tecticornia.43 In the language of the Noongar of the south-west corner of Australia, samphire or mil-yu is “abundant both on the sea-coast and on the salt plains in the interior.”44 The accounts of nineteenth-century Anglo-European explorers, surveyors, and naturalists in Australia associate samphire with the mutability of

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swamplands. In 1829, in the marshes of the Peel Estuary near what would become the settlement of Mandurah, surgeon-botanist Alexander Collie and officer William Preston observed “a succulent plant, having some distant resemblance to samphire.”45 In their characterization of either Sarcocornia or Tecticornia, Collie and Preston invoked the marsh samphire, or glasswort (Salicornia europaea), as a visual point of comparison enabling their readers to associate an unknown antipodean wetland plant with a familiar Northern European analogue. Near the Darling Range, moreover, an exploratory team led by Robert Dale in 1830 “entered a dense forest of gum trees and brushwood, which we penetrated with difficulty; after walking nearly five miles through it, we came to a tea tree and samphire swamp, the water of which was brackish.”46 His reference to brackish—semi-saline—water suggests that the party encountered an inland salt lagoon within view of Mount Caroline and Mount Stirling. Later, in 1849, around Jerramungup in the Great Southern region south-east of Perth, surveyor John Septimus Roe demonstrated a rudimentary understanding that particular kinds of plants signify the hydrological changeability of wetlands: “Samphire and rushes filled the bed of the stream, indicating a want of permanency in the good water.”47 After gazing over the vast salt lake system of the Great Southern, Roe commented that “the presence of samphire seemed to indicate that the water is not at all times fit for use.”48 Elsewhere in his journal, the surveyor noted “numerous small salt or samphire lagoons” and “broad belts of salt lakes and samphire marshes.”49 In the accounts of these chroniclers, samphire embodies a commonplace misperception of the Western Australian environment as largely barren, hostile, and unfit for human occupation. Such a totalizing view, however, strongly negates Noongar stewardship of the land as boodjar—as a “nourishing terrain”50—and marginalizes Aboriginal Australian peoples’ affective interactions with samphire as a source of bodily sustenance. Popular British writer and traveler William Howitt, who spent two years in the Goldfields of Victoria, published a non-fiction account of grazier John McKinlay’s search for the explorers Robert O’Hara Burke and William John Wills.51 In 1861, following the unexplained disappearance of the Burke and Wills party on their return from the Gulf of Carpentaria, the South Australian government selected McKinlay to lead a relief mission. Howitt’s summary of that mission includes references to samphire as recorded in McKinlay’s diary published two years earlier in The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London (1863). Near Appam Barra Lake, according to Howitt, McKinlay faced a desperately bleak landscape, “hard and bare, with next to no vegetation, except plenty of salt, polygonum, samphire, and other bushes. There were many natives, who smelt strongly of fish; and fish, including craw-fish, was abundant.”52 As similarly evident in the textual depictions of samphire by Western Australian explorers, Howitt’s chronicle of the McKinlay expedition

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construes the plant and other salt lake flora, notably polygonum (knotweed), as living metonyms of barrenness and sterility. Nevertheless, Indigenous residents of the land indulged in its profuse aquatic resources. Rather than a repugnant olfactory register, the smell of the fish indexes the fecundity of the samphire ecosystem. In his own version of the expedition, McKinlay bemoaned the “miserable country, with salt-bush of various description, and samphire, and small stones occasionally” as well as “exceedingly boggy” areas of land where “what seemed clover was nothing but young samphire.”53 His team crossed large dry lake beds “with a saltlike appearance, the only vegetation being a few scattered bushes of samphire.”54 For McKinlay, samphire represented austerity and—in its semblance to clover and other familiar plants—frustrated the colonial visual fixation on northern hemispheric ideals of the pastoral. In the contemporary Australian context, a resurgence of culinary interest in wild edible plants has put samphire on restaurant menus and on the kitchen tables of bush tucker enthusiasts—both within the country and around the world. Distinguished for its qualities of saltiness and crunchiness, samphire is eaten uncooked in salads, made into a sea vegetable pesto, pickled, sautéed with fish and other seafood, and prepared as a substitute for asparagus.55 Farmer Andrew French has spearheaded the commercial samphire industry in the Gippsland region of eastern Victoria. Grazing on the plant, his cattle suffer from fewer diseases and, at the same time, produce a uniquely flavored beef that has received accolades from food writer Richard Cornish.56 On Kangaroo Island in South Australia, where Anglo-European locals have been consuming samphire for generations, Kate Brooksby harvests the succulent by hand from salt marshes and then pickles the stems.57 Samphire recipes have even been featured in Vogue Australia; for instance, “Red Snapper, Good Island Samphire, Preserved Lemon, Capers, and Fennel” calls for “160g samphire or 2 bunches asparagus, halved, blanched.”58 An article in ABC News Online, furthermore, praises samphire as a “versatile and tasty vegetable which can be eaten fresh on sandwiches or in salads. It can also be cut up and cooked in scrambled eggs, or sprinkled over a tray of baked vegetables ten minutes before they come out of the oven. Fresh samphire can be blanched then dressed with oil and pepper to make a bed for fish or steak.”59 Far more than a poverty food or undesirable weed, samphire has become integral to an evolving Australian cuisine based, in part, on Aboriginal Australian traditions of harvesting, preparing, and eating the water-loving succulent. Consequently, the popular perception of samphire has shifted from its association with miserable country to its insinuation in contemporary culinary networks. The gustatory sense figures similarly in the biocultural history of the aquatic nardoo fern, regarded in the late nineteenth century as “perhaps the most celebrated wild food of the Australians.”60

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“A MOST INSINUATING ARTICLE”: NARDOO, THE AQUATIC FERN Found throughout Australia, especially in seasonally wet inland habitats, nardoo (Marsilea spp.) is a genus of perennial rhizomatous ferns. Writing in the 1950s, American botanist John Thieret observed that nardoo “occurs in swampy lands over much of the island continent.”61 Of the eight species occurring in Australia, six are endemic.62 Nardoo plants have clover-like fronds comprising four leaflets that, depending on environmental conditions, can either float on the water surface or stand upright when dry (figure 5.2).63 A distinctive anatomical feature of the fern is its reproductive structure known as a sporocarp—or spore-bearing capsule—produced at various times during the year and dehiscing upon immersion in water.64 Regenerating rapidly in response to rain, the drought-tolerant sporocarps can germinate after lying dormant in the soil for over 100 years.65 David Johnson, for instance, produced nardoo growth from 99- to 100-year-old herbarium specimens whereas other botanists have reported stimulating plant development from sporophytes estimated to be 130 years in age.66 Researchers suggest that waterfowl spread sporocarps because the tough capsules pass intact through the digestive systems of the birds. What’s more, sporocarps are replete in thiaminase, an exceedingly heat-impervious enzyme that breaks down thiamine or vitamin B1.67 If not processed correctly, nardoo becomes detrimental to health, as the case of Burke and Wills’ fatal consumption of Marsilea drummondii demonstrates. Horses and pigs, additionally, can perish from a dietary disease known as bracken staggers, caused by ingesting nardoo.68 With its fast-growing rhizomes, eminently robust sporocarps, and a hardy physiology,

Figure 5.2  Marsilea or Nardoo Fern Leaves, Fitzroy River Floodplain in Coastal Central Queensland, Australia. Image Credit: Ethel Aardvark (Wikimedia Commons).

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nardoo adapts readily to amphibious environments that fluctuate across the seasons between extremes of wetness and dryness.69 The eight nardoo species occurring in Australia are designated by an array of descriptive vernacularisms, including banded nardoo, carpet plant, clover fern, common nardoo, desert fern, four-leaf clover, long stalk-fruited marsilea, narrow-leaf nardoo, resurrection plant, short-fruited nardoo, smooth nardoo, swayback nardoo, water clover, and water fern. To be precise, the eight taxonomic names for Australian nardoo species are M. angustifolia, M. costulifera (narrow-leaf), M. drummondii (common), M. exarata (swayback), M. hirsuta (short-fruited), M. latzii, M. mutica (smooth), and M. quadrifolia (clover fern).70 Comprising about sixty species, the cosmopolitan Marsilea genus enshrines the surname of the Italian natural scientist Count Luigi Ferdinando Marsili (1656–1730) who founded the Academy of Sciences of the Institute of Bologna.71 Like those of many other botanical subjects of imperial science, the species designations for nardoo memorialize prominent colonial botanists (e.g., drummondii for James Drummond) and denote some of the unique taxonomic attributes of the fern (e.g., quadrifolia for four leaflets and angustifolia for narrow leaf). In contrast, the widespread colloquial appellation, nardoo, in global circulation since the 1860s, inflects the Indigenous Australian ethnobotanical traditions that, for more than 50,000 years, have preserved intergenerational knowledge of harvesting, processing, and eating the plant.72 The name nardoo and its alternates, nardu and ardo, derive most likely from the Indigenous languages of South Australia and New South Wales; as an example, for the Kamilaroi, or Gamilaraay, of northern NSW, the fern is known as nhaadu. Although consumed by Aboriginal people across Australia, the sporocarps of nardoo must first be carefully processed through crushing and rinsing.73 The first known appearance of the term nardoo in print sources shortly followed the Victorian Exploring Expedition, suggesting that the men learned the word from the Yandruwandha people of South Australia.74 At Cooper’s Creek, in their bid to endure the ordeal, the men began to consume nardoo flour rendered from the sporocarps of M. drummondii. But the flour precipitated an acute downturn in their health as their bodies could no longer produce vitamin B1.75 Wills mentioned nardoo in a diary entry from June 3, 1861, in which he described partaking in “fish and bread” with a group at Maramilya Waterhole led by Pitchery, or Bitchuree, the Yandruwandha chief: The fish being disposed of, next came a supply of nardoo cake and water, until I was so full as to be unable to eat any more, when Pitchery allowing me a short time to recover myself, fetched a large bowl of the raw nardoo flour, mixed to a thin paste—a most insinuating article, and one that they appear to esteem a great delicacy.76

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A mere seventeen days later, on June 20, 1861, he complained about the digestive effects of eating the aquatic fern, stating that “I cannot understand this nardoo at all; it certainly will not agree with me in any form.”77 The last statement of his final diary entry on June 26, 1861, reflects on the impossibility of surviving on the “farinacious” sporocarps alone: “The want of sugar and fat in all substances obtainable here is so great that they become almost valueless to us as articles of food, without the addition of something else.”78 Burke and Wills’ ultimately fatal mistake was to attempt to prepare the hydrophytic fern like a European grain by pulverizing and cooking the sporocarps. The process did not break down the remarkably heat-resistant thiaminase.79 After decades of debate, historians now generally agree that the explorers perished from beriberi, a disease triggered by thiamine deficiency.80 In contrast, the Yandruwandha people, who introduced the men to nardoo, consumed the starchy sporocarps as a well-integrated part of a wetland food bioculture that also included fish, crustaceans, reptiles, birds, animals, and other plants. Their method of processing nardoo, moreover, effectively nullified the pernicious enzyme, specifically through the rinsing of the sporocarps. As the preparation of nardoo was “women’s work,” however, the complexities of rendering the fern safe to eat were never revealed to Burke and Wills.81 Contemporary Elder Benny Kerwin explains that Yandruwandha people traditionally make a gruel by crushing nardoo and then agitating it “in a coolamon. Then they pour the water on it and eat it with the water. They eat it by spooning it into their mouths with a mussel [shell], not with a coolabah leaf or with bark, only with a mussel.”82 Sluicing was an essential component of the process insofar as water, to a large extent, inhibits thiaminase.83 Grindstones used for crushing nardoo are typically found near mudflats.84 Two significant late nineteenth-century accounts of Indigenous gustatory traditions involving nardoo are Australian geologist Robert Brough Smyth’s The Aborigines of Victoria (1878) and medical naturalist Thomas Lane Bancroft’s essay “On the Habit and Use of Nardoo” communicated by botanist Joseph Maiden in The Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales (1894). Smyth praised Aboriginal Victorians for their “complete knowledge of every plant that grows.”85 He published a remarkably detailed description of nardoo preparation, including references to the grinding, rinsing, and baking of the sporocarps by women: When the women reach their homes, they proceed to grind the seeds of the nardoo and grass between two stones. The larger flat stone, about eighteen inches in length, one foot in breadth, and about two inches in thickness, is called Yelta on the Darling [Murray-Darling basin]; and the smaller, held in the hand—the other larger stone resting on the ground—is about six inches in length, five inches in breadth, and one inch or more in thickness. The latter is named Nay-ka.

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The stones used for grinding in nearly all parts of the Darling are Silurian sandstones, and when the seeds are ground up and made into paste, the natives necessarily swallow a quantity of sand with each morsel. Water is added as they grind the seeds, and they scoop up the paste with the forefinger. In some places the paste is baked into cakes.86

In Smyth’s account, the naming of the small and large grindstones signifies the intricacies of processing nardoo and, more broadly, the material-semiotic—or world-language—imbrications at the center of Aboriginal Australian wetland cultures. At Annandale, NSW, Bancroft, additionally, witnessed the preparation of nardoo damper: The involucres, which are very hard, are pounded between two stones; a handful of them is held in the left hand and fed to a stone on the ground, a few grains being allowed to drop from the hand by separating, abducting the little finger, a smart blow being struck with a stone in the right hand, which effectually pulverises every grain at once; it is surprising with what rapidity they can do this work. The flour is mixed with water, kneaded to a dough, and baked in the ashes.87

Bancroft’s passage evokes the specific human habitus required to prepare nardoo and which is shaped by the vibrant materialities of involucres (sporocarps), stones, and swamps. The story of the Burke and Wills expedition profoundly influenced the perception of nardoo by writers within and outside of Australia. Many accounts of the late nineteenth and early to mid-twentieth centuries exhibit an understanding of nardoo as a food and, more specifically, an awareness of the edibility of its sporocarps. This unusual phenomenon—which I will call sporocarp consciousness—involves the circulation of biocultural knowledge about this particular anatomical feature of nardoo through the Burke and Wills story imagined by popular and scientific audiences in Australia, Europe, and elsewhere. British botanist and illustrator William Jackson Hooker’s Garden Ferns (1862), for instance, alludes to nardoo specimens received “from Captain Washington, hydrographer to the Admiralty, inscribed as ‘Nardoo seed, taken from the patch on the spot where Burke died, Cowper’s Creek […] collected by E.T. Welch, September 25th, 1861’.”88 Hooker even speculated that the improper handling of nardoo caused the suffering and eventual deaths of the men: “Could they have provided themselves as easily with the Nardoo, and prepared it as readily as the natives do, their lives might have been spared to their country, which owed so much to their exertions.”89 In The Natural History of Man (1870), likewise, British natural history writer John George Wood elaborated—in both botanical and cultural terms predicated on sporocarp consciousness—that “the fruit is about as large as a pea, and is cleaned for use by being rubbed in

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small wooden troughs. It is then pounded into a paste, and made into cakes, like oatmeal […] The fruit, or ‘sporocarp’ of the nardoo is the part that is eaten.”90 Citing Smyth’s evocation of Aboriginal uses of the fern, botanist Joseph Maiden in Useful Native Plants of Australia (1889) observed that “in the summer months the swamps containing this plant dry up, and it withers completely away, but the spore cases remain.”91 Residues of sporocarp consciousness persisted into the mid-twentieth century, for instance, in Thieret’s explanation that Indigenous Australians acquired nardoo ferns “either by sweeping them with twig brooms into wooden vessels or by gathering the dried roots with sporocarps attached.”92 To be certain, the example of the hydrophytic fern represents the complex entanglements between Aboriginal and Anglo-European wetland cultures. Global interest in nardoo resulted from its association with the Burke and Wills narrative, which in fact yielded the earliest textual accounts of the plant’s biocultural aspects (its uses, benefits, and hazards).93 An affective ecocritical approach to nardoo and other hydrophytes, therefore, recognizes the capacity of the plant to affect (bodies, psyches, emotions, places) and to be affected (collected, ground, consumed, transmuted) as a vegetal agent within swamplands. As Bladow and Ladino suggest, affect registers in and between specific bodies (plant and non-plant) and places (wetland and non-wetland).94 They argue that “bodies, human and nonhuman, are perhaps the most salient sites at which affect and ecocriticism come together.”95 The challenge for the emerging field of affective ecocriticism is to call attention to the vegetal bodies that sustain other beings within those places, such as wetlands, that have been denigrated historically as sites of the ghastly, the undesirable, the dangerous, and the uncanny (see chapters 2 and 3 of this volume). Multisensoriality—tasting, smelling, feeling, looking, listening to—similarly mediates the bioculturalities of the Australian waterlily (Nymphaea spp.), as evident in a range of historical narratives. “FINE REACHES OF WATER, FULL OF NYMPHAEA”: THE WATERLILY Comprising five genera and approximately seventy total species, the botanical family Nymphaeaceae is globally widespread. In his seminal study The Waterlilies (1905), American botanist Henry Shoemaker Conard wrote, “The habits of waterlilies are too well known to need more than a brief statement here. These plants are found in the shallows of slow streams or still water all around the world.”96 Species of the genus Nymphaea are commonly called waterlilies, although some are incorrectly labelled lotuses. These rhizomatous hydrophytes usually exhibit entomophilous—or insect-loving—flowers

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pollinated by beetles. In Australia, there are approximately seventeen endemic and two naturalized waterlily species as well as numerous hybrids.97 For the most part, endemic species occur in the northern tropical and subtropical reaches of the island continent. Only the giant waterlily (N. gigantea) ranges south to northern New South Wales.98 Further beyond this point, all other waterlilies are introduced; for instance, the African blue lotus (N. caerulea) has become widely naturalized in waterbodies throughout eastern Australia.99 The charismatic giant waterlily displays floating leaves and intoxicatingly fragrant purple-to-white flowers with rounded petal tips (figure 5.3). The hydrophyte usually inhabits coastal lagoons about one meter in depth but can occur in some inland wetlands.100 Prevalent in the Australian tropics, the endemic blue lily (N. violacea) bears small tuberous rhizomes that can overwinter and thus endure extended dry periods.101 Other Australian waterlilies are rare and highly localized; as a case in point, botanists have recorded N. hastifolia at only a dozen sites in the Kimberley and Northern Territory.102 To be certain, the extent of waterlily diversity in Australia is continuously emerging. A team of botanists led by Carlos Magdalena of Kew recently identified a species, previously unknown to science, in a remote part of northwestern Australia.103 The genus designation, Nymphaea, derives from the Latin nymphae for nymphs, or the “minor goddesses who inhabited fountains and rivers.”104 In similar terms, other botanical writers have etymologized the genus as “the classical name after Nymphe, a water nymph.”105 Originally published in 1848, Gray’s Manual of Botany, moreover, states simply that Nymphaea is an “ancient name from the Water-nymphs.”106 In The Philosopher’s Plant, Michael Marder traces Nymphaea to the Greek nymphē for “bride,” which,

Figure 5.3  Australian Water Lily (Nymphaea gigantea) at Kew Gardens, England. Image Credit: Emőke Dénes (Wikimedia Commons).

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in turn, underlies the Latin nūbere for “to take in marriage” as the basis of the English nuptials.107 Following Marder’s cue, the technical nomenclature for the waterlily would imply embodied filiation—union, partnership, intercourse—between plants and people. Yet, while invoking Western mythological wetland-personae, the waterlily genus name, at the same time, elides the Indigenous creation beings, including the Waugal of the Noongar of Southwest Australia, who dwell in and protect swampy ecosystems (see chapter 2). To be precise, many Aboriginal Australian languages have complex vocabularies for denoting various kinds and parts of Nymphaea, thus underscoring the biocultural resonances of the plant. For instance, in the Nunggubuyu, or Wubuy, language of Arnhem Land, more than a dozen words refer to the structures and lifecycles of waterlilies.108 Known generally as yangguri, the waterlily supplies a crucial food source and, accordingly, wudan refers to the edible corm (the underground storage organ); jirigilil to the immature corm; yiwujung to the advanced yet immature corm; and nindan to the waterlily when it has turned old and bitter-tasting.109 Also of Arnhem Land, the Ngandi people have traditionally harvested waterlilies, or yarlbun, from billabongs.110 Ngandi woman Maritza Roberts recalls gathering yarlbun with community members during her childhood: “We used to get lots of lily roots, lots of lily pods and even the stems. We’d bring them back to Ngukurr [a town in the Northern Territory] and I’d help my grandmother grind the lily pods to make dampers.”111 With its comestible roots, stalks, seeds, flowers, and leaves, the waterlily is a culturally salient hydrophyte for Aboriginal people wherever it grows. In particular, the blue lily (N. violacea) exemplifies the gustatory range of Australian Nymphaea: the fruits and petioles are eaten uncooked; young plant stems are baked; and oily seeds are roasted in pods or ground for damper flour.112 Starchy waterlily roots have long furnished a valuable energy source. Once extracted from muddy billabong bottoms, the roots are cleaned, skinned, roasted, mashed, and savored. The ancestors of the Alawa people of the Roper River area of Arnhem Land were known to store the roots in caves for eating during times of scarcity.113 The stalks of closed flowers, moreover, are rendered edible after the removal of the indigestible fiber. The Aboriginal people of the Cambridge Gulf region of northern Western Australia use the stalks of N. gigantea as bush straws for drinking the cooler water that lies at the bottom of waterholes.114 In the mid-nineteenth century, the German explorer-naturalist Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig Leichhardt witnessed the consumption of waterlily seeds by Indigenous Queenslanders: “I threw a tin canister over to them, and they returned me a shower of roasted Nymphaea fruit. It seems that the seed-vessels of Nymphaea and its rhizoma form the principal food of the natives; the seeds contain much starch and soil, and are extremely nourishing.”115

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Leichhardt wrote a detailed account of the pounding of seeds, stems, and tubers into “a substance much resembling mashed potatoes.”116 His party passed: several fine lagoons, richly adorned by the large showy flowers of a white Nymphaea, the seed-vessels of which some families of natives were busily gathering: after having blossomed on the surface of the water, the seed-vessel grows larger and heavier, and sinks slowly to the bottom, where it rots until its seeds become free, and are either eaten by fishes and waterfowl, or form new plants. The natives had consequently to dive for the ripe seed-vessels; and we observed them constantly disappearing and reappearing on the surface of the water.117

Around the Northern Territory, Aboriginal hunters have also been known to place large waterlily leaves over their faces to camouflage themselves while wading for common waterbirds called “magpie geese” (Anseranas semipalmata).118 In such circumstances, the leaves from N. gigantean can be crushed and applied to the skin to impede leech attacks.119 What’s more, the waterlily is a significant bush calendar plant. In the Brisbane area, as explained by Uncle Willie Mackenzie, the blossoms have traditionally been taken as signs that river mussels were ready to harvest.120 And, finally, Nymphaea is connected to ancestral entities. For many Indigenous Australian language groups, the appearance of shoots after early season rain heralds the passage of creation beings from billabongs to the Skyworld.121 In fact, waterlilies signify that wetlands are deep enough for these spirits to inhabit.122 During his journey from Moreton Bay in southeast Queensland to Port Essington in the Northern Territory from 1844 to 1845, Leichhardt noted the regular occurrence of Nymphaea in waterbodies. A perspicacious observer of Australian flora and a skillful writer of wetlands, Leichhardt was enthralled by the visual beauty and classical—that is, Old World—associations of the Australian waterlilies he saw. An affectively charged image in the botanical imagination of Northern Europe—and one with an extensive Western cultural history123—Nymphaea would have supplied an element of solace for Leichhardt and his party in an otherwise unheimlich plantscape of strange and endemic flora.124 At a campground that he dubbed “Brown’s Lagoons” in the Central Highlands region of Queensland, Leichhardt recorded a “beautiful blue” waterlily “growing in the lagoon; and around it, among the reeds and high cyperaceous plants, a small labiate, a Gomphrena, the native Chamomile, and a Bellis were growing.”125 The naturalist’s perception of the lagoon reflects an ecological aesthetics that positions the beauty—pleasing color, balanced form—of the Nymphaea in dynamic relation to the affective qualities of other plants (here, of the genera Gomphrena and Bellis) that occupy the same habitat. Near the Mackenzie River in Central Queensland, moreover,

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the expedition crossed “a chain of fine lagoons […] covered with splendid blue Nymphaeas.”126 Leichhardt’s aesthetic-affective diction—splendid, fine, beautiful, and so on—implies that his positive experiences of the landscape through which he walked were, in part, mediated by observations of, and interactions with, aquatic flora. At the same time, the waterlily proffered a linguistic reference point for evoking the lesser-known plants encountered by the men. In this way, Leichhardt described lotus plants—genus Nelumbo or Nelumbium—growing in “deep soft mud” as “crowned with a pink flower resembling that of a Nymphaea, but much larger.”127 Similarly, the explorer-botanist William Carron, who left Sydney in 1848 in the vessel Tam O’Shantier, accompanied by H.M.S. Rattlesnake, took note of waterlilies occurring inland from Rockingham Bay in Far North Queensland: “We travelled over uneven rocky ground, and crossed several gullies, and camped by the bed of a river, at a spot where there were fine reaches of water, full of Nymphaea and Villarsia.”128 Carr and other nineteenth-century botanical commentators connected Nymphaea to “fine” flowing water courses due to the depth of water—about one meter, or three feet—required by the hydrophyte. In their accounts, the waterlily is filiated with “fine reaches” as well as with Villarsia, a genus of aquatic plants restricted for the most part to Australia. As narrated by Carron, Nymphaea supplied a tangible means of establishing trust, promoting exchange, and engendering conviviality between Traditional Owners and Anglo-European newcomers. The botanist, for instance, witnessed “several natives with pieces of fish and turtle, which I took from them, when they left us. The natives also brought us some roasted nymphaea roots, which they call ‘dillii’.”129 As also in the historical representations of nardoo and samphire, waterlily was eaten as one component within a diverse wetland food culture including mammals, fish, reptiles, plants, and other more-than-human agents. And, like the journal of Leichhardt, Carron’s narrative remains a vital source of biocultural knowledge about waterlilies, specifically as encoded in the Indigenous name dillii for the roasted roots. The interwoven significance of hydrophytes in both Indigenous and Settler wetland cultures—of the past and of present—is additionally evident in the example of the broad-leaved paperbark (Melaleuca quinquenervia). “GENERALLY THE COMPANION OF WATER”: BROAD-LEAVED PAPERBARK Created by Linnaeus in 1767, Melaleuca is the genus name for a large group of evergreen trees and shrubs called paperbarks, many of which grow in stationary or slow-moving brackish or fresh water.130 The genus comprises approximately 230 species with 22 endemic to Australia.131 Typically located

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Figure 5.4  Melaleuca quinquenervia Leaves and Flowers (Woolgoolga, NSW). Image Credit: Geoff Derrin (Wikimedia Commons).

within forty kilometers—or twenty-five miles—of the ocean, broad-leaved paperbarks (M. quinquenervia) range from the south coast of New South Wales (NSW) to the Cape York Peninsula; and with small populations present in southern New Guinea and New Caledonia.132 Their key morphological features include white-gray bark, white to cream-colored bottlebrush flowers, broad grey-green leaves with five distinct veins, and a shallow root system where 80 percent of the root biomass is restricted to the upper fifteen centimeters—or six inches—of the soil (figure 5.4).133 Broad-leaved paperbarks are found mostly near wetlands because their seeds require moist substrates to propagate.134 An ecologically important hydrophyte, M. quinquenervia provides nest sites and nectar sources for birds, bats, insects, and other organisms.135 Rainbow lorikeets (Trichoglossus moluccanus) and singing honeyeaters (Lichenostomus virescens), for instance, consume its nectar.136 What’s more, paperbark blossoms form an essential part of the diet of the threatened grey-headed flying fox (Pteropus poliocephalus), a large bat endemic to south-eastern Australia.137 As with other Myrtaceae plant family members, the leaves of M. quinquenervia contain medicinal essential oil, or what has been called niaouli.138 Notwithstanding its diverse ecological and health-promoting virtues, however, broad-leaved paperbark is considered “one of the world’s worst woody weeds” and has become a major invasive species in the Everglades of Florida since its introduction there in the early 1900s.139 As also evident in the examples of waterlily, nardoo, and beaded samphire, the vernacular and technical names of M. quinquenervia reflect rich biocultural histories. The common name, paperbark, derives from the thick gray bark that peels back in long sheets. Other colloquial appellations include belbowrie (around Gloucester, NSW), bottlebrush, broad-leaved

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paperbark, broadleaf paperbark, broadleaf tea tree, five-veined paperbark, melaleuca, milkwood (in the Northern Territory), niaouli (in New Caledonia), paperbark tea tree, punk tree, swamp tea tree, and white tea tree.140 Queensland botanist Stanley Thatcher Blake noted regional variations in the vernacular naming of the species: “M. quinquenervia is often called broadleaved tea-tree in south-east Queensland but farther north this name is more appropriately applied to M. viridiflora. It is often called merely tea-tree or paper-bark and in New South Wales, Belbowrie has been applied to it.”141 On arriving at the east coast of Australia in 1770, James Cook and Joseph Banks applied the term tea tree to small trees with leaves harvested by the sailors as a tea substitute.142 Not specific to broad-leaved paperbark, tea trees include an array of myrtaceous plants within the genera Melaleuca, Leptospermum, Kunzea, and Baeckea.143 Stemming from the Greek melas for “black” and leukos for “white,” the genus Melaleuca denotes the black trunks and white shoots of some paperbarks or, alternately, the charred white bark of the first described specimen.144 On the etymology of the genus, Maiden clarifies that “the explanation probably is that trunk and branches were alike papery and white, but that the trunk (as is often the case) was charred by a fire, giving it a blackish appearance.”145 Moreover, the species name, quinquenervia, derives from the Latin terms quinque for “five” and nervus for “nerve” in reference to the five prominent leaf veins.146 In his monograph Icones Et Descriptiones Plantarum (Icons and Descriptions of Plants), Spanish botanist Antonio José Cavanilles published the genus-species nomenclature Metrosideros quinquenervia based on specimens collected four years earlier near Port Jackson (Sydney) during the Malaspina Expedition.147 During the mid-twentieth century, Stanley Blake, however, transferred broad-leaved paperbark to the genus Melaleuca and differentiated quinquenervia from three closely related species.148 Historical sources, at times, conflate M. quinquenervia, M. viridiflora, and M. leucadendron149—a technical consideration that is especially crucial to conducting research into the biocultural histories of Australian flora. During the circumnavigation of Australia by HMS Investigator under the command of Captain Matthew Flinders (1801–3), Scottish botanist Robert Brown noted numerous representatives of “the beautiful genus Melaleuca.”150 Brown and other naturalists of the era equated the endemic paperbarks with the antipodean landmass: “With the exception of two species of this section, namely, Melaleuca Leucadendron, and M. Cajeputi, the genus Melaleuca appears to be confined to Terra Australis.”151 Comparably, in his seven-volume Flora Australiensis (1866), compiled with the assistance of Ferdinand von Mueller, British botanist George Bentham characterized the Melaleuca genus as “probably entirely Australian.”152 While not entirely accurate, the assertions of Bentham and Brown, nevertheless, underscore the centrality of paperbarks

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in the Australian wetlandscape, as evident in nineteenth-century narratives. Leichhardt, for instance, recalled “the drooping tea-tree (Melaleuca Leucodendron?), which we found afterwards at every creek and river; it was generally the companion of water, and its drooping foliage afforded an agreeable shade, and was also very ornamental.”153 After naming the Mitchell River in Far North Queensland, he observed “a Melaleuca with broad lanceolate leaves”154—most likely what we now identify as M. quinquenervia. In his late nineteenth-century botanical travelogue “The Dorrigo Forest Reserve,” Maiden characterized M. leucadendron—or “broad-leaved tea-tree”—as “plentiful on the coast in and about the Bellinger River [of NSW] [and] found up to 18 inches in diameter.”155 Furthermore, his book The Forest Flora of New South Wales describes the same species as able to attain “a considerable size, with a thick, often spongy bark, peeling off in layers; the branches slender and often pendulous, but in some situations remaining a small tree or shrub with rigid erect branches.”156 Maiden’s evocations of the broad-leaved paperbark reveal the plant affectivities on the periphery—and, simultaneously, at the core—of botanical science. By plant affectivities, I am referring to the sensorialities of plants—their visual, auditory, gustatory, olfactory, and haptic resonances— as well as the particular corporealities of vegetal beings with, for instance, “slender,” “pendulous,” “rigid,” and “erect” bodily habitus.157 The concept of plant affectivity signifies the capacity of botanical life to affect and to be affected—to sense and to be sensed, to respond and to provoke response—as vegetal actants within wetland ecosystems. As such, plant affectivity is an inherently intercorporeal transaction between human and botanical bodies. In terms of human-plant intercorporeality, Maiden articulated the practical uses of paperbark among pastoralists: “The young leaves are bruised in water and the liquid drunk for headaches and colds, and general sickness; the bark is also used for bedding, &c., on the Mitchell River, Queensland.”158 The bark of the species provided an upholstery filling and insulating material for protecting against insect infestation.159 Hydrophytes—including M. quinquenervia and its relatives—are not merely passive, aesthetic objects within the wetlandscape but, rather, are active, agential contributors to swamp biocultural networks and narrative constructions of those networks. Put differently, plant and swamp insinuate themselves in language and text (see chapter 4 of this volume). Some of these posthumanist ideas inflect in Maiden’s account of the extraction of paperbark essential oil or “the well-known ‘Cajeput oil’ of commerce.”160 He details the distillation of oil from leaves “gathered on a warm day and placed in a sack, where they become hot and damp. They are then macerated in water and left to ferment for a night, and afterwards submitted to distillation.”161 Although processed—gathered, placed, macerated, fermented, submitted, distilled—the paperbark resists devitalization as

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its essence becomes part of biocultural networks, in Australia and beyond, predicated on human bodily incorporation of the antimicrobial oils. Plant affectivity presents a framework for appreciating Aboriginal Australian usage of paperbark materials for tools, fibers, medicines, beverages, and food. Indigenous languages indeed have a variety of names for these trees. Maiden lists the appellations numbah for the species in the languages of southern New South Wales and belbowrie among the people of the Gloucester area of the state.162 He enumerated some of the manifold names for M. quinquenervia throughout its coastal distribution: “It bears a number of aboriginal names in Queensland. They are quoted by Mr. Bailey as follows:— ‘Mor-ngi’, Palmer River (Roth); ‘Kyenbooree’, Mackay (Nugent); ‘Bichuma’ Forest Hill (Macartney); ‘Atchoourgoo’, Mitchell River (Palmer); ‘Oodgeroo’, Stradbroke Island (Watkins), to which may be added ‘Bethar’, Port Curtis (Hedley).”163 (As an aside, the contemporary Indigenous poet and activist Oodgeroo Noonuccal’s adopted traditional name can be translated to “paperbark tree of the Noonuccal people.”) Throughout Australia, Aboriginal people have manufactured bandages, burial coverings, clothing, cradle liners, mats, menstrual pads, pouches, shelter roofs, toilet paper, and water containers from the hydrophytic tree.164 The Enindilyakwa and Rirratjingu people of Arnhem Land, for instance, employ Melaleuca species in a range of tool-making practices.165 Leaves from paperbark varieties are processed into a medicine for coughs and colds.166 The Bundjalong people of the north coast of New South Wales exploit the bactericidal and fungicidal properties of Melaleuca foliage to alleviate a range of ailments.167 In the tropics, people have been known to suck the nectar from paperbark blossoms or steep them in water to create a beverage.168 In return, Aboriginal communities have maintained populations of water-filiated trees—broad-leaved paperbark and river sheoak (Casuarina cunninghamiana) included—through long-term cultivation practices such as landscape burning.169 A “NATURAL BANK PROTECTOR”: RIVER SHEOAK A protected species in New South Wales, river sheoak is a medium to large casuarina with soft foliage, small woody fruits, and a preference for permanent freshwater.170 As one of the few genuinely riparian trees endemic to Australia,171 C. cunninghamiana is the physically largest of the Casuarina genus in Oceania. The tree ranges in height from 20 to 35 meters (65 to 115 feet) and, in width, from 0.5 to 1.5 meters (2 to 5 feet).172 Growing principally on river and stream banks, this tall casuarina forms monospecific, or pure, stands in narrow riparian belts, often between normal water level and flood water level, where its roots can directly access hydration.173 Flowering typically

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between February and March, river sheoak is wind-pollinated and dioecious, that is, having male and female plants.174 The tree releases seeds continuously over a six-month period. One of the means through which the well-floating seeds are dispersed is via water.175 The bark is dark-grey, hard, and deeply furrowed (figure 5.5). The fruits are pale-brown samaras, or winged achenes, enclosed by woody leaf-like structures known as bracteoles. Growing in soils ranging from fine-textured sands to gravels, river sheoak forms nitrogenfixing associations with soil bacteria, specifically of the genus Frankia.176 The scientific name Casuarina is said to derive from the Malay term kasuaris for “cassowary.” The genus denotes the visual similarity of sheoak foliage to the plumage of the bird.177 The species designation, moreover, memorializes Allan Cunningham (1791–1839), “King’s Botanist, and formerly Superintendent of the Botanic Gardens, Sydney” who collected plants principally in eastern Australia.178 The term sheoak, additionally, alludes to the conspicuous medullary rays—cellular structures appearing as distinct radiating lines in the wood—that, for early settlers, brought to mind the true oaks (Quercus spp.) of the Northern Hemisphere.179 In 1848, the first taxonomic description of river sheoak was published by Dutch botanist Friedrich Anton Miquel (1811–1871) in Revisio Critica Casuarinarum.180 Another early scientific account of the casuarina was supplied in 1876 by French botanist Jules Poisson (1833–1919) in his treatise Recherchessur les Casuarina. C. cunninghamiana has been known by a number of evocative vernacular names—from river oak, giant river oak, swamp oak, creek oak (especially in Queensland), white oak and fire oak (for the use of its wood as fuel) to brown sheoak, Australian beefwood, and Australian larch.181 Aware of the limits of vernacularisms, Maiden recommended the names “fresh-water swamp oak” to avoid confusion with “salt-water swamp oak” (C. glauca), but concluded that “river oak” would be the most appropriate common appellation for this species given its preference for riparian environments.182 The river-dwelling casuarina is known as billagin in the Aboriginal languages of the Camden region located south-west of Sydney.183 River sheoak prefers temperate and subtropical areas along the eastern and northern coasts of Australia. The species occurs naturally along freshwater streams from southern New South Wales to the Northern Territory.184 C. cunninghamiana is dominant along rivers east of the Great Dividing Range but is generally absent from areas with less than 500 millimeters (20 inches) of rainfall per year.185 With its overall distribution determined by fresh water, river sheoak is replaced, toward the coast, by swamp oak (C. glauca) especially along rivers with higher salinity.186 C. cunninghamiana is rare in western New South Wales but becomes more common in areas with higher annual precipitation.187 In the north of its range—the Gulf of Carpentaria in Queensland and in the Northern Territory—the casuarina is frequently only 10 to 12 meters

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Figure 5.5  River Sheoak (Casuarina cunninghamiana) at Boorolong Creek, Yarrowyck, NSW, 2017. Image Credit: J. Ryan.

(33 to 44 feet) in height and has a distinctive straggly presentation.188 The two subspecies are cunninghamiana (NSW and QLD) and miodon (NT). Subsp. cunninghamiana occupies narrow belts along permanent freshwater courses in eastern Australia from Bega, in coastal southern NSW near the Victorian border, to the Laura Basin in north-east Queensland. This subspecies extends inland to Chillagoe and Augathella in QLD and Narrandera in NSW. Identified in 1989, subsp. miodon can be found alongside large fresh or brackish streams from the Daly River, NT, to the Gulf of Carpentaria, QLD.189 As with C. equisetifolia and C. glauca, river sheoak has become naturalized or invasive in South, Central, and North America as well as parts of Africa and Asia.190 In 1840, the species was introduced to Réunion Island for

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firewood and erosion control.191 The capacity of the tree to tolerate frequent inundation renders it valuable for protecting river banks from erosion.192 River sheoak timber has been used to make turnery, bullock yokes, planks, floorboards, shingles, umbrella handles, serviette rings, ash trays, batons, and walking sticks. When seasoned, the wood becomes remarkably dense. A writer using the alias “Silky Oak” in The Queenslander (1926) observed that the wood “is understood to give the best results when it is buried for some time before use.”193 In another botanical travelogue, “Mount Seaview and the Way Thither,” Maiden observed that along the rivers he crossed on his way to the mountain, “the River Sheoak (Casuarina Cunninghamiana) is abundant, and trees 80 to 100 feet high and 2 or 3 feet in diameter are not uncommon.”194 He noted that “as on the Hastings, the River Oak (Casuarina Cunninghamiana) is both abundant and large in size.”195 According to an edition of the Daily Liberal from Dubbo, NSW, the “timber is of pink color, is light and strong and was used by early settlers for shingles.”196 An article in a 1931 edition of the Central Queensland Herald indicates that “the principal use to which [the wood] is put is in the making of bullock yokes, in which capacity it experiences a different atmosphere to that it enjoys when, more rarely, it is used for turnery that might grave even ecclesiastical edifices. Pit sawn into planks, it has been found in good condition after 50 years of service.”197 Providing a superior fuel source, river sheoak wood was preferred for bakers’ ovens.198 Maiden asserted that “this and other Casuarinas burn well, and their ashes retain the heat for a long while.”199 The foliage has also been used as a fodder during times of drought. Maiden, accordingly, effused that “in many districts the mortality amongst sheep and cattle would have been far greater than it was had it not been for this valuable tree.”200 Casuarinas, such as river sheoak, provide critical habitat for rare and endangered animals. The vulnerable glossy black cockatoo (Calyptorhynchus lathami) and the red-winged parrot (Aprosmictus erythropterus), for instance, depend on eucalypt and C. cunninghamiana woodlands of which only onequarter of the original remains.201 River sheoaks also furnish habitat for the critically endangered regent honeyeater (Anthochaera phrygia) as well as a variety of butterflies and epiphytic orchids.202 A healthy aquatic system consisting of river sheoaks supplies diverse benefits to adjacent dryland and riverine biota. Wetland botanical communities in Australia, however, are threatened by land management practices, invasive plants, salinization, and reservoir development.203 Additionally, grazing can pose problems for already-degraded aquatic habitats.204 Over one-hundred years ago, Maiden extolled river sheoak as a “natural bank protector.” He recommended that C. cunninghamiana should be “faithfully conserved, for besides its value as a stock food in time of drought it is one of the best trees we have for

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protecting the friable banks of rivers.”205 Encouraging “intelligent conservation of existing and future trees,” the prescient cultural botanist recognized the “equilibrium” of river bank ecosystems and called into question the widespread removal of river sheoaks “to obtain more ready access to the river frontage, and to enlarge the area of cultivated land.”206 For Australian plant conservationists today, Maiden’s message from the early twentieth century still reverberates widely. CONCLUSION: HYDROPHYTES AND SWAMPLAND AFFECTS This chapter began by foregrounding the significance of plant life to swamplands and other water bodies in Australia. The writings of nineteenthcentury explorer-naturalists, such as Leichhardt and Maiden, offer valuable biocultural narratives that situate hydrophytes within wetland assemblages comprising humans, flora, fauna, water, soil, and elements. The affective approach developed in the chapter underscored human–plant intercorporeal affinities in swamplands alongside the multitudinous ways in which flora has shaped Indigenous and Anglo-European wetland biocultures. Aquatic plants, indeed, present potent emblems of hope, responsivity, and adaptability in the disconcerting era of biodiversity loss known as the Anthropocene. Embracing the wisdom of hydrophytes is one means to think-with the swampy botanical world. Although limited to five hydrophytes (bearded samphire, nardoo, waterlily, broad-leaved paperbark, and river sheoak), the discussion ultimately points to further possibilities for investigating the biocultural histories of aquatic plants toward wider popular and scholarly appreciation of the diverse capacities of vegetal life. NOTES 1. Ralph Tiner, “The Concept of a Hydrophyte for Wetland Identification,” Bioscience 41, no. 4 (1991): 236–46 [236]. 2. Ibid., 241; Wetland Indicators: A Guide to Wetland Identification, Delineation, Classification, and Mapping, 2nd edn. Baton Rouge: Chapman and Hall/CRC, 2016), 157. 3. John C. Ryan, “Writing the Lives of Plants: Phytography and the Botanical Imagination,” a/b Auto/Biography Studies (2019), in press. 4. Anna Lewington, Birch (London: Reaktion Books, 2018). 5. Fred Gray, Palm (London: Reaktion Books, 2018). 6. Kyle Bladow and Jennifer Ladino, “Toward an Affective Ecocriticism: Placing Feeling in the Anthropocene,” in Affective Ecocriticism: Emotion, Embodiment,

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Environment, ed. Kyle Bladow and Jennifer Ladino (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2018), 4. 7. Joakim Schouw, Grundtrack Til En Almindlig Plantegeografie (Berlin: Reimer, 1822). 8. Joakim Schouw, qtd. in Frederic Clements, Plant Succession and Indicators: A Definitive Edition of Plant Succession and Plant Indicators (New York: H.W. Wilson Company, 1928), 143. 9. Eugen Warming, Oecology of Plants: An Introduction to the Study of PlantCommunities (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909), 69, 97. 10. Ibid., 131. 11. Ibid., 154. 12. Clements, Plant Succession, 50, 60, 156. 13. Ibid., 283. 14. Christen Raunkiær, Planterigets Livsformerog Deres Betydning for Geografien (Copenhagen: I Kommission Hos, 1907); The Life Forms of Plants and Statistical Plant Geography Being the Collected Papers of C. Raunkiaer (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934). 15. Raunkiær, The Life Forms of Plants, 16–19. 16. Ibid., 64. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid., 96. 19. Ibid., 97, emphasis added. 20. Londa Schiebinger, Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 194–225. 21. John Weaver and Frederic Clements, Plant Ecology, 2nd edn. (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1938), 424. 22. Ibid., 425. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid., 425–36. 25. National Herbarium of NSW, “Vallisneriaaustralis S.W.L. Jacobs & Les,” Plant Net, 2018, accessed May 20, 2019, http:​//pla​ntnet​.rbgs​yd.ns​w.gov​.au/c​gi-bi​n/ NSW​fl.pl​?page​=nswf​l &lvl​=sp&n​ame=V​allis​neria​~aust​ralis​. 26. Warren Sheather and Gloria Sheather, “Crassulahelmsii, Swamp Stonecrop,” Australian Plants Society NSW, 2017, accessed May 20, 2019, https​://au​stpla​nts.c​ om.au​/Cras​sula-​helms​ii-Sw​amp-S​tonec​rop. 27. National Herbarium of NSW, “Myriophyllum simulans Orchard,” Plant Net, 2018, accessed May 20, 2019, http:​//pla​ntnet​.rbgs​yd.ns​w.gov​.au/c​gi-bi​n/NSW​fl.pl​ ?page​=nswf​l &lvl​=sp&n​ame=M​yriop​hyllu​m~sim​ulans​. 28. Tiner, “The Concept of a Hydrophyte,” 246. 29. Ibid., 238. 30. Ibid., 240. 31. Bladow and Ladino, “Toward an Affective Ecocriticism,” 6. 32. Neil Saintilan, “Distribution of Australian Saltmarsh Plants,” in Australian Saltmarsh Ecology, ed. Neil Saintilan (Collingwood, Vic: CSIRO Publications, 2009), 24.

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33. Anneke A. Veenstra-Quah, Josephine Milne, and Peter Kolesik, “Taxonomy and Biology of Two New Species of Gall Midge (Diptera: Cecidomyiidae) Infesting Sarcocornia quinqueflora (Chenopodiaceae) in Australian Salt Marshes,” Australian Journal of Entomology 46, no. 3 (2007): 198–206 [198], doi: 10.1111/j.1440-6055.2007.00603.x. 34. Geoff Sainty, John Hosking, Geoff Carr, and Paul Adam, “Low Saltmarsh,” in Estuary Plants and What’s Happening to Them in South-East Australia, ed. Geoff Sainty, John Hosking, Geoff Carr, and Paul Adam (Potts Point, NSW: Sainty and Associates, 2012), 169. 35. Ibid. 36. Julie Mondon, Kate Morrison, and Robert Wallis, “Impact of Saltmarsh Disturbance on Seed Quality of Sarcocornia (Sarcocornia quinqueflora), a Food Plant of an Endangered Australian Parrot,” Ecological Management & Restoration 10, no. 1 (2009): 58–60 [58], doi: 10.1111/j.1442-8903.2009.00439.x. 37. Ibid., 60. 38. Joseph Banks, Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks, ed. Joseph Hooker (London: Macmillan and Co., 1896), 270. 39. Franz Baron Ungern-Sternberg, Versucheiner Systematik der Salicornieen (Dorpat: E.J. Karow, 1866). 40. A.J. Scott, “Reinstatement and Revision of Salicorniaceae J. Agardh (Caryophyllales),” Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society 75, no. 4 (1977): 357–74 [368–69]. 41. Robert Sullivan, A Dictionary of Derivations, or an Introduction to Etymology: On a New Plan, 3rd edn. (London: Samuel Holdsworth, Amen-Corner, 1838), 167–68. 42. Slow Food in Australia, “Native Blackseed Samphire,” Slow Food in Australia, n.d., accessed May 20, 2019, http:​//slo​wfood​austr​alia.​com.a​u/ark​oftas​te/na​ tive-​black​seed-​samph​ire/.​ 43. Philip Clarke, Aboriginal Plant Collectors: Botanists and Australian Aboriginal People in the Nineteenth Century (Dural Delivery Centre, NSW: Rosenberg Publishing, 2008), 47. 44. George Fletcher Moore, A Descriptive Vocabulary of the Language in Common Use Among the Aborigines of Western Australia (London: WM. S Orr & Co., 1842), 73. 45. Alexander Collie and William Preston, “Observations on the Coast, Country, &c From Cockburn Sound to Geographe Bay, Between the 17th and 30th of November, 1829,” in Journals of Several Expeditions Made in Western Australia During the Years 1829, 1830, 1831, and 1832, ed. Joseph Cross (London: J. Cross, 1833), 37. 46. Robert Dale, “Journal of Another Expedition to the Eastward of the Darling Range, Under the Direction of Ensign Dale; Commenced on the 25th of October, and Concluded on the 7th of November, 1830,” in Journals of Several Expeditions Made in Western Australia During the Years 1829, 1830, 1831, and 1832, ed. Joseph Cross (London: J. Cross, 1833), 65. 47. J.S. Roe, “Report of an Expedition Under the Surveyor-General, Mr. J.S. Roe, to the South-Eastward of Perth, in Western Australia, Between the Months of

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September, 1848, and February, 1849, to the Hon. the Colonial Secretary,” The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London 22 (1852): 1–57 [5]. 48. Ibid., 35. 49. Ibid., 6, 11. 50. Deborah Bird Rose, Nourishing Terrains: Australian Aboriginal Views of Landscape and Wilderness (Canberra: Australian Heritage Commission, 1996). 51. William Howitt, The History of Discovery in Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand, from the Earliest Date to the Present Day (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green, 1865), 254–83. 52. Ibid., 268. 53. John McKinlay, “Diary of Mr. J. McKinlay, Leader of the Burke Relief Expedition, Fitted Out By the Government of South Australia,” The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London 33 (1863): 13–61 [14]. 54. Ibid., 16. 55. Yasmin Noone, “You Don’t Have to Be a Beachcomber to Get Your Hands on Tasty Sea Herbs,” SBS Online, September 26, 2018, accessed May 21, 2019, https​ ://ww​w.sbs​.com.​au/fo​od/ar​ticle​/2018​/09/2​4/you​-dont​-have​-be-b​eachc​omber​-get-​ your-​hands​-tast​y-sea​-herb​s. 56. Jeremy Story Carter, “Samphire and Salty Sea Succulents Sealing Big Boutique Markets and Boosting Cattle Health for Gippsland Farmer,” ABC News, September 4, 2014, accessed May 21, 2019, https​://ww​w.abc​.net.​au/ne​ws/ru​ral/2​014-0​ 8-20/​farme​r-fin​ds-fa​vour-​with-​salty​-sea-​speci​es/56​83296​. 57. Matt Upson, “Recipes,” Vogue Australia, February/March (2010): 90–97 [92]. 58. Ibid., 96. 59. Cathy Pryor, “Food on Friday: Growing, Harvesting, and Eating Samphire,” ABC News, November 4, 2011, accessed May 21, 2019, http:​//www​.abc.​net.a​u/sit​ e-arc​hive/​rural​/tele​graph​/cont​ent/2​011/s​33562​55.ht​m. 60. John George Wood, The Natural History of Man; Being an Account of the Manners and Customs of the Uncivilized Races of Man, vol. 2 (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1870), 17. 61. John Thieret, “Nardoo,” American Fern Journal 46, no. 3 (1956): 108–09 [108]. 62. D.L. Jones, “Marsileaceae,” in Flora of Australia: Ferns, Gymnosperms, and Allied Groups, ed. Patrick McCarthy (Collingwood, Vic: CSIRO Publishing, 1998), 166. 63. Nick Romanowski, Aquatic and Wetland Plants: A Field Guide for NonTropical Australia (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 1998), 73; Geoff Sainty and Surrey Jacobs, Waterplants in Australia: A Field Guide, 4th ed. (Potts Point, NSW: Sainty and Associates, 2003), 30; K.M. Stephens and Ralph Dowling, Wetland Plants of Queensland: A Field Guide (Collingwood, Vic: CSIRO Publications, 2002), 47. 64. Sainty and Jacobs, Waterplants in Australia, 30. 65. Kerrylee Rogers, “Vegetation,” in Floodplain Wetland Biota in the MurrayDarling Basin: Water and Habitat Requirements, ed. Kerrylee Rogers and Timothy Ralph (Collingwood, Vic: CSIRO Publications, 2011), 56; Romanowski, Aquatic and Wetland Plants, 73.

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66. David M. Johnson, “New Records for Longevity of Marsilea Sporocarps,” American Fern Journal 75, no. 1 (1985): 30–31 [30], doi: 10.2307/1546579. 67. Jones, “Marsileaceae,” 166–67. 68. Robert Soeder, “Fern Constituents: Including Occurrence, Chemotaxonomy and Physiological Activity,” The Botanical Review 51, no. 4 (1985): 442–536 [449]. 69. Nathalie Nagalingum, Harald Schneider, and Kathleen Pryer, “Molecular Phylogenetic Relationships and Morphological Evolution in the Heterosporous Fern Genus Marsilea,” Systematic Botany 32, no. 1 (2007): 16–25 [16]. 70. Jones, “Marsileaceae,” 166–72. 71. John Stoye, Marsigli’s Europe, 1680–1730: The Life and Times of Luigi Ferdinando (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994). 72. Clarke, Aboriginal Plant Collectors, 128–33. 73. Sainty and Jacobs, Waterplants in Australia, 30. 74. R.M.W. Dixon, Bruce Moore, W.S. Ramson, and Mandy Thomas, Australian Aboriginal Words in English: Their Origin and Meaning, 2nd edn. (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2006), 17, 116. 75. John Earl and Barry McCleary, “Mystery of the Poisoned Expedition,” Nature 368, no. 6473 (1994): 683–84 [683]. 76. William John Wills, “Journal of a Trip from Cooper’s Creek Towards Adelaide,” Burke and Wills Web: Digital Research Archive, 2019, unpaginated, accessed May 21, 2019, http:​//www​.burk​eandw​ills.​net.a​u/Jou​rnals​/Will​s_Jou​rnals​/Will​s_Jou​ rnal_​June_​1861.​htm. 77. Ibid., unpaginated. 78. Ibid., unpaginated, emphasis added. 79. Earl and McCleary, “Mystery of the Poisoned Expedition,” 684. 80. Clarke, Aboriginal Plant Collectors, 128–34. 81. State Library Victoria, “Did Burke and Wills Die Because They Ate Nardoo?” Dig: The Burke & Wills Research Gateway, 2019, para. 7, accessed May 21, 2019, http:​//bur​keand​wills​.slv.​vic.g​ov.au​/ask-​an-ex​pert/​did-b​urke-​and-w​ills-​die-b​ ecaus​e-the​y-ate​-nard​oo. 82. Benny Kerwin qtd. in ibid., para. 3. 83. Clarke, Aboriginal Plant Collectors, 131. 84. Ibid. 85. Robert Brough Smyth, The Aborigines of Victoria: With Notes Relating to the Habits of the Natives of Other Parts of Australia and Tasmania, vol. 1 (Melbourne: John Ferres, Government Printer, 1878), 209. 86. Ibid., 214. 87. Thos Bancroft, “On the Habit and Use of Nardoo (Marsilea Drummondii A.Br.), Together with Some Observations on the Influence of Water-Plants in Retarding Evaporation,” in The Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales (Sydney: F. Cunninghame & Co., 1894), 216. 88. William Jackson Hooker, Garden Ferns; Or, Coloured Figures and Descriptions, with the Needful Analyses of the Fructification and Venation, of a Selection of Exotic Ferns Adapted for Cultivation in the Garden, Hothouse, and Conservatory (London: Lovell, Reeve & Co., 1862), plate 63. 89. Ibid.

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90. Wood, The Natural History of Man, 17. 91. Joseph Maiden, The Useful Native Plants of Australia (Including Tasmania) (Sydney: Turner and Henderson, 1889), 42. 92. Thieret, “Nardoo,” 108. 93. Bancroft, “On the Habit”; Maiden, The Useful Native Plants; Smyth, The Aborigines of Victoria; Wills, “Journal of a Trip.” 94. Bladow and Ladino, “Toward an Affective,” 16. 95. Ibid., 3. 96. Henry Conard, The Waterlilies: A Monograph of the Genus Nymphaea (Washington DC: Carnegie Institution, 1905), 27. 97. Sainty and Jacobs, Waterplants in Australia, 36. 98. Romanowski, Aquatic and Wetland Plants, 81–82. 99. Stephens and Dowling, Wetland Plants, 54. 100. Ibid., 55. 101. Sainty and Jacobs, Waterplants in Australia, 40. 102. Atlas of Living Australia, “Nymphaea hastifolia Domin,” Atlas of Living Australia, accessed May 21, 2019, https​://bi​e.ala​.org.​au/sp​ecies​/http​://id​.biod​ivers​ity. o​rg.au​/node​/apni​/2897​049. 103. Ian Sample, “Spectacular New Species of Waterlily Discovered in Australia,” The Guardian, June 6, 2015, accessed May 21, 2019, www.t​hegua​rdian​.com/​scien​ ce/20​15/ju​n/05/​spect​acula​r-new​-spec​ies-o​f-wat​erlil​y-dis​cover​ed-in​-aust​ralia​. 104. F.A. Sharr, Western Australian Plant Names and Their Meanings: A Glossary, Enlarged edn. (Crawley WA: University of Western Australia, 1996), 51. 105. Allen Coombes, Dictionary of Plant Names (Portland, OR: Timber Press, 1994), 126. 106. Asa Gray, Gray’s Manual of Botany: A Handbook of the Flowering Plants and Ferns of the Central and Northeastern United States and Adjacent Canada, 8th edn. (Portland, OR: Dioscorides Press, 1993), 640. 107. Michael Marder, The Philosopher’s Plant: An Intellectual Herbarium (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), 216. 108. Philip Clarke, Aboriginal People and Their Plants (Dural Delivery Center, NSW: Rosenberg Publishing, 2007), 13. 109. Clarke, Aboriginal Plant Collectors, 46–47. 110. Anna Salleh, “Way of the Water Lilies: Where Science Meets the Billabong,” ABC News, July 7, 2016, accessed May 21, 2019, https​://ww​w.abc​.net.​au/ne​ws/sc​ience​ /2016​-07-0​7/way​-of-t​he-wa​ter-l​ilies​-wher​e-sci​ence-​meets​-the-​billa​bong/​75712​06. 111. Ibid., para. 9. 112. Sainty and Jacobs, Waterplants in Australia, 40. 113. Clarke, Aboriginal People, 77. 114. Ibid., 81. 115. Ludwig Leichhardt, Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia, from Moreton Bay to Port Essington, a Distance of Upwards of 3000 Miles, During the Years 1844–1845 (London: T&W Boone, 1847), 246–47. 116. Ibid., 257. 117. Ibid., 297–98.

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118. Philip Clarke, Discovering Aboriginal Plant Use: The Journeys of an Australian Anthropologist (Dural Delivery Centre, NSW: Rosenberg Publishing, 2014), 148. 119. Clarke, Aboriginal People, 101. 120. Ibid., 55. 121. Clarke, Discovering, 147. 122. Ibid. 123. Conard, The Waterlilies. 124. John C. Ryan, Green Sense: The Aesthetics of Plants, Place, and Language (Oxford: True Heart Press, 2012). 125. Leichhardt, Journal, 80. 126. Ibid., 105, emphasis added. 127. Ibid., 111. 128. William Carron, “Narrative of Mr. Wm. Carron,” in Narrative of the Voyage of H.M.S. Rattlesnake Commanded by the Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S., &c During the Years 1846–1850, ed. John Macgillivray (London: T & W Boone, 1852), 179. 129. Ibid., 219. 130. Romanowski, Aquatic and Wetland Plants, 79; Sainty and Jacobs, Waterplants in Australia, 272. 131. Lyn Craven, “Behind the Names: The Botany of Tea Tree, Cajuput, and Niaouli,” in Tea Tree: The Genus Melaleuca, ed. Ian Southwell and Robert Lowe (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2005), 12. 132. Atlas of Living Australia, “Melaleuca quinquenervia (Cav) S.T.Blake,” Atlas of Living Australia, accessed May 21, 2019, https​://bi​e.ala​.org.​au/sp​ecies​/http​://id​ .biod​ivers​ity.o​rg.au​/node​/apni​/2887​514; Romanowski, Aquatic and Wetland Plants, 79; Tibby et al., “Carbon Isotope Discrimination in Leaves of the Broad-Leaved Paperbark Tree, Melaleuca quinquenervia, as a Tool for Quantifying Past Tropical and Subtropical Rainfall,” Global Change Biology 22, no. 10 (2016): 3474–86 [3476], doi: 10.1111/gcb.13277. 133. Sainty and Jacobs, Waterplants in Australia, 272; Tibby et al., “Carbon Isotope,” 3476. 134. Tibby et al., “Carbon Isotope,” 3476. 135. Romanowski, Aquatic and Wetland Plants, 79. 136. R.D. Barker and W.J.M. Vestjens, The Food of Australian Birds: NonPasserines, vol. 1 (Canberra: CSIRO Publications, 1989), 345; B.J. Lepschi, “Food of Some Birds in Southern Australia: Additions to Barker &Vestjens, Part 2,” Emu: Austral Ornithology 97, no. 1 (1997): 84–87 [86], doi: 10.1071/MU97009. 137. Peggy Eby and Bradley Law, Ranking the Feeding Habitats of Grey-Headed Flying Foxes For Conservation Management (Sydney: Office of Heritage and Environment, 2008). 138. Ian Southwell, “Introduction,” in Tea Tree: The Genus Melaleuca, ed. Ian Southwell and Robert Lowe (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2005), 1. 139. Amanda Padovan, Andras Keszei, Tobias Köllner, Jörg Degenhardt, and William Foley, “The Molecular Basis of Host Plant Selection in Melaleuca

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quinquenervia by a Successful Biological Control Agent,” Phytochemistry 71, no. 11 (2010): 1237–44 [1237], doi: 10.1016/j.phytochem.2010.05.013. 140. Institute of Pacific Islands Forestry, “Melaleuca quinquenervia (Cav.) S.T. Blake, Myrtaceae,” Pacific Island Ecosystems at Risk (PIER), 2013, accessed May 21, 2019, http:​//www​.hear​.org/​pier/​speci​es/me​laleu​ca_qu​inque​nervi​a.htm​; Joseph Maiden, The Forest Flora of New South Wales, vol. 1, parts 1–10 (Sydney: William Applegate Gullick, Government Printer, 1904), 92. 141. Stanley Blake, “A Revision of Melaleuca leucadendron and Its Allies (Myrtaceae),” Contributions from the Queensland Herbarium 1, May 27 (1968): 1–114 [32]. 142. Southwell, “Introduction,” 1. 143. Ibid. 144. Coombes, Dictionary, 117. 145. Maiden, The Forest Flora, vol. 1, 91. 146. D.C. Gunawardena, Genera Et Species Plantarum Zeylaniae: An Etymological and Historical Account of the Flowering Plants of Ceylon (Colombo: Lake House Investments, 1968), 98. 147. Antonio José Cavanilles, Icones Et Descriptiones Plantarum (Madrid: Ex Regia Typographia, 1797), 19. 148. Blake, “A Revision,” 73. 149. Ibid., 32. 150. Robert Brown, “General Remarks, Geographical and Systematical, on the Botany of Terra Australis,” in A Voyage to Terra Australis, Undertaken for the Purpose of Completing the Discovery of that Vast Country and Prosecuted in the Years 1801, 1802, and 1803, ed. Matthew Flinders (London: G. and W. Nicol, 1814), 547. 151. Ibid., 547, genus and species names without italics in original. 152. George Bentham, Flora Australiensis: A Description of the Plants of the Australian Territory, vol. 3 (London: Lovell Reeve & Co., 1866), 124. 153. Leichhardt, Journal, 144, emphasis added. 154. Ibid., 295. 155. Joseph Maiden, The Dorrigo Forest Reserve: Part II: A List of the Plants Collected, with Descriptive Notes of Those of Economic or Botanical Interest (Sydney: Department of Agriculture, 1894), 610. 156. Maiden, The Forest Flora, vol. 1, 90, emphasis added. 157. Ibid., 90. 158. Ibid., 92. 159. Blake, “A Revision,” 11. 160. Maiden, The Forest Flora, vol. 1, 92. 161. Maiden, The Useful Native Plants, 277. 162. Maiden, The Forest Flora, vol. 1, 92. 163. Ibid. 164. Clarke, Aboriginal People, 106, 116. 165. Raymond Specht, “Aboriginal Plant Names in North-Eastern Arnhem Land: Groote Eylandt–Enindilyakwa Language; Yirrkala–Rirratjingu Language,” Australian Aboriginal Studies 1 (2006): 63–67 [66]. 166. Clarke, Aboriginal People, 104.

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167. Graham Lloyd Jones, “Traditional, Current, and Potential Uses of Australian Medicinal Plants.” Journal of the Australian Traditional-Medicine Society 12, no. 4 (2006): 201–05 [203]. 168. Clarke, Aboriginal People, 79. 169. See, for example, Bruce Pascoe, Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of Agriculture (Broome, WA: Magabala Books, 2014). 170. D.J. Boland et al., Forest Trees of Australia, 4th edn. (East Melbourne: CSIRO Publications, 1992), 98. 171. A.R. Woolfrey and P.G. Ladd, “Habitat Preference and Reproductive Traits of a Major Australian Riparian Trees Species (Casuarina cunninghamiana),” Australian Journal of Botany 49, no. 6 (2001): 705–15 [706], doi: 10.1071/BT01009. 172. Boland et al., Forest Trees, 96. 173. Joseph Maiden, The Forest Flora of New South Wales, vol. 2 (Sydney: William Applegate Gullick, Government Printer, 1907), 119. 174. Luke Potgieter, David Richardson, and John Wilson, “Casuarina: Biogeography and Ecology of an Important Tree Genus in a Changing World,” Biological Invasions 16, no. 3 (2014): 609–33, doi: 10.1007/s10530-013-0613-x. 175. Woolfrey and Ladd, “Habitat Preference,” 712. 176. G.F. Moran, J.C. Bell, and J.W. Turnbull, “A Cline in Genetic Diversity in River She-Oak Casuarina cunninghamiana,” Australian Journal of Botany 37, no. 2 (1989): 169–80 [171], doi: 10.1071/BT9890169. 177. Silky Oak, “The Timbers of Queensland: Creek Oak (Casuarina cunninghamiana),” The Queenslander, February 13 (1926): 20. 178. Maiden, The Forest Flora, vol. 2, 119. 179. Boland et al., Forest Trees, 96. 180. Commonwealth of Australia, “Species Bank: Casuarina cunninghamiana,” 2017, accessed January 11, 2019, http:​//www​.envi​ronme​nt.go​v.au/​cgi-b​in/sp​ecies​ -bank​/sban​k-tre​atmen​t.pl?​id=49​48. 181. Central Queensland Herald, “Rockhampton’s Trees: Casuarina cunninghamiana,” Central Queensland Herald, April 9 (1931): 7; Cunningham et al., Plants of Western New South Wales (Sydney: Soil Conservation Service of NSW, 1981), 208. 182. Maiden, The Forest Flora, vol. 2, 95. 183. Ibid., 119. 184. Moran, Bell, and Turnbull, “A Cline,” 169. 185. Woolfrey and Ladd, “Habitat Preference,” 706. 186. J.C. Doran and N. Hall, “Notes on Fifteen Australian Casuarina Species,” in Casuarina Ecology, Management and Utilization, ed. S.J. Midgley, J.W. Turnbull, and R.D. Johnston (Canberra: Forest Research CSIRO, 1981), 26. 187. Cunningham et al., Plants of Western New South Wales, 208. 188. Doran and Hall, “Notes,” 26. 189. Boland et al., Forest Trees, 96. 190. Potgieter, Richardson, and Wilson, “Casuarina,” 609. 191. Ibid., 618. 192. Ibid., 611. 193. Silky Oak, “The Timbers of Queensland,” 20.

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194. Joseph Maiden, Mount Seaview and the Way Thither (Sydney: Department of Agriculture, 1898), 6. 195. Ibid., 17. 196. Dubbo Liberal, “Know Your Trees: River She Oak (Casuarina cunninghamiana),” Dubbo Liberal, June 18 (1954): 25–26 [25]. 197. Central Queensland Herald, “Rockhampton’s Trees,” 7. 198. Doran and Hall, “Notes,” 26. 199. Maiden, The Forest Flora, vol. 2, 119. 200. Ibid. 201. Potgieter, Richardson, and Wilson, “Casuarina,” 612. 202. Ibid. 203. Woolfrey and Ladd, “Habitat Preference,” 705. 204. Ibid., 714. 205. Maiden, The Forest Flora, vol. 2, 120. 206. Ibid.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Atlas of Living Australia. “Melaleuca quinquenervia (Cav) S.T.Blake.” Atlas of Living Australia. Accessed May 21, 2019. https​://bi​e.ala​.org.​au/sp​ecies​/http​://id​.biod​ ivers​ity.o​rg.au​/node​/apni​/2887​514. ———. “Nymphaea hastifolia Domin.” Atlas of Living Australia. Accessed May 21, 2019. https​://bi​e.ala​.org.​au/sp​ecies​/http​://id​.biod​ivers​ity.o​rg.au​/node​/apni​/2897​049. Bancroft, Thos. “On the Habit and Use of Nardoo (Marsilea Drummondii A.Br.), Together with Some Observations on the Influence of Water-Plants in Retarding Evaporation.” In The Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales, 215–17. Sydney: F. Cunninghame & Co., 1894. Banks, Joseph. Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks, edited by Joseph Hooker. London: Macmillan and Co., 1896. Barker, R.D., and W.J.M. Vestjens. The Food of Australian Birds: Non-Passerines, vol. 1. Canberra: CSIRO Publications, 1989. Bentham, George. Flora Australiensis: A Description of the Plants of the Australian Territory, vol. 3. London: Lovell Reeve & Co., 1866. Bladow, Kyle, and Jennifer Ladino. “Toward an Affective Ecocriticism: Placing Feeling in the Anthropocene.” In Affective Ecocriticism: Emotion, Embodiment, Environment, edited by Kyle Bladow and Jennifer Ladino, 1–22. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2018. Blake, Stanley. “A Revision of Melaleuca leucadendron and Its Allies (Myrtaceae).” Contributions from the Queensland Herbarium 1 (1968, May 27): 1–114. Boland, D.J., M.I.H. Brooker, G.M. Chippendale, N. Hall, B.P.M. Hyland, R.D. Johnston, D.A. Kleinig, M.W. McDonald, and J.D. Turner. Forest Trees of Australia, 4th edn. East Melbourne: CSIRO Publications, 1992. Original edition, 1957. Brown, Robert. “General Remarks, Geographical and Systematical, on the Botany of Terra Australis.” In A Voyage to Terra Australis, Undertaken for the Purpose of

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Completing the Discovery of That Vast Country and Prosecuted in the Years 1801, 1802, and 1803, edited by Matthew Flinders, 533–94. London: G. and W. Nicol, 1814. Carron, William. “Narrative of Mr. Wm. Carron.” In Narrative of the Voyage of H.M.S. Rattlesnake Commanded by the Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S., &c During the Years 1846–1850, edited by John Macgillivray, 119–227. London: T & W Boone, 1852. Carter, Jeremy Story. “Samphire and Salty Sea Succulents Sealing Big Boutique Markets and Boosting Cattle Health for Gippsland Farmer.” ABC News, September 4, 2014. Accessed May 21, 2019. www.a​bc.ne​t.au/​news/​rural​/2014​-08-2​0/far​mer-f​ inds-​favou​r-wit​h-sal​ty-se​a-spe​cies/​56832​96. Cavanilles, Antonio José. Icones Et Descriptiones Plantarum. Madrid: Ex Regia Typographia, 1797. Central Queensland Herald. “Rockhampton’s Trees: Casuarina cunninghamiana.” Central Queensland Herald, April 9 (1931): 7. Clarke, Philip. Aboriginal People and Their Plants. Dural Delivery Center, NSW: Rosenberg Publishing, 2007. ———. Aboriginal Plant Collectors: Botanists and Australian Aboriginal People in the Nineteenth Century. Dural Delivery Centre, NSW: Rosenberg Publishing, 2008. ———. Discovering Aboriginal Plant Use: The Journeys of an Australian Anthropologist. Dural Delivery Centre, NSW: Rosenberg Publishing, 2014. Clements, Frederic. Plant Succession and Indicators: A Definitive Edition of Plant Succession and Plant Indicators. New York: H.W. Wilson Company, 1928. Collie, Alexander, and William Preston. “Observations on the Coast, Country, &c from Cockburn Sound to Geographe Bay, Between the 17th and 30th of November, 1829.” In Journals of Several Expeditions Made in Western Australia During the Years 1829, 1830, 1831, and 1832, edited by Joseph Cross, 35–50. London: J. Cross, 1833. Commonwealth of Australia. “Species Bank: Casuarina cunninghamiana.” 2017. Accessed January 11, 2019. http:​//www​.envi​ronme​nt.go​v.au/​cgi-b​in/sp​ecies​-bank​/ sban​k-tre​atmen​t.pl?​id=49​48. Conard, Henry. The Waterlilies: A Monograph of the Genus Nymphaea. Washington DC: Carnegie Institution, 1905. Coombes, Allen. Dictionary of Plant Names. Portland, OR: Timber Press, 1994. Craven, Lyn. “Behind the Names: The Botany of Tea Tree, Cajuput, and Niaouli.” In Tea Tree: The Genus Melaleuca, edited by Ian Southwell and Robert Lowe, 11–29. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2005. Cunningham, G.M., W.E. Mulham, P.L. Milthorpe, and J.H. Leigh. Plants of Western New South Wales. Sydney: Soil Conservation Service of NSW, 1981. Dale, Robert. “Journal of Another Expedition to the Eastward of the Darling Range, Under the Direction of Ensign Dale; Commenced on the 25th of October, and Concluded on the 7th of November, 1830.” In Journals of Several Expeditions Made in Western Australia During the Years 1829, 1830, 1831, and 1832, edited by Joseph Cross, 62–72. London: J. Cross, 1833.

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Dixon, R.M.W., Bruce Moore, W.S. Ramson, and Mandy Thomas. Australian Aboriginal Words in English: Their Origin and Meaning, 2nd edn. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2006. Doran, J.C., and N. Hall.“Notes on Fifteen Australian Casuarina Species.” In Casuarina Ecology, Management and Utilization, edited by S.J. Midgley, J.W. Turnbull, and R.D. Johnston, 19–52. Canberra: Forest Research CSIRO, 1981. Dubbo Liberal. “Know Your Trees: River She Oak (Casuarina cunninghamiana).” Dubbo Liberal, June 18 (1954): 25–26. Earl, John, and Barry McCleary. “Mystery of the Poisoned Expedition.” Nature 368, no. 6473 (1994): 683–84. Eby, Peggy, and Bradley Law. Ranking the Feeding Habitats of Grey-Headed Flying Foxes for Conservation Management. Sydney: Office of Heritage and Environment, 2008. Gray, Asa. Gray’s Manual of Botany: A Handbook of the Flowering Plants and Ferns of the Central and Northeastern United States and Adjacent Canada, 8th edn. Portland, OR: Dioscorides Press, 1993. Original edition 1848. Gray, Fred. Palm. London: Reaktion Books, 2018. Gunawardena, D.C. Genera Et Species Plantarum Zeylaniae: An Etymological and Historical Account of the Flowering Plants of Ceylon. Colombo: Lake House Investments, 1968. Hooker, William Jackson. Garden Ferns; Or, Coloured Figures and Descriptions, with the Needful Analyses of the Fructification and Venation, of a Selection of Exotic Ferns Adapted for Cultivation in the Garden, Hothouse, and Conservatory. London: Lovell, Reeve & Co., 1862. Howitt, William. The History of Discovery in Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand, from the Earliest Date to the Present Day. London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green, 1865. Institute of Pacific Islands Forestry. “Melaleuca quinquenervia (Cav.) S.T.Blake, Myrtaceae.” Pacific Island Ecosystems at Risk (PIER). 2013. Accessed May 21, 2019. http:​//www​.hear​.org/​pier/​speci​es/me​laleu​ca_qu​inque​nervi​a.htm​. Johnson, David M. “New Records for Longevity of Marsilea Sporocarps.” American Fern Journal 75, no. 1 (1985): 30–31. doi: 10.2307/1546579. Jones, D.L. “Marsileaceae.” In Flora of Australia: Ferns, Gymnosperms, and Allied Groups, edited by Patrick McCarthy, 166–72. Collingwood, Vic: CSIRO Publishing, 1998. Jones, Graham Lloyd. “Traditional, Current, and Potential Uses of Australian Medicinal Plants.” Journal of the Australian Traditional-Medicine Society 12, no. 4 (2006): 201–05. Leichhardt, Ludwig. Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia, from Moreton Bay to Port Essington, a Distance of Upwards of 3000 Miles, During the Years 1844–1845. London: T&W Boone, 1847. Lepschi, B.J. “Food of Some Birds in Southern Australia: Additions to Barker & Vestjens, Part 2.” Emu: Austral Ornithology 97, no. 1 (1997): 84–87. doi: 10.1071/MU97009. Lewington, Anna. Birch. London: Reaktion Books, 2018. Maiden, Joseph. The Useful Native Plants of Australia (Including Tasmania). Sydney: Turner and Henderson, 1889.

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———. The Dorrigo Forest Reserve: Part II: A List of the Plants Collected, with Descriptive Notes of Those of Economic or Botanical Interest. Sydney: Department of Agriculture, 1894. ———. Mount Seaview and the Way Thither. Sydney: Department of Agriculture, 1898. ———. The Forest Flora of New South Wales, vol. 1, parts 1–10. Sydney: William Applegate Gullick, Government Printer, 1904. ———. The Forest Flora of New South Wales, vol. 2. Sydney: William Applegate Gullick, Government Printer, 1907. Marder, Michael. The Philosopher’s Plant: An Intellectual Herbarium. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014. McKinlay, John. “Diary of Mr. J. McKinlay, Leader of the Burke Relief Expedition, Fitted Out by the Government of South Australia.” The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London 33 (1863): 13–61. Mondon, Julie, Kate Morrison, and Robert Wallis. “Impact of Saltmarsh Disturbance on Seed Quality of Sarcocornia (Sarcocornia quinqueflora), a Food Plant of an Endangered Australian Parrot.” Ecological Management & Restoration 10, no. 1 (2009): 58–60. doi: 10.1111/j.1442-8903.2009.00439.x. Moore, George Fletcher. A Descriptive Vocabulary of the Language in Common Use Among the Aborigines of Western Australia. London: WM. S Orr & Co., 1842. Moran, G.F., J.C. Bell, and J.W. Turnbull. “A Cline in Genetic Diversity in River She-Oak Casuarina cunninghamiana.” Australian Journal of Botany 37, no. 2 (1989): 169–80. doi: 10.1071/BT9890169. Nagalingum, Nathalie, Harald Schneider, and Kathleen Pryer. “Molecular Phylogenetic Relationships and Morphological Evolution in the Heterosporous Fern Genus Marsilea.” Systematic Botany 32, no. 1 (2007): 16–25. National Herbarium of NSW. “Myriophyllum simulans Orchard.” Plant Net. 2018a. Accessed May 20, 2019. http:​//pla​ntnet​.rbgs​yd.ns​w.gov​.au/c​gi-bi​n/NSW​fl.pl​?page​ =nswf​l &lvl​=sp&n​ame=M​yriop​hyllu​m~sim​ulans​. ———. “Vallisneria Australis S.W.L. Jacobs & Les.” Plant Net. 2018b. Accessed May 20, 2019. http:​//pla​ntnet​.rbgs​yd.ns​w.gov​.au/c​gi-bi​n/NSW​fl.pl​?page​=nswf​ l&lvl​=sp&n​ame=V​allis​neria​~aust​ralis​. Noone, Yasmin. “You Don’t Have to be a Beachcomber to Get Your Hands on Tasty Sea Herbs.” SBS Online September 26, 2018. Accessed May 21, 2019. https​://ww​ w.sbs​.com.​au/fo​od/ar​ticle​/2018​/09/2​4/you​-dont​-have​-be-b​eachc​omber​-get-​your-​ hands​-tast​y-sea​-herb​s. Padovan, Amanda, Andras Keszei, Tobias Köllner, Jörg Degenhardt, and William Foley. “The Molecular Basis of Host Plant Selection in Melaleuca quinquenervia by a Successful Biological Control Agent.” Phytochemistry 71, no. 11 (2010): 1237–44. doi: 10.1016/j.phytochem.2010.05.013. Pascoe, Bruce. Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of Agriculture. Broome, WA: Magabala Books, 2014. Potgieter, Luke, David Richardson, and John Wilson. “Casuarina: Biogeography and Ecology of an Important Tree Genus in a Changing World.” Biological Invasions 16, no. 3 (2014): 609–33. doi: 10.1007/s10530-013-0613-x.

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Pryor, Cathy. “Food on Friday: Growing, Harvesting, and Eating Samphire.” ABC News, November 4, 2011. Accessed May 21, 2019. www.a​bc.ne​t.au/​site-​archi​ve/ ru​ral/t​elegr​aph/c​onten​t/201​1/s33​56255​.htm.​ Raunkiær, Christen. Planterigets Livsformer og Deres Betydning for Geografien. Copenhagen: I Kommission Hos, 1907. ———. The Life Forms of Plants and Statistical Plant Geography Being the Collected Papers of C. Raunkiaer. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934. Roe, J.S. “Report of an Expedition Under the Surveyor-General, Mr. J.S. Roe, To the South-Eastward of Perth, in Western Australia, Between the Months of September, 1848, and February, 1849, to the Hon. the Colonial Secretary.” The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London 22 (1852): 1–57. Rogers, Kerrylee. “Vegetation.” In Floodplain Wetland Biota in the Murray-Darling Basin: Water and Habitat Requirements, edited by Kerrylee Rogers and Timothy Ralph, 17–82. Collingwood, Vic: CSIRO Publications, 2011. Romanowski, Nick. Aquatic and Wetland Plants: A Field Guide for Non-Tropical Australia. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 1998. Rose, Deborah Bird. Nourishing Terrains: Australian Aboriginal Views of Landscape and Wilderness. Canberra: Australian Heritage Commission, 1996. Ryan, John C. Green Sense: The Aesthetics of Plants, Place, and Language. Oxford: TrueHeart Press, 2012. ———. “Writing the Lives of Plants: Phytography and the Botanical Imagination.” a/b Auto/Biography Studies (2019). in press. Saintilan, Neil. “Distribution of Australian Saltmarsh Plants.” In Australian Saltmarsh Ecology, edited by Neil Saintilan, 23–52. Collingwood, Vic: CSIRO Publications, 2009. Sainty, Geoff, John Hosking, Geoff Carr, and Paul Adam. “Low Saltmarsh.” In Estuary Plants and What’s Happening to Them in South-East Australia, edited by Geoff Sainty, John Hosking, Geoff Carr, and Paul Adam, 154–77. Potts Point, NSW: Sainty and Associates, 2012. Sainty, Geoff, and Surrey Jacobs. Waterplants in Australia: A Field Guide, 4th edn. Potts Point, NSW: Sainty and Associates, 2003. Salleh, Anna. “Way of the Water Lilies: Where Science Meets the Billabong.” ABC News, July 7, 2016. Accessed May 21, 2019. https​://ww​w.abc​.net.​au/ne​ws/sc​ience​ /2016​-07-0​7/way​-of-t​he-wa​ter-l​ilies​-wher​e-sci​ence-​meets​-the-​billa​bong/​75712​06. Sample, Ian. “Spectacular New Species of Waterlily Discovered in Australia.” The Guardian, June 6, 2015. Accessed May 21, 2019. www.t​hegua​rdian​.com/​scien​ ce/20​15/ju​n/05/​spect​acula​r-new​-spec​ies-o​f-wat​erlil​y-dis​cover​ed-in​-aust​ralia​. Schiebinger, Londa. Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. Schouw, Joakim. Grundtrack Til En Almindlig Plantegeografie. Berlin: Reimer, 1822. Scott, A.J. “Reinstatement and Revision of Salicorniaceae J. Agardh (Caryophyllales).” Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society 75, no. 4 (1977): 357–74. Sharr, F.A. Western Australian Plant Names and Their Meanings: A Glossary, Enlarged edn. Crawley, WA: University of Western Australia, 1996.

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Sheather, Warren, and Gloria Sheather. “Crassula helmsii, Swamp Stonecrop.” Australian Plants Society NSW. 2017. Accessed May 20, 2019. https​://au​stpla​nts.c​ om.au​/Cras​sula-​helms​ii-Sw​amp-S​tonec​rop. Silky Oak. “The Timbers of Queensland: Creek Oak (Casuarina cunninghamiana).” The Queenslander, February 13 (1926): 20. Slow Food in Australia. “Native Blackseed Samphire.” Slow Food in Australia. n.d. Accessed May 20, 2019. http:​//slo​wfood​austr​alia.​com.a​u/ark​oftas​te/na​tive-​black​ seed-​samph​ire/.​ Smyth, Robert Brough. The Aborigines of Victoria: With Notes Relating to the Habits of the Natives of Other Parts of Australia and Tasmania, vol. 1. Melbourne: John Ferres, Government Printer, 1878. Soeder, Robert. “Fern Constituents: Including Occurrence, Chemotaxonomy and Physiological Activity.” The Botanical Review 51, no. 4 (1985): 442–536. Southwell, Ian. “Introduction.” In Tea Tree: The Genus Melaleuca, edited by Ian Southwell and Robert Lowe, 1–10. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2005. Specht, Raymond. “Aboriginal Plant Names in North-Eastern Arnhem Land: Groote Eylandt–Enindilyakwa Language; Yirrkala–Rirratjingu Language.” Australian Aboriginal Studies 1 (2006): 63–67. State Library Victoria. “Did Burke and Wills Die Because They Ate Nardoo?” Dig: The Burke & Wills Research Gateway. 2019. Accessed May 21, 2019. http:​//bur​ keand​wills​.slv.​vic.g​ov.au​/ask-​an-ex​pert/​did-b​urke-​and-w​ills-​die-b​ecaus​e-the​y-ate​ -nard​oo. Stephens, K.M., and Ralph Dowling. Wetland Plants of Queensland: A Field Guide. Collingwood, Vic: CSIRO Publications, 2002. Stoye, John. Marsigli’s Europe, 1680–1730: The Life and Times of Luigi Ferdinando. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994. Sullivan, Robert. A Dictionary of Derivations, or an Introduction to Etymology: On a New Plan, 3rd edn. London: Samuel Holdsworth, Amen-Corner, 1838. Thieret, John. “Nardoo.” American Fern Journal 46, no. 3 (1956): 108–09. Tibby, John, Cameron Barr, Francesca McInerney, Andrew Henderson, Melanie Leng, Margaret Greenway, Jonathan Marshall, Glenn McGregor, Jonathan Tyler, and Vivienne McNeil. “Carbon Isotope Discrimination in Leaves of the BroadLeaved Paperbark Tree, Melaleuca quinquenervia, as a Tool for Quantifying Past Tropical and Subtropical Rainfall.” Global Change Biology 22, no. 10 (2016): 3474–86. doi: 10.1111/gcb.13277. Tiner, Ralph. “The Concept of a Hydrophyte for Wetland Identification.” Bioscience 41, no. 4 (1991): 236–46. ———. Wetland Indicators: A Guide to Wetland Identification, Delineation, Classification, and Mapping, 2nd edn. Baton Rouge: Chapman and Hall/CRC, 2016. Ungern-Sternberg, Franz Baron. Versuch einer Systematik der Salicornieen. Dorpat: E.J. Karow, 1866. Upson, Matt. “Recipes.” Vogue Australia, February/March (2010): 90–97. Veenstra-Quah, Anneke A., Josephine Milne, and Peter Kolesik. “Taxonomy and Biology of Two New Species of Gall Midge (Diptera: Cecidomyiidae)

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Infesting Sarcocornia quinqueflora (Chenopodiaceae) in Australian Salt Marshes.” Australian Journal of Entomology 46, no. 3 (2007): 198–206. doi: 10.1111/j.1440-6055.2007.00603.x. Warming, Eugen. Oecology of Plants: An Introduction to the Study of Plant-Communities. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909. Original edition, 1895. Weaver, John, and Frederic Clements. Plant Ecology, 2nd edn. New York: McGrawHill Book Company, 1938. Wills, William John. “Journal of a Trip from Cooper’s Creek Towards Adelaide.” Burke and Wills Web: Digital Research Archive. 2019. Accessed May 21, 2019. www.b​urkea​ndwil​ls.ne​t.au/​Journ​als/W​ills_​Journ​als/W​ills_​Journ​al_Ju​ne_18​61.ht​ m. Wood, John George. The Natural History of Man: Being an Account of the Manners and Customs of the Uncivilized Races of Man, vol. 2. London: George Routledge and Sons, 1870. Woolfrey, A.R., and P.G. Ladd. “Habitat Preference and Reproductive Traits of a Major Australian Riparian Trees Species (Casuarina cunninghamiana).” Australian Journal of Botany 49, no. 6 (2001): 705–15. doi: 10.1071/BT01009.

Part II

WESTERN AUSTRALIAN WETLAND CULTURES

Beeliar December 6, 2016 Nandi Chinna

Swan and sedge, dugite and tiger snake, Nuytsia floribunda, fringe lily, woody pear marri, mungite, dianella, jarrah, balga, Hibbertia quenda, yoorna, Lerista skink, peacock spider, Christmas spider, peep-wren heron, spoonbill, ibis, swamp harrier, little eagle, musk duck, pied cormorant, long-necked turtle, aquifer, mud, algae, water, donkey orchid, Spearwood dune, Bassendean dune, tadpole, frog, banded stilt, pelican, clicking frog, moaning frog, I call on you to survive.

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Three Wetland Poems dedicated to J. P. Quinton John Kinsella

POEM FOR THE GATHERING The people are gathering at the wetlands off Bibra Drive The people are gathering to ward-off the deleting machines The people are gathering with trees as extensions of their bodies The people are gathering so Main Roads won’t run rings around them The people are gathering so quendas can breathe an air of insects and vegetation The people are gathering to let the rich wet soil do its organics, speak its rhizomes The people are gathering to show no deals are done to sign-off on Beeliar!

THE TREES ALONGSIDE BIBRA DRIVE The tangle of branches is the zest of conversation over-arching the wetlands – 143

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if we study the leaves, the branches, the ravens interpreting the stories, we will be able to say: Yes, this planet is inhabited – we will set our lexicons to synch with the many voices that emanate from its green echoes. But as for the aperçus of the illuminati of the Main Roads, well, read them with caution: they are dust rings, debris orbiting the planet.

RESISTING FROM WITHIN THE GREEN TENT AT BIBRA DRIVE, BEELIAR (FOR JAMES) In real time the air is green with leaves of grass through the membrane contractors talk deletion but the face of resistance wears all life in its features – all life’s sounds all life’s textures all life’s responses to the plan to unmake air and ground and water, to unmake mediums

Three Wetland Poems

in which all life’s many lives hang on against the deletion, Grow out of the green light, speak to the contractors from within the tent – say: all life’s life is in here, have some respect for yourselves if nothing else.

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Chapter 6

Environmental Activism and Wetlands Conservation in Western Australia Philip Jennings

ORIGINS, 1960–1980 Concern about the environment and efforts to conserve our natural heritage have a long history in Australia. Environmental activism, however, is a relatively recent phenomenon. On April 21, 1964, an eighty-nine-year-old social activist, Bessie Rischbieth, staged a non-violent protest against the filling of Mounts Bay for the Narrows Bridge Interchange, by standing in the way of a rubbish truck that was attempting to dump sand into the Swan River in Perth, Western Australia. Her protest came after several years of campaigning by the Swan River Protection Society against the design of the freeway interchange. Their pleas were ignored by the Brand Government and so Rischbieth used direct, nonviolent action to dramatize her cause. In this she succeeded, as her protest gained wide media attention and she became a symbol of public resistance to environmental irresponsibility by government. Rischbieth failed to stop the filling of Mounts Bay, but her action aroused considerable public support which forced the government to make some concessions.1 Eventually, they landscaped the interchange and created gardens and artificial wetlands, which partly compensated for the loss of habitat.2 Environmental activism arose out of the social movements of the 1960s when concerned citizens held rallies, staged protests, and lobbied politicians for social justice. Causes such as the civil rights movement in the United States, the protests against atmospheric nuclear testing, and the Vietnam War were major concerns in the 1960s. Social activism became an international phenomenon, and when it was combined with growing environmental awareness, it led eventually to environmental activism. The publication in 1962 of Silent Spring by Rachel Carson was a catalyst for drawing public attention to the mismanagement of the natural environment 147

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and the tragic consequences of this.3 In Western Australia, Tom Riggert drew attention to the dramatic loss of wetlands on the Swan Coastal Plain in a landmark study from the mid-1960s.4 His cause was taken up by George Seddon in his classic account of the environment of the Swan Coastal Plain, A Sense of Place, which was first published in 1972.5 Seddon drew attention to the amazing biodiversity of the Swan Coastal Plain and the important role that it played in enhancing the lives of its residents. He also described how the wetlands sustained the ecology of the Swan Coastal Plain and enhanced the attractiveness of the landscape. The Indigenous Whadjuk Noongar people appreciated and cared for the Swan Coastal Plain environment for thousands of years prior to the arrival of the first European settlers in 1829. The Noongar carefully managed the land and used the wetlands for food and water supply and for ceremonial and spiritual purposes. They understood, in a way that the European settlers did not, that the health of the environment and their society depended to a large extent on the health of the wetlands.6 The early European settlers saw the wetlands as impediments to progress and a source of foul odors and insect pests. They exploited the wetlands for water, timber, and summer pasture. Many lakes were drained or filled to make way for housing and agriculture. A few were retained as landscape features and beautified in the European style,7 as, for example, at Lake Monger, Hyde Park Lake, and Queens Gardens.8 In 1967, a small group of environmental societies combined to form the Conservation Council of Western Australia (CCWA). Their aim was to develop a strong advocacy organization to argue for a comprehensive system of national parks and nature reserves to conserve the State’s biological heritage. They also wanted the government to establish an Environmental Protection Authority, similar to that which the Kennedy administration had established in the USA. One of the first actions of the Conservation Council was to organize a torchlight march to Parliament House in 1969 to present a petition calling for these actions. The march was attended by more than 20,000 citizens and this persuaded the government to act and the Tonkin government passed legislation to set up the EPA, which began operations in 1972. One of the first tasks that the EPA set for itself was to review government land holdings across the State in order to identify land that was suitable for conservation. During the 1970s, they published a set of twelve reports (called Red Books) with their recommendations for conservation reserves and this led to a trebling in the size of the conservation estate in WA (from 2 percent of the land area in 1960 to 6 percent in 1980). The most problematic area for the EPA was the Swan Coastal Plain (also known as System Six) because of the high level of freehold land and the significant amount of development that had already occurred. The System Six Report was the last of the system reports to be completed (in 1983). It

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highlighted the urgent need to protect the remaining fragments of banksia woodland and wetlands of this biodiversity hotspot. The Conservation Council and its affiliated groups participated strongly in the Conservation through Reserves study during the 1970s and lobbied the government to accept the EPA’s recommendations. Eventually, the Burke government announced in May 1984 that it accepted the recommendations in the System Six Report “in principle.”9 Even before the System Six Report was finalized in 1983, however, powerful government agencies were moving to undermine its recommendations. The State Housing Commission proposed to develop a new social housing estate by clearing and filling part of Star Swamp in North Beach. The EPA had recommended (M35) that Star Swamp should be set aside for conservation because it was an excellent example of a pristine wetland in the urban environment. A dispute broke out between the Housing Commission and a community group called the Friends of Star Swamp, and a vigorous debate ensued for two years until the newly elected Burke government decided to purchase the swamp from the Housing Commission and to preserve it as a nature reserve. This was the first win for community environmental activists for wetlands conservation in Western Australia. Not long after this, the Main Roads Department, supported by the Cities of Melville and Cockburn, decided to challenge another of the EPA’s recommendations by constructing a western extension to Farrington Road through the North Lake wetlands. The EPA had specifically recommended against this in its System Six Red Book (recommendation M93.3), but Main Roads was a powerful agency and was used to getting its way with the government. Main Roads applied to the Commonwealth for Bicentenary Road funding and stated in its application that there were no significant environmental or Indigenous heritage issues involved.10 Their application was approved and once the funds were received they pressured the EPA into reversing its position and approving the construction of Farrington Road. Local residents were surprised when bulldozers arrived on the site on September 10, 1984, and began clearing the bush. They were joined by angry students and conservationists, and many were arrested as they tried to impede the bulldozers. The Kardinya Residents Association sought an injunction to stop the clearing, but this was refused, and eventually the road went through.11 The Burke government was shocked by the intensity of the public concern about the environment and the wetlands. They managed to modify the project slightly to protect Roe Swamp and to require sensitive revegetation of the roadside verge. They also decided to amend the Environmental Protection Act to give more authority to the EPA and to prevent a recurrence of this process, and they set up a study into the potential impacts of other proposed roadworks on wetlands.12

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ADDRESSING THE ISSUES, 1984–2001 In the wake of the Farrington Road dispute, in which direct, non-violent action and legal action failed to halt the abuse of power by a powerful government agency, a new community group formed to campaign for wetland conservation. The Wetlands Conservation Society (WCS) held its inaugural general meeting in February 1985. It was initially composed mainly of veterans of the Farrington Road campaign (such as Norm Godfrey, Ray Polglaze, Jan Rodda, and Helga and Philip Jennings), and it resolved to campaign for the implementation of the EPA’s system reports and to undertake environmental education and restoration. The WCS formed an alliance with the Waterbird Conservation Group that had been established in 1984 by Joan Payne and Karen McRoberts following a serious algal bloom at Thomsons and Forrestdale Lakes. Their initial focus was on waterbird rescues and rehabilitation, but they soon broadened their focus to include wetland conservation and the rehabilitation of wetlands.13 Another community group that held similar aims was the Peel Preservation Group that had been formed by Len Howard and John Devereaux in 1977 to campaign for the preservation of the Peel/Harvey/Yalgorup wetlands. They faced many challenges from developers wishing to convert estuarine wetlands into canal estates. The Peel Inlet and Harvey Estuary were also suffering from severe eutrophication caused by fertilizer runoff from farms in the Serpentine, Murray, and Harvey River catchments.14 The mid-1980s was a time of rising concern about the environment and the wetland groups, together with the Conservation Council, put forward many proposals to government for wetland conservation. The CCWA lobbied for a system of regional parks based on the System Six Red Book recommendations.15 The WCS made specific suggestions about the Beeliar Regional Park and the government established a planning committee in 1988 to define the boundaries and land uses for this park. Eventually, in 1997, the Court Government established eight regional parks to conserve the wetlands and woodlands of the Metropolitan Area. In 1992, the PPG proposed a Peel Regional Park, and this was strongly supported by CCWA and the other wetland groups. Despite detailed planning, carried out between 2001 and 2008, however, this park was still not established as of 2019. In September 1985, another dispute broke out in the Canning River wetlands when a developer gained approval to fill in the Watts Road Lake for a housing estate. This small wetland, adjacent to the Canning River, was a valuable wildlife refuge. Protests and demonstrations were held at the site but the government refused to intervene and the Lake was eventually filled and covered with new houses.16 In 1987, a major dispute erupted over the cruel practice of duck shooting in WA wetlands. In the duck shooting season that

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year, hundreds of native waterbirds were accidentally or deliberately shot for sport by recreational hunters, and several nature reserves were damaged by shooters. The State Government banned duck shooting in 1988 and 1989 due to low duck numbers but, in 1990, a new minister, Ian Taylor, declared an open season in the autumn. The Conservation Council, together with the Waterbird Conservation Group and the Wetlands Conservation Society, joined forces with animal welfare groups, the Humane Society and Animal Liberation, to form a coalition called the Campaign Against Duck Shooting (CADS). CADS staged a series of protests and rallies, including direct action in several wetlands, such as Lake Wannamal, and collected a petition with over 140,000 signatures calling for an end to duck shooting. This protest shocked the government and Mr. Taylor was soon replaced by a new minister, Bob Pearce, who was strongly opposed to duck shooting. After two attempts, he succeeded in June 1992 in passing legislation to permanently ban the sport of recreational duck shooting in Western Australia.17 In 1989, the State Government put out a call for tenders to develop a tourist resort at Port Kennedy, south of Rockingham. The proposed development was to include private housing, a marina, a golf course, and an equestrian complex. Several conservation groups opposed this plan as it was contrary to the System Six recommendation (M106) that the area should become a Regional Park in order to protect high-quality wetlands and vegetation. Eventually, after a prolonged lobbying campaign, part of the area was given over to housing and a golf course, but the areas of conservation value were included in the Port Kennedy Scientific Park, which became a part of the Rockingham Lakes Regional Park in 1997. The wetlands were eventually recognized as having international scientific interest and, in 2001, they were included on the List of Wetlands of International Importance as the Becher Suite. The vegetation in the swales of the coastal dunes was listed by the Commonwealth authorities as a Threatened Ecological Community called Sedgelands in Holocene Dune Swales (TEC 19). Despite all this effort, the Port Kennedy area is very poorly managed by the government authorities. At about this time, another dispute broke out when the State Government’s land development agency, Landcorp, tried to develop a housing estate in the Leda area. This is a large area of tuart woodland and wetlands in the southern part of the city of Kwinana. The land in question was vacant crown land that the EPA had recommended should be converted into a nature reserve (System Six recommendation M104) because it was one of the best remaining fragments of this type of woodland. Landcorp issued a plan called “The Birth of a Dream” showing how it intended to subdivide and develop the site. This resulted in a major campaign by conservation groups, led by the Conservation Council, to protect the environmental values of the Leda area. Eventually, the

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EPA agreed to a compromise in which the tuart woodland and wetlands were incorporated into a nature reserve, while the banksia woodland to the east was cleared for housing by Landcorp and its agents. A similar dispute with Landcorp arose in 1992 at Secret Harbour, south of Port Kennedy, where there were valuable young wetlands in the Quindalup dune swales. The EPA refused to protect these wetlands because the land was privately owned and therefore was not included in the System Six recommendations. In the end, a small coastal reserve and several of the wetlands were retained as landscape features in the development. Nearby at Jandakot, Landcorp and private developers purchased farmland over the Jandakot groundwater mound in the 1980s. They then approached the State Planning Commission to have it rezoned from rural uses to urban. Although the land contained valuable wetlands of the Jandakot suite and it was over one of Perth’s drinking water supplies, the EPA and the SPC allowed the rezoning. They left the protection of the wetlands to the city of Cockburn to negotiate with the developers at the subdivision stage. The Conservation Council objected strongly to this environmental irresponsibility and eventually the government purchased two large blocks of banksia woodland in Wandi as offsets, and these were later included in Jandakot Regional Park.18 During the 1980s, the Conservation Council campaigned to have some of the State’s outstanding wetlands nominated for the List of Wetlands of International Importance under the Ramsar Convention. The Department of Conservation and Land Management drew up a list of twelve wetlands that they wished to nominate. Some landowners, however, objected to listing and eventually nine wetlands were nominated and listed in 1990. The CCWA continued to lobby for further listings because an independent scientific study indicated that more than forty other wetlands were eligible for Ramsar listing. In 2001, shortly before the State Election, the Court Government nominated a further three wetlands plus four extensions to existing listed wetlands. Since then, there has been little visible progress, although CALM/DEC/DPAW has been working on a further eight nominations, with very limited human resources and lack of interest from government. The WCS has continued to lobby the minister for action on this matter. Concern for the environment reached a peak during the term of the Hawke government in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In WA, the EPA under the leadership of Barry Carbon promised to end wetland loss and set about developing a set of Environmental Protection Policies (EPPs) to protect wetlands in various parts of the State. The Swan Coastal Plain Lakes EPP was gazetted in 1992, and it aimed to protect a system of lakes from drainage, filling, and pollution.19 The EPA also produced a similar policy for the wetlands of the South West Agricultural Area, but CALM refused to cooperate by listing the wetlands it managed, and so that policy was totally ineffective.20 The EPA

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also began work on a State Wetlands EPP but this was abandoned following the election of the Liberal/National coalition government in 1993. Meanwhile, lobbying continued for a Wetlands Conservation Policy for WA and the coalition government finally endorsed it in 1997.21 This policy set out an ambitious agenda to identify, classify, conserve, and restore wetlands throughout the State. A Wetlands Coordinating Committee (WCC) was set up to oversee its implementation, and the voluntary conservation movement was invited to nominate two members to this Ministerial Advisory Committee. The WCC oversaw the implementation of the policy, including the Ramsar nominations and the development of a wetland buffers policy and an update to the State Wetlands Conservation Policy. Following the election of the Barnett coalition government in 2008, however, the WCC began to meet infrequently and work on wetland policy development was wound down. During the 1990s, despite the change of government in 1993, the conservation movement remained strong and influential, and great progress was made on key wetland conservation issues, such as the Regional Parks system, the Wetlands Conservation Policy for WA, and various EPPs such as the one to protect the habitat of the Western Swamp Tortoise.22 There were also many public protests over inappropriate development proposals that affected wetlands, such as the Creery wetlands in Mandurah, the Moore River estuary at Guilderton and the Perth Airport wetlands. All of these involved opportunistic bids for the conservation estate by private developers and, in each case, compromises were negotiated but some valuable habitat was lost. The WCS was committed to awareness raising as a means of giving the public some ownership of the conservation debate. To this end, they collaborated with the city of Cockburn to establish the Cockburn Wetlands Education Center (CWEC) at Bibra Lake in June 1993. This center is run by three community groups and has operated successfully for nearly twenty-five years, carrying out landcare and environmental education programs. Other similar centers have been established at Herdsman Lake, Lake Richmond, Piney Lakes, and Canning River. They play a vital role in raising public awareness about the value of wetlands and providing opportunities for environmental and landcare experiences for all age groups. A volunteer-run native fauna rehabilitation centre, called Native ARC, was established adjacent to CWEC in 2001. Such centers promote core wetland values: environmental (biodiversity, habitat, wildlife migration, carbon sinks); social (recreation, research, education); cultural (heritage, sense of place, aesthetic, spiritual); and economic (summer pasture, water supplies, tourism, fisheries, landscape enhancement, social amenities, UHI reduction). Following the Farrington Road dispute in 1984, the WCS drew the government’s attention to the System Six Red Book recommendation M93.3 that the Roe Highway should be modified to reduce its impact on the North and

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Bibra Lake wetlands. This led the Burke government to set up a committee to explore alternative alignments to the unsatisfactory one through the North Lake reserve. The committee concluded that the “no highway option” was their preferred position because no suitable alternative could be found and because there was no need to extend the Roe Highway beyond the Kwinana Freeway.23 The state government noted this report but took no action to delete the road reserve because of opposition from local government. This was a serious error that led to renewed conflict in the new century. THE BACKLASH, 2001–2017 Attitudes toward the environment began to change in the early years of the twenty-first century. Governments became more focused on economic and social issues and global environmental issues like climate change and whaling. Local issues such as biodiversity and wetland conservation received a lower priority as the years went by. Farming and housing lobbyists became more influential, and they opposed Ramsar listing and World Heritage nominations. They succeeded in persuading the Carpenter government to abandon its proposed Swan Coastal Plain Wetlands Policy in 2006, despite widespread support from the conservation movement. Developers began to eye off the conservation estate, and Landcorp made an audacious bid to confiscate 70 hectares (173 acres) of conservation land from the Rockingham Lakes Regional Park to develop a residential marina complex in Mangles Bay, adjacent to Lake Richmond. This aroused considerable opposition from conservation groups and many objections were received by the EPA when this proposal was assessed. By then, however, a pro-development Liberal/National government was in power, and the EPA approved the proposal, despite having rejected a similar proposal in the 1990s.24 The new minister rejected the appeals and approved the marina and canal project, subject to conditions. A similar situation developed with the Roe Highway stage 8 project. In 2003, the Gallop Labor Government sought strategic advice on the impact of the proposed Roe 8 on the wetlands. The EPA advised that it was unlikely that any proposal could be developed that would be environmentally acceptable.25 The Labor Government then announced that it would delete Roe 8 from the Metropolitan Region Planning Scheme. However, before they could do this, they lost office and the new Liberal/National Government decided that it would build Roe 8. They conducted a series of consultations and in 2011 put forward a proposal for Roe 8.26 The EPA put it out for public review and several thousand objections were received. Despite this, the EPA reversed its previous position and approved the project. More than 100 appeals were received but the minister dismissed these and approved the construction. The Liberal/National coalition government in Canberra offered to fund the project provided it was a toll road

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for trucks. The opponents tried several avenues of legal action to halt the project but they were unsuccessful and so, shortly before the 2017 State Election, the Barnett government permitted the contracts for Roe 8. As the bulldozers began clearing in the wetlands and woodland near North Lake, they were confronted by hundreds of protesters who stood or chained themselves to trees or bulldozers. Many were arrested but the protests continued for nearly three months leading up to the election on March 11, 2017. A considerable amount of damage was done to the Beeliar wetlands. The protesters campaigned through the media and via door knocking in marginal electorates. On Election Day, there was a huge swing against the Barnett government, and they lost their majority. Some election analysts attributed a part of the swing to public disapproval of the government’s handling of Roe 8. The new premier, Mark McGowan, immediately honored his pledge to stop work on Roe 8, and he announced that the Labor Government would delete the Roe 8 road reserve and revegetate it. This was a spectacular victory for the public over the bureaucracy and political establishment. The Roe 8 saga illustrated clearly the high level of public concern for the environment, a fact that some political leaders failed to understand. The premier, Colin Barnett, believed that the public would support him in being tough and uncompromising with “greenies,” but, as the destruction of the Beeliar wetlands continued, more and more people joined in the protests and many became disillusioned with his style of government. Environmental activism became mainstream as he ruthlessly crushed the protests, and he paid a high price for his callous attitude.27 Despite this victory, there have been numerous setbacks for the conservation movement in recent years. The Barnett government reduced the funding for DPAW, and its wetlands section has been downsized from twenty-three staff to three. This has hampered policy development, especially the Ramsar nominations. The Barnett government also refused to finalize the Wetland Buffer Guidelines and the updated Wetlands Conservation Policy for WA. In the last State of the Environment Report for WA (2007), the EPA reported that wetland loss in WA was continuing at a rate of four hectares per day.28 Despite this, the Environment Minister in the Barnett government, Albert Jacob, revoked the Swan Coastal Plain Lakes EPP (and the SW Agricultural zone EPP and the Gnangara Mound EPP) in 2015, claiming that they were no longer needed because of the clearing regulations. THE TASK AHEAD Wetlands conservation has come full circle since 1960. During the 1960s and 1970s, our society developed a better appreciation of the value of wetlands. Much valuable research and policy formulation was carried out and this

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provided the basis for real progress in conservation. Some of this occurred as a result of community activism and occasional conflict with government agencies and developers. In the wake of the Farrington Road dispute, many improvements were made to environmental protection laws and wetland conservation policy. The creation of the Regional Parks system in 1997 and the partial implementation of the Bush Forever Plan in 2001 were giant steps forward. The Regional Parks have become highly prized by urban residents and they guard them fiercely against developers who seek to exploit them. This is clearly illustrated by the Roe 8 and Mangles Bay Marina protests. However, there have been significant losses since the Barnett government came to power in 2008. They sought to facilitate development by reducing environmental protection by revoking key policies, such as the Swan Coastal Plain Lakes EPP and stalling on others, such as the Wetland Buffer Guidelines and the Ramsar nominations and the implementation of Bush Forever and the expansion of the Regional Parks system. The EPA has also been weakened through inappropriate appointments and cutbacks in funding, and its recent rulings appear to indicate that it has no appetite to refuse outlandish proposals from developers. Recent court rulings indicate that the EPA is not required to follow its own policies and procedures and that Ministerial Conditions on projects are not enforceable. Reform of the EPA is clearly urgently needed. Another serious problem is the cutbacks in funding and human resources for conservation. As a result of budget cuts, in response to the State’s financial crisis (caused by overspending on iconic projects) the DPAW has lost the capacity to carry out effective management of the conservation estate. Local governments manage their conservation reserves to a far higher standard than the State Government. DPAW has also lost some of its capacity to undertake wetland research, which is the basis for effective conservation.29 The community conservation grant program was abolished by the Barnett government in 2013 and this decision has also reduced restoration work in the conservation estate. Policy development on wetlands has been stalled for nearly fifteen years, due to lack of human resources and the efforts of pro-development lobbyists. There are serious issues that need to be addressed. The EPA has also suffered funding cuts and has been unable to update the State of the Environment Report since 2007. This reporting is vital for identifying conservation priorities and emerging threats. One policy area that has not been affected by the cutbacks is the strategic assessment of land use in the Perth and Peel regions. This work has been carried out by the Premier’s Department. It is the largest such exercise ever attempted in Australia. The aim is to gain blanket approval from the Commonwealth Government for future housing, mining, infrastructure, and industrial development by showing that all of the biodiversity values of the region are adequately protected. In principle, this is a worthwhile exercise. It is rare

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for State Governments to undertake detailed long-term planning on such a scale. However, the draft Green Growth Plan failed to achieve this objective and in fact proposed to substantially downsize the current conservation estate and jeopardize the survival of some endangered species (e.g., Carnaby’s black cockatoo).30 This policy needs to be carefully reconsidered by the new Labor Government. More public consultation and scientific input is essential before the policy is finalized. Climate change is a major threat to wetlands in the Southwest of Western Australia. Already the effects are apparent with many wetlands drying out due to the dramatic decline in rainfall over the past twenty-five years. Weed invasion and loss of wildlife habitat are major consequences of climate change. There is little that State Governments can do to mitigate these effects in the short term, and the WA Government has made no attempt to develop a climate change policy. Ad hoc adaptation measures may be more effective until adequate mitigation policies are put in place internationally. A good example of this is the water supplementation project at Thomsons Lake. This Ramsar listed wetland has been badly affected by declining groundwater levels due to reduced rainfall and increased groundwater extraction and urban development nearby. As a result, large numbers of cygnets have perished because the lake dried out before they were able to fly. Also Typha orientalis (bulrush) has invaded the lake bed and reduced the wader habitat and thereby compromised its Ramsar status. In response to concerns from the conservation movement, DPAW has developed a water supplementation program whereby drainage water from a local housing development is passed through nutrient-stripping ponds and then pumped into Thomsons Lake, thereby extending the period of inundation from December to February, by which time the cygnets are fully fledged. Other local authorities have also carried out adaptation programs such as typha and weed control in their wetlands. Some are considering more drastic measures such as dredging to deepen wetlands and artificial wetlands have been created in many places, often following mining or infrastructure development or in new housing estates. Some of these have become valuable wildlife habitat. Looking back on nearly sixty years of environmental activism for wetland conservation, it is clear that much has been achieved. Public attitudes to wetlands have changed enormously, and there is a much greater appreciation of Indigenous heritage and its links to the wetlands. Some developers and government agencies are still oblivious to the need to conserve all of our remaining wetlands, but public opinion is now firmly on the side of conservation. Environmental activism is now an accepted part of the political process and the outpouring of public support for the campaign against Roe 8 is evidence of this. The public has come to appreciate and value our biodiversity and likes to recreate in natural surroundings. The conservation movement needs to build on this public support through environmental awareness and education.

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Providing pleasant outdoor experiences for children and adults will lead to a lifelong appreciation of the natural environment. This is a vital role for all environmental educators. Environmental activism is a relatively new phenomenon in Australian society. It arose out of the social and political movements of the 1960s and growing concerns about loss of biodiversity, pollution, ozone depletion, and climate change. Environmental activism can take many forms, ranging from awareness raising to lobbying and letter writing and finally to legal action and direct non-violent action. Wetlands conservation in WA has experienced all of these manifestations, and they have become key drivers in the quest for sustainability. Environmental activism draws heavily on the work of researchers and educators who provide the factual basis and awareness of the key issues.31 The public has a vital interest in the health of the environment, and environmental activism has become its most effective means of participating in the sustainability debate.

NOTES 1. For a photograph of Bessie Rischbieth protesting the filling of Mounts Bay on April 21, 1964, see figure 2, page 49, in Jenny Gregory and Jill L. Grant, “The Role of Emotions in Protests Against Modernist Urban Redevelopment in Perth and Halifax,” Urban History Review 42, no. 2 (2014): 44–58. 2. Jenny Gregory, Perth’s Waterfront and Urban Planning 1954–93: The Narrows Scheme and the Perth City Foreshore Project (Crawley, WA: School of Humanities, University of Western Australia, 2009), accessed May 22, 2019, http:​// soa​c.fbe​.unsw​.edu.​au/20​09/PD​F/Gre​gory%​20Jen​ny.pd​f. 3. Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962). 4. Tom Riggert, A Study of the Wetlands of the Swan Coastal Plain: Being a Pilot Study of the Wetlands of Western Australia with Particular Reference to Their Use by Waterfowl (Perth, WA: Department of Fisheries and Fauna, 1966). 5. George Seddon, A Sense of Place: A Response to an Environment, the Swan Coastal Plain, Western Australia (Nedlands, WA: University of Western Australia Press, 1972). 6. Sylvia Hallam, Fire and Hearth: A Study of Aboriginal Usage and European Ursurpation in South-Western Australia (Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1975). 7. Rod Giblett and Hugh Webb, “A City and Its Swamp Setting,” in Western Australian Wetlands: The Kimberley and South-West, ed. Rod Giblett and Hugh Webb (Perth, WA: Black Swan Press/Wetlands Conservation Society, 1996). 8. To view Louis Edward Shapcott’s photograph “Lake Monger Jetty, Promenade, and Pavilionc.1914,” see https​://up​load.​wikim​edia.​org/w​ikipe​dia/c​ommon​ s/3/3​c/Lak​e_Mon​ger_j​etty_​prome​nade_​and_p​avili​on_c.​_1914​.jpg.​

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9. Government of Western Australia, The Darling System, System 6: Conservation Reserves for Western Australia: Part II, Recommendations for Specific Localities (Perth, WA: Department of Conservation and Environment, 1983). 10. Government of Western Australia, Western Australian Parliamentary Debates, Assembly (Perth, WA: Government of Western Australia, 1984), 1479. 11. For images of the Farrington Road Blockade, September 1984, see Philip Jennings, “40 Years of Wetlands Conservation: What Have We Achieved?,” Slide Player, n.d., accessed May 29, 2019, https://slideplayer.com/slide/4629483/. 12. Philip Jennings, “A Message From Farrington Road,” Environment WA 7 (1985): 15–21. 13. Philip Jennings, “A Decade of Wetland Conservation,” in Western Australian Wetlands: The Kimberley and South-West, ed. Rod Giblett and Hugh Webb (Perth, WA: Black Swan Press/Wetlands Conservation Society, 1996). 14. Ibid. 15. Conservation Council of Western Australia, Regional Parks: A New Approach to Nature Conservation in Urban Areas (West Perth, WA: Conservation Council of Western Australia, 1990). 16. The filling of Watts Road Lake occurred in September 1985. 17. Anti-duck shooting rallies took place in Fremantle, WA, in the 1990s. 18. Solomon Road Swamp, Jandakot, was destroyed by urban development in 1994. 19. Government of Western Australia, Environmental Protection, Swan Coastal Plain Lakes Policy (Perth, WA: Environmental Protection Authority, 1992). 20. Government of Western Australia, Environmental Protection (South West Agricultural Zone Wetlands) Policy Approval Order (Perth, WA: Environmental Protection Authority, 1998), accessed May 22, 2019, www.s​lp.wa​.gov.​au/ga​zette​/ gaze​tte.n​sf/ga​zlist​/A081​135E4​8D086​CE482​567BD​00036​BF4/$​file/​gg215​.pdf.​ 21. Government of Western Australia, Wetlands Conservation Policy for Western Australia (Perth, WA: Environmental Protection Authority, 1997), accessed May 22, 2019, www.d​paw.w​a.gov​.au/i​mages​/docu​ments​/abou​t/pol​icy/w​etlan​dspol​icy_t​ext.p​df. 22. Government of Western Australia, Environmental Protection, Western Swamp Tortoise Habitat (Perth, WA: Environmental Protection Authority, 2011). 23. Sinclair, Knight, and Partners, Report to the State Planning Commission and Main Roads Department, Roe Highway Alignment Review: North Lake Road to Kwinana Freeway, May. (Perth, WA: Department of Planning and Urban Development; Sydney: Sinclair, Knight, and Partners, 1988); Government of Western Australia, Technical Working Group Progress Report for the Proposed Roe Highway Alignment Through the Beeliar Wetlands Area (Perth, WA: Department of Planning and Urban Development, 1990). 24. Government of Western Australia, Mangles Bay Marine Based Tourist Precinct, EPA Report 1471 (Perth, WA: Environmental Protection Authority, 1993), accessed May 22, 2019, www.e​pa.wa​.gov.​au/pr​oposa​ls/ma​ngles​-bay-​marin​e-bas​ ed-to​urist​-prec​inct.​ 25. Government of Western Australia, Environmental Values Associated with the Alignment of Roe Highway (Stage 8): A Report by the Environmental Protection Authority Under Section 16(j) of the Environmental Protection Act 1986 (Perth, WA:

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Environmental Protection Authority, 2003), accessed May 22, 2019, www.e​pa.wa​ .gov.​au/si​tes/d​efaul​t/fil​es/Pu​blica​tions​/1570​_B108​8.pdf​. 26. Government of Western Australia, Report and Recommendations of the Environmental Protection Authority, Roe Highway Extension, EPA Report 1489 (Perth, WA: Environmental Protection Authority, 2013), accessed May 22, 2019, www. s​uprem​ecour​t.wa.​gov.a​u/_fi​les/0​7_EPA​_Repo​rt_14​89_Ro​e_Hig​hway_​Exten​sion_​ (1of2​).pdf​. 27. See, for example, images such as Claire Moodie’s “Police Clash with Protestors at Roe 8,” ABC News, January 11, 2017, accessed May 29, 2019, www.a​bc.ne​ t.au/​news/​2017-​01-12​/poli​ce-cl​ash-w​ith-p​rotes​ters-​at-ro​e-8/8​17767​8. 28. Government of Western Australia, State of the Environment Report for Western Australia (Perth, WA: Environmental Protection Authority, 2007), accessed May 22, 2019, www.e​pa.wa​.gov.​au/st​ate-e​nviro​nment​-repo​rt-20​07. 29. Jennings, “A Decade of Wetland Conservation.” 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962. Conservation Council of Western Australia. Regional Parks: A New Approach to Nature Conservation in Urban Areas. West Perth, WA: Conservation Council of Western Australia, 1990. Giblett, Rod, and Hugh Webb. “A City and Its Swamp Setting.” In Western Australian Wetlands: The Kimberley and South-West, edited by Rod Giblett and Hugh Webb, 127–46. Perth, WA: Black Swan Press/Wetlands Conservation Society, 1996. Government of Western Australia. The Darling System, System 6: Conservation Reserves for Western Australia: Part II, Recommendations for Specific Localities. Perth, WA: Department of Conservation and Environment, 1983. ———. Western Australian Parliamentary Debates, Assembly. Perth, WA: Government of Western Australia, 1984. ———. Technical Working Group Progress Report for the Proposed Roe Highway Alignment Through the Beeliar Wetlands Area. Perth, WA: Department of Planning and Urban Development, 1990. ———. Environmental Protection, Swan Coastal Plain Lakes Policy. Perth, WA: Environmental Protection Authority, 1992. ———. Mangles Bay Marine Based Tourist Precinct, EPA Report 1471. Perth, WA: Environmental Protection Authority, 1993. Accessed May 22, 2019. www.e​pa.wa​ .gov.​au/pr​oposa​ls/ma​ngles​-bay-​marin​e-bas​ed-to​urist​-prec​inct.​ ———. Wetlands Conservation Policy for Western Australia. Perth, WA: Environmental Protection Authority, 1997. Accessed May 22, 2019. www.d​paw.w​a.gov​ .au/i​mages​/docu​ments​/abou​t/pol​icy/w​etlan​dspol​icy_t​ext.p​df.

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———. Environmental Protection (South West Agricultural Zone Wetlands) Policy Approval Order. Perth, WA: Environmental Protection Authority, 1998. Accessed May 22, 2019. www.s​lp.wa​.gov.​au/ga​zette​/gaze​tte.n​sf/ga​zlist​/A081​135E4​8D086​ CE482​567BD​00036​BF4/$​file/​gg215​.pdf.​ ———. Environmental Values Associated with the Alignment of Roe Highway (Stage 8): A Report by the Environmental Protection Authority Under Section 16(j) of the Environmental Protection Act 1986. Perth, WA: Environmental Protection Authority, 2003. Accessed May 22, 2019. www.e​pa.wa​.gov.​au/si​tes/d​efaul​t/fil​es/Pu​blica​ tions​/1570​_B108​8.pdf​. ———. State of the Environment Report for Western Australia. Perth, WA: Environmental Protection Authority, 2007. Accessed May 22, 2019. www.e​pa.wa​.gov.​au/ st​ate-e​nviro​nment​-repo​rt-20​07. ———. Environmental Protection, Western Swamp Tortoise Habitat. Perth, WA: Environmental Protection Authority, 2011. ———. Report and Recommendations of the Environmental Protection Authority, Roe Highway Extension, EPA Report 1489. Perth, WA: Environmental Protection Authority, 2013. Accessed May 22, 2019. www.s​uprem​ecour​t.wa.​gov.a​u/_fi​les/0​ 7_EPA​_Repo​rt_14​89_Ro​e_Hig​hway_​Exten​sion_​(1of2​).pdf​. ———. Perth and Peel Green Growth Plan for 3.5 Million: Strategic Assessment of the Perth and Peel Regions: Draft Action Plan H: Conservation Program. Perth, WA: Department of Premier and Cabinet, 2015. Gregory, Jenny. Perth’s Waterfront and Urban Planning 1954–93: The Narrows Scheme and the Perth City Foreshore Project. Crawley, WA: School of Humanities, University of Western Australia, 2009. Accessed May 22, 2019. http:​//soa​ c.fbe​.unsw​.edu.​au/20​09/PD​F/Gre​gory%​20Jen​ny.pd​f. Gregory, Jenny, and Jill L. Grant. “The Role of Emotions in Protests Against Modernist Urban Redevelopment in Perth and Halifax.” Urban History Review 42, no. 2 (2014): 44–58. Hallam, Sylvia. Fire and Hearth: A Study of Aboriginal Usage and European Usurpation in South-Western Australia. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1975. Jennings, Philip. “A Message from Farrington Road.” Environment WA 7 (1985): 15–21. ———. “A Decade of Wetland Conservation.” In Western Australian Wetlands: The Kimberley and South-West, edited by Rod Giblett and Hugh Webb, 149–66. Perth, WA: Black Swan Press/Wetlands Conservation Society, 1996. ———. “40 Years of Wetlands Conservation: What Have We Achieved?” Slide Player. n.d. Accessed May 29, 2019. https://slideplayer.com/slide/4629483/. Moodie, Claire. “Police Clash with Protestors at Roe 8.”ABC News, January 11, 2017. Accessed May 29, 2019. www.a​bc.ne​t.au/​news/​2017-​01-12​/poli​ce-cl​ash-w​ith-p​ rotes​ters-​at-ro​e-8/8​17767​8. Riggert, Tom. A Study of the Wetlands of the Swan Coastal Plain: Being a Pilot Study of the Wetlands of Western Australia with Particular Reference to Their Use by Waterfowl. Perth, WA: Department of Fisheries and Fauna, 1966. Seddon, George. A Sense of Place: A Response to an Environment, the Swan Coastal Plain, Western Australia. Nedlands, WA: University of Western Australia Press, 1972.

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Shapcott, Louis Edward. “Lake Monger Jetty, Promenade, and Pavilion c.1914.” Wikimedia Commons. Accessed May 29, 2019. https​://up​load.​wikim​edia.​org/ w​ikipe​dia/c​ommon​s/3/3​c/Lak​e_Mon​ger_j​etty_​prome​nade_​and_p​avili​on_c.​_1914​ .jpg.​ Sinclair, Knight, and Partners. Report to the State Planning Commission and Main Roads Department, Roe Highway Alignment Review: North Lake Road to Kwinana Freeway, May. Perth, WA: Department of Planning and Urban Development; Sydney: Sinclair, Knight, and Partners, 1988.

Chapter 7

Where Fanny Balbuk Walked Re-imagining Perth’s Wetlands John C. Ryan, Danielle Brady, and Christopher Kueh

Perth, like many other cities around the world, was founded on wetlands that have been integral to its history and culture (as chapters 8 and 9 of this volume also highlight).1 In order to promote a settlement agenda, however, early mapmakers sought to erase the city’s wetlands from cartographic depictions.2 Since the colonial era, inner Perth’s swamps and lakes have been drained, filled, significantly reduced in size, or otherwise reclaimed for urban expansion.3 Not only have the swamps and lakes physically disappeared but the memory of their presence and influence on the city’s development over time has also largely been forgotten (see also chapter 8). What was the site of Perth, specifically its wetlands, like before British settlement? In 2014, an interdisciplinary team at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Western Australia, developed a digital visualization process to re-envision Perth prior to colonization. This was based on early maps of the Swan River Colony and a range of archival information. The images depicted the city’s topography, hydrology, and vegetation and became the centerpiece of the physical exhibition titled Re-imagining Perth’s Lost Wetlands and a virtual exhibition hosted by the Western Australian Museum. Alongside historic maps, paintings, photographs, and writings, the visual reconstruction of Perth aimed to foster appreciation of the pre-settlement environment—the homeland of the Whadjuck Noongar, or Bibbulmun, people.4 The exhibition included the narrative of Fanny Balbuk, a Noongar woman who voiced her indignation over the “usurping of her beloved home ground” by flouting property lines and walking through private residences to reach places of cultural significance.5 Beginning with Balbuk’s story and the digital tracing of her walking route through colonial Perth, this chapter discusses the Re-imagining Perth’s Lost Wetlands project in the context of contemporary 163

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pressures on the city’s extant wetlands. We argue that the re-envisioning of Perth through historically, culturally, and geographically grounded digital visualization approaches can inspire the conservation of its wetlands heritage. FANNY BALBUK’S WALK THROUGH THE CITY For many who grew up in Perth, Fanny Balbuk’s perambulations have achieved legendary status in the collective cultural imagination. In his memoir, David Whish-Wilson mentions Balbuk’s defiant walks and the lighting up of the city for astronaut John Glenn in 1962 as the two stories that had the most impact on his Perth childhood.6 From Gordon Stephenson House, Whish-Wilson visualizes her journey in his mind’s eye, past Government House on St. Georges Terrace (the main thoroughfare through the city center), then north on Barrack Street toward the railway station, the site of Lake Kingsford where Balbuk once gathered bush tucker.7 He considers the footpaths “beneath the geometric frame of the modern city [. . .] worn smooth over millennia that snake up through the sheoak and marri woodland and into the city’s heart.”8 In many respects, Balbuk’s story embodies the intertwined culture and nature of Perth—a city of wetlands. Born in 1840 on Heirisson Island, Balbuk (known also as Yooreel) had ancestral bonds to the urban landscape. According to Daisy Bates, writing in the early 1900s, the Noongar term Matagarup, or “leg deep,” denotes the passage of shallow water near Heirisson Island where Balbuk would have forded the Swan River.9 Yoonderup was recorded as the Noongar name for Heirisson Island10 and the birthplace of Balbuk’s mother.11 In the suburb of Shenton Park near present-day Lake Jualbup, her father bequeathed to her a red ochre (or wilgi) pit that she guarded fervently throughout her life.12 Balbuk’s grandparents were culturally linked to the site. At his favorite camp beside the freshwater spring near Kings Park on Mounts Bay Road, her grandfather witnessed the arrival of Lieutenant-Colonel Frederick Irwin, cousin of James Stirling.13 In 1879, colonial entrepreneurs established the Swan Brewery at this significant locale.14 Her grandmother’s gravesite later became Government House15 and she protested vociferously outside “the stone gates guarded by a sentry [that] enclosed her grandmother’s burial ground.”16 Balbuk’s other grandmother was buried beneath Bishop’s Grove, the residence of the city’s first archbishop, now Terrace Hotel.17 Historian Bob Reece observes that Balbuk was “the last full-descent woman of Kar’gatta (Karrakatta), the Bibbulmun name for the Mount Eliza [Kings Park] area of Perth.”18 According to accounts drawn from Bates, her home ground traversed the area between Heirisson Island and Perth’s north-western limits. In Kings Park, one of her relatives was buried near a large, hollow

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tree used by Noongar people like a cistern to capture water and which later became the site of the Queen Victoria statue.19 On the slopes of Mount Eliza, the highest point of Kings Park, at the western end of St. Georges Terrace, she harvested plant foods, including zamia fruits (Macrozamia riedlei).20 Fanny Balbuk’s knowledge contributed to the native title claim lodged by Noongar people in 2006 as Bennell v State of Western Australia—the first of its kind to acknowledge Aboriginal land rights in a capital city and part of the larger Single Noongar Claim.21 Perth’s colonial administration perceived the city’s wetlands as impediments to progress and as insalubrious environments to be eradicated through reclamation practices. For Balbuk and other Noongar people, however, wetlands were “nourishing terrains”22 that afforded sustenance seasonally and meaning perpetually.23 Mary Graham, a Kombu-merri Elder from Queensland, articulates the connection between land and culture: “Because land is sacred and must be looked after, the relation between people and land becomes the template for society and social relations. Therefore all meaning comes from land.”24 Traditional, embodied reliance on Perth’s wetlands is evident in Bates’ documentation. For instance, Boojoormeup was a “big swamp full of all kinds of food, now turned into Palmerston and Lake streets.”25 Considering her cultural values, Balbuk’s determination to maintain pathways through the increasingly colonial Perth environment is unsurprising (figure 7.1). From Heirisson Island “a straight track had led to the place where once she had gathered jilgies [crayfish] and vegetable food with the women, in the swamp where Perth railway station now stands. Through fences and over them, Balbuk took the straight track to the end. When a house was built in the way, she broke its fence-palings with her digging stick and charged up the steps and through the rooms.”26 One obstacle was Hooper’s Fence, which Balbuk broke repeatedly on her trips to areas between Kings Park and the railway station.27 Her tenacious commitment to walking ancestral routes signifies the friction between settlement infrastructure and traditional Noongar livelihood during an era of rapid change. PROJECT BACKGROUND AND APPROACH Inspired by Fanny Balbuk’s story, Re-imagining Perth’s Lost Wetlands began as an Australian response to the Mannahatta Project (see chapter 8 for more details). Founded in 1999, that project used spatial analysis techniques and mapping software to visualize New York’s urbanized Manhattan Island—or Mannahatta as it was called by Indigenous people—in the early 1600s.28 Based on research into the island’s original biogeography and the ecological practices of Native Americans, Mannahatta enabled the public to “peel back”

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the city’s strata, revealing the original composition of the New York site. The layers of visuals included rich details about the island’s landforms, water systems, and vegetation. Mannahatta compelled Associate Professor Rod Giblett, a cultural researcher then based at Edith Cowan University, to propose an analogous model for visualizing Perth circa 1829. The idea attracted support from the City of Perth, Landgate, and the university. Using stories, artifacts, and maps, the team—comprising a cartographer, designer, three-dimensional modeling expert, and historical researchers—set out to generate visualizations of the landscape at the time of British colonization. Noongar Elder Dr. Noel Nannup approved culturally sensitive material and contributed his perspective on Aboriginal content to include in the exhibition. The initiative’s context remains pressing. In many ways, Perth has become a template for development in the metropolitan area.29 While not unusual for a capital city, the rate of transformation is perhaps unexpected in a city less than 200 years old.30 There also remains a persistent view of existing wetlands as obstructions to progress that, once removed, are soon forgotten.31 Digital visualization can contribute to appreciating environments prior to colonization but also to reenvisioning possibilities for future human interactions with land, water, and space.

Figure 7.1  Determination of Fanny Balbuk’s Journey between Yoonderup (Heirisson Island) and Lake Kingsford Traversing What is Now the Central Business District of Perth on the Swan River (2014). Image Background Prepared by Dimitri Fotev. Track Interpolation by Jeffrey Murray. Image Credit: Danielle Brady (Reimagining Perth’s Lost Wetlands Project Team).

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Despite the rapid pace of change, many Perth area residents have memories of wetlands lost during their lifetimes.32 As the clearing and drainage of the inner city occurred early in settlement, however, recollections of urban wetlands exist exclusively in historical records. In the 1930s, a local correspondent using the name “Sandgroper” reminisced about swamps, connecting them to Perth’s colonial heritage: But the Swamps were very real in fact, and in name in the [18] Nineties, and the Perth of my youth cannot be visualised without them. They were, of course, drying up apace, but they were swamps for all that, and they linked us directly with the earliest days of the Colony when our great-grandparents had founded this City of Perth on a sort of hog’s-back, of which Hay-street was the ridge, and from which a succession of streamlets ran down its southern slope to the river, while land locked to the north of it lay a series of lakes which have long since been filled to and built over so that the only evidence that they have ever existed lies in the original street plans of Perth prepared by Roe and Hillman in the early eighteen-thirties.33

A salient consequence of the loss of ecological memory is the tendency to repeat the miscues of the past, especially the blatant disregard for natural and cultural heritage, as suburbanization engulfs the area. While the swamps of inner Perth remain only in the names of streets, existing wetlands in the metropolitan area are still being threatened, as the defeated Roe Highway (Roe 8) campaign demonstrates (see chapters 6 and 8). To re-envision—that is, to engage in the process of re-imagining—Perth’s lost landscape, we used several colonial survey maps to plot the location of the original lakes and swamps. At this time, a series of interconnecting water bodies, known as the Perth Great Lakes, spread across the north of the city.34 This phase required the earliest cartographic sources because, by 1855, city maps no longer depicted wetlands. We synthesized contextual information, such as well depths, geological and botanical maps, settlers’ accounts, Noongar oral histories, and colonial-era artists’ impressions, to produce renderings of Perth (see chapter 8, figures 8.2a and 8.2b). This diverse collection of primary and secondary materials served as the basis for creating new images of the city. Team member Jeffrey Murray interpolated Balbuk’s route using historical mappings and accounts, topographical data, court records, and cartographic common sense. He determined that Balbuk would have camped on the high ground of the southern part of Lake Kingsford rather than the more inundated northern part (figure 7.1). Furthermore, she would have followed a reasonably direct course north of St. Georges Terrace (contrary to David Whish-Wilson’s imaginings) because she was barred from Government House for protesting. This easier route would have also avoided the springs and gulleys that appear on early maps of Perth.

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Additionally, we produced an animated display based on aerial photographs to show the historical extent of change to Fanny Balbuk’s landscape. Prompted by the build-up to World War II, the earliest aerial photography of Perth dates from the late 1930s.35 As “Sandgroper” noted, by this time, most of the urban wetlands had been drained or substantially modified. The animation revealed considerable alterations to the formerly swampy Swan River shoreline. Most prominent among them was the alteration of the Matagarup shallows across the Swan River, originally consisting of small islands. Now traversed by a causeway, this area was transformed into a single island, Heirisson—the general site of Balbuk’s birth. The animation and accompanying materials (maps, images, and writings) enabled viewers to apprehend the changes in real time and to envision what the city was once like. RE-ENVISIONING PERTH’S URBAN HEART The physical environment of inner Perth includes virtually no trace of its wetland origins. Consequently, we considered whether a representation of Perth, as it existed previously, could enhance public understanding of natural heritage and thereby increase its value. For this reason, interpretive materials were exhibited centrally at Perth Town Hall. Built partly by convicts between 1867 and 1870, the venue is close to the site of the 1829 foundation of Perth, depicted in George Pitt Morrison’s painting. Balbuk’s grandfather “camped somewhere in the city of Perth, not far from the Town Hall.”36 The building lies one block from the site of the railway station on the site of Lake Kingsford, the subsistence grounds of Balbuk and her forebears: “The old swamp which is now the Perth railway yards had been a favourite jilgi ground; a spring near the Town Hall had been a camping place of Maiago [. . .] and others of her fathers’ folk; and all around and about city and suburbs she had gathered roots and fished for crayfish in the days gone by.”37 Beginning in 1848, the draining of Lake Kingsford reached completion during the construction of the Town Hall. While the swamps of the city were not appreciated by many residents, some organizations, such as the Perth Town Trust, vigorously opposed the reclamation of the lake, alluding to its hydrological role: “That, the soil being sand, it is not to be supposed that Lake Kingsford has in itself any material effect on the wells of Perth; but that, from this same reason of the sandy soil, it would be impossible to keep the lake dry without, by so doing, withdrawing the water from at least the adjacent parts of the townsite to the same depth.”38 At the time of our exhibition in late 2014, the Lake Kingsford site was again being reworked to sink the railway line and build Yagan Square, a public space named after a colonial-era Noongar leader. The project required specialized construction techniques due to the

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high water table—the remnants of the lake. People travelling to the exhibition by train in October 2014 could have seen the lake reasserting itself in partly filled depressions, flush with winter rain. The exhibition was situated in the Town Hall’s enclosed undercroft designed for markets and more recently for shops. While some visited after peering curiously through the glass walls of the undercroft, others hailed from local and state government organizations. Guest comments applauded the alternative view of Perth we presented. The content invited the public to re-imagine Perth as a city of wetlands that were both environmentally and culturally important. A display panel described how the city’s infrastructure presented a hindrance for Balbuk as she attempted to negotiate the oncefamiliar route between Yoonderup and Lake Kingsford (figure 7.1). Perth’s growth “restricted Balbuk’s wanderings; towns, trains, and farms came through her ‘line of march’; old landmarks were thus swept away, and year after year saw her less confident of the locality of one-time familiar spots.”39 CONSERVING WETLANDS: FROM RECLAIMING TO RE-VALUING? Imagination, for philosopher Roger Scruton, involves “thinking of, and attending to, a present object (by thinking of it, or perceiving it, in terms of something absent).”40 According to Scruton, the feelings aroused through imagination can prompt creative, transformative experience and action. While environmental conservation tends to rely on data-driven empirical approaches, it appeals to imagination less commonly. We have found, however, that attending to the present object (the city) in terms of something absent (its wetlands) through evocative visual material can complement traditional conservation agendas focused on habitats and species. The actual extent of wetlands loss in the Swan Coastal Plain—the flat and sandy region extending from Jurien Bay south to Cape Naturaliste, including Perth—is contested. However, estimates suggest that 80 percent of wetlands have been lost, with remaining habitats threatened by climate change, suburban development, agriculture, and industry.41 As with the swamps and lakes of the inner city, many regional wetlands were cleared, drained, or filled before they could be properly documented. Additionally, the seasonal fluctuations of swampy places have never been easily translatable to twodimensional records. As Giblett notes, the creation of cartographic representations and the assignment of English names were attempts to fix the dynamic boundaries of wetlands, at least in the minds of settlers and administrators.42 Moreover, European colonists found the Western Australian landscape, including its

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wetlands, generally discomfiting. In a letter from 1833, metaphors failed George Fletcher Moore, the effusive colonial commentator: “I cannot compare these swamps to any marshes with which you are familiar.”43 The intermediate nature of wetlands—as neither land nor lake—is perhaps one reason for their cultural marginalization (see also chapter 8).44 The conviction that unsanitary, miasmic wetlands should be converted to more useful purposes largely prevailed.45 Felicity Morel-Ednie Brown’s research into land ownership records in colonial Perth demonstrated that town lots on swampland were often preferred.46 By layering records using geographic information systems (GIS), she revealed modifications to town plans to accommodate swampland frontages. The decline of wetlands in the region appears to have been driven initially by their exploitation for water and later for fertile soil. Northern market gardens supplied the needs of the early city. It is likely that the depletion of Noongar bush foods predated the flourishing of these gardens.47 Engaging with the history of Perth’s swamps raises questions about the appreciation of wetlands today. In an era where numerous conservation strategies and alternatives have been developed,48 the exploitation of wetlands in service to population growth persists. On Perth’s north side, wetlands have long been subdued by controlling their water levels and landscaping their boundaries, as the suburban examples of Lake Monger and Hyde Park (formerly Third Swamp Reserve) reveal. Largely unmodified wetlands, such as Forrestdale Lake, exist south of Perth, but they too are in danger (as chapter 9 of this volume explains).49 The Beeliar Wetlands near the suburb of Bibra Lake comprise an interconnected series of lakes and swamps that are vulnerable to a highway extension project first proposed in the 1950s. Just as the Perth Town Trust debated Lake Kingsford’s draining, local councils and the public fiercely contested the construction of the Roe Highway, which was slated to bisect Beeliar Wetlands, destroying Roe Swamp (chapter 8 provides an account of this campaign).50 The conservation value of wetlands still struggles to compete with traffic planning underpinned by a modernist ideology that associates cars and freeways with progress.51 Outside of archives, the debate about Lake Kingsford is almost entirely forgotten and its physical presence has been erased. Despite the magnitude of loss, re-envisioning the city’s swamplands, in the way that we have, calls attention to past indiscretions while invigorating future possibilities. We hope that the re-envisioning of Perth’s wetlands stimulates public respect for ancestral tracks and songlines like Balbuk’s. Despite the accretions of settler history and colonial discourse, songlines endure as a fundamental cultural heritage. Noongar Elder Noel Nannup states, “as people, if we can get out there on our songlines, even though there may be farms or roads overlaying

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them, fences, whatever it is that might impede us from travelling directly upon them, if we can get close proximity, we can still keep our culture alive. That is why it is so important for us to have our songlines.”52 Just as Fanny Balbuk plied her songlines between Yoonderup and Lake Kingsford, the traditional custodians of Beeliar and other wetlands around Perth walk the landscape as an act of resistance and solidarity, keeping the stories of place alive. NOTES 1. George Seddon, Sense of Place: A Response to an Environment, the Swan Coastal Plain, Western Australia (Melbourne: Bloomings Books, 2004), 226–32. 2. Rod Giblett, Cities and Wetlands: The Return of the Repressed in Nature and Culture (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), chapter 2. 3. Hugo Bekle, “The Wetlands Lost: Drainage of the Perth Lake Systems,” Western Geographer 5, nos. 1–2 (1981): 21–41. 4. Bevan Carter and Lynda Nutter, Nyungah Land: Records of Invasion and Theft of Aboriginal Land on the Swan River 1829–1850 (Guildford, WA: Swan Valley Nyungah Community, 2005). 5. Daisy Bates, The Passing of the Aborigines: A Lifetime Spent Among the Natives of Australia (London: John Murray, 1966), 69. 6. David Whish-Wilson, Perth (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2013). 7. Ibid., 4. 8. Ibid. 9. Daisy Bates, “Oldest Perth: The Days Before the White Men Won,” The Western Mail December 25 (1909): 16–17 [16]. 10. Ibid. 11. Daisy Bates, “Aboriginal Perth,” The Western Mail, July 4 (1929): 70. 12. Ibid. 13. Daisy Bates, “Fanny Balbuk-Yooreel: The Last Swan River (Female) Native,” The Western Mail, June 1 (1907): 45. 14. Suzanne Welborn, Swan: The History of a Brewery (Crawley, WA: University of Western Australia Press, 1987). 15. Bates, “Fanny Balbuk-Yooreel.” 16. Bates, The Passing, 70. 17. Bates, “Aboriginal Perth.” 18. Bob Reece, “‘Killing with Kindness’: Daisy Bates and New Norcia,” Aboriginal History 32 (2008): 128–45 [134]. 19. Bates, “Aboriginal Perth.” 20. Bates, “Fanny Balbuk-Yooreel.” 21. South West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council and John Host with Chris Owen, “It’s Still in My Heart, This is My Country”: The Single Noongar Claim History (Crawley, WA: University of Western Australia Press, 2009). 22. Deborah Bird Rose, Nourishing Terrains: Australian Aboriginal Views of Landscape and Wilderness (Canberra: Australian Heritage Commission, 1996).

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23. Rory O’Connor, Gary Quartermaine, and Corrie Bodney, Report on an Investigation into Aboriginal Significance of Wetlands and Rivers in the Perth-Bunbury Region (Perth, WA: Western Australian Water Resources Council, 1989). 24. Mary Graham, “Some Thoughts about the Philosophical Underpinnings of Aboriginal Worldviews,” Australian Humanities Review 45 (2008), accessed May 21, 2019, http:​//aus​trali​anhum​aniti​esrev​iew.o​rg/20​08/11​/01/s​ome-t​hough​ts-ab​out-t​he-ph​ iloso​phica​l-und​erpin​nings​-of-a​borig​inal-​world​views​/. 25. Bates, “Aboriginal Perth,” 70. 26. Bates, The Passing, 70. 27. Daisy Bates, “Hooper’s Fence: A Query,” The Western Mail, April 18 (1935): 9. 28. Eric Sanderson, Markley Boyer, and Chad Robertson, Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2009). 29. Richard Weller, Boomtown 2050: Scenarios for a Rapidly Growing City (Crawley, WA: University of Western Australia Press, 2009). 30. Clive Forster, Australian Cities: Continuity and Change (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 31. Urban Bushland Council, “Bushland Issues,” Urban Bushland Council, September 29 (2015), accessed September 1, 2015, www.b​ushla​ndper​th.or​g.au/​bushl​ and-i​ssues​. 32. Rod Giblett, Forrestdale: People and Place (Bassendean, WA: Access Press, 2006). 33. Sandgroper, “Gilgies: The Swamps of Perth,” The West Australian May 4 (1935): 7. 34. Hugo Bekle and Joseph Gentilli, “History of the Perth Lakes,” Early Days 10, no. 5 (1993): 442–60. 35. Robert Dixon, Photography, Early Cinema, and Colonial Modernity: Frank Hurley’s Synchronized Lecture Entertainments (London: Anthem Press, 2011), 148–54. 36. Bates, “Fanny Balbuk-Yooreel.” 37. Daisy Bates, “Derelicts: The Passing of the Bibbulmun,” The Western Mail, December 25 (1924): 55–56 [55]. 38. Independent Journal of Politics and News, “Perth Town Trust,” The Perth Gazette and Independent Journal of Politics and News, July 8 (1848): 2–3 [3]. 39. Bates, “Fanny Balbuk-Yooreel.” 40. Roger Scruton, Art and Imagination (London: Methuen, 1974), 155. 41. Department of Environment and Conservation, Geomorphic Wetlands Swan Coastal Plain Dataset (Perth, WA: Department of Environment and Conservation, 2008). 42. Rod Giblett, Postmodern Wetlands: Culture, History, Ecology (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996), 72–73. 43. George Fletcher Moore, Extracts from the Letters of George Fletcher Moore, ed. Martin Doyle (London: Orr and Smith, 1834), 220. 44. Giblett, Postmodern Wetlands, 39. 45. Rod Giblett, Black Swan Lake: Life of a Wetland (Bristol: Intellect, 2013), 105–22. 46. Felicity Morel-Ednie Brown, “Layered Landscape: The Swamps of Colonial Northbridge,” Social Science Computer Review 27, no. 3 (2009): 390–419.

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47. Carter and Nutter, Nyungah Land. 48. For example, see, Roland Bobbink, Boudewijn Beltman, Jos Verhoeven, and Dennis Whigham, eds., Wetlands: Functioning, Biodiversity Conservation, and Restoration (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2006), 93–220. 49. Giblett, Black Swan Lake. 50. Nandi Chinna, “Swamp,” Griffith Review 47 (2015), accessed May 23, 2019, https​://gr​iffit​hrevi​ew.co​m/art​icles​/swam​p. 51. Jenny Gregory, “Remembering Mounts Bay: The Narrows Scheme and the Internationalization of Perth Planning,” Studies in Western Australian History 27 (2011): 145–66. 52. Noel Nannup, “Songlines with Dr Noel Nannup,” Vimeo (2015), accessed May 23, 2019, https://vimeo.com/129198094, quoted material transcribed from 3.08–3.39 of the video.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Bates, Daisy. “Fanny Balbuk-Yooreel: The Last Swan River (Female) Native.” The Western Mail, June 1 (1907): 45. ———. “Oldest Perth: The Days Before the White Men Won.” The Western Mail, December 25 (1909): 16–17. ———. “Derelicts: The Passing of the Bibbulmun.” The Western Mail, December 25 (1924): 55–56. ———. “Aboriginal Perth.” The Western Mail, July 4 (1929): 70. ———. “Hooper’s Fence: A Query.” The Western Mail, April 18 (1935): 9. ———. The Passing of the Aborigines: A Lifetime Spent Among the Natives of Australia. London: John Murray, 1966. Bekle, Hugo. “The Wetlands Lost: Drainage of the Perth Lake Systems.” Western Geographer 5, nos. 1–2 (1981): 21–41. Bekle, Hugo, and Joseph Gentilli. “History of the Perth Lakes.” Early Days 10, no. 5 (1993): 442–60. Bobbink, Roland, Boudewijn Beltman, Jos Verhoeven, and Dennis Whigham, eds. Wetlands: Functioning, Biodiversity Conservation, and Restoration. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2006. Carter, Bevan, and Lynda Nutter. Nyungah Land: Records of Invasion and Theft of Aboriginal Land on the Swan River 1829–1850. Guildford, WA: Swan Valley Nyungah Community, 2005. Chinna, Nandi. “Swamp.” Griffith Review 47 (2015).Accessed May 23, 2019. https​:// gr​iffit​hrevi​ew.co​m/art​icles​/swam​p. Department of Environment and Conservation. Geomorphic Wetlands Swan Coastal Plain Dataset. Perth, WA: Department of Environment and Conservation, 2008. Dixon, Robert. Photography, Early Cinema, and Colonial Modernity: Frank Hurley’s Synchronized Lecture Entertainments. London: Anthem Press, 2011. Forster, Clive. Australian Cities: Continuity and Change. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Giblett, Rod. Postmodern Wetlands: Culture, History, Ecology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996.

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———. Forrestdale: People and Place. Bassendean, WA: Access Press, 2006. ———. Black Swan Lake: Life of a Wetland. Bristol: Intellect, 2013. ———. Cities and Wetlands: The Return of the Repressed in Nature and Culture. London: Bloomsbury, 2016. Graham, Mary. “Some Thoughts about the Philosophical Underpinnings of Aboriginal Worldviews.” Australian Humanities Review 45 (2008). Accessed May 21, 2019. http:​//aus​trali​anhum​aniti​esrev​iew.o​rg/20​08/11​/01/s​ome-t​hough​ts-ab​out-t​ he-ph​iloso​phica​l-und​erpin​nings​-of-a​borig​inal-​world​views​/. Gregory, Jenny. “Remembering Mounts Bay: The Narrows Scheme and the Internationalization of Perth Planning.” Studies in Western Australian History 27 (2011): 145–66. Independent Journal of Politics and News. “Perth Town Trust.” The Perth Gazette and Independent Journal of Politics and News, July 8 (1848): 2–3. Moore, George Fletcher. Extracts from the Letters of George Fletcher Moore, edited by Martin Doyle. London: Orr and Smith, 1834. Morel-Ednie Brown, Felicity. “Layered Landscape: The Swamps of Colonial Northbridge.” Social Science Computer Review 27, no. 3 (2009): 390–419. Nannup, Noel. “Songlines With Dr Noel Nannup.” Vimeo (2015). Accessed May 23, 2019. https://vimeo.com/129198094. O’Connor, Rory, Gary Quartermaine, and Corrie Bodney. Report on an Investigation into Aboriginal Significance of Wetlands and Rivers in the Perth-Bunbury Region. Perth, WA: Western Australian Water Resources Council, 1989. Reece, Bob. “ ‘Killing with Kindness’: Daisy Bates and New Norcia.” Aboriginal History 32 (2008): 128–45. Rose, Deborah Bird. Nourishing Terrains: Australian Aboriginal Views of Landscape and Wilderness. Canberra: Australian Heritage Commission, 1996. Sanderson, Eric, Markley Boyer, and Chad Robertson. Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2009. Sandgroper. “Gilgies: The Swamps of Perth.” The West Australian May 4 (1935): 7. Scruton, Roger. Art and Imagination. London: Methuen, 1974. Seddon, George. Sense of Place: A Response to an Environment, the Swan Coastal Plain, Western Australia. Melbourne: Bloomings Books, 2004. South West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council and John Host with Chris Owen. “It’s Still in My Heart, This Is My Country”: The Single Noongar Claim History. Crawley, WA: University of Western Australia Press, 2009. Urban Bushland Council. “Bushland Issues.” Urban Bushland Council, September 29 (2015). Accessed September 1, 2015. www.b​ushla​ndper​th.or​g.au/​bushl​and-i​ssues​. Welborn, Suzanne. Swan: The History of a Brewery. Crawley, WA: University of Western Australia Press, 1987. Weller, Richard. Boomtown 2050: Scenarios for a Rapidly Growing City. Crawley, WA: University of Western Australia Press, 2009. Whish-Wilson, David. Perth. Sydney: New South Publishing, 2013.

Chapter 8

The Cultural Significance of Wetlands Perth’s Lost Swamps to the Beeliar Wetlands Danielle Brady and Jeffrey Murray

The history of Perth, Western Australia, has been characterized by the incremental loss of its wetlands (as other contributors to this volume have emphasized). While disputes about wetlands are often framed solely in terms of the environment, they are places of cultural significance too. The extensive wetlands of central Perth, food gathering and meeting places for Noongar people, are now expunged from the landscape. Urban dwellers of Perth are largely unaware that the seasonal lakes and wetlands of the center of the city were the larders, gardens, hideouts, dumps, and playgrounds of previous generations; both Noongar and Settler. The loss of social memory of these lost cultural/ natural places entails the framing of wetlands as aberrant and continues to influence Perth’s development and the sense of place of its inhabitants. Reimagining Perth’s Lost Wetlands was a project which attempted to re-imagine the pre-colonial landscape using archival material (see also chapter 7). Reimagining the past allows connections to be made to the last remaining wetlands in the wider metropolitan area. The fight to save the Beeliar Wetlands in southern suburban Perth as a cultural/natural place illustrates the changing value of wetlands and the laying down of social memories of place. A popular view of Perth is of a pleasant city on the edge of a vast, arid state. Yet, Perth has a Mediterranean climate, with a cool, wet winter. It is also the center of an internationally recognized biodiversity hotspot. The city sits on the Swan Coastal Plain, a geographical region encompassing the meandering Swan and Canning Rivers. The city was established on the banks of the Swan River, technically an estuary at this point in its journey to the sea. Prior to European colonization in 1829, the plain was dotted with lakes and wetlands, or, as they are often known locally, swamps. The developing city of Perth was situated between the river and a network of wetlands extending across the north of the city. While the journals of European colonists repeatedly refer 175

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to these wetlands, or “lagoons,” within the first hundred years of settlement, most had been drained. While Perth dwellers can still experience a few highly modified lakes on the outskirts of the central district, the original lakes and swamps are completely gone, covered by streets and buildings. The development of Perth removed wetlands from the central city landscape and, moreover, from social memory. In this chapter, we use social memory in the sense articulated by Sturken as different to historical records and solely personal memories, but continually reproduced through cultural forms.1 Geographies of memory are reproduced not only by material form but by “bodily repetition of performance.”2 The limited visual traces of Perth’s wetlands, in maps, artworks, and photographs, has led to a loss of understanding of the biogeography of the region alongside the physical loss of the wetlands, which can no longer be experienced. This chapter takes as its starting point a research project that aimed to re-imagine the lost wetland environment of central Perth by reconstructing a digital image of the natural landscape as it might have appeared in 1827 prior to settlement. Rod Giblett problematizes the separation of nature and culture, arguing that even national parks are cultural landscapes.3 In Giblett’s five cultures of nature taxonomy, the transition from second nature (agriculture) to third nature (mining) occurred in a short period of time in Western Australia.4 Agricultural and pastoral pursuits were followed quickly by mining and engineering, and the central city of Perth began to engineer drainage solutions to perceived problems of flooding and sanitation from the early years after European settlement. Perth was settled by Europeans just before the photographic era. Many of the well-known images of colonial Perth were taken by Alfred Stone, a lawyer and pioneer photographer.5 As Perth was slow to develop at first, Stone’s photographs taken from the 1860s show examples of original vegetation and landform. However, the majority of photographs of Perth, and, indeed, artworks, are from a perspective facing the river and the wetlands at the back of Perth do not feature. The other common perspective is from the highest point of King’s Park. This 400 hectare (988 acre) park, the majority of which is remnant vegetation, is promoted by its own park authority as the largest of its kind contained within a capital city. While it is not the pristine bush many believe, having been quarried and logged in colonial times, it has hundreds of endemic species and remains significant to how Western Australians view themselves.6 Seddon and Ravine wrote about the iconic view from Mount Eliza, Kings Park, across the Swan River to Perth and its linkage to Arcadian themes.7 Despite the fact that this view now takes in a freeway interchange, constructed over a large, filled section of the Swan River, it is still understood as aesthetically pleasing. By contrast, there are just a few images of wetland areas in Perth, such as an image of Claise Brook by Alfred Stone.8 Giblett has challenged the pleasant view of Perth, seeing instead “a city malignantly settling its swamp setting.”9

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In Perth’s Kings Park, renamed for the King in 1901, is the approved park with its pleasing prospect from Mount Eliza, whereas the lakes and wetlands behind the city were first exploited and then expunged. Wetland drainage and clearing in the wider metropolitan area of Perth continues to the present day, a local manifestation of a worldwide problem. The drivers for wetland clearing are most frequently transport development and urban sprawl. In this century, the few remaining wetlands on the Swan Coastal Plain are in the outer city and all are threatened by development of different kinds. The values attached to wetlands in Perth, however, have changed over time. After considering the lost wetlands of central Perth, this chapter moves to a contemporary dispute about the Beeliar Wetlands in outer, suburban Perth. RE-IMAGINING PERTH’S LOST WETLANDS The original intention of the Re-imagining Perth’s Lost Wetlands project was to create a model of the center of Perth in a similar way to the Mannahatta project. Manhattan Island is one of the most altered physical environments on Earth. Landscape ecologist Eric Sanderson led a team who attempted to reimagine the island, Mannahatta, at the time of Dutch colonization in 1609.10 The foundation for this work was the British Headquarters Map, which dated from the American Revolutionary War and detailed topography, shorelines, streams, and wetlands along with settlement.11 Lacking anything as detailed as the British Headquarters Map, the Re-imagining Perth’s Lost Wetlands project used several archival maps to infer topography and the location of wetlands. One example is the 1838 Roe-Hillman map (figure 8.1) showing the lakes and early city layout. Maps showing the water table and well depths were used to glean additional information about the seasonal nature of the lakes and contemporary soil maps were used to deduce the broad vegetation categories. Settlers’ and surveyors accounts, Noongar oral histories, colonial era artworks, and the early photography of Alfred Stone were used to create a historical impression of the city. Figure 8.2a shows the re-imagined visualization of Perth before European settlement. It reveals forgotten interconnectedness between the wetlands. The pre-settlement wetlands all drained eastward into a seasonally flooded area called variously Tea Tree Lagoon or Swamp and from there into Claise Brook, prior to emptying into the Swan River. The image shows the wet season extent of the lakes, whereas their boundaries would have varied during the year. In figure 8.2a, artistic licence has been employed in exaggerating the height of the vegetation to indicate the relative locations of forested areas and swamp/lake margins occupied by paperbark and rushes. The vegetation types,

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Figure 8.1  Plan of Town Site of Perth, Western Australia, 1838 by Colonial Draftsman, A. Hillman, and Surveyor General, John Septimus Roe. Image Credit: State Records Office Western Australia.

including sandy areas of native grass, are portrayed in locations deduced from the many historical sources researched during the project. Tree types appearing to grow in water replicate genera that were seasonally flooded. The image, therefore, presents an artistic impression of what the central area of Perth might have looked like in 1827, rather than a reconstruction, as in the Mannahatta project. In contrast, a contemporary view of Perth shows no trace of the lost wetlands (figure 8.2b). Claisebrook Cove shown in the foreground is a completely reconstructed inlet. It was developed as part of the East Perth Project in the 1990s and is in approximately the same area as the original Tea Tree Lagoon/Swamp but with a larger entrance to allow egress by boats. The present day “brook” entering the cove from the north is an engineered, artificial waterway, complete with bronze turtle public art. As with many contemporary waterways in Perth, the Cove has limestone banks surrounded by either mowed lawns or paving. The re-imagined impression of central Perth is viewed obliquely from the east of the city at the point the Swan River turns north. This is the opposite side of the town from the pleasing aspect from Kings Park (seen in figure 8.2b as the vegetated area to the left of the skyscrapers). From colonial times, the east side of Perth was the location of tanneries, rubbish dumps, an abattoir, and a cemetery. Later, industrial uses included a power station, gas works, and train yards.12 Claise Brook, which had drained most of the fresh water

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Figure 8.2  (a) South-west View Across Central Perth from the Swan River at East Perth. Re-imagined View of Perth, circa 1827. (b) Contemporary View, 2014. Image Credit: (a) Danielle Brady (Edith Cowan University) and (b) City of Perth.

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swamps and seasonal lakes across Perth into the Swan River, became instead the carrier of its effluent. The loss of the social memory of the original landscape, particularly wetlands, is only one layer of re-inscription of East Perth, and Perth’s, cultural history. East Perth has been continuously inhabited by Noongar people, but during 1927–48, they were prohibited from entering central Perth after 6 p.m. without a permit.13 It was the location of the Coolbaroo Club for Aboriginal people and their white supporters between 1946 and 196014 and became a residential area for Aboriginal people from outside Perth due to the lower cost housing among the industrial activity.15 In 2000, East Perth was cut in two by construction of the Graham Farmer Freeway. While few can now afford to live there, sites of significance to Noongar people are memorialized in East Perth public art and plaques. Byrne and Houston have pointed out that in the gentrification of East Perth “the colonial past has not really been displaced, but rather has been incorporated into popular multicultural representations of place.”16 Gregory cautions accepting a romanticized version of East Perth’s history to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.17 Avoidance of the mistakes of the past was a motivating factor in exhibiting the Re-imagining Perth’s Lost Wetlands project. An exhibition of materials from the Re-imagining Perth’s Lost Wetlands project was held in the Perth Town Hall in 2014 (see also chapter 7). The exhibition contained archival photographs, maps, and textual accounts of the lost wetlands. When the 1827 view (figure 8.2a) was displayed, exhibition visitors expressed surprise and, even, disbelief, at the extent of wetlands that had existed across central Perth. The visual materials prompted visitors to make connections between the lost wetland landscape of central Perth, remaining wetlands in outer Perth, and their memories of wetlands. While it is obvious, on the one hand, that all urban environments were once natural, change has taken place in Perth over such a short period of history it is almost as though the wetlands of central Perth had never existed. The superficially pleasant tree-lined streets and abundant parks mask the extent of the changes. Bolleter, Buck, and Sweetman have noted that, although parks are numerous in the suburban core of Perth, “one quarter have no trees, only one-tenth have significant wildlife function and only one-hundredth have wetlands.”18 This loss of biodiversity in urban environments has motivated at least some Perth residents as the city spreads further across the Swan Coastal Plain. Organizations such as the Urban Bushland Council have attempted to link together localized “Friends” groups who act as custodians of remnant wetlands and bushland (see also chapter 9). “Friends” volunteers promote activities like weeding, planting, watering, and rubbish removal. The bodily repetition of these communal acts of care inscribes a different suite of social memories for the remaining wetlands of Perth.

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PERTH’S LOST SWAMPS AS LANDSCAPES OF CULTURE Wetlands and swamps have been described as intermediate, neither wholly land nor water, which may account for the ambivalence toward them.19 Even the arguably more aesthetically pleasing river systems of Western Australia have been paid limited attention in histories of Perth, given their importance to settlement.20 However, the river is still visible, albeit with modified foreshores and declining biota. The wetlands of central Perth are gone and the seasonal fluctuations in water and fauna activity are no longer visible. Gardens and public areas are planted with species expected to survive the hot, dry summers with reticulation from precious water supplies. Morel Ednie-Brown demonstrated by GIS (Geographic Information System) analysis of colonial Perth town plans that depictions of the inner-city swamplands disappeared over the twenty-two years from 1833 to 1855.21 She concluded that swamplands were preferentially selected by settlers due to their fertile soil and access to fresh water and that the town plan was modified to maximize lots with swamp frontages. This work showed that drainage and clearing were not due entirely to fears about disease. Indeed, disease had been associated with swamps in colonial Perth due to sewage entering the water table connected to the lakes. Outbreaks of typhoid in the 1890s doubtless extended the period in which people associated swamps with illness and beyond the era when miasma were thought to cause disease. Chinese gardeners had been among the first of the settlers to utilize the rich, swamp soils for food production and became the target of complaints, along with their swamp gardens. At the time this aggrieved Perth resident wrote to the paper in 1909, the inner-city swamps were no longer shown on maps: There is no doubt the time is fast approaching when the citizens will demand the filling up of all the oozy swamp areas all over the city. These areas are the breeding ground for that champion disease-carrier, the ubiquitous mosquito, and one has but to notice the heavy dank pall which hangs over the swamps during most nights to be convinced that in the interests of health an end must come to their existence in their present state. Another serious menace to health lies in the use of high-smelling fertilisers by the Chinese gardeners, who rent the swamps. The heavy stench which arises from the vegetable gardens on muggy nights is clear evidence that public health is menaced by their existence. The time must come when every city swamp must be filled in, and when every Chinaman now cultivating the gardens will be told to remove their business to less populous parts.22

While all of the wetlands shown in figure 8.2a had disappeared by the turn of the century, two on the outskirts of central Perth, Lake Monger and Third Swamp (later Hyde Park), would continue to elicit public commentary until

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they were tamed. In the 1890s, arguments about what to do about Third Swamp resulted in numerous letters to local papers. Residents made a deputation to Premier John Forrest about Third Swamp claiming “a great deal of the sickness in the locality it was thought was due to the bad smell that came from it.”23 However, not all were content with the moves to turn the swamp into a park: An expensive fence has been placed round the said reserve, the value of which, as an investment, can benefit only the surrounding estate. Again, trees which cost nothing and gave a grateful shade, also tending to keep the earth cool, have been ruthlessly cut down, and to replace them 300 border plants have been set, and at a cost, did the ratepayers know it, that might well make them ponder. Then come to the swamp itself, and what has been done to it? As things go in Perth it would make a valuable market garden addition, if cheapness of living is a sufficiently important factor to be considered. It would economically dry by evaporation if undue haste were absent; and then the reeds could have been cut and grubbed, islands banked, and all else done at a fractional expense of what has been already expended, and for which there is so little to see.24

This agricultural re-imagining of Third Swamp did not come to fruition, and it was reborn as Hyde Park, complete with decorative flower beds. Negative connotations of swamps and indeterminate wetlands persist to the present. As recently as 2012, the Hyde Park Lakes Restoration Working Group investigated options to ensure the park “does not continue to be a ‘seasonal wetland’ and a casualty of declining water levels which transforms it into a swamp each summer.”25 In this context, the term swamp is understood intrinsically as undesirable. The restoration of Hyde Park did not restore the original landscape, a swamp rather than a lake, but extended the already park-like environment with limestone edges to the lake, constructed islands and artificial water level management. The memory of swamps as places of abundance and social activity has largely been lost along with their original ecosystems, except to Noongar people. Interviewed about their family connection to Forrestdale Lake, south of Perth, Noongar Elders described the swamp as “a larder,” “a kitchen,” and “a supermarket,” thus reflecting the memory of this usage.26 Lake Kingsford, one of the original lakes in central Perth and now replaced by the Perth Railway Station, was known as a collection site for vegetable foods, fresh water crayfish, and turtles.27 Swamps were also places of refuge. In the second year of European settlement of Perth, a battle occurred between local Noongar and soldiers and armed settlers. Fought over the course of one day in May 1830, this dispute started near present-day Kings Park and ended at a swamp believed to be Lake Monger. At this site, Noongar people attempted to take cover in the tea

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trees and dense reeds. Spears were thrown from the cover of the swamp and muskets fired into the bush. At nightfall, the soldiers attempted to corral the Noongar: Darkness had now fallen, and patrols were told to completely surround the lagoons and prevent, if possible, any movement during the night. For a considerable time voices were heard in the lagoon, but in a while silence reigned. Yet the patrols had not reported any movement on the part of the blacks. At daybreak next morning the commander of the troops endeavoured to get into communication with the blacks and, if possible, re-establish friendly feelings, when it was found that the lagoon was practically deserted by the enemy. The military cordon had reported no movement during the hours of darkness, but the thick scrub made the matter of reconnaissance very difficult. In a little while, however, the patrol to the eastward reported that the enemy were in the act of crossing the river at what is now the Causeway, having eluded the vigilance of the reconnoitring parties, travelling, no doubt, along the chain of swamps which than extended to what is now East Perth.28

The account of the battle and aftermath by the commanding officer, Captain Frederick Irwin, also explained that, in the morning, the Noongar were “seen to cross the river at the islands, with their families, in considerable numbers.”29 The swamps across the northern boundary of Perth had provided refuge and an escape route for the Noongar people as they fled along a traditional route across the river. While combatants on both sides were wounded in the battle, it is unknown how many Noongar people were killed. This significant event in colonial history is not well known in Western Australia, and there is no written account of the Noongar side of the story. Lake Monger continued to be a meeting and campsite for Noongar people until the 1920s.30 Arguments about the vegetation, drainage of, and access to Lake Monger were made as the city grew, and early claims were often utilitarian, preferring wetland uses that favored agriculture. Ultimately, exertion of control over the indeterminate wetlands and swamps was often achieved by turning them into rubbish dumps: Five acres have been reclaimed for the Lake Monger reserve by the tipping of refuse into the swamp [. . .] 25,960 loads of trade waste and rubbish (making a total of 30,797 tons) had been dumped at the tip and 13,000 cubic yards of sand had been used for the covering seal. The area added to the reserve would ultimately be grassed and added to the acreage already reclaimed for the “creation of a fine recreational reserve.”31

In 2017, the assumed site of the Battle of Lake Monger is a clearly defined lake with sparse vegetation around much of its perimeter. Due to its proximity to the city, it is heavily used for recreational purposes such as walking and

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cycling. Although the natural environment of Lake Monger has changed dramatically, it is still home to large numbers of birds including the black swan, and is a place where city people now encounter wildlife. On the east side of town, the river crossing of muddy islands where Noongar fled the muskets of colonists in 1830 is today the discrete Heirisson Island. It is traversed by a causeway and is a major traffic route into and out of Perth. The route across the causeway and down the Albany Highway was probably a Noongar bidi, or traditional pathway (see chapter 6), and the island known also by its Noongar name, Matagarup, has been a site of protest and resistance since 1978.32 Facing Matagarup on the city side is the reconstructed wetland of Point Frazer Park. Bolleter has suggested this particular “park” is a minimal response to numerous failed naturalization plans for the reclaimed river foreshore and notes that the original, swampy, Point Frazer is subsumed within the reclaimed foreshore.33 The original lakes and swamps in central Perth are long gone, but even the two remaining on the outer edges of central Perth are lost in the sense that they no longer resemble their natural state and only a part of their histories is retained. Lake Monger has been hydrologically disconnected from the Claisebrook catchment, with a drain emptying into the Swan River at Mounts Bay. Hyde Park is faintly reminiscent of its English namesake. Perth’s innercity wetlands have been reformulated as discrete lakes and parks and only selected social memories of these former cultural/natural places are held. There are no “swamps” left in central Perth. RE-IMAGINING THE BEELIAR WETLANDS AS OTHER THAN THE ROE 8 RESERVE Colonial attitudes to wetlands continue to shape the development of the city as Perth expands inexorably across the Swan Coastal Plain. A present-day dispute about wetland clearing demonstrates the changing value of wetlands in metropolitan Perth and that, although road development continues to override other land uses, the clearing of swamp land can no longer proceed uncontested. The foundation of what was ultimately a successful protest against a highway project was the re-imagining of the Beeliar Wetlands as other than a road reserve. This re-imagining was mediated not only through the spatial and experiential knowledge of the natural wetland environment, but by acknowledging the social values attached to the specific place of Beeliar. The colonial surveyor John Septimus Roe is well remembered in Perth for laying out the inner city. A monument to his memory can be found in Kings Park, not far from the location of the famous viewing site. The place, the Roe Gardens, has at its center a granite plinth topped with a bronze version of

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the map shown in figure 8.1. Of course, no lakes or swamps can be observed today from the viewing point of Roe Gardens, and significant areas of the Swan River in the vista have been reclaimed. The Roe Gardens monument dates from 1956, the heyday of modernist highway planning in Perth.34 Roe’s name was given to a highway first proposed in 1955, which later became part of Perth’s Metropolitan Regional Scheme (MRS). The Roe highway was to be an outer ring road around the city center at the time it was planned, but, by the time construction commenced in 1981, it was contained within greater metropolitan Perth. Construction of several sections of the Roe Highway involved the clearing of remnant bushland, but the most controversial section, Roe 8, was to pass between two lakes and bisect the Beeliar Wetlands. The Beeliar Wetlands, named for the original Beeliar people, also contains Bibra (Wallibup) and North Lake (Coolbellup), now part of the Beeliar Regional Park located about 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of central Perth.35 Surrounded by residential development and encircled by roads, the wetlands contain fauna species that are now rare in urban environments, including splendid fairy wrens, oblong turtles, and the shy, burrowing marsupials known locally by their Noongar name quenda. The banksia woodland flora includes iconic species, such as spider orchids and the Christmas tree (Nuytsia floribunda), and critical foraging habitat for the endangered Carnaby’s black cockatoo. Migratory birds like the rainbow bee-eater nest in shallow burrows in the sandy ground. Massive flooded gums and paperbarks grow in a swampy peat basin believed to be hydrologically unique on the Swan Coastal Plain (see chapter 5 of this volume).36 The high biodiversity of this area has been recorded by successive studies, both in terms of plant communities and in total number of species. It contains a particularly unusual and untouched swamp that has come to be known as Roe Swamp. In contrast to the situation with the wetlands of central Perth lost in colonial times, Beeliar Regional Park is commonly agreed to have environmental value, and parts of the wetlands are mapped as “conservation category,” intended to ensure their preservation.37 However, the state government has excised parts of the regional park in order to build the Roe 8 Highway. The Roe 8 reserve can be clearly seen on maps dating from the 1960s. Strong objection to Roe 8 has been voiced since the 1970s, alongside the growing environmental movement, while the need for it to be completed has been supported by successive Liberal governments in Western Australia. While justifications for the highway have changed over the fifty years since it was first suggested, they are all connected to the idea that roads equal progress and that highway building is a natural consequence of development in Perth. In 2008, the state government recommitted to completing the Roe 8 Highway section. By this time, the Beeliar Regional Park containing the wetlands and two lakes, to be impacted by the highway, was heavily used by the

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local community and increasing numbers of visitors. Recreational uses, such as bird-watching, dog-walking, and cycling, contributed new values ascribed to the wetlands and social memories associated with them. The wetlands became a focus for education with the establishment of a Wetlands Education Center in the 1980s, attracting students, artists, and tourists. Increasingly the Beeliar wetlands are cherished for their intrinsic value as a wild place remaining within an urban environment. There is also growing understanding that this urban bushland provides necessary habitat for mobile endemic species such as the endangered Carnaby’s black cockatoo. The assemblage of plants and animals found on in the remaining wetland areas of Perth are often described in the terms of environmental science, but there are complex values attached to the sights and sounds of the native flora and fauna in their natural habitat. The Beeliar wetlands were settled by Europeans in the 1840s and, as with other wetland areas on the Swan Coastal Plain, there were early incursions for agricultural purposes including dairying and market gardening and the inevitable rubbish dumping at the southern end of Bibra Lake.38 An Australian Women’s Army Service (AWAS) camp was stationed at Bibra Lake during the Second World War.39 Residential developments have continued to infill around the wetlands. Recreational facilities, including a water park, ice rink, and skateboarding park, abut Bibra Lake. The shores of Bibra and North Lake have long been known as Aboriginal heritage sites, and remain significant to Noongar people, but in 2015 approval was given for construction of Roe 8 through heritage sites.40 A traditional Noongar custodian, Corina Abraham, attempted to challenge the approval in the Supreme Court on cultural heritage grounds. Just before Christmas, in December 2016, work on the Roe 8 highway commenced. This followed the overturn on appeal of a Western Australian Supreme Court case won by the community group, Save Beeliar Wetlands, which had held off construction for a year.41 Over the following three months, a grass-roots community protest movement opposed the dominant narrative surrounding the need for the highway to reduce traffic congestion and improve road safety. Community members, instead, supported the retention of the Beeliar Wetlands, firstly, for their intrinsic value as a wild place and, secondly, as a space tied to community values of connectedness and wellbeing. This emotional geography incorporated natural and cultural values42 and led to Indigenous and non-Indigenous people joining forces to protest the construction of the highway. The desire to preserve the Beeliar Wetlands, and opposition to the highway, revealed that fragmenting wetlands into discrete areas is no longer uniformly accepted. In a similar way, to the network of seasonal lakes and swamps behind Perth, the Beeliar Wetlands comprises several lakes and

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swamps with interconnected hydrology. Building a highway between the two lakes would disrupt the natural flow of water and would make the movement of animals difficult while fracturing the community. This barrier to movement, of both people and fauna, was a major point of opposition. The past human uses of the wetlands, both Indigenous and Settler, were incorporated into the suite of cultural touchpoints referenced by protesters. For example, two Norfolk Island pines, non-endemic species planted in 1900 by dairy farmer John Dixon, were cut down during early site works to the outrage of the community. The city of Cockburn heritage inventory entry captures the layers of meaning surrounding these trees on the shores of Bibra Lake: The pine trees are very tall and have streetscape and landmark qualities. The trees have historic value as they display strong links with a dairy industry on the shores of Bibra Lake, an industry that is no longer practiced in this vicinity. The trees are fine representatives of vegetation that has survived urban development and are associated with early settlers, the Dixon Family.43

The trees were crudely lopped at an early stage of works when they did not pose any impediment to other clearing and well before other nearby work began (figure 8.3). The local community and protesters experienced this as a purposeful desecration of the place they were fighting to preserve and as an attempt to demoralize the community. The lost trees were seen as a symbol of

Figure 8.3  Heritage Norfolk Island Pine Trees at Bibra Lake in 2017. (a) left: Fenced in the Roe 8 Reserve; (b) right: Lopped. Image Credit: Danielle Brady.

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Figure 8.4  Non-Violent Direct Action by Roe 8 Protestors at the Beeliar Wetlands 2017. Image Credit: Simon Stevens.

the government attitude to the protest, a metaphorical two-finger salute, and even mentioned in the federal parliament by an opposition member: “A few weeks ago they were chopped down to stumps and left to stand in a fenced enclosure like exhibits in a display of human stupidity.”44 So easily observed in the wetland area at stake, the ruined trees hardened the resolve of protesters and galvanized non-violent direct action at the construction site (figure 8.4). Although the Dixon Pines were the remnant of an agricultural incursion into the Beeliar Wetlands, they were incorporated into the social memory of the place along with the Noongar heritage sites, the AWAS camp and the biodiversity of Roe Swamp. The Roe 8 clearing was halted with a change of the Western Australian state government in March 2017, with community protest as a likely factor in the election result. By this time, however, a path had been gouged through the entire length of the Roe 8 reserve and through the wetlands. The ghost road seen on maps since the 1960s had become a physical road. The attempts to preserve the Beeliar Wetlands by mapping unique landforms and cataloguing rare species had been unsuccessful. Just as the city maps of the wetlands of central Perth were instruments of colonial intent, the later MRS overlays predetermined that road uses would outweigh other uses of the Beeliar Wetlands. All maps betray the social systems that create them. The people who sought to preserve the wetlands, however, rejected the mapped and catalogued version of the Beeliar Regional Park, preferring their experiential,

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spatial knowledge. Numerous mass protests were held in bushland around the perimeter of the construction site and tree-sitters—and those who locked on to trees and equipment—used local knowledge to circumvent fencing and security. Turnbull considered the ways differing knowledge traditions could be used in mapping and concluded that a performative dimension was one solution to avoid “subsumption into one common or universal ontology.”45 Certainly the regular pathways through the wetlands used by the community included an old limestone road to the Dixon farm, an access road for the state electricity utility, fire breaks and the Roe 8 road reserve itself. The emotional performance of walking through the space but experiencing it as “other” than a road reserve was the foundation on which the protest movement was built and led to the later “reclaiming” protest actions. Protesters also objected to the loss of land for the highway being “offset” by purchase of conservation land 100 kilometers outside the city. The place of Beeliar, in the eyes of its protectors, was indivisible, specific, and irreplaceable. One wetland is not as good as another and the cultural values inscribed upon it are a complex of interactions between the people, animals, and plants that inhabit or continue to experience that particular place. Giblett has claimed that “wilderness is a human artefact, or more precisely a European settler aesthetic and land-use artefact to which various, often contradictory, meanings have been ascribed.”46 While the Beeliar Wetlands, with an auditory background of birdsong and traffic noise, can hardly be described as a wilderness, it was their wild, non-urban character which first drove efforts to preserve them. And yet, as the description of layers of meaning inscribed on the Beeliar Wetlands show, the most recent preservation efforts involved an emotional geography of interwoven cultural and natural values.47 Hoelscher and Alderman point out the spatial aspect of social memory and its linkage to identity.48 The location and characteristics of the original wetlands of central Perth are largely lost to social memory, while urban development and transport needs continue to dominate the identity of the city. In the fight to save the Beeliar Wetlands, a community of activists acted out their protest that the wetlands were other than a road reserve. The laying down of social memories about Beeliar, mediated through cultural objects, but also through practices of walking in and remembering the natural environment, provides a possible new context for Perth identity, one which values wetlands for their varied cultural and natural attributes. NOTES 1. Marita Sturken, “Memory, Consumerism and Media: Reflections on the Emergence of the Field,” Memory Studies 1, no. 1 (2008): 73–78, doi: 10.1177/1750698007083890.

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2. Steven Hoelscher and Derek Alderman, “Memory and Place: Geographies of a Critical Relationship,” Social and Cultural Geography 5, no. 3 (2004): 347–55 [350], doi: 10.1080/1464936042000252769. 3. Rod Giblett, People and Places of Nature and Culture (Bristol, UK: Intellect Press, 2011). 4. Ibid. 5. Jacqueline O’Brien and Pamela Statham-Drew, Court and Camera: The Life and Times of A.H. Stone: A Pioneer Lawyer & Photographer (Fremantle, WA: Fremantle Press, 2012). 6. George Seddon, Sense of Place: A Response to an Environment, the Swan Coastal Plain, Western Australia (Crawley, WA: University of Western Australia Press, 1972). 7. George Seddon and David Ravine, A City and Its Setting: Images of Perth, Western Australia (Fremantle, WA: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1986). 8. O’Brien and Statham-Drew, Court and Camera. 9. Rod Giblett, “A City and Its Swamp Sett(l)ing,” in Western Australian Wetlands, ed. Rod Giblett and Hugh Webb (Perth, WA: Black Swan Press and Wetlands Conservation Society, 1996), 127. 10. Eric Sanderson, Markley Boyer, and Chad Robertson, Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2009). 11. Ibid., 35. 12. Charles Thomas Stannage, The People of Perth: A Social History of Western Australia’s Capital City (Perth, WA: Carroll’s for Perth City Council, 1979). 13. Jenny Gregory, City of Light: A History of Perth Since the 1950s (Perth, WA: City of Perth, 2003). 14. A. Taylor, “ ‘The Sun Always Shines in Perth’:” A Post-Colonial Geography of Identity, Memory and Place,” Australian Geographical Studies 38, no. 1 (2000): 27–35, doi: 10.1111/1467-8470.00098. 15. Gregory, City of Light. 16. Jason Byrne and Donna Houston, “Ghosts in the City: Redevelopment, Race and Urban Memory in East Perth,” in Consent and Consensus: Politics, Media and Governance in Twentieth Century Australia, ed. Jean Hillier and Denis Cryle (Perth, WA: API Network, 2005), 1. 17. Gregory, City of Light, 328. 18. Julian Bolleter, Mackenzie Buck, and Sam Sweetman, “Going Public: Auditing Perth’s Public Landscapes for Urban Infill,” Westerly (2016): 54–79 [68]. 19. Rod Giblett, Postmodern Wetlands: Culture, History, Ecology (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996), 39. 20. Sue Graham-Taylor, “A Missing History: Towards a River History of the Swan,” Studies in Western Australian History 27 (2011): 125–44. 21. Felicity Morel-Ednie Brown, “Layered Landscape: The Swamps of Colonial Northbridge,” Social Science Computer Review 27, no. 3 (2009): 390–419. 22. The Daily News, “Swamp Lands of the City,” The Daily News, January 23 (1909): 7. 23. The Daily News, “Third Swamp Reserve,” The Daily News, March 3 (1897): 4.

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24. The West Australian, “Third Swamp Reserve,” The West Australian, November 15 (1898): 7. 25. City of Vincent, Hyde Park Lakes Restoration (Vincent, WA: City of Vincent, 2012), accessed May 29, 2019, www.v​incen​t.wa.​gov.a​u/res​ident​s/env​ironm​ent/ a​dopt-​a-tre​e-pro​gram/​vince​nt-gr​eenin​g-pla​n/gre​ening​-vinc​ent/h​yde-p​ark-l​akes-​resto​ ratio​n.asp​x. 26. Rod Giblett, Forrestdale: People and Place (Bassendean, WA: Access Press, 2006), 4–5. 27. Daisy Bates, “Aboriginal Perth,” The Western Mail, July 4 (1929): 70. 28. The Western Mail, “A Battle Near Perth,” The Western Mail, January 9 (1914): 38. 29. Frederick Irwin, qtd. in Bevan Carter and Lynda Nutter, Nyungah Land: Records of Invasion and Theft of Aboriginal Land on the Swan River 1829–1850 (Guildford, WA: Swan Valley Nyungah Community, 2005), 68. 30. Stannage, The People of Perth. 31. The West Australian, “Swamp to Be Reserve,” The West Australian March 24 (1948): 9. 32. Thor Kerr and Shaphan Cox, Setting Up the Nyoongar Tent Embassy: A Report on Perth Media (Perth, WA: Ctrl-Z Press, 2013), accessed May 29, 2019, www.c​trl-z​ .net.​au/wp​-cont​ent/u​pload​s/201​3/08/​Setti​ng-Up​-the-​Tent-​Embas​sy-Ke​rr-Co​x.pdf​. 33. Julian Bolleter, Take Me to the River: The Story of Perth’s Foreshore (Crawley, WA: University of Western Australia Press, 2015). 34. Jenny Gregory, “Remembering Mounts Bay: The Narrows Scheme and the Internationalization of Perth Planning,” Studies in Western Australian History 27 (2011): 145–66. 35. Department of Conservation and Land Management, Beeliar Regional Park Final Management Plan (Perth, WA: Conservation Commission of Western Australia, 2006), accessed May 29, 2019, www.d​paw.w​a.gov​.au/i​mages​/docu​ments​/park​s/ man​ageme​nt-pl​ans/d​ecarc​hive/​beeli​ar_ma​nagem​ent_p​lan_1​8_10_​2006.​pdf. 36. Vic Semeniuk (hydrogeologist, Wetlands Research Association), in discussion with the authors, Perth, 2016. 37. Department of Conservation and Land Management, Beeliar Regional Park. 38. Michael Berson, Cockburn: The Making of a Community (Cockburn, WA: City of Cockburn, 1978). 39. Eileen (Reilly) Tucker, We Answered the Call: AWAS of Western Australia and Their Mates (Perth, WA: Vanguard Press, 1991). 40. Jacob Kagi, “Aboriginal Heritage Committee Reversed Decision to Knock Back Roe Highway Works, WA Parliament Told,” ABC News, September 10, 2015, accessed May 29, 2019, www.a​bc.ne​t.au/​news/​2015-​09-10​/roe-​highw​ay-ab​origi​nal-c​ ultur​al-co​nsent​-refu​sed-t​hen-g​rante​d/676​3502.​ 41. Toby Nisbet and Geoffrey Syme, “No Way to Build a Highway: Law, Social Justice Research and the Beeliar Wetlands,” Environmental and Planning Law Journal 34, no. 2 (2017): 162–75. 42. Joyce Davidson, Liz Bondi, and Mick Smith, eds., Emotional Geographies (Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2012).

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43. City of Cockburn, Local Government Inventory (Cockburn, WA: City of Cockburn, 2014), 287, accessed May 29, 2019, www.c​ockbu​rn.wa​.gov.​au/Co​uncil​ _Serv​ices/​City_​Devel​opmen​t/Her​itage​/. 44. Josh Wilson, “The Summer of Roe 8: Speech to House of Representatives,” Josh Wilson MP, March 20, 2017, accessed May 29, 2019, http:​//jos​hwils​on.or​g.au/​ news/​speec​hes/8​11-th​e-sum​mer-o​f-roe​-8.ht​ml. 45. David Turnbull, “Maps, Narratives and Trails: Performativity, Hodology and Distributed Knowledges in Complex Adaptive Systems: An Approach to Emergent Mapping,” Geographical Research 45, no. 2 (2007): 140–49 [140], doi: 10.1111/j.1745-5871.2007.00447.x. 46. Giblett, People and Places, 114. 47. Davidson, Bondi, and Smith, Emotional Geographies. 48. Hoelscher and Alderman, “Memory and Place.”

BIBLIOGRAPHY Bates, Daisy. “Aboriginal Perth.” The Western Mail, July 4 (1929): 70. Berson, Michael. Cockburn: The Making of a Community. Cockburn, WA: City of Cockburn, 1978. Bolleter, Julian. Take Me to the River: The Story of Perth’s Foreshore. Crawley, WA: University of Western Australia Press, 2015. Bolleter, Julian, Mackenzie Buck, and Sam Sweetman. “Going Public: Auditing Perth’s Public Landscapes for Urban Infill.” Westerly (2016): 54–79. Byrne, Jason, and Donna Houston. “Ghosts in the City: Redevelopment, Race and Urban Memory in East Perth.” In Consent and Consensus: Politics, Media and Governance in Twentieth Century Australia, edited by Jean Hillier and Denis Cryle, 319–49. Perth, WA: API Network, 2005. Carter, Bevan, and Lynda Nutter. Nyungah Land: Records of Invasion and Theft of Aboriginal Land on the Swan River 1829–1850. Guildford, WA: Swan Valley Nyungah Community, 2005. City of Cockburn. Local Government Inventory. Cockburn, WA: City of Cockburn, 2014. Accessed May 29, 2019. www.c​ockbu​rn.wa​.gov.​au/Co​uncil​_Serv​ices/​City_​ Devel​opmen​t/Her​itage​/. City of Vincent. Hyde Park Lakes Restoration. Vincent, WA: City of Vincent, 2012. Accessed May 29, 2019. www.v​incen​t.wa.​gov.a​u/res​ident​s/env​ironm​ent/a​dopt-​ a-tre​e-pro​gram/​vince​nt-gr​eenin​g-pla​n/gre​ening​-vinc​ent/h​yde-p​ark-l​akes-​resto​ratio​ n.asp​x. Davidson, Joyce, Liz Bondi, and Mick Smith, eds. Emotional Geographies. Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2012. Department of Conservation and Land Management. Beeliar Regional Park Final Management Plan. Perth, WA: Conservation Commission of Western Australia, 2006. Accessed May 29, 2019. www.d​paw.w​a.gov​.au/i​mages​/docu​ments​/park​s/ man​ageme​nt-pl​ans/d​ecarc​hive/​beeli​ar_ma​nagem​ent_p​lan_1​8_10_​2006.​pdf.

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Giblett, Rod. “A City and Its Swamp Sett(l)ing.” In Western Australian Wetlands, edited by Rod Giblett and Hugh Webb, 127–46. Perth, WA: Black Swan Press and Wetlands Conservation Society, 1996a. ———. Postmodern Wetlands: Culture, History, Ecology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996b. ———. Forrestdale: People and Place. Bassendean, WA: Access Press, 2006. ———. People and Places of Nature and Culture. Bristol, UK: Intellect Press, 2011. Graham-Taylor, Sue. “A Missing History: Towards a River History of the Swan.” Studies in Western Australian History 27 (2011): 125–44. Gregory, Jenny. City of Light: A History of Perth Since the 1950s. Perth, WA: City of Perth, 2003. ———. “Remembering Mounts Bay: The Narrows Scheme and the Internationalization of Perth Planning.” Studies in Western Australian History 27 (2011): 145–66. Hoelscher, Steven, and Derek Alderman. “Memory and Place: Geographies of a Critical Relationship.” Social and Cultural Geography 5, no. 3 (2004): 347–55. doi: 10.1080/1464936042000252769. Kagi, Jacob. “Aboriginal Heritage Committee Reversed Decision to Knock Back Roe Highway Works, WA Parliament Told.” ABC News, September 10, 2015. Accessed May 29, 2019. www.a​bc.ne​t.au/​news/​2015-​09-10​/roe-​highw​ay-ab​origi​ nal-c​ultur​al-co​nsent​-refu​sed-t​hen-g​rante​d/676​3502.​ Kerr, Thor, and Shaphan Cox. Setting Up the Nyoongar Tent Embassy: A Report on Perth Media. Perth, WA: Ctrl-Z Press, 2013. Accessed May 29, 2019. www.c​trl-z​ .net.​au/wp​-cont​ent/u​pload​s/201​3/08/​Setti​ng-Up​-the-​Tent-​Embas​sy-Ke​rr-Co​x.pdf​. Morel-Ednie Brown, Felicity. “Layered Landscape: The Swamps of Colonial Northbridge.” Social Science Computer Review 27, no. 3 (2009): 390–419. Nisbet, Toby, and Geoffrey Syme. “No Way to Build a Highway: Law, Social Justice Research and the Beeliar Wetlands.” Environmental and Planning Law Journal 34, no. 2 (2017): 162–75. O’Brien, Jacqueline, and Pamela Statham-Drew. Court and Camera: The Life and Times of A.H. Stone: A Pioneer Lawyer & Photographer. Fremantle, WA: Fremantle Press, 2012. Sanderson, Eric, Markley Boyer, and Chad Robertson. Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2009. Seddon, George. Sense of Place: A Response to an Environment, the Swan Coastal Plain, Western Australia. Crawley, WA: University of Western Australia Press, 1972. Seddon, George, and David Ravine. A City and Its Setting: Images of Perth, Western Australia. Fremantle, WA: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1986. Stannage, Charles Thomas. The People of Perth: A Social History of Western Australia’s Capital City. Perth, WA: Carroll’s for Perth City Council, 1979. Sturken, Marita. “Memory, Consumerism and Media: Reflections on the Emergence of the Field.” Memory Studies 1, no. 1 (2008): 73–78. doi: 10.1177/1750698007083890. Taylor, A. “‘The Sun Always Shines in Perth’:” A Post-Colonial Geography of Identity, Memory and Place.” Australian Geographical Studies 38, no. 1 (2000): 27–35. doi: 10.1111/1467-8470.00098.

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The Daily News. “Third Swamp Reserve.” The Daily News, March 3 (1897): 4. ———. “Swamp Lands of the City.” The Daily News, January 23 (1909): 7. The West Australian. “Third Swamp Reserve.” The West Australian, November 15 (1898): 7. ———. “Swamp to Be Reserve.” The West Australian, March 24 (1948): 9. The Western Mail. “A Battle Near Perth.” The Western Mail, January 9 (1914): 38. Tucker, Eileen (Reilly). We Answered the Call: AWAS of Western Australia and Their Mates. Perth, WA: Vanguard Press, 1991. Turnbull, David. “Maps, Narratives and Trails: Performativity, Hodology and Distributed Knowledges in Complex Adaptive Systems: An Approach to Emergent Mapping.” Geographical Research 45, no. 2 (2007): 140–49. doi: 10.1111/j.1745-5871.2007.00447.x. Wilson, Josh. “The Summer of Roe 8: Speech to House of Representatives.” Josh Wilson MP. March 20, 2017. Accessed May 29, 2019. http:​//jos​hwils​on.or​g.au/​ news/​speec​hes/8​11-th​e-sum​mer-o​f-roe​-8.ht​ml.

Chapter 9

Swamp-philia and Paludal Heroism The Passion of Wetland Conservationists in Australia and Elsewhere John C. Ryan and Li Chen

Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps [. . .] A town is saved, not more by the righteous men in it than by the woods and swamps that surround it. —From Henry David Thoreau’s essay “Walking” (1862)1

In a climate change epoch, in which each year harrowingly turns out to be “the hottest on record”—marked by more and more habitat destruction, species decline, unrestrained urbanization, and other serious ecological problems—environmental heroes reassert hope, empowerment, transformation, and possibility against prevailing despair.2 From all corners of the globe and of all ages, ethnicities, and backgrounds, eco-heroes devote themselves to “other-regarding choices over self-interested ones” for the betterment of humankind and more-than-humans.3 Since 1990, the Goldman Environmental Prize has honored “grassroots environmental heroes” and has acknowledged “individuals for sustained and significant efforts to protect and enhance the natural environment, often at great personal risk.”4 Recent Australian recipient, octogenarian Wendy Bowman, for instance, successfully defended her family farm in Camberwell, Hunter Valley, New South Wales, against the incursions of a multinational mining company. In 1990, moreover, Bob Brown received the inaugural award. Brown founded the Tasmanian Wilderness Society and galvanized a successful nationwide campaign in the 1980s to block the construction of the Franklin River dam.5 Indeed, environmental heroes, such as Brown and Bowman in contemporary Australia and Thoreau before them in the nineteenth-century United States—as well as other contemporary wetlands heroes discussed later in this chapter—are moral 195

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exemplars who highlight that “each life, no matter how long or short, can have great significance if lived well.”6 Through interviews conducted with exceptional Western Australian conservationist David James between 2005 and 2017, this chapter will describe a particular subgenre of eco-heroism we call paludal heroism.7 This form of heroic behavior, we suggest, centralizes the defense of swamp habitats, wetland ecosystems, and their interdependent human-non-human occupants. According to The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, the adjective paludal derives from the Latin term palūd for marsh and denotes organisms, soils, and conditions associated with marsh environments.8 Referring to a herbaceous wetland in which the water table remains above the surface of the soil, a marsh in North American parlance corresponds to the British signifier swamp.9 The concept of eco-heroism formulated in this chapter invokes paludal as a general descriptor for wetlands, delimited by the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance as areas of marsh, fen, peatland or water, whether natural or artificial, permanent or temporary, with water that is static or flowing, fresh, brackish or salt, including areas of marine water the depth of which at low tide does not exceed six meters.10

The chapter, moreover, will claim that a subset of biophilia—henceforth termed swamp-philia—inspires acts of paludal heroism and appropriately characterizes those human lives dedicated to (and, at times, consumed by) wetlands advocacy and conservation. Following social psychologist Erich Fromm’s articulation of the concept as “the love of life” in his book The Heart of Man,11 biologist E.O. Wilson defined biophilia as the love of life or “the innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes.”12 To be certain, David James and other paludal heroes in the tradition of Thoreau immerse themselves physically, mentally, and emotionally in the many lives and processes of wetlands.13 For David, the conservation of wetlands, including Forrestdale Lake and Anstey-Keane Damplands south of Perth, Western Australia, is exclusively neither a scientific project nor an ecological preoccupation. His paludal heroism, in contrast, is a long-term “naturalcultural” enactment borne out of an affinity for swamp nature and predicated on the complex imbrication of biological diversity with cultural heritage and sense of place.14 Approaching his local community as a multispecies assemblage of diverse organisms emplaced within the Swan Coastal Plain, David is a paragon of “ecosocial heroism” who assumes “community leadership roles by envisioning diverse forms of ecosocial justice.”15 In the interviews conducted with him, David foregrounds the value of conservation for the community of organisms living in, and adjacent to, the vulnerable

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wetlands south of Perth, specifically, between the quickly expanding suburbs of Armadale, Forrestdale, and Piara Waters: The challenge now is to save the land despite the massive encroachment of housing and current government attitudes because the land is worth so much money now. Real estate prices in Perth now are just exorbitant.16

In particular, the self-trained naturalist communicates the urgent need for wetlands conservation through negative affect—that is, of “feeling miserable” if deprived of access to the precious bushland that has contracted progressively during his lifetime as a result of suburban development propelled by swelling human populations and ill-conceived government agendas.17 In contrast to Bowman and Brown, however, David remains an unsung community hero committed to paludal habitats typically denied the esteem conferred to more aesthetically gratifying and visually impressive environments such as, for instance, the Franklin River in Tasmania and the old-growth eucalypt forests near Walpole, WA.18 As two interlinked ecological virtues proposed in this chapter, swamp-philia and paludal heroism are essential correctives to the continuing degradation of wetlands in Perth and elsewhere in Australia and the world.19 Through his environmental activism, political advocacy, and community outreach, David James inspires these virtues in members of the community afflicted with “nature-deficit disorder”—or, more precisely, swamp-deficit disorder—for whom wetlands are unappealing impediments to economic hyper-rationalization and technocratic growth.20 THE SODDEN ROOTS OF SWAMPPHILIA AND PALUDAL HEROISM Since its early formulation by Erich Fromm in 1964 and subsequent popularization by E.O. Wilson twenty years later, the biophilia hypothesis has been applied to a range of fields including developmental psychology, architectural theory, and environmental conservation.21 Biophilia, nevertheless, remains a contested concept open to various interpretations and limited by internal inconsistencies.22 Notwithstanding the debates surrounding biophilia’s origins (as either an evolutionary and genetic or acquired and experiential trait) and ethical significance (as either an anthropocentric or ecocentric framework for protecting the natural world), most theorists concur that the principle centralizes states of human affect.23 In The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, Fromm characterizes biophilia further as “passionate love of life and of all that is alive; it is the wish to further growth, whether in a person, a plant, an idea, or a social group.”24 Fromm maintains that biophilia is not only a

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generalized sense of affection for life but also a compelling desire to contribute to the actualization—the growth—of non-humans through tactile engagement with the lives of “all that is alive.”25 In a similar mode, theorists have postulated more recently that, in sharp contrast to biophobic (life-hating or life-negating) responses to the non-human world, the biophilia hypothesis is grounded in “affective affiliation” and, as a consequence, “posits an intimate emotional link between humans and the living world.”26 In his book Biophilia: The Human Bond with Other Species,27 Wilson argues that natural selection has resulted in an “adaptive affinity” in humans for other living forms and for inanimate lifelike processes and things.28 Rather than acquired through experience and direct contact, biophilia is regarded as the upshot of human evolution and, to some extent, is hardwired genetically. In other words, it is part of the human condition. From an evolutionary viewpoint, biophilic responses to wetlands, therefore, would derive not from detached aesthetic pleasure but from deep-seated affinities for flora and fauna that on an ancestral basis supplied vital sources of nutrition, medicine, and protection.29 By way of comparison, Dorion Sagan and Lynn Margulis invoke the less melodious term prototaxis to signify the genetic predisposition of lives to respond to other lives discernibly.30 With its salient congruences with biophilia, prototaxis is a phenomenon that occurs broadly in bacteria, protists, fungi, plants, animals, and other organisms.31 Biologist Ivan Wallin proposed the term in 1923 to specify “the innate tendency of one organism or cell to react in a definite manner to another organism or cell.”32 Instead of the love, affinity, and affection of the biophilia hypothesis, the prototaxis principle hinges on electrical potentials, moisture, light, temperature, and other quantifiable variables.33 Some commentators, however, conceptualize biophilia as a learned—rather than programmed, genetic, or innate—response to the natural world. John Simaika and Michael Samways, for example, maintain that the human bond with the environment is invariably acquired and nurtured.34 In their view, biophilia derives from experiences of, and associations with, the non-human domain. Whether an inborn desire or learned response to the natural world, biophilia is thought to underlie an ethics of environmental conservation by countering the anti-ecological impulses of reductionism, utilitarianism, and instrumentalization. In this context, Stephen Kellert characterizes biophilia as “a deep and enduring urge to connect with living diversity” and “a broad affinity for natural diversity” that “reflects the human tendency to impute worth and importance to the natural world.”35 As an environmental virtue, biophilia is “a character trait whose target and affective content consist of caring for and about non-human life.”36 Fostering the development of biophilic dispositions in individuals and communities, moreover, depends on current knowledge of ecological

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science, including biodiversity issues and the environmental implications of human behaviors and decisions.37 In emphasizing the benefits conferred to human health and well-being through affinity with nature, not the least of which is the long-term survival of Homo sapiens, however, biophilia in the sense elaborated by E.O. Wilson verges on “anthropocentric environmentalism.”38 This mode of environmentalism contrasts with biocentric environmentalism predicated on the intrinsic rights of non-human beings and their habitats beyond a use-value paradigm. Leveraging a dichotomy between anthropocentrism and biocentrism, I argue, proves to be counterproductive insofar as it re-inscribes the culture/nature schism separating humankind from the non-human and driving perilous human exceptionalism. An innate affinity for the environment and a propensity for attraction to living beings, instead, have the potential to benefit humans and nonhumans alike because culture is nature, and vice versa. In this context, the posthumanist premise of natureculture—as human-non-human physical and metaphysical incorporation—is foundational to the formulation of the idea of wetland cultures in chapter 1 of this volume. What, then, are the distinguishing features of swamp-philia, defined as the love of wetlands and the innate tendency to focus on slough lives and processes? We will briefly describe three features: multisensorial engagement, corporeal immersion, and ecological understanding. To begin with, a “swamp lover” appreciates the specific sensory affordances of wetlands.39 Indeed, one of the omissions in the majority of theorizations of biophilia is the corporeal dimension of “affective affiliation” with the natural world.40 Experiential knowledge derived from sensory interaction with the non-human milieu can inspire expressions of environmental empathy and justice based in transcorporeality as the permeability between bodies.41 As Rod Giblett observes, swamps are uncanny environments that restrain sight, confound hearing, but amplify the proximate senses of touch (of water, mud, mosquitoes), smell (of decay, sulfides, musk), and taste (of fruits, crustaceans, wild rice).42 Thoreau noted that peculiar fragrance from the marsh at the Hubbard Causeway, though the marsh is mostly covered. Is it a particular compound of odors? It is more remarkable and memorable than the scent of any particular plant,—the fragrance, as it were, of the earth itself.43

Following Thoreau, swamp-philia engenders experiential, embodied, and sensorially rich bonds with wetland habitats that, in turn, provoke conservation values and imperatives within the individual and community. Calling attention to the tactility of wetlands, David James, for instance, recounts memories of turtles, known as tortoises then, in the 1950s and 1960s at Lake Forrestdale. He details physically immersive experiences of being in

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the lake, which is located on the eastern perimeter of the Jandokot Mound, an area beneath the Swan Coastal Plain, distinguished for an elevated water table: While swimming or canoeing in Lake Forrestdale as a kid, it was common to see numerous tortoise heads poking out of the water as they came up for a breath of air. It was always fun trying to count them. Often when swimming in the lake we felt tortoises scooting away from under our feet. They were so numerous we couldn’t help treading on them.44

Tortoises “scooting away from under our feet” and the perception of “treading on them” as he swam in Forrestdale Lake as a child are somatic memories inspiring his life-long commitment to Perth’s suburban wetlands and its diverse species: Looking out for baby tortoises was a yearly event as they were regularly seen crossing Commercial Road in Forrestdale or crawling about the lake’s fringing bushland [. . .] Each winter when James Drain flowed strongly into the lake, masses of tortoises were seen struggling against the current as they tried to get to the swamps west of Lake Forrestdale.45

As David later elaborates, many of the tortoises “struggling against the current” were run over by traffic on Commercial Road. Another characteristic of swamp-philia linked closely to multisensorial experience is bodily im(sub)mersion. For Thoreau, physical transactions with wetlands were both fortifying and baptismal: “I enter a swamp as a sacred place,—a sanctum sanctorum [holy of holies]. There is the strength, the marrow, of Nature.”46 Through the all-encompassing sensation of entering the earth-water-body, the swamp-philiac comes to love the wetland in its ontological liminality—as an environment existing as an in-between state, neither solid nor fluid yet both. Swamp-philia, furthermore, is defined by knowledge of ecological science, specifically of biodiversity and the interactions between wetland species.47 In this regard, Thoreau associated his affective responses to, and physical immersion in, wetlands to then-current scientific perceptions of plants, as evident in his observation that “there are no richer parterres [formal gardens] to my eyes than the dense beds of dwarf andromeda (Cassandra calyculata) which cover these tender places on the earth’s surface.”48 In the spirit of Thoreau, David James reveals that ecological information is integral to swamp-philia insofar as science supplies another medium for engendering human-non-human affinities. As a case in point, David details the rare plant life of Anstey-Keane Damplands during our en plein air interview: “Regelia ciliata is the dominant shrub here. It has mauve flowers and dies in bush fires but comes back very quickly and grows in dense thickets. It is ideal habitat

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for wrens and bandicoots because it becomes so thick that foxes cannot get into it.”49 David’s experiential knowledge of wetland ecology enhances “an intimate emotional link” that, in turn, invigorates his sense of locale (Anstey-Keane), place (Swan Coastal Plain), and biogeographical region (Southwest Australia).50 An innate love for wetland nature, thus, can be grounded to some extent in scientific principles, conservation processes, and technical nomenclature. In becoming a self-trained naturalist, David followed the work of professional botanists, such as Neville Graeme Marchant and Gregory John Keighery, botanist-illustrator Rica Erickson (1908–2008), conservationist Penny Hussey, and members of the Wildflower Society of Western Australia.51 To this theorization of swamp-philia as multisensorial, immersive, and ecological, moreover, we add the notion of paludal heroism, characterized as heroic behavior on behalf of wetlands performed either as a one-off incident or consistently over the life of an individual, organization, community, or movement. Although environmental heroes have been acknowledged for their ecosocial contributions52 and analyzed in general terms for their ethics,53 there have been scarce attempts to either narrativize or theorize wetland heroism as a distinct phenomenon within contemporary environmentalism. One example that foregrounds wetland heroism is the documentary film The Last Stand: Heroes at Ballona Wetlands, depicting the campaign to preserve the last intact wetland ecosystem in the Los Angeles basin.54 The preponderance of eco-heroism studies, nonetheless, pertains to the defense of forests, oceans, or natural monuments rather than swamps.55 The account of paludal heroism that follows distinguishes between paludal activism and paludal heroism. The latter term fulfills the principle of supererogation as moral exemplariness that goes above and “beyond the call of duty [and] includes acts of tremendous heroism or saintliness that go beyond what anyone could reasonably think of as being morally required.”56 Put differently, supererogatory behavior exceeds that which is usually demanded of others and, although morally valuable, cannot be expected of the general population.57 At all stages and of all kinds, heroic behavior is predicated on “recognizing the limits of our existence.”58 Biophilic heroes, additionally, acknowledge the living earth as the actual limit of human-non-human inter-being. Supererogatory action on behalf of the natural world becomes possible when the eco-hero considers the life he or she wants to have lived in interdependent relation to the lives of other humans and beings.59 Such a conceptualization of paludal heroism is inherently multispecies and relational as well as simultaneously self- and other-affirming. Local heroes, such as David James, contest the degradation of their communities and devote themselves whole-heartedly to the resolution of anthropogenic problems because they are compelled by a feeling of duty.60 The paradox of environmental supererogation, however,

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is that those who perform heroic acts to protect the natural world—often at considerable personal expense borne over time—tend to claim that they were merely following a personal call of duty. Eco-heroes are inclined to classify their own acts as obligatory (to be expected; usual), rather than supererogatory (not to be expected; exceptional).61 In minimizing the supererogatory standing of their actions on behalf of wetlands, nonetheless, paludal heroes indirectly assert their moral depth: moral heroes do exhibit very real and exceptional moral depth in their identification with the relevant moral values [. . .] they also typically get so carried away by their enthusiasm for those values that they fail to recognize their own very real sacrifices, and thereby mistake what is actually supererogatory for a moral obligation.62

Paludal heroism, accordingly, involves exceptional acts intended to protect the community of beings in, and near, a wetland environment. These supererogatory feats can go unnoticed both by the individual performing the acts and the larger activist community of which he or she is part. This is especially the case when smaller-scale heroic acts are carried out diachronically throughout one’s lifetime, often without due recognition. Important features of the supererogatory paradox described above are humility and modesty. Both virtues underscore the significance of not inflating the esteem one receives and of limiting the potential distraction from “what is really important” that can result from excessive concern for recognition and entitlement.63 As the next section will elaborate, David’s paludal heroism is constituted by the virtues of humility and modesty, rendering the actual extent of his accomplishments over many years difficult to determine. David enacts eco-heroism as part of the fabric of his life, and on an everyday basis, through sustained devotion to the wetlands of his community rather than through hyper-masculinist “eco-warriorism,” for instance, perfected in the trope of activists chaining themselves to bulldozers.64 His practice of eco-heroism, moreover, resists extreme hierarchical differentiation between subjects of culture (humans) and objects of nature (non-humans). For David, the conservation of wetlands benefits all beings, not just wrens and bandicoots and not just naturalists and saunterers. In this light, our formulation of heroism in this chapter diverges from the view of moral heroism as invariably homocentric (or anthropocentric) and opposed to biocentric (or ecocentric) values. Patrick Dooley positions eco-heroism as problematically coupled to an anthropocentric ontology prioritizing non-human well-being narrowly in terms of future human generations.65 From Dooley’s standpoint, supererogation leads invariably back to human privileging.66 He asks: “Is our ethical responsibility toward the environment a matter of ethical duty or a matter

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of ethical heroism?”67 Whereas ethical duty leads to “sensible and good practice,” moral heroism is “optional and arduous” as well as untenable in the long-term.68 Contrary to Dooley, we maintain that the actions of paludal heroes exemplify the forms of multispecies ethics that are increasingly essential to countering the degradation and destruction of wetlands and the lifeforms that depend on them.

A LIFE OF SWAMP-PHILIA: CONSERVATIONIST EXTRAORDINAIRE DAVID JAMES Born in the early 1950s, passionate activist and self-trained naturalist David James has lived near Forrestdale Lake all his life. The Lake is located on the Swan Coastal Plain, shared by Perth, and protects numerous endangered plant, animal, and insect species.69 Nearby Anstey-Keane Damplands is one of the most ecologically significant wetlands on the Swan Coastal Plain and, in fact, more biologically diverse than the internationally renowned Kings Park and Botanic Gardens overlooking the central business district of the city.70 As David James elaborates, the actual extent of the biodiversity of Anstey-Keane has not yet been established by ecologists: “This place is probably only eighty percent known. There’s still a twenty percent unknown factor here.”71 The Damplands area lies at the northern tip of the Pinjarra Plains, a system of flat damplands—defined as moist, shallow sinks—containing the best soil on the Swan Coastal Plain for agricultural and, later, industrial development since the nineteenth century.72 An active member of numerous community-based conservation organizations and the current president of the Friends of Forrestdale (FoF), David expresses exasperation over the constant and overwhelming pressures on the remnant parcels of Pinjarra Plains habitat. His leadership within the Friends, however, provides a practical outlet for responding to his ongoing environmental concerns. Indeed, throughout Australia, volunteer-based Friends Groups perform landscape monitoring and often acquire specific knowledge of local sites and habitat conditions.73 Social networks developed within Friends Groups and between Friends and other community organizations, moreover, enhance the sharing of skills, knowledge and experience while promoting a feeling of solidarity through mutual purpose and common vision. Launched in 1990, the Friends of Forrestdale is one such volunteer group tasked with protecting Forrestdale Lake Nature Reserve and adjoining reserves, including Anstey-Keane Damplands, Piara Nature Reserve, and Gibbs Road Swamp, all of which are located within the 3,000-hectare (or 7,400-acre) Jandakot Regional Park.74

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For David James, Forrestdale Lake and Anstey-Keane Damplands constitute “emotional geographies” in Perth’s rapidly expanding southern reaches.75 These landscapes nurture humans and non-humans physically and metaphysically but also themselves require reciprocal forms of care from us. Even after receiving state government attention, however, crucial sites for biodiversity remain vulnerable to the hazards and vagaries of development and of government policy. This is acutely so for Anstey-Keane, classified as Bush Forever Site 342. In 2000, the Ministry for Planning and the Department of Conservation and Land Management launched the Bush Forever program, identifying more than fifty-thousand hectares of bushland for protection or eighteen percent of the original, pre-European-settlement vegetation of the Swan Coastal Plain. The sites “incorporate associated vegetated conservation category wetlands. These wetlands are recognized as being some of the most biologically diverse habitats.”76 As of October 2017, two high-conservation-value Anstey-Keane blocks, earmarked for eventual inclusion in Jandakot Regional Park, are privately owned, unfenced, unmanaged, and susceptible to off-road vehicle damage and the illegal dumping of rubbish.77 The Friends currently recommend that the Western Australian Planning Commission (WAPC) acquires the two blocks without hesitation before further environmental degradation occurs. David’s swamp-philia, indeed, is informed by these ongoing issues and pervasive problems. The impending possibility of losing what remains of the emotional paludography around him is exacerbated by affective memories of what existed during his upbringing in the area: When I was young, we took the bush for granted. There were miles of bush in Forrestdale. We played in the bush. We walked in the bush. We collected birds’ eggs. The bush was everywhere. We didn’t worry about it because there was plenty of it. But as the years have gone by, the bush has rapidly declined.78

His pointed kinesthetic recollection involves playing, walking, collecting eggs, and other somatic acts, revealing the imbrications between feeling (as emotion), feeling (as memory), and feeling (as sensation). David’s remembrance of his worry-free childhood, additionally, suggests the phenomenon of floratemporaesthesia as “a sense of time formulated through close attention to the physical registers of vegetal life in space.”79 Whereas the natural world was once “everywhere” and, as a consequence, local residents took its presence for granted in their everyday lives, the gradual shrinkage of the bushland marks the movement of time in David’s temporally expansive sense of place. A particularly traumatic memory for him was the razing of the Damplands by bulldozers over forty years ago to make way for a development scheme that was then suddenly abandoned soon after the devastation:

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Sometime back in the 1970s, this whole block was bulldozed flat. For a while, the City of Armadale wanted to turn it into a recreation reserve. That idea was dropped almost immediately. It tore my heart out to see the whole place bulldozed. They chained it all with big chains. I came out one morning and it was all flat. That’s why all the trees here [points] are rather small because it was all knocked down a few years ago.80

Latent within “affective affiliation” and “an intimate emotional link between humans and the living world”81 is the potential for intense and occasionally debilitating states of grief, depression, mourning, and melancholia: I’ve loved birdlife and wildflowers since I was a kid. It’s a natural thing for me. If I just couldn’t walk to a piece of bush somewhere nearby and observe everything, I’d feel pretty deprived and miserable. If you’ve experienced wildflowers and birds and natural history when you were young, you appreciate it when you get older. You feel it if it’s not there. If a child is brought up without any appreciation of bushland, they don’t miss it later in life.82

As an affection for wetlands and the inborn predisposition to attend sensitively to slough lives and processes—as love of the “birdlife and wildflowers” of paludal environments—swamp-philia entails the risk of feeling “deprived and miserable.” This excerpt from a video interview with David at AnsteyKeane also parallels eco-pedagogical arguments about childhood interaction with the natural world as an effective medium for developing emotional affinities alongside an ethics of responsibility for the environment later in life.83 David’s participation in a range of conservation organizations dedicated to preserving Western Australian wetlands, notably the Friends of Forrestdale, Wetlands Conservation Society, Wildflower Society of WA, Conservation Council of WA, and the Western Australian Naturalists Club, represents an extended “period of, shall we say, activism with organizations that are actually trying to preserve the environment.”84 To be sure, although wetlands activism is integral to their exertions, paludal heroes such as David greatly exceed what is normally expected of locally-focused environmentalists. In his longstanding commitment to advancing conservation and preserving sense of place for the well-being of the entire wetlands community, David is a moral exemplar devoted to paludal activism beyond the call of duty alone. In the following passage, he relates the success of his collaborative efforts in the 1990s to acquire protected status for certain parts of the unsung AnsteyKeane Damplands complex: [. . .] we started a big campaign with all our friends in the conservation movement. We petitioned politicians, begged and wrote letters to the Department of Conservation and Land Management. Eventually the Labor Government of the

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day had the foresight to buy the place. Jump a few years ahead and now the place has become part of the Jandakot Regional Park. I’ve been on the park consulting committee for seventeen years now. This parcel of Anstey-Keane is recognized as the most floristically rich part of the park. We’re tickled pink about that.85

This is not to claim, however, that duty and obligation do not figure meaningfully into eco-heroism but, instead, to suggest that these virtues supply the substratum for a supererogatory being-in-the-world consisting of a multitude of acts performed over many decades of one’s life. Rather than sporadic—for example, centered on dramatic stand-offs with multinational conglomerates or law enforcement agencies—David’s continuous enactment of paludal heroism is woven into the fabric of his existence in Forrestdale. His devotion to environmental well-being, moreover, tracks seamlessly between internal and external struggles. In our field interview, David invokes the term “worry” recurringly to convey his anxiety over the future of the local wetlands: It’s just a shame that nowadays I have to spend so much time fighting to protect the bush rather than going out enjoying it, which is a worry, but we still get time to do that.86

As the political intergrades with the personal, wetlands conservation becomes both ecologically and emotionally complex. At times, the most formidable obstacle is not of the human kind but, rather, an invasive species that has become as menacing to the integrity of the environment as bulldozers, rubbish-dumpers, and thoughtless legislation: One of the biggest challenges for us and the government is to try to keep weeds out. I would say that weeds pose the biggest challenge along with the lack of water. The rainfall has diminished in the last few years, which is a worry for all our wetlands, including this damplands. It is rather worrying how the lack of water will affect the site over time.87

States of negative affect—including worry and anxiety—beset the paludal hero and render wetlands conservation challenging. The marginal conservation status of bushland areas, such as Anstey-Keane, compounded by lack of water, fencing, funding, and human-power as well as weak government support for wetlands cultures take their toll on eco-heroic individuals and communities. While some would be tempted to abandon the work and move on, David stands his ground in Forrestdale, notwithstanding the losses and heartaches. Without a doubt, his heroism is based on obligation but also exceeds mere duty in its temporal extent and personal intensity. Although

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David is no longer immersed physically in Forrestdale Lake due to water depletion and other hydrogeological changes, he is certainly engrossed emotionally and spiritually in the wetlandscapes of Forrestdale at all times. His example reminds us that paludal heroism—in the sustained mode in which he enacts it—is indispensable to the future of wetlands in Perth and elsewhere on the planet. While his form of heroism does not necessarily make the evening news, it is immensely vital for preserving the paludal landscapes that remain and on which we depend. SWAMP HEROES AND THE WETLAND CONSERVATION TRADITION David James is an environmental hero whose community-based conservation performed over four decades has focused on saving the wetland ecosystems of the steadily multiplying southern suburbs of Perth. David’s supererogatory behavior has necessitated confronting a multitude of environmental villains or “bush-bashers”—including off-road vehicle drivers, rubbish dumpers, real estate developers, self-interested politicians, invasive weeds, and so forth—on behalf of the local human-non-human community of inter-beings. Although exceptional, his all-consuming dedication to the paludal world is not an isolated instance but, in contrast, can be understood within a broader historical and international context of wetlands heroism, in certain instances, leading directly to habitat conservation. In the following section, we will briefly present seven very different case studies of swamp-philia and paludal heroism in the lives of the writer-naturalist Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) in the swamps of Massachusetts; author-environmentalist Marjory Stoneman Douglas (1890–1998) in the Everglades region of Florida; ornithologistconservationist Luc Hoffmann (1923–2016) in the Camargue of France and the Coto Doñana of Spain; journalist-activist Francisco Anselmo de Barros (1940–2005) in the immense Pantanal wetlands of west-central Brazil; economist-activist Anu Muhammad (born 1956) in the extraordinary mangroves of the Sundarbans region of Bangladesh; Xu Xiujuan (1964–87) in the biodiverse Zhalong Nature Reserve in China; and Huang Wanli (1911–2001) in the wetlands of China’s famous Yellow River. Compelled to action in part by their affective affinities for the natural world, these heroes serve as paragons of exemplary moral behavior and environmental virtue in defense of wetlands. To be certain, Henry David Thoreau stands out among paludal biophiles for his unusually evocative accounts of walking, wading, and crawling through the wetlands of the Concord, Massachusetts, area to collect wild fruits and appreciate the sensuousness of swamp-dwelling plants.88 In particular, the

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intimate senses of taste and smell galvanized Thoreau’s affinity for swamps and their botanical denizens. Rod Giblett aptly characterizes Thoreau as the “patron saint of swamps.”89 Drawn into wetlands by his curious palate and nose, the writer-naturalist, moreover, is the patron saint and epicure extraordinaire of swamp species, as evident, for instance, in his anecdote of the “fungus-like smell when broken” of “swamp apples” or galls and puffs.90 Thoreau regarded wetlands as “sacred places”91 as well as bountiful sites of heightened gustatory and olfactory affordance: Yes, though you may think me perverse, if it were proposed to me to dwell in the neighborhood of the most beautiful garden that ever human art contrived, or else of a dismal swamp, I should certainly decide for the swamp.92

His preference for “a dismal swamp” reflects the maturation of a multisensorial aesthetics of the paludal hinterlands—rather than of the gentrified spaces—of the Concord environs. Approaching the bog as home, habitat, and health, Thoreau’s paludal attraction verges on perversity for its reversal of the dominant Kantian aesthetic paradigm of beauty privileging the symmetry of visual forms. The swamp-plant lover, for example, evokes the fruits of one blueberry species (Rubus sempervirens) as “little blue sacks full of swampy nectar and ambrosia commingled, whose bonds you burst by pressure of your teeth.”93 Thoreau’s philia is especially palpable in the section “High Blueberry” from Wild Fruits in which he gives an account of harvesting swamp blueberries.94 In his narrative, however, paludal biophilia is not the exclusive domain of humans who bear the capacity to love wetlands but also applies to nonhumans with sensori-emotional affinities for swamps. Confined to the edge of the wetland and flourishing when the water level is high, the blueberry species “loves the water so much.”95 Indeed, this paludal section of Wild Fruits develops a vivid analysis of the corporeal habitus one should adopt in order to navigate swamps on foot as well as the unique sensuous rewards that ensue. As a case in point, the naturalist recalls the spreading tops of blueberry bushes arching over winding paths and forming a perfect labyrinth to which there is no clue, but you must steer by the sun— paths which can be convenient only to rabbits, where you make your way with difficulty, stooping low and straddling from tussock to tussock in order to keep out of water, guided perhaps by the accidental rattling of your companion’s tin pail.96

In the mode practiced by Thoreau, swamp-philia demands a willingness to stoop low, straddle, and steer by the sun, as the familiar indicators of direction become obscure and disappear. Other wetland transactions similarly require

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“stooping close to the ground and brushing off the berries with my pack” while anticipating omnipresent soppiness underfoot: “When I see their dense curving tops ahead, I expect a wet foot.”97 The compensation takes the form not only of refreshingly acidic fruits but of flowers effusing “an agreeable, sweet and berry-promising fragrance” and that “embody for me the essence and flavor of the swamp. When they are thick and large, bending the bushes with their weight, few fruits are so handsome a sight.”98 The Concordian’s aesthetic openness toward swampscapes underlies his affinity for all paludal things and informs his conception of wetlands as sacrosanct spaces of moral growth actualized through bodily exertion. In the early to mid-twentieth century, another American swamp-phile and paludal hero, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, emerged prominently as a staunch and passionate defender of the threatened Everglades of southern Florida. By the time she died at age 108 in 1998, she was widely known as the “grande dame of the Everglades and the state’s pre-eminent conservationist.”99 Stoneman was raised in Taunton, Massachusetts, 50 miles south-east of Thoreau’s swamp haunts at Concord.100 She worked as an assistant editor of The Miami Herald newspaper before turning her attention to independent journalism and wetlands activism—two activities that remained closely connected during her lifetime. Through her potent combination of writing and activism, Stoneman became central to the successful campaign to create the Everglades National Park in the 1940s and went on to co-found the conservation organization Friends of the Everglades in the late 1960s. A region of 600,000 hectares (1,500,000 acres) of subtropical wetlands stretching from the Kissimmee River near Orlando to Florida Bay, the Everglades has been described as “the country’s greatest wetland”101 and “a national treasure.”102 Designated an International Biosphere Reserve, a World Heritage Site and a Ramsar Convention Wetland of International Importance, the Everglades encompasses a diversity of species including the American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis), the Florida panther (Puma concolor), the manatee (Trichechus manatus laterostris), and hundreds of birds, notably, the piping plover (Charadrius melodus), bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus), and roseate tern (Sterna dougallii).103 Since the 1700s, however, nearly half of the overall area of the Everglades has been drained for development and agriculture. Wading bird populations, furthermore, have been reduced to one-fifth of their levels in the 1930s while the endemic panther was almost exterminated.104 Published in 1947, the same year as the inauguration of the Everglades National Park, Douglas’ non-fiction account, The Everglades: River of Grass, exemplifies the idea of wetland culture, for instance, in its first two chapters on “The Nature of the Everglades” and “The People of the Glades” and subsequent wending through tales of discovery, adventure, conquest, ecology,

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and drainage. The book begins with a direct and evocative declaration of the biocultural value of the Everglades: There are no other Everglades in the world. They are, they have always been, one of the unique regions of the earth, remote, never wholly known. Nothing anywhere else is like them: their vast glittering openness, wider than the enormous visible round of the horizon, the racing free saltness and sweetness of their massive winds, under the dazzling blue heights of space. They are unique also in the simplicity, the diversity, the related harmony of the forms of life they enclose.105

Like Thoreau, Douglas integrates visual (horizon, blue heights) and nonvisual (saltiness, sweetness) impressions with multispecies awareness (forms of life). In this naturalcultural mode, her non-fiction would prove indispensable to transforming “the country’s most menacing swamp into its most cherished wetland.”106 Later in the chapter, Douglas enumerates the pernicious tropes deployed to characterize the Everglades since Anglo-European settlement of the Florida peninsula: [. . .] a series of miasmic swamps, poisonous lagoons, huge dismal marshes without outlet, a rotting, shallow, inland sea, or labyrinths of dark trees hung and looped about with snakes and dripping mosses, malignant with tropical fevers and malarias, evil to the white man.107

Beginning with the confronting declarative “the Everglades were dying,” the final chapter, entitled “The Eleventh Hour,” narrates the decline and disappearance of the unique wetlands ecosystem.108 Her swamp-philia prompted her protest against the construction of the Everglades Jetport, or Big Cypress Jetport, in 1968, planned as the largest airport in the world. After intense public resistance, however, jetport construction ceased in 1970 and remains unfinished except for a single runway.109 The work of paludal heroes, such as Thoreau and Douglas, partly involves attempting to reclaim wetlands from public discourses that construct swamps derogatively as miasmic, poisonous, rotting, dismal, and malaria-infested wastelands. This process of reclamation requires literary finesse as well as political shrewdness, as the work of renowned ornithologist and conservationist Luc Hoffmann demonstrates. Wielding exceptional ecopolitical dexterity, Hoffman co-founded the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in 1961 and helped to establish an international wetlands conservation treaty, the Ramsar Convention, ratified in 1975.110 Hoffmann’s early wetlands advocacy and activism focused on the Camargue, located between Arles in France and the Mediterranean Sea, and the Coto Doñana, on the Atlantic coast of Andalucía, Spain.111 In 1954, Hoffman founded Station Biologique de la Tour du Valat, a research center dedicated to the Camargue wetlands, and served

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as managing director of the station until the mid-1970s. A Ramsar site and a UNESCO reserve, the Camargue is one of the most biologically diverse places in Europe and, for example, is home to a major flamingo colony.112 Coto Doñana, moreover, is regarded as “one of the most valuable wetlands in Europe” and “a sanctuary for millions of migratory birds and endangered species.”113 In the 1950s, Coto Doñana was originally identified as having high conservation value by the biologist José Antonio Valverde. Hoffmann and other WWF biologists subsequently studied the marshes during their “Doñana Expeditions” and advanced Valverde’s campaign to save the Guadalquivir Marshes, leading to the establishment of the Coto Doñana National Park in 1969. In 2004, the Luc Hoffman Medal for Excellence in Wetland Science and Conservation was created.114 Some paludal heroes are wholly self-sacrificing, giving up their lives in the defense of wetlands, as Brazilian activist Francisco Anselmo de Barros did. In November 2006, de Barros died after setting himself on fire at the end of a demonstration in Campo Grande, the capital and largest city of the state of Mato Grosso do Sul. De Barros was protesting plans to construct a sugarcane processing facility in the Pantanal wetlands, which would have turned the Paraguay River into a navigation channel for large vessels and the Upper Paraguay Basin into a site for ethanol plants. Prior to his death, de Barros had devoted thirty years to wetlands activism as the founder of one of Brazil’s oldest conservation organizations, the Mato Grosso do Sul Nature Conservation Foundation (Fuconams).115 Encompassing over 200,000 square kilometers (77,200 miles) and extending from Brazil into Bolivia and Paraguay, the Pantanal is the largest wetlands complex in the world.116 In fact, the Spanish root of the word Pantanal means “wetland.”117 Frustrated by political inaction and corruption, de Barros declared that “since we have no votes to save the Pantanal, we will give our lives to save it.”118 Paludal heroism remains a matter of life and death also for the Bangladeshi economist-activist Anu Muhammad, who had been arrested, beaten, and threatened during his seven-year campaign against a proposal to build a coal-fired plant at Rampal Upazila in southern Bangladesh.119 The planned Rampal Power Station is a joint venture between India and Bangladesh that activists claim would destroy the Sundarbans, one of the world’s largest mangrove forests and a UNESCO World Heritage site. Muhammad’s defense of the Sundarbans enacts paludal heroism by shifting between the natural and cultural effects of the plant. He characterizes the mangrove forest as “a huge natural safeguard against frequent cyclone, storm and other natural disasters in the country” and concludes that “the lives and properties of up to four million people who live on it will be threatened if there is no Sundarban.”120 Two other stories of paludal heroes come from China. The young heroine Xu Xiujuan sacrificed her life to protect the red-crowned cranes living in one of the most famous Chinese swamp reserves, Zhalong Nature Reserve, in

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Heilongjiang province. The marshland of over 2,000 square kilometers (775 square miles) is a major habitat for over three hundred species of migrating birds including the nationally protected red-crowned crane.121 Xu’s parents were custodians of the red-crowned crane, and, when Xu was seventeen years old, she started as a casual worker feeding baby birds. In the early 1980s, she became well known as the first female wild crane handler with skills in feeding, hatching and breeding. In 1986, she graduated from Chinese Northeast Forestry University with a specialization in wildlife studies. She was then invited to the Yancheng Nature Reserve in Central China to design winter habitat for migrating cranes.122 She carried three precious crane eggs to the new reserve. During the entire 2,500-kilometer trip, she held the eggs near her heart because hatching cranes requires extremely strict temperature and humidity. After eighty-three days, the three newborn cranes successfully settled in the reserve. The young cranes learned to dance following Xu’s instruction. Xu even put sick cranes in her own bed in order to look after them easily. On September 15, 1987, while rescuing two injured cranes, she died at age 23 when she stepped into the swamp and was swallowed by the marshland she loved deeply. Thousands of people attended her funeral. Coincidentally, there was a solar eclipse on the day. In fact, people thought she turned into a fairy crane who would protect the land and birds forever.123 The song “A True Story” commemorates her story and has spread widely throughout China. In 2006, the film He Xiang Qing [The Attachment to the Zhalong Nature Reserve] was released in memory of the paludal heroine and to advocate for environmental protection.124 On July 2, 2018, the National Ballet of China staged “The Spirit of Cranes,” based on Xu’s story, at Zhalong Nature Reserve, to a background of flying wild cranes.125 Unlike Xu Xiujuan, who remains a grassroots paludal heroine eulogized by both the government authorities and the general populace, the Chinese environment scientist, Huang Wanli, underwent political repression for decades because he dissented from China’s “War Against Nature” policies of the twentieth century. Born in 1911, Huang experienced the 1931 Han River flood and the 1933 dam collapse on the Yellow River. Aspiring to become a hydrological and geomorphological engineer, he completed a doctorate in engineering in the United States and returned to China in 1937. After 1949, he served “New China” at the Bureau of Water Resources and the Hydraulic Engineering Department of Qinghua University.126 In the mid-1950s, reflecting his extensive knowledge of China’s rivers, he openly opposed the construction of the Sanmenxia Dam on the Yellow River. Huang argued that trapping sediment to create a clear river “distorted the laws of nature.”127 He insisted that the sediment was responsible for the largest Chinese wetlands, the Yellow River Delta, which, for thousands of years, has fed millions of Chinese people.128 He foresaw that although the lower reaches of the river

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would become clear temporarily by holding the sediment behind the dam, the upriver would become silted up and create serious flooding problems.129 Despite his scientific expertise, Huang Wanli was singled out for criticism because Chairman Mao Zedong had the ambition that “work on the Yellow River must be carried out well.”130 As a result, Huang was deprived a university teaching position and forced to labor at the Mi Yun Reservoir construction site. During the ten-year Cultural Revolution, his whole family suffered severely under political pressure. Due to his stubbornness, after Mao’s death in 1976, he was one of the last rehabilitated “rightest” intellectuals at Qinghua University.131 Huang’s predictions about the perils of abusing the natural world came to pass. In less than two years, with 1.5 billion tons of silt behind the dam, the reservoir became a serious threat to the Guanzhong plain and the populated capital city of Shanxi province, Xi’an. In 1962, the Sanmenxia Dam had to be reopened at a high cost to let the sediment out.132 After forty years, following his eightieth birthday, Huang Wanli petitioned the government not to repeat the mistake with the Three Gorges Dam. Yet, he was still alone in his opposition to developing rivers and because of his unswerving views he was not permitted to return to teaching until he was 87 years old, only three years before his death.133 He never regretted his convictions and said that “the Earth will always circle the Sun, not the other way around. This will not change because of anything you have to say.”134 CONCLUSION: SWAMP-PHILIA AND PALUDAL HEROISM This chapter has proposed swamp-philia as an affective affinity for wetlands and paludal heroism as a subgenre of environmental heroism focused on human efforts to protect swamps, sloughs, bogs, marshes, and related ecosystems. Demonstrating these ideas, the conservation work of David James over forty years in the southern suburbs of Perth, Western Australia, can be contextualized within an international movement of unrelated individuals who have loved wetlands and have devoted themselves to the defense of the more-than-human domain. This local-global perspective on David James’ eco-heroism—as both profoundly rooted in his human-non-human community in Forrestdale but also of international reach and relevance—responds to eco-cosmopolitanist urges to consider the localist preoccupation of environmental activism within a global imaginary.135 Located at various biogeographical scales, communities of paludal activism share in common an innate affection for wetlands and an appreciation of the ecological significance of these essentially unsung habitats in an epoch in which every year seems to become “the hottest on record.”136 The all-consuming devotion of paludal

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heroes inspires us to re-imagine the value of wetlands and reconfigure our relationship to their human protectors and more-than-human inhabitants.

NOTES 1. Henry David Thoreau, “The Swamp Lover: Excerpt from ‘Walking’,” The Atlantic 320, no. 4 (2017): 122–23. 2. Nature, “2016 Was the Hottest Year on Record,” Nature 541, no. 7638 (2017): 441. 3. Ari Kohen, Untangling Heroism: Classical Philosophy and the Concept of the Hero (New York: Routledge, 2013), 8. 4. Goldman Environmental Foundation, “About the Prize,” The Goldman Environmental Prize, 2017, accessed May 28, 2019, www.goldmanprize.org/ about/. 5. Ian Terry, “A Matter of Values: Stories from the Franklin River Blockade, 1982–83,” Papers and Proceedings: Tasmanian Historical Research Association 60, no. 1 (2013): 48–60. 6. Kohen, Untangling Heroism, 8. 7. Friends of Forrestdale, “Oblong Turtle (Chelodina colliei),” The Bushland Whistler 15 (2017): 5–6; Rod Giblett, Forrestdale: People and Place (Bassendean, WA: Access Press, 2006); David James, “Interview by John C. Ryan,” September 1, 2009, Unpublished Transcript; David James, “Interview with Conservationist David James (FloraCultures),” Vimeo, 2015, accessed May 28, 2019, https://vimeo. com/159349971. 8. T.F. Hoad, ed., The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2003). 9. Michael Allaby, A Dictionary of Ecology, 4th ed. (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2010). 10. Ramsar, “The Convention on Wetlands Text, As Originally Adopted in 1971,” 2003, Article 1, accessed May 28, 2019, http:​//arc​hive.​ramsa​r.org​/cda/​en/ ra​msar-​docum​ents-​texts​-conv​entio​n-on-​20708​/main​/rams​ar/1-​31-38​%5E20​708_4​ 000_0​__. 11. Erich Fromm, The Heart of Man (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), 9. 12. Edward O. Wilson, Biophilia: The Human Bond with Other Species (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 1. 13. Rod Giblett, Black Swan Lake: Life of a Wetland (Bristol, UK: Intellect Press, 2013), 12. 14. Donna Haraway, When Species Meet (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), 16. 15. Julia Anderson Boyd, “Environmental Heroism and the Power of Storytelling in the Novels and Papers of Brian Doyle: ‘The Infinite Family of Organisms’,” Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures 8, no. 2 (2016): 89–118 [91]. 16. James, “Interview with Conservationist,” minute 8:04–8:20. 17. James, “Interview with Conservationist.”

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18. John C. Ryan and Rod Giblett, eds., Forest Family: Australian Culture, Art, and Trees (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill Publishing, 2018). 19. R.T. Kingsford and R.F. Thomas, “Destruction of Wetlands and Waterbird Populations by Dams and Irrigation on the Murrumbidgee River in Arid Australia,” Environmental Management 34, no. 3 (2004): 383–96, doi: 10.1007/ s00267-004-0250-3. 20. Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from NatureDeficit Disorder (London: Atlantic Books, 2005). 21. Yannick Joye and Andreas De Block, “‘Nature and I are Two’: A Critical Analysis of the Biophilia Hypothesis,” Environmental Values 20, no. 2 (2011): 189–215 [190]. 22. See, for example, Sanford Levy, “The Biophilia Hypothesis and Anthropocentric Environmentalism,” Environmental Ethics 25, no. 3 (2003): 227–46, doi: 10.5840/enviroethics200325316. 23. David Clowney, “Biophilia as an Environmental Virtue,” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 26, no. 5 (2013): 999–1014, doi: 10.1007/s10806013-9437-z; Fromm, The Heart of Man; The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (New York: Rinehart & Winston, 1973); Joye and De Block, “‘Nature and I’”; Stephen Kellert, Kinship to Mastery: Biophilia in Human Evolution and Development (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1997); Levy, “The Biophilia Hypothesis”; Wilson, Biophilia. 24. Fromm, The Anatomy, 366, emphasis added. 25. Ibid. 26. Joye and De Block, “‘Nature and I’,” 191–92. 27. Wilson, Biophilia. 28. Joye and De Block, “‘Nature and I’,” 189. 29. Ibid., 200. 30. Dorion Sagan and Lynn Margulis, “God, Gaia, and Biophilia,” in The Biophilia Hypothesis, ed. Stephen Kellert and Edward O. Wilson (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1993). 31. John Simaika and Michael Samways, “Biophilia as a Universal Ethic for Conserving Biodiversity,” Conservation Biology 24, no. 3 (2010): 903–06 [904], doi: 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2010.01485.x. 32. Ivan Wallin qtd. in Jan Sapp, Evolution by Association: A History of Symbiosis (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1994), 121. 33. Sapp, Evolution by Association. 34. Simaika and Samways, “Biophilia,” 95. 35. Kellert, Kinship, 1–3. 36. Clowney, “Biophilia,” 1010. 37. Ibid., 1011. 38. Levy, “The Biophilia Hypothesis,” 227. 39. Thoreau, “The Swamp Lover.” 40. Joye and De Block, “‘Nature and I’,” 191–92. 41. Dayna Nadine Scott, “‘We Are the Monitors Now’: Experiential Knowledge, Transcorporeality and Environmental Justice,” Social and Legal Studies 25, no. 3 (2016): 261–87, doi: 10.1177/0964663915601166.

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42. Rod Giblett, Canadian Wetlands: Places and People (Bristol, UK: Intellect Press, 2014), 183. 43. Henry David Thoreau, The Writings of Henry David Thoreau: Journal, 1837–1846, 1850–Nov. 3, 1861, ed. Bradford Torrey and Franklin Benjamin Sanborn (New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1906), 288. 44. David James qtd. in Friends of Forrestdale, “Oblong Turtle,” 5, emphasis added. 45. Ibid. 46. Thoreau, “The Swamp Lover,” 123. 47. Clowney, “Biophilia,” 1011. 48. Thoreau, “The Swamp Lover,” 122. 49. James, “Interview with Conservationist,” minute 2:18–2:33. 50. Joye and De Block, “‘Nature and I’,” 191–92. 51. James, “Interview by John C. Ryan.” 52. Goldman Environmental Foundation. “About the Prize.” 53. Boyd, “Environmental Heroism;” Patrick Dooley, “The Ambiguity of Environmental Ethics: Duty or Heroism?” Philosophy Today 30, no. 1 (1986): 48–57; Martin Hultman, “The Making of an Environmental Hero: A History of Ecomodern Masculinity, Fuel Cells and Arnold Schwarzenegger,” Environmental Humanities 2 (2013): 79–99. 54. The Last Stand: Heroes at Ballona Wetlands, directed by Sheila Laffey, Echo Mountain Productions, 2004, film. 55. See, for example, Terry, “A Matter of Values.” 56. Alfred Archer and Michael Ridge, “The Heroism Paradox: Another Paradox of Supererogation,” Philosophical Studies 172, no. 6 (2015): 1575–92 [1577], doi: 10.1007/s11098-014-0365-1. 57. Alfred Archer, “Supererogation and Intentions of the Agent,” Philosophia 41, no. 2 (2013): 447–62 [447], doi: 10.1007/s11406-013-9422-9. 58. Kohen, Untangling Heroism, 5. 59. Ibid., 8. 60. Anne Colby and William Damon, Some Do Care: Contemporary Lives of Moral Commitment (New York: The Free Press, 1992), 20, 70. 61. Archer and Ridge, “The Heroism Paradox,” 1578. 62. Ibid., 1590. 63. Michael Ridge, “Modesty as a Virtue,” American Philosophical Quarterly 37, no. 3 (2000): 269–83 [281]. 64. Laurie Finke and Martin Shichtman, “Arthur Pendragon, Eco-Warrior,” Arthuriana 23, no. 1 (2013): 5–19. 65. Dooley, “The Ambiguity.” 66. Ibid., 55. 67. Ibid., 49. 68. Ibid., 55. 69. Giblett, Forrestdale. 70. Rod Giblett and David James, “Anstey-Keane: Botanical Jewel,” Landscope 24, no. 4 (2009): 42–4. 71. James, “Interview with Conservationist,” minute 2:00–2:04.

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72. John Beard, The Vegetation of the Pinjarra Area, Western Australia: Map and Explanatory Memoir (Perth, WA: Vegmap Publications, 1979), 27. 73. Ben Cooke, “Community-Based Monitoring: Exploring the Involvement of Friends Groups in a Terrestrial Park Management Context,” Australasian Plant Conservation 17, no. 1 (2008): 10–12. 74. SERCUL, “Friends of Forrestdale,” SERCUL: South East Regional Centre for Urban Landcare, 2017, accessed May 29, 2019, www.sercul.org.au/ forrestdale/. 75. Joyce Davidson, Liz Bondi, and Mick Smith, eds., Emotional Geographies (Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2012). 76. Ministry for Planning, Bush Forever: Policies, Principles and Processes, vol. 1 (Perth, WA: Ministry for Planning, 2000), viii. 77. Friends of Forrestdale, “Anstey-Keane Dampland (Bush Forever Site 342),” The Bushland Whistler 16 (2017), accessed May 29, 2019, www.s​ercul​.org.​au/wp​ -cont​ent/u​pload​s/201​6/12/​THE-B​USHLA​ND-WH​ISTLE​R-EDI​TION-​SIXTE​EN.pd​ f. 78. James, “Interview with Conservationist,” minute 8:20–8:40, emphasis added. 79. John C. Ryan, Plants in Contemporary Poetry: Ecocriticism and the Botanical Imagination (New York: Routledge, 2017), 114. 80. James, “Interview with Conservationist,” minute 3:11–3:37, emphasis added. 81. Joye and De Block, “‘Nature and I,’” 191–92. 82. James, “Interview with Conservationist,” minute 7:06–7:32, emphasis added. 83. Phillip Payne, “Ecopedagogy and Radical Pedagogy: Post-Critical Transgressions in Environmental and Geography Education,” Journal of Environmental Education 48, no. 2 (2017): 130–38, doi: 10.1080/00958964.2016.1237462. 84. James, “Interview by John C. Ryan.” 85. James, “Interview with Conservationist,” minute 1:00–1:36. 86. Ibid., minute 8:40–8:47. 87. Ibid., minute 4:35–4:53. 88. John C. Ryan, Posthuman Plants: Rethinking the Vegetal Through Culture, Art and Poetry (Champaign, IL: Common Ground Publishing, 2015), 174–87. 89. Rod Giblett, Postmodern Wetlands: Culture, History, Ecology (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996), 229–39. 90. Henry David Thoreau, Wild Fruits: Thoreau’s Rediscovered Last Manuscript (New York: W.W. Norton, 2000), 17. 91. Thoreau, Wild Fruits, 31. 92. Thoreau, “The Swamp Lover,” 123, emphasis added. 93. Thoreau, Wild Fruits, 33. 94. Ibid., 30–36. 95. Ibid., 30. 96. Ibid., 33. 97. Ibid., 31, 30. 98. Ibid., 30, 31. 99. Craig Basse, “Grand Dame of the Everglades,” St. Petersburg Times Online May 15, 1998, accessed March 1, 2018, www.s​ptime​s.com​/Stat​e/515​98/Gr​and_d​ ame_o​f_the​_Eve.​html.​

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100. Everglades Information Network, “Marjory Stoneman Douglas, 1890–1998,” 2017, accessed May 29, 2019, http:​//eve​rglad​es.fi​u.edu​/recl​aim/b​ios/d​ougla​s.htm​. 101. Jack Davis, An Everglades Providence: Marjory Stoneman Douglas and the American Environmental Century (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2009), 4. 102. Michael Grunwald, The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise (New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2006), 3. 103. Steven M. Davis and John C. Ogden, “Introduction,” in Everglades: The Ecosystem and Its Restoration, ed. Steven M. Davis and John C. Ogden (Boca Raton, FL: St. Lucie Press, 1994), 3. 104. Ibid. 105. Marjory Stoneman Douglas, The Everglades: River of Grass (Sarasota, FL: Pineapple Press, 2007), 5. 106. Davis, An Everglades Providence, 5. 107. Douglas, The Everglades, 6. 108. Ibid., 349. 109. Davis, An Everglades Providence, chapter 30. 110. Ramsar, “The Convention.” 111. Luc Hoffmann Institute, “Dr Luc Hoffmann Spent Most of His Life Working to Protect the Environment,” 2017, accessed May 29, 2019, http:​//luc​hoffm​annin​ stitu​te.or​g/abo​ut/ab​out-d​r-luc​-hoff​mann/​; Stephen Moss, “Luc Hoffmann Obituary,” The Guardian August 1, 2016, accessed May 29, 2019, www.t​hegua​rdian​.com/​envir​ onmen​t/201​6/aug​/01/l​uc-ho​ffman​n-obi​tuary​; WWF, “Doñana: Fifty Years Since WWF’s Landmark Conservation Achievement,” 2013, accessed May 29, 2019, http:​// wwf​.pand​a.org​/?213​750/D​onana​-fift​y-yea​rs-si​nce-W​WFs-f​i rst-​major​-cons​ervat​ion-a​ chiev​ement​. 112. William Mitsch and James Gosselink, Wetlands, 5th ed. (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2015), 78. 113. WWF, “Doñana.” 114. Wetlands International, “Luc Hoffmann Medal,” 2017, accessed May 29, 2019, www.w​etlan​ds.or​g/abo​ut-us​/luc-​hoffm​ann-m​edal/​. 115. Rupert Wright, Take Me to the Source: In Search of Water (New York: Vintage, 2009), 93. 116. F.D. Por, The Pantanal of Mato Grosso (Brazil): World’s Largest Wetlands, 1st ed. (Dordrecht: Springer Science+Business Media, 1995), 1. 117. Por, The Pantanal of Mato Grosso (Brazil). 118. ECOA, “Pantanal Day: 10 Years After the Death of Francisco Anselmo,” 2017, accessed May 29, 2019, http:​//eco​a.org​.br/1​2-de-​novem​bro-d​ia-do​-pant​anal/​. 119. AZM Anas, “Politics of Death: The Bangladeshi Professor Defending Nature with His Life,” Reuters June 26, 2017, accessed May 29, 2019, www.r​euter​s.com​/ arti​cle/b​angla​desh-​landr​ights​-powe​rstat​ion/f​eatur​e-pol​itics​-of-d​eath-​the-b​angla​deshi​ -prof​essor​-defe​nding​-natu​re-wi​th-hi​s-lif​e-idU​SL8N1​IK32J​. 120. Anu Muhammad qtd. in ibid., “Air Pollution,” para. 2. 121. Nan Li and Tiedong Kang, “Zhalong Shidi: Dandinghe De Guxiang [Zhalong Wetland: The Hometown of the Red-Crowned Crane],” Guotu Lvhua [Land Greening] 7 (2013): 48–49 [48]; Laura Riley and William Riley, Nature’s Strongholds: The

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World’s Great Wildlife Reserves (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 195. 122. Sina News, “Qi Yan Liangdi Hudong: Jinian Jiuhe Guniang Xu Xiujuan Xunnan 20 Zai [The 20th Commemoration Held to Remember Xu Xiujuan at both Zhalong and Yancheng Reserves],” Sina News, 2007, accessed May 29, 2019, http:​// new​s.sin​a.com​.cn/o​/2007​-09-1​8/104​01259​0028s​.shtm​l. 123. China Radio International Online, “Yige Zhenshi de Gushi: Xu Xiujuan de Gushi [A True Story of Xu Xiujuan],” China Radio International Online, 2004, accessed May 29, 2019, http:​//new​s.cri​.cn/g​b/41/​2004/​02/21​/114@​73641​_1.ht​m. 124. Tencent, “Chuanbo Daai: Gongyi Dianying ‘Dandinghe Nvhai’ Gaibian Zhenshi Gushi [The Film ‘Crane Girl’ is Adapted from the True Story of Xu Xiujuan],” Tencent, 2016, accessed May 29, 2019, http://ent.qq.com/a/20160909/042856.htm. 125. People’s Daily Online, “Zhongyang Balei Wutuan Xie ‘Hehun’ Fan Hexiang Yu He Gongwu [The National Ballet of China Staged ‘The Spirit of Cranes’ at Zhalong Nature Reserve],” People’s Daily Online, 2018, accessed May 29, 2019, http:​// hlj​.peop​le.co​m.cn/​n2/20​18/07​02/c2​20024​-3176​8427.​html.​ 126. Judith Shapiro, Mao’s War Against Nature: Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 51–52. 127. Huang Wanli qtd. in ibid., 52. 128. Huawen Chen and Ling Li, “‘Changhe Gulv’ Jiangshu Huang Wanli de Danshi yu Yongqi [The Book ‘Changhe Gulv’ Demonstrates Huang Wanli’s Bravery and Courage],” ScienceNet June 8, 2012, accessed May 29, 2019, http:​//new​s.sci​encen​ et.cn​/html​news/​2012/​6/265​331.s​htm. 129. Shapiro, Mao’s War, 62. 130. Kelly Haggart, “A Tale of Two Scientists,” Probe International June 27, 2002, accessed May 29, 2019, https​://jo​urnal​.prob​einte​rnati​onal.​org/2​002/0​6/27/​tale-​ two-s​cient​ists-​2/. 131. Shapiro, Mao’s War, 54–58. 132. Haggart, “A Tale.” 133. Ibid. 134. Shapiro, Mao’s War, 58. 135. Ursula Heise, Sense of Place and Sense of Planet: The Environmental Imagination of the Global (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2008). 136. Nature, “2016.”

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Scott, Dayna Nadine. “‘We Are the Monitors Now’: Experiential Knowledge, Transcorporeality and Environmental Justice.” Social and Legal Studies 25, no. 3 (2016) 261–87. doi: 10.1177/0964663915601166. SERCUL. “Friends of Forrestdale.” SERCUL: South East Regional Centre for Urban Landcare. 2017. Accessed May 29, 2019. www.sercul.org.au/forrestdale/. Simaika, John, and Michael Samways. “Biophilia as a Universal Ethic for Conserving Biodiversity.” Conservation Biology 24, no. 3 (2010): 903–06. doi: 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2010.01485.x. Shapiro, Judith. Mao’s War Against Nature: Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Sina News. “Qi Yan Liangdi Hudong: Jinian Jiuhe Guniang Xu Xiujuan Xunnan 20 Zai [The 20th Commemoration Held to Remember Xu Xiujuan at both Zhalong and Yancheng Reserves].” Sina News. 2007. Accessed May 29, 2019. http:​//new​ s.sin​a.com​.cn/o​/2007​-09-1​8/104​01259​0028s​.shtm​l. Tencent. “Chuanbo Daai: Gongyi Dianying ‘Dandinghe Nvhai’ Gaibian Zhenshi Gushi [The Film ‘Crane Girl’ is Adapted from the True Story of Xu Xiujuan].” Tencent. 2016. Accessed May 29, 2019. http://ent.qq.com/a/20160909/042856.htm. Terry, Ian. “A Matter of Values: Stories from the Franklin River Blockade, 1982–83.” Papers and Proceedings: Tasmanian Historical Research Association 60, no. 1 (2013): 48–60. The Last Stand: Heroes at Ballona Wetlands. Directed by Sheila Laffey. Echo Mountain Productions, 2004. Film. Thoreau, Henry David. “The Swamp Lover: Excerpt from ‘Walking’.” The Atlantic 320, no. 4 (2017): 122–23. Original publication 1862. ———. The Writings of Henry David Thoreau: Journal, 1837–1846, 1850–Nov. 3, 1861, edited by Bradford Torrey and Franklin Benjamin Sanborn. New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1906. ———. Wild Fruits: Thoreau’s Rediscovered Last Manuscript. New York: W.W. Norton, 2000. Wetlands International. “Luc Hoffmann Medal.” 2017. Accessed May 29, 2019. www.w​etlan​ds.or​g/abo​ut-us​/luc-​hoffm​ann-m​edal/​. Wilson, Edward O. Biophilia: The Human Bond with Other Species. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984. Wright, Rupert. Take Me to the Source: In Search of Water. New York: Vintage, 2009. WWF. “Doñana: Fifty Years Since WWF’s Landmark Conservation Achievement.” 2013. Accessed May 29, 2019. http:​//wwf​.pand​a.org​/?213​750/D​onana​-fift​y-yea​ rs-si​nce-W​WFs-f​i rst-​major​-cons​ervat​ion-a​chiev​ement​.

Power of Deluge Glen Phillips

In April in the country after month upon month of summer the air changes: skies take on the milkiness of the film on a blind man’s eyes. Suddenly there is not the welcome cool of evening. In the night the air is chill and mornings follow in a hazy fume. Across the windstruck skyline suddenly like the tail of a kite, raucous black cockatoos fly screeching to the pine tops. And children call them the ‘rain birds’. Where they have been you see holocausts of torn twigs and ransacked cones scattered on the silent earth beneath the pines. And now at night you hear the hidden frogs whooping their calls. They importune the King of Frogs to unloose his great pale belly distending with the winter rains. Night after night they chant and chant litanies in the gardens, in the fields. And at last in the norwest, darkening the earth, rises the shadowed bulk of their King! As often times over the lowlands of Sumeria or the Nile when that scent of rain at evening has promised the rising flood, 225

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the frogs redoubled their pleading chants; and a patter of answering drops comes on the powdery dust. Dry grass stoops, the tree leaves quiver like moths, then ranks of grey showers hammer the roofs; I see dark rivulets run from the spouts this night. Afterwards as the rain steadies on the black glistening road, the thankful white-robed crowds of frogs advance out of swamp and ditch to stand in the beam of our lights, heads aloft to their awaited God-King. Their faith, their great longing satisfied just as our whizzing tyres smack them down, as if they were pale leaves pasted on the stones by rush of rain.

Chapter 10

Epilogue Twenty-Five Years of Wetland Studies in the Humanities Rod Giblett

For many years wetlands—swamps, marshes, mires, morasses, bogs, lagoons, sloughs, shallow lakes, and estuaries, etc.—have been observed by water-bird watchers, appreciated by naturalists, loved by nature writers1 and landscape memoirists,2 praised (or damned) by poets,3 depicted by painters and photographers,4 studied by scientists,5 misdiagnosed as disease-generating by medical practitioners, demonized by preachers of fear as evil places where monsters lurk in their murky, black waters, and denigrated as dismal swamps and as obstacles to development by devotees of modern progress.6 This has left the critical study of the cultural and human side of wetlands largely in limbo for a long time struggling to find a voice and a champion to plead their case in works of cultural and literary criticism. The historical and geographical study of wetlands, such as the English Fens, was begun in the late 1930s by H. C. Darby, a pioneering historical geographer and economic historian of wetlands in the social sciences.7 The story is much bleaker in the humanities with the critical study of the cultural and human side of wetlands taking a lot longer to emerge. It might have emerged in Raymond Williams’s otherwise exemplary radical cultural and literary work on English landscapes, but remained undeveloped, especially in relation to the Fens. Williams discusses the enclosure of the commons into private property in The Country and the City8 as “a plain enough case of class robbery,” as E. P. Thompson puts it,9 but Williams does not mention the fact that much of this took place in and of the Fens and other wetlands by dredging and draining as documented by Darby.10 Wetlands generally get short shrift in The Country and the City where they might have been discussed as a displeasing prospect within dominant aesthetics and politics. Williams describes Richard Jeffries’ novel After London as 227

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“a powerful but acrid vision of the metropolis reclaimed by the swamp”—on which it was founded by “reclaiming” the swamp, but Williams does not say this, nor discuss the implied fact.11 In After London the swamp on which London was founded re-reclaims the metropolis. The repressed wetland returns in Jefferies’ cultural vision of nature swamping the city of London.12 The enclosure of the Fens was mourned by John Clare, a selection of whose poetry was coedited by Williams and his daughter. In this edition and in The Country and the City, they read Clare as a pastoral poet of “green language” in the country, “the finest naturalist in all English poetry,” and a political poet against enclosure.13 In all these aspects, Clare and the Williams’ reading of his work are exemplary. Yet they neglect or overlook that Clare is also a nature and culture poet of, and for, the Fens as a wetland habitat for human and non-human life, especially in the long poems, “The Fens” and “To the Snipe.”14 Similarly, and contemporaneously with the Williams, John Barrell, in his otherwise exemplary discussion of landscape and sense of place in relation to Clare’s poetry,15 and Elizabeth Helsinger, in her article on Clare as a “peasant poet of place,” overlook the centrality of the Fens as a wetland place in Clare’s work and do not comment at all on “The Fens” and “To the Snipe.”16 Clare qualifies for canonization as St. John, the Patron Saint of the Fens. The draining or filling of the Fens enclosed the wetland commons and its indigenous wetland agri- and aqua-culture into private dryland agriculture, which was later industrialized. Wetlands before or by the city or on its outskirts were also drained or filled for the development or expansion of the city.17 Agricultural land on the outskirts of cites was also turned into the city. Wetlands are located either in or between the country and the city. The draining or filling of wetlands in the country for dryland agriculture and in sites for the dryland city is the representative land change and psychogeopathology (earthly mental illness) of urbanity and modernity.18 The fundamental event of the modern age is the conquest of wetlands. The symptomatic modern psychogeopathology is the drive to sublimate primeval slime into the modern sublime manifested in the will to fill, drain, or otherwise destroy wetlands.19 Misaquaterrism (hatred of wetlands) led to aquaterracide (the killing of wetlands). Those looking for cultural guides to the human side of wetlands might have found one in Clare if his writing on the Fens had not been neglected or overlooked in The Country and the City. As this was a pioneering book in ecocriticism and ecocultural studies,20 it was a touchstone book for writing Postmodern Wetlands in which Jeffries is, as a result, a welcome presence and from which Clare is, as a result, a notable and deplorable absence.21 Had I known about his work at the time, Clare would have got a guernsey (sporting team pullover or jumper) in the final chapter showcasing wetland writers, including Henry David Thoreau.

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In the early stages of researching and writing Postmodern Wetlands in the early 1990s, I found a kindred wetland spirit in Thoreau, the great nature writer, exemplary cultural botanist, and environmental philosopher of the nineteenth century. Thoreau writes lovingly of swamps and being in them, principally in his 1862 essay “Walking” and buried throughout the two million words of his voluminous journal.22 In chapter 9 of this volume, John C. Ryan and Li Chen call Thoreau “a paludal hero” (from the Latin term palūd for marsh) and “a swamp-philiac.” Along similar lines, I have previously called Thoreau “the patron saint of swamps.”23 Previously I also placed Thoreau in the paludal lineage that goes on to include John Muir, the foundation president of the Sierra Club, and Aldo Leopold, the foundation president of the Wilderness Society in the United States who wrote about Manitoban marshes.24 Wetlands have got and deserve the presidential treatment. Yet the importance of wetlands for Thoreau, Muir, and Leopold is neglected by most American writers about them and American wilderness.25 Leopold qualifies for canonization as St. Aldo, the Patron Saint of Marshes. John C. Ryan and Li Chen place Thoreau at the forefront of a lineage in which he includes the current paludal hero and swamp-philiac, David James, the founding and still-serving president of the Friends of Forrestdale in Western Australia. David has been an extraordinary conservationist, local naturalist, and “citizen scientist” for about three decades before that condescending term was coined. David, for me, is the local naturalist and swamp conservationist side of a Henry David Thoreau of the south to my other, university-educated, owner-builder/designer and writer side. Between David and me, we made up the Thoreau of Forrestdale, culminating in the article we wrote together about a dampland in Forrestdale under threat from the proposed construction of a road and a pipeline through the middle of it.26 The road was stopped, but not the pipeline. We follow in Thoreau’s big footsteps that we don’t pretend to fill. He was not only a founder of the American conservationist movement, a philosopher of walking and wilderness, and a purveyor of “the tonic of wildness” as an antidote to the stagnation of village life, but also an advocate for corporeal and paludal wildness as “the bog in our brain and our bowels” and the “patron saint of swamps” who wrote a word for wetlands. In the humanities, wetlands and other landforms have suffered for a long time from the nature/culture split and from the “two cultures” of the sciences versus the humanities with nature assigned to the sciences and culture to the humanities. Nature was repressed in, and by, the major schools and strands of cultural studies. The return of the natural in ecocultural studies was generated by Williams’ early work on nature and landscape and his later work on livelihood. Together they make up the foundational texts of ecocriticism and ecocultural studies of which he is arguably the founder.27 Acknowledging that

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the distinction he earlier drew between the country and the city was too stark and did not address the inter-dependency between, Williams later developed the concept and championed the practice of livelihood. Wetlands are located either within or between the country and city in bioregions; livelihoods take place in bioregions and are derived from them.28 Following in Williams’ footsteps, the shift to considering nature in cultural studies was continued, and Williams explicitly acknowledged, by Alexander Wilson’s pioneering work of ecocultural studies, The Culture of Nature: North American Landscape from Disney to Exxon Valdez.29 Yet rather than one unitary, homogeneous “culture of nature,” as Wilson implies, a variety of culturally and politically heterogeneous and historically contingent “cultures of natures” contend for hegemony in various unholy alliances between them.30 Like Williams, Wilson neglects or overlooks wetlands in his broadranging and exemplary study. Wetlands were repressed in, and by, ecocultural studies as practiced by Williams and Wilson. The return of the paludal repressed in ecocultural studies began in 1992 and so it was contemporaneous with Wilson’s study of the culture of nature.31 The representation and signification of wetlands in culture finally emerged as a legitimate topic of theorization and critical analysis. It occurred within the humanities over a decade before the environmental humanities were invented, or at least an invitation to them was issued.32 Like their predecessors in ecocultural studies, the environmental humanities have privileged dryland country and water bodies (lakes, oceans, rivers) and marginalized wetlands. Crossing the great divide of the “two cultures” between the sciences/ humanities and deconstructing and decolonizing the nature/culture split meant that the consideration of wetlands culture was transdisciplinary from its inception. It also crossed over between the disciplines of history, philosophy, anthropology, and literary studies. It built a bridge for dialogue and rapprochement between these disciplines and brought a plague on both their houses when they entrenched themselves. Occasionally it was shot down in the “no-man’s” wasteland between them by those stuck in the fortified trenches of their discipline. It also developed or affirmed psychoanalytic, postmodern, and political (socialist and feminist) ecologies. In Western culture, wetlands have traditionally, or at least in patriarchal times, been seen as places of darkness, disease and death, horror and the uncanny, melancholy and the monstrous—in short, as black waters. They have often been regarded as home to some sort of horrifying marsh monster or swamp serpent lurking in their murky waters.33 Up until the 1890s, it was thought that the miasmatic vapors that rose from stagnant pools caused malaria (which means literally “bad air”). The perception persisted from ancient times that miasma also cause melancholia or depression. Wetlands have been filled or drained not only to prevent malaria and

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melancholia, but also because they pose an obstacle to agricultural and urban development. In Aboriginal cultures, however, wetlands have been (and continue to be) seen as places of both life and death, light and darkness, life-giving and death-dealing to be revered and conserved—in other words, as “living black waters.” They are often associated, or equated with, with the usually brightly colored rainbow, but sometimes black, yet richly patterned serpent of the Dreaming stories. These and other aspects of Aboriginal understandings of wetlands are discussed in Western Australian Wetlands.34 This was one of the first books to address Aboriginal Australian interactions with, and perceptions of, wetlands in a cultural studies and environmental humanities context. The rainbow serpent and associated figures are also discussed in chapter 2 of this volume within the contexts of anthropology and theology. Until recently, theology has not been much considered in the environmental humanities, yet theology underpins and informs understandings of and actions toward the natural and cultural environments in general, and toward wetlands in particular.35 Of course, within theology, there has been a long-standing consideration of the environment.36 The earthly sacrality of marsh monsters and swamp serpents are figures for a belief in, and a way of living, bio- and psycho-symbiotic livelihoods in bioregions of the living earth in the Symbiocene, the hoped-for age and paradigm superseding (in the sense of embracing and following) the Anthropocene. The Symbiocene comes out of the desire for, and paradigm of, mutuality. The Anthropocene came out of its drive for, and the failed paradigm of, mastery over nature.37 In the era of climate change and global warming, nature is mastering, or monstering. Along similar lines to Aboriginal cultures, other non-Western, and prepatriarchal Western, cultures feminized the swamp positively as the source of new life in the snake goddess, the mistress of living black waters, whereas patriarchal hierarchy with its dryland agriculture and its misogynist denigration of the wetland feminized the wetland as the environmental femme fatale, spider woman and vagina dentata. With the rise of capitalism under the aegis of patriarchy in Europe with its modern cities the black waters of wetlands “at home” and in the colonies were seen by many citizens as premodern wasteland or wilderness to be conquered as a marker of “Progress.” Wetlands either were drained or filled to create the dead surface of private property on which agricultural and urban development could then take place or they were polluted by cities and farms to produce the dead black waters of a modern wastewetland. Later the draining or filling and polluting of wetlands by industrial technology increased markedly their degradation and destruction.38 Why this horror of wetlands? Part of the problem with wetlands lies in the fact that wetlands are neither strictly land nor water but both land and water.

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Wetlands are a taxonomic anomaly in a classificatory system or “the order of things” predicated on a hard-and-fast distinction between land and water, time and space, or perhaps more precisely, their representational systems: the timelessness of maps and the spacelessness of history do not lend themselves to the changing nature of wetlands. What is needed, instead, are temporal maps that move with time, that show historical change in wetlands; spatial history that shows history taking place in, and in relation to, wetlands; and quantum ecology that construes “the environment,” especially wetlands, on a space/time continuum. Part of the problem with wetlands also lies in the fact that they do not generally conform to the norms and conventions of aesthetics in the European landscape tradition. Aesthetics and wetlands have had a fraught and troubled relationship. Wetlands are generally not picturesque, nor beautiful, nor sublime.39 Yet these three are not the only aesthetic modes, or pleasures (or pleasure bordering on pain in the case of the sublime), possible. The fourth modality of the uncanny applies to the wetlandscape. The uncanny combines fascination and horror. It also engages the sense of smell with its immediacy, rather than the sense of sight with its mastery over an object.40 The wetlandscape is, in a word, uncanny, involving fascination and horror. Both the uncanny and the wetlandscape involve an appreciation of smell quite inimical to the aesthetics of sight of the beautiful, picturesque, and sublime. Yet by way of dissociating the uncanny from its misogynist overtones (the ultimate uncanny place for patriarchal culture is the mother's genitalia), it is necessary to make a distinction between the fascinatingly uncanny and the horrifically uncanny. Wetlands have by and large been the locus of the horrifically uncanny to shun, and destroy; they need to become a place of the fascinatingly uncanny to appreciate (its sights, sounds and smells, even its tastes and textures) and preserve. When European explorers first came to Southwest Australia and the site for the future Swan River Colony (later the city of Perth) they were faced with an alien landscape (or more precisely wetlandscape) which did not conform to their preconceived ideas of what lakes should look like. So strange were the shallow, often seasonal wetlands of this new land that explorers did not mark them on their maps, nor even note the existence of lakes and swamps in their descriptions of the country.41 By contrast, when European explorers first came to south-eastern Australia and Port Philip Bay (later the site for the city of Melbourne) they did mark on their maps and note in their descriptions of the country the existence of lakes and swamps.42 The Port Phillip wetlands were clustered around the shores of the Bay close to open, navigable water. They were readily accessible by English explorers circumnavigating within Port Philip Bay who made onshore excursions into the surrounding wetlands and went up the

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Yarra and Maribyrnong Rivers debouching into deltaic marshes and swamps, whereas early Dutch, French, and English explorers went up the non-deltaic Swan River and did not make onshore excursions into the inter-dunal Perth wetlands lying beyond. When Captain James Stirling, an early explorer of the Swan River and later the first governor of the Swan River Colony, wanted to sell real estate in the Colony he described the Swan Coastal Plain as “grassy country, thinly wooded,” whereas in fact it was swampy country, thickly wooded. When it came to the foundation of a settlement, wetlands had to be mapped and were done so at a larger scale of a smaller area around the settlement of Perth, whereas the explorers’ smaller-scale maps of a larger area wrote Perth’s wetlands out of existence.43 Not until the 1990s were Perth’s surviving wetlands precisely mapped in and as “A City of Wetlands.” The general view of settlers right into the twentieth century was that many Australian wetlands were not really lakes at all, and so not worthy of consideration, let alone conservation. They were also subject to the utilitarian view and found to be useless, though we now know that wetlands can even be more productive than rainforests. The project of colonization, especially in its modern phase and especially in relation to the establishment of settlements and the foundation of cities, is strongly tied to the draining or filling of wetlands; in fact, the latter makes possible the former. Without the draining or filling of wetlands the establishment and expansion of many modern cities would not have been possible. Some iconic cities of modernity, such as St Petersburg, were built on land reclaimed from marshes, while some new colonial settlements which grew into modern cities, such as Toronto,44 Perth,45 and Melbourne46 were founded between a river and wetlands. These and other wetland cities which became iconic cities of modernity, such as Paris, London, Venice, Berlin, Hamburg, Boston, New York, New Orleans, Washington, and Chicago, could only expand in an uninterrupted fashion by filling or draining the marshes or swamps.47 The project of modernity with both industrial agriculture and the modern city is strongly tied to the draining or filling of wetlands. Shifting focus toward the south-east of Australia, Melbourne is a city that has lost most of its presettlement wetlands. Perth and Melbourne are both grid plan towns in which the rectilinear layout of the streets and lots of the early settlements was written around the wetlands that were there originally. Both cities gradually expanded and the central wetlands were filled or drained. Both cities wrote over their central wetlands and they were largely written out of history. Melbourne’s wetlands, for instance, are not mentioned in Paul Carter’s history of Melbourne as a grid plan town in The Road to Botany Bay,48 nor in Mythform, his account of the design for Nearamnew, the inscription in stone of the history of Melbourne in Federation Square.49 These absences are surprising as many of the sources cited in my work on Melbourne as a city of ghost

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swamps are also cited by Carter in both books.50 Carter writes wetlands out of Melbourne’s history, just as the city wrote over them.51 Melbourne is regularly voted “the world’s most livable city.” It is also a UNESCO “city of literature,” but it was, and still is, a city of wetlands, like Perth. Some surviving wetlands can still be found in outlying suburbs. Urban dwellers of Melbourne are largely oblivious to the history of Melbourne’s wetlands, but these wetlands are present by virtue of their very oblivion, not least as “ghost swamps.” These swamps haunt the present consciousness of Melbourne and sit like a nightmare of history on the minds of the living (to use Marx’s words). Perth’s wetlands are commemorated in memorials and were remembered in an exhibition mounted at Perth Town Hall in September 2014 now online on the Western Australian Museum website (see chapters 7 and 8 of this volume). Melbourne’s wetlands, by contrast, have not been commemorated in memorials, nor remembered in an exhibition, nor celebrated in a public art work. Nearamnew was a missed opportunity to do so. Wetlands have been colonized by the city and its historians. The project of decolonization needs to include the decolonization of wetlands. Decolonization will not be achieved until wetlands are decolonized. Decolonization of wetlands has been addressed specifically in relation to Perth’s wetlands52 and to Melbourne’s wetlands.53 Decolonization of Melbourne’s wetlands could not only involve rehabilitating then, but also acknowledging them by mourning their death and commemorating their life in memorials and other interpretation, such as in an exhibition. Swamps have been, and still are to some extent, associated in Western culture with disease, and with its possible, fatal outcome. They can even be associated not so much with the end of life as with lifelessness and the uninhabitable. This is not to deny that the swamp, or the wetland more generally, is a place of death—it is. But it is also a place of life. Wetlands are places of both life and death. They are living black waters. Death is necessary for life to be reborn. In the middle of death and decay in wetlands, we are in the midst of new life being reborn. Modern Western culture has largely dismissed the association of wetlands with life, as living waters, and concentrated exclusively on the association of wetlands with death, as black waters. The wetland has been seen in the patriarchal Western tradition not only as bad for the body, but also as bad for the mind. Indeed, it can plunge the mind into melancholia, and even into madness. The association between wetlands and melancholy (and boredom and bitterness, sadness and solitude) seems to have its roots in the theory of the elements and the humors. European culture was founded and still functions on the philosophy of the four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. Wetlands have always been problematic, indeed aberrant, from this point of view because they mix the elements of earth and water (and even air and “fire” or heat in the tropics). They also cross the boundaries

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between land and water, and can even be in transition spatially and temporally between open water to dry land. They are a troubling and unsettling category mediating between land and water. As wetlands mix the elements, they produce an aberrant “humor,” or psychosomatic state, strictly a kind of phlegmatic melancholy. In the patriarchal Western tradition wetlands have been seen as a wilderness to be tamed, the sites of mixed elements and aberrant humors giving rise to melancholy and madness. Besides being seen as places of disease, depression, horror, and the monstrous, wetlands have also been, often as a direct result, a refuge for the runaway and a site of resistance for the rebel or revolutionary. Wetlands are easy to defend and hard to attack. Many of the characteristics of the wetland that make it unattractive for the norm society, such as its darkness and impenetrability, are precisely those features which make it ideal for the rebel or revolutionary during time of war or suitable for the runaway from oppression during the time of “peace” of a sustained deprivation of liberty. The wetland is the locus of contradictory, mutually exclusive definitions, depending on whose point of view, even whose side, one takes, as is the definition of the rebel or revolutionary as either “terrorist” or “freedom-fighter” and patriot. Nowhere is this ambiguity more evident than when considering the role wetlands have played in military and slavery history where the same wetland can be, on the one hand, an intractable and inhospitable foe to the dominant but, on the other, a helpful and obliging friend to the dominated seeking refuge, and even a base for insurgency. Attitudes to wetlands are not only ambivalent, but also the wetland is literally ambi-valent, a place of moving values, its meanings circulating and swirling around like its waters sometimes never settling on one definition, never flowing to an endpoint. At once, the wetland is a wasteland to be filled or drained, to be turned into a profitable agricultural land or into a sanitary land-fill site and, at the same time, wilderness not yet subject to a capitalist imperative in which to seek refuge and from which to mount resistance to cultural and military imperialism. Against the rhetoric of swamps and marshes as places of melancholy and monstrosity, of horror and disease, there has been a counter-tradition in the patriarchal west that has regarded the wetland as a sacred place, a place of both death and life. The counter-tradition sees wetlands as fully functioning ecosystems and habitats that hark back to the living black waters of premodern, pre-capitalist, pre-patriarchal wetlands.54 NOTES 1. Henry David Thoreau, Walking (Boston: Beacon, 1991). 2. Tim Winton, Island Home: A Landscape Memoir (Melbourne: Hamish Hamilton, 2015), 31–34.

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3. See John C. Ryan in chapter 4 of this volume. 4. See Rod Giblett in chapter 3 of this volume. 5. A.J. McComb and P.S. Lake, Australian Wetlands (Sydney: Angus & Roberston, 1990). 6. Rod Giblett, Postmodern Wetlands: Culture, History, Ecology (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996). 7. H.C. Darby, The Draining of the Fens, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956); The Medieval Fenland, 2nd ed. (Newton Abbot: David and Charles, 1974); The Changing Fenland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 8. Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (London: Chatto and Windus, 1973), 96. 9. E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), 237. 10. Giblett, Postmodern Wetlands, 47–48. 11. Williams, The Country, 196. 12. See Giblett, Postmodern Wetlands, 80–83; and Cities and Wetlands: The Return of the Repressed in Nature and Culture (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), chapter 4. 13. Williams, The Country, 132–141; Merryn Williams and Raymond Williams, eds., John Clare: Selected Poetry and Prose (London: Methuen, 1986), 1–20, 213. 14. Williams and Williams, John Clare, 109–112 and 150–153. 15. John Barrell, The Idea of Landscape and the Sense of Place 1730–1840: An Approach to the Poetry of John Clare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972). 16. Elizabeth Helsinger, “Clare and the Place of the Peasant Poet,” Critical Inquiry 13, no. 3 (1987): 509–531. 17. Rod Giblett, “Lost and Found Wetlands of Melbourne,” Victorian Historical Journal 87, no. 1 (2016): 134–155. 18. Giblett, Postmodern Wetlands; Cities and Wetlands. 19. Giblett, Postmodern Wetlands, Chapter 2. 20. Rod Giblett, “Nature is Ordinary Too: Raymond Williams as the Founder of Ecocultural Studies,” Cultural Studies 26, no. 6 (2012): 922–933. 21. Giblett, Postmodern Wetlands. 22. Thoreau, Walking. 23. Giblett, Postmodern Wetlands, 229–239. 24. Ibid., 240–245; Rod Giblett, Canadian Wetlands: Places and People (Bristol: Intellect Books, 2014), 153–162 and 180–186. 25. Giblett, Postmodern Wetlands, 229, 247, n. 1. 26. Rod Giblett and David James, “Anstey-Keane Botanical Jewel,” Landscope 24, no. 4 (2009), 41–44; Rod Giblett, Traces: Of an Active and Contemplative Life, 1983–2013 (Champaign, IL: Common Ground, 2013). 27. See Giblett, “Nature is Ordinary”; Traces, chapter 17. 28. See Rod Giblett, People and Places of Nature and Culture (Bristol: Intellect Books, 2011), chapter 12. 29. Alexander Wilson, The Culture of Nature: North American Landscape from Disney to Exxon Valdez (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992). 30. See Giblett, People and Places, chapter 1.

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31. See Rod Giblett, “Philosophy (and Sociology) in the Wetlands: The S(ub)lime and the Uncanny,” New Formations 18 (1992): 142–159, revised and republished in Giblett, Postmodern Wetlands, chapter 2. 32. Deborah Bird Rose and Libby Robin, “The Ecological Humanities in Action: An Invitation,” Australian Humanities Review 31–32 (2004), unpaginated, accessed May 15, 2019, http:​//aus​trali​anhum​aniti​esrev​iew.o​rg/20​04/04​/01/t​he-ec​ologi​cal-h​ umani​ties-​in-ac​tion-​an-in​vitat​ion/.​ 33. Giblett, Postmodern Wetlands; “Theology of Wetlands: Tolkien and Beowulf on Marshes and their Monsters,” Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism 19, no. 2 (2015): 132–43; Environmental Humanities and Theologies: Ecoculture, Literature and the Bible (London: Routledge, 2018). 34. Rod Giblett and Hugh Webb, “Western Australian Wetlands: Living Water or Useless Swamps?” Habitat 21, no. 3 (1993): 30–36; eds., Western Australian Wetlands: The Kimberley and South-West (Perth: Black Swan Press/Wetlands Conservation Society, 1996). 35. See Giblett, “Theology of Wetlands”; Environmental Humanities and Theologies. 36. See also Giblett, Environmental Humanities and Theologies. 37. I am grateful to Glenn Albrecht for the concept of the Symbiocene (see Giblett, Cities and Wetlands, 12 and 251, n. 1). I differentiate the two paradigms of mastery and mutuality in People and Places of Nature and Culture, chapter 1. I also make the argument and call for living bio- and psycho-symbiotic livelihoods in bioregions of the living earth in People and Places, especially chapter 12. I discuss and differentiate the Anthropocene and the Symbiocene in Environmental Humanities and Theologies, chapter 9). 38. For cities and wetlands, see Giblett, Cities and Wetlands. 39. See Rod Giblett, chapter 3 of this volume in relation to Australian painting and photography. 40. See Rod Giblett, “Philosophy (and Sociology) in the Wetlands”; “Kings in Kimberley Watercourses: Sadism and Pastoralism,” Span: Journal of the South Pacific Association of Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies 36, no. 2 (1993): 541–559; Postmodern Wetlands; Environmental Humanities and the Uncanny: Ecoculture, Literature and Religion (London: Routledge, 2019). 41. See Rod Giblett, “Cities and Swamp Settling: Decolonizing Wetlands,” Span: Journal of the South Pacific Association of Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies 36, no. 1 (1993): 285–301; Postmodern Wetlands; Black Swan Lake: Life of a Wetland (Bristol: Intellect Books, 2013). 42. Giblett, Cities and Wetlands; Environmental Humanities and Theologies. 43. Giblett, “Cities and Swamp Settling”; Postmodern Wetlands, chapter 3. 44. Rod Giblett, “A City ‘Set in Malarial Lakeside Swamps’: Toronto and Ashbridge’s Bay Marsh,” Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies 29 (2013): 113–132; Canadian Wetlands; Cities and Wetlands. 45. Giblett, “Cities and Swamp Settling”; Postmodern Wetlands. 46. Giblett, “Lost and Found.” 47. All these cities, as well as St Petersburg and Toronto, receive a chapter-bychapter treatment in Giblett, Cities and Wetlands.

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48. Paul Carter, The Road to Botany Bay: An Exploration of Landscape and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), chapter 7. 49. Paul Carter, Mythform: The Making of Nearamnew at Federation Square (Carlton: Miegunyah Press of Melbourne University Press, 2005). 50. Giblett, “Lost and Found”; Modern Melbourne: City and Site of Nature and Culture (Bristol: Intellect Books, forthcoming 2020), part I, chapters 2 to 5. 51. A detailed critique of Mythform and Nearamnew is given in Giblett “Lost and Found,” 147–152 and Modern Melbourne, chapter 4. 52. Giblett, “Cities and Swamp Settling;” Postmodern Wetlands. 53. Giblett, “Lost and Found.” 54. All these aspects of the culture and history of wetlands mentioned above receive an extensive, often chapter-by-chapter, treatment in Giblett, Postmodern Wetlands.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Barrell, John. The Idea of Landscape and the Sense of Place 1730–1840: An Approach to the Poetry of John Clare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972. Carter, Paul. The Road to Botany Bay: An Exploration of Landscape and History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. ———. Mythform: The Making of Nearamnew at Federation Square. Carlton: Miegunyah Press of Melbourne University Press, 2005. Darby, H.C. The Draining of the Fens. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956. ———. The Medieval Fenland. 2nd ed. Newton Abbot: David and Charles, 1974. ———. The Changing Fenland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Giblett, Rod. “Philosophy (and Sociology) in the Wetlands: The S(ub)lime and the Uncanny.” New Formations 18 (1992): 142–59. ———. “Cities and Swamp Settling: Decolonizing Wetlands.” Span: Journal of the South Pacific Association of Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies 36, no. 1 (1993): 285–301. ———. “Kings in Kimberley Watercourses: Sadism and Pastoralism.” Span: Journal of the South Pacific Association of Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies 36, no. 2 (1993): 541–59. ———. Postmodern Wetlands: Culture History Ecology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996. ———. People and Places of Nature and Culture. Bristol: Intellect Books, 2011. ———. “Nature is Ordinary Too: Raymond Williams as the Founder of Ecocultural Studies.” Cultural Studies 26, no. 6 (2012): 922–33. ———. Black Swan Lake: Life of a Wetland. Bristol: Intellect Books, 2013. ———. “A City ‘Set in Malarial Lakeside Swamps’: Toronto and Ashbridge’s Bay Marsh.” Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies 29 (2013): 113–32. ———. Traces: Of an Active and Contemplative Life, 1983–2013. Champaign, IL: Common Ground, 2013.

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———. Canadian Wetlands: Places and People. Bristol: Intellect Books, 2014. ———. “Theology of Wetlands: Tolkien and Beowulf on Marshes and their Monsters.” Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism 19, no. 2 (2015): 132–43. ———. Cities and Wetlands: The Return of the Repressed in Nature and Culture. London: Bloomsbury, 2016. ———. “Lost and Found Wetlands of Melbourne.” Victorian Historical Journal 87, no. 1 (2016): 134–55. ———. Environmental Humanities and the Uncanny: Ecoculture, Literature and Religion. London: Routledge, 2019. ———. Modern Melbourne: City and Site of Nature and Culture. Bristol: Intellect Books, forthcoming 2020. Giblett, Rod, and David James. “Anstey-Keane Botanical Jewel.” Landscope 24, no. 4 (2009): 41–44. Giblett, Rod, and Hugh Webb. “Western Australian Wetlands: Living Water or Useless Swamps?” Habitat 21, no. 3 (1993): 30–36. ———. eds. Western Australian Wetlands: The Kimberley and South-West. Perth: Black Swan Press/Wetlands Conservation Society, 1996. Helsinger, Elizabeth. “Clare and the Place of the Peasant Poet.” Critical Inquiry 13, no. 3: (1987): 509–531. McComb, A.J., and P.S. Lake. Australian Wetlands. Sydney: Angus & Roberston, 1990. Rose, Deborah Bird, and Libby Robin. “The Ecological Humanities in Action: An Invitation.” Australian Humanities Review 31–32 (2004): unpaginated. Accessed May 15, 2019. http:​//aus​trali​anhum​aniti​esrev​iew.o​rg/20​04/04​/01/t​he-ec​ologi​cal-h​ umani​ties-​in-ac​tion-​an-in​vitat​ion/.​ Thompson, E.P. The Making of the English Working Class. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968. Thoreau, Henry David. Walking. Boston: Beacon, 1991. Originally published in 1861. Williams, Merryn, and Raymond Williams, eds. John Clare: Selected Poetry and Prose. London: Methuen, 1986. Williams, Raymond. The Country and the City. London: Chatto and Windus, 1973. Wilson, Alexander. The Culture of Nature: North American Landscape from Disney to Exxon Valdez. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992. Winton, Tim. Island Home: A Landscape Memoir. Melbourne: Hamish Hamilton, 2015.

Index

Page references for figures are italicized

Aboriginal Australian cultures, 14, 16, 20, 33–43, 51, 55, 61–62, 64, 80, 86–87, 105, 106, 111, 113–15, 165–66, 180, 231; biocultural heritage, 11, 186; cosmologies, 8, 15; Country, 12–13, 33, 34, 61; Dreaming, 13, 33–35, 55, 80, 231; importance of wetlands for, 16, 51; painting, 20, 51–52, 56–57; swamp narratives, 9, 14; and wetland plants, 20, 99, 104, 108, 109–11, 113–14, 119. See also Noongar The Aborigines of Victoria (Smyth), 109–10 Abraham, Corina Patricia, 12–13, 186 Adamson, Robert, 73, 77, 78–79, 84 adaptive affinity, 198 Adnyamathanha people, 104. See also Aboriginal Australian cultures aesthetics, 34, 51–52, 56, 60, 63, 64, 73, 80, 83–85, 114–15, 118, 153, 176, 181, 189, 197–98, 208–209, 227; European landscape, 20, 51, 53, 56, 57, 232. See also the sublime

affect, 79, 81, 85, 87, 100–103, 105, 111, 112, 114–15, 118, 123, 198–200, 204–7. See also affective ecocriticism; plant affectivities affection, 87, 198, 205, 213 affective ecocriticism, 100, 111. See also affect; ecocriticism affective fallacy, 81 agriculture, 8, 9, 15–17, 19, 51, 54, 56, 58, 76, 86, 148, 152, 155, 169, 176, 182–83, 186, 188, 203, 209, 228, 231, 233, 235 Albrecht, Glenn, 36, 237n37 amphibious milfoil (Myriophyllum simulans), 102 anglocentrism, 17 Anstey-Keane Damplands, Perth, Australia, 196, 200–201, 203–6 Anthropocene, 12, 20, 37, 44–45, 75, 99, 123, 231, 237n37 anthropocentrism, 16, 44, 197; and environmentalism, 199, 202 anthropology, 19–20, 33–39, 230–31 aquatic flora. See hydrophytes

241

242

Index

Arafura Swamp, Queensland, Australia, 76 artificial wetlands, 51, 63, 73, 86–87, 147, 157, 178, 182, 184, 196. See also wetlands Ashton, James, 55, 60, 64 assemblage, 8, 11, 19, 103, 123, 186, 196. See also affect “At Rushy Lagoon” (McAuley), 78 Attar, Faridud-Din, 86 Australian Women’s Army Service (AWAS), 186, 188 backyard gardening, 15, 18–19 Balbuk, Fanny (Yooreel), 14, 21, 163–65, 166, 167–69, 170–71 Bancroft, Thomas Lane, 109, 110 Banks, Joseph, 103, 117 banksia, 10, 149, 152, 185 Banksia Street Wetland, Canberra, ACT, Australia, 87 “Bathers at an Estuary” (Fahey), 77–78 beaded samphire (Sarcocornia quinqueflora), 99, 103–6, 104, 116, 123 Bean, Charles, 62–63 Beeliar Wetlands, Perth, Western Australia, 9–10, 12–13, 15, 21, 141, 142–44, 150, 155, 170–71, 175, 177, 184–86, 188, 188–89. See also Roe 8 campaign Bennell v State of Western Australia, 165 Bennett Brook Catchment, Perth, Western Australia, 77, 78, 80–81 Bentham, George, 117 beriberi, 109 Bibra Lake, Perth, Western Australia, 13, 16, 153–54, 170, 186–87, 187 binarism, 9, 22, 37, 62 biocentrism: and environmentalism, 199, 202 bioculture, 8, 10, 12, 14, 20–21, 73, 81, 84, 87, 116–19, 123, 210; and

heritage, 8, 11, 75, 88; and wetland plants, 20, 99–123 biodiversity, 11, 20, 77, 99, 123, 148–49, 153–54, 156–58, 175, 180, 185, 188, 198, 200, 203–204. See also conservation biogeography, 46, 77, 165, 176, 201, 208, 213 biophilia, 14, 196–99. See also swamp-philia Biophilia (Wilson), 198 bioregion, 34, 36, 44–46, 49n59, 230, 231, 237n37; poetics of, 71 biosemiotics, 11 Bishop’s Grove, Perth, Western Australia, 164 black swan, 52, 59, 65n6, 184 blood, 15, 18, 19, 37, 62, 86 bogs. See wetlands Bolin Bolin Billabong, Yarra River, Victoria, Australia, 56 Boojoormeup Swamp, Perth, Western Australia, 165 Boondall Wetlands, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 72–73, 77, 79–80 “Boondall Wetlands” (Watson), 72–73. See also “Poem 9.” botanical text, 100 Bowman, Wendy, 195, 197 Boyd, Arthur, xi, 20, 51–52, 54, 58–60, 59 bracken staggers, 107. See also nardoo broad-leaved paperbark (Melaleuca quinquenervia), 99, 115–19, 116, 123 brolga (Antigone rubicunda), 15, 60 Brown, Bob, 195, 197 Brown, Robert, 117 bulrush (Typha orientalis), 157 “Bunuroo Drying of the Wetlands” (Pickett), 74 Burke and Wills Expedition, 105, 107–9, 110–11 bush-bashers, 207

Index

Bush Forever Plan, 156, 204 bush tucker, 106, 164 Camargue wetlands, Southern France, 207, 210–11 Campbell, David, 82 Canning River Wetlands, Perth, Australia, 150, 153 capitalism, 34, 43, 44, 64, 231, 235 Carnaby’s black cockatoo (Calyptorhynchus latirostris), 185, 186 Carron, William, 115 Carson, Rachel, 147–48 Carter, Paul, 233–34 cartography, 20, 163, 166, 167, 169–70 Cavanilles, Antonio José, 117 Chinese wetland cultures: activism, 211–13; backyard gardening, 18–19; conservation, 207, 211–13; early settlement in Perth, 15–19; farming methods, 15–16; market gardening, 16, 17–18, 181 Chinna, Nandi (Anandashila Saraswati), 3, 17–18, 72, 73, 77, 141 Christianity, 37, 39–42 Christmas tree (Nuytsia floribunda), 141, 185 Clare, John, 228 Clause, Frederick, 52 Clements, Frederic, 101–2 climate change, 9, 10, 11, 74, 76, 154, 157–58, 169, 195, 231. See also Anthropocene Cockburn Wetlands Education Center, Perth, Western Australia, 153, 186 Collie, Alexander, 105 colonization, 21, 34, 41–43, 55, 83, 87, 106, 148, 163, 166, 175–77, 233–34. See also decolonization Conard, Henry Shoemaker, 111–12 The Conference of the Birds (Attar), 86 Confucianism, 16, 19

243

conservation, 20–22, 44, 64, 72–75, 79, 83–84, 86, 88, 99, 123, 147–58, 164, 169–70, 185, 189, 195–214 Conservation Council of Western Australia (CCWA), 148–52, 205 the contemplative sublime, 54. See also the sublime Cook, James, 117 Coolbaroo Club, Perth, Western Australia, 180 “Cooley” (Archie Weller), 7–8, 14 coolibah (Eucalyptus coolabah), 82 corporeality, 14, 22, 55, 81, 85, 100, 102–3, 118, 199–200, 208–9, 229. See also intercorporeality Coto Doñana National Park, Spain, 207, 210–11 critical animal studies, 71 critical plant studies, 71 cultural landscape, 34, 176 Cunningham, Allan, 120 Dale, Robert, 105 Darby, H.C., 227 Davis, Jack, 73, 74, 77–78, 80–81 de Barros, Francisco Anselmo, 207, 211 decolonization, 8, 10, 41, 64, 230, 234 Dennis, C.J., 72, 82 dialogical relationships to nature, 15, 34, 43, diaspora, 15–16, 18–19, 37 digital visualization, 21, 163–66 Douglas, Marjory Stoneman, 207, 209–10 drainage. See wetlands Dreaming. See Aboriginal Australian cultures duck hunting, 150–51 Durack, Mary, 87 ecocentrism, 197, 202. See also biocentrism eco-cosmopolitanism, 213

244

Index

ecocriticism, 11, 12, 22, 100, 111, 228, 229. See also affective ecocriticism ecocultural studies, 75, 228, 229–30. See also environmental humanities eco-heroism, 195–214. See also paludal heroism ecological memory, 167. See also memory “Ecology” (Fogarty), 80 eco-pedagogy, 205 ecopoetics, 20, 71–72, 73 ecopolitics, 9, 80, 210 ecosystems, 7, 8, 10, 11, 23n21, 59, 74–77, 79, 99, 100, 106, 113, 118, 123, 182, 196, 201, 207, 210, 213, 235. See also biodiversity ecotheology, 33, 39–43 eco-warriorism, 202. See also eco-heroism edible landscape, 19. See also bush tucker Eliade, Mircea, 36 emotion, 34, 73, 100, 103, 111, 186, 189, 196, 198, 201, 204–8 emotional geographies, 186, 189, 204. See also affect and emotion endangered species, 157, 211. See also biodiversity environmental activism, 8, 20, 75; in Bangladesh, 211; in China, 211–13; in France and Spain, 210–11; in New South Wales, Australia, 195; in South America, 211; in Tasmania, Australia, 195; in Western Australia, 147–58, 184–89, 195–207. See also Roe 8 campaign environmental humanities, xi, 12, 22, 71, 73, 75, 230–31; transdisciplinary, 8–9, 72; wetlands in the humanities, 8–9, 22; wetland turn, 8. See also ecocriticism; ecocultural studies Environmental Protection Authority (EPA), Western Australia, 148 Erickson, Rica, 201 estuarine wetlands, 150

“Estuary” (Harwood), 77 eutrophication, 82, 150 “Evening Shadows, Backwater of the Murray, South Australia” (Johnstone), 54–55 Everglades, Florida, USA, 23n21, 116, 207, 209–10 The Everglades: River of Grass (Douglas), 209 Fahey, Diane, 77–78 feeling, 13, 14, 15, 46, 78, 81, 103, 111, 169, 183, 197, 201, 203–5. See also affect feng shui, 16–17 “The Fight to Save Bennett Brook” (Davis), 77, 78, 80–81 filiation, 112–13 Flinders, Matthew, 117 floratemporaesthesia, 204. See also the senses Fogarty, Lionel, 74, 80 “Fong Gow” (Chinna), xiii, 17 The Forest Flora of New South Wales (Maiden), 118 Forrestdale Lake Nature Reserve, 36, 150, 170, 182, 196, 200, 203–4, 207 Franklin River Dam, 195, 197 friends groups, 180. See also Friends of Forrestdale; Friends of the Everglades Friends of Forrestdale, 22, 203, 205, 229 Friends of the Everglades, 209 “The Frogs” (Hewett), 78 Fromm, Erich, 196–98 Genesis, 33, 39, 40–42 geographic information systems (GIS), 170, 181 geo-humanities, 71. See also environmental humanities Giblett, Rod, 8–9, 12, 72; five cultures of nature, 176 Glenn, John, 164

Index

Gnangara Mound, 11, 15, 80, 155 the Grampians, Victoria, Australia, ix, xiii, 52, 53, 54, 58–59 grassroots environmentalism, 195, 212 Gray’s Manual of Botany, 112 greenies, 155 Gritten, Henry, 55–56, 58 “Hanging Swamp” (O’Connor), 82 Haraway, Donna, 75 Harwood, Gwen, 77 Hawkesbury River New South Wales, Australia, 73, 78 Heade, Martin Johnson, 54 Heirisson Island, Perth, Western Australia, ix, 164–65, 166, 168, 184 helophytes, 101 heroism. See eco-heroism; paludal heroism Hewett, Dorothy, 78 He Xiang Qing (The Attachment to the Zhalong Nature Reserve), 212 Hill, Barry, 75, 82–83, 85–86 Hoffmann, Luc, 207, 210–11 homocentrism, 202. See also anthropocentrism Hooker, William Jackson, 110 hoopoe (Upupa epos), 86 Howard, John, 37, 62 Howitt, William, 105–6 Huang, Wanli, 207, 212–13 humility, 202. See also eco-heroism Hurley, Frank, 62–63 “The Hut by the Black Swamp” (Kendall), 72, 82–84 hydrology, 10, 21, 99, 163, 187 hydrophytes, 20, 77, 99–123 “Ibis and River Swamp” (Boyd), 60 “Ibis in Swamp” (Tucker), 60, 75, 83–84 identity, 14, 40, 47n22, 62, 77, 189 “Illara Creek, Western James Range” (Namatjira), 57 imagination, 20, 99, 114, 164, 169

245

imagining, xi–xii, 21, 163–64, 165, 167, 175, 177–80, 182, 184 Indigenous Australians. See Aboriginal Australian cultures inland wetlands, 72–73, 76, 81–86, 107, 112 intercorporeality, 15, 37, 44, 81, 118, 123 “In the Swamp Now” (Matthews), 79, 82–85 invasive species, 102, 116, 206 “Irrigation Lake, Wimmera” (Boyd), ix, xi, 54, 58, 58 James, David, xi–xii, 9, 20–22, 196–207, 213, 229 Jandakot Regional Park, Perth, Australia, 152, 159n18, 203, 204, 206 Jefferies, Richard, 227–28 Jennings, Philip, 20–21, 56–57, 59, 61, 150 Johnstone, Henry James, 54–55 Kendall, Henry, 20, 72, 82–84, 87 Kerwin, Benny, 109 Kew Gardens, England, ix, 112, 112 The Kimberley, 64, 86, 112 kinaesthetics, 78, 204 Kings Park, Perth, Western Australia, 164–65, 176–77, 178, 182, 184, 203 Kinsella, John, 20, 60–61, 75, 76, 82–86, 143–45 lagoons, 5, 13, 52, 55–56, 72, 73, 76–78, 105, 112, 114–15, 176, 177–78, 183, 210, 227 Lake Argyle, 86 Lake Claremont, 10 Lake Jindabyne, New South Wales, Australia, 82 Lake Kingsford, ix, 164, 166, 167–71, 182 “Lament for the Drowned Country” (Durack), 87

246

Index

Landcorp, 151–52 landscape, 9, 11, 19–21, 34, 36, 39, 42, 43, 51–64, 71, 74–75, 77, 79, 81, 86, 105, 115, 118, 119, 147, 148, 152, 153, 164, 166–69, 171, 175–77, 180–82, 203–4, 207, 227–30, 232 Latour, Bruno, 44 Lawlor, Wayne, 63–64 Leichhardt, Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig, 113–15, 118, 123 Leopold, Aldo, 229 The Life Forms of Plants (Raunkiær), 101 linguistic violence, 9–10 Linnaeus, 115 livelihood, 15, 17, 19, 34, 36, 42, 44, 84, 165, 229–31, 237n37 lotus, 111–12, 115 Luc Hoffman Medal for Excellence in Wetland Science and Conservation, 211 MacKellar, Dorothea, 35 Mackenzie, Uncle Willie, 114 “Mahony’s Mountain” (Stewart), 82 Maiden, Joseph, 109, 111, 117, 118–19, 120, 122–23 mallee, 58, 85 mangroves, 73, 76–79, 84, 207 “Mangroves” (Porter), 78 Mannahatta Project, 165–66, 177–78 mapping, 84, 165, 167, 188–89. See also cartography Marchant, Neville Graeme, 201 Marder, Michael, 112–13 marginalization, 105, 170, 206, 230 Margulis, Lynn, 198 marine and coastal wetlands, 72, 76–82 marshes. See wetlands Marsili, Count Luigi Ferdinando, 108 Matagarup, Perth, Western Australia, 164, 168, 184. See also Heirisson Island material ecocriticism, 11. See also ecocriticism

material-semiosis, 22, 110 Matthews, Harley, 20, 79, 83–85 McAuley, James, 78 McKinlay, John, 105–6 melancholia, 9, 55, 61, 83, 205, 230–31, 234–35 Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 37, 54–56, 60, 76, 232, 233–34 “Melbourne from the Botanical Gardens in 1867” (Gritten), 55–56 memory, 21, 73, 78, 163, 167, 175–76, 180–82, 184, 186, 188–89, 204, 212 miasma, 60–61, 83–86, 181, 230 Miquel, Friedrich Anton, 120 modesty, 202. See also eco-heroism the monstrous, 9, 37–38, 45–46, 55–56, 62–63, 230, 235 moor, 77. See also wetlands Moore, George Fletcher, 170 “Morning after the Battle of Paschendale” (Hurley), 62–63 “Mount William and part of the Grampians in West Victoria” (von Guérard), 52–54, 53, 58 Mudrooroo, 37, 47n22 Muhammad, Anu, 207, 211 Muir, John, 45, 229 multispecies theory, 11, 14, 19, 22, 196, 201, 203, 210 Murray, Les, 77–78, 87 mutuality, 15, 44, 45, 231, 237n37 naiads, 102 Namatjira, Albert, xi, 20, 51–52, 56 Nannup, Noel, xi, 12, 13, 166, 170 nardoo (Marsilea spp.), ix, 5, 99, 106–11, 107, 116, 123 nationalism, 62, 83 native plants, 99–100. See also hydrophytes natural heritage, 9, 75, 147, 168. See also wetlands naturalization, 112, 121, 184 nature/culture binary, 22, 199, 229, 230 nature-cultures, 8, 12, 15, 22, 196, 210

Index

nature deficit disorder, 197. See also swamp deficit disorder “Near Heidelberg, 1890” (Streeton), 56, 57 Neidjie, Bill, 14–15 neocolonialism, 9, 81 Neville, Simon, 63, 64 New Climate Regime, 44. See also Bruno Latour niaouli oil, 116 non-violent action, 147, 150, 158, 188 Noongar, 8, 11, 12–15, 18, 19, 21, 80–81, 104, 113, 163–68, 170, 175, 177, 180, 182–85, 186, 188; bidi (paths), 13, 184; boodjar (Country), 12–13, 21, 105; Dreaming, 13, 33, 34, 35, 80, 231; impacts of wetland loss on, 11; seasons, 18, 38, 44, 74, 165; songlines, 170–71; traditional custodians, 171, 186; uses of wetlands, 11, 21, 99–123; Whadjuck (Perth area), 12–14, 21, 148, 163. See also Aboriginal Australian cultures Noonuccal, Oodgeroo, 38, 74, 80, 119 nostalgia, 17, 54 nourishing terrains, 105, 165 Nunggubuyu language, Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, Australia, 113 oceanization, 12 O’Connor, Mark, 82 Oecology of Plants (Warming), 100–101 “On Albert Tucker’s Ibis in Swamp” (Kinsella), 60–61, 75, 82–85 “On the Habit and Use of Nardoo” (Bancroft), 109, 110 orange-bellied parrot (Neophema chrysogaster), 103 Ord River Irrigation Scheme (ORIS), 86–87 oxbow lakes, 72, 81

247

painting, ix, 8, 10, 20, 36–37, 51–62, 163, 168. See also landscape paludal activism, 201, 205, 213 paludal criticism, 71–72 paludal heroism, 21, 22, 195–214, 229 paludography, 204 Pantanal Wetlands, Mato Grosso, Brazil, 7, 207, 211 paperbarks, 7, 99, 115–19, 123, 177, 185 the pastoral, 34, 40, 52–54, 56–57, 60, 78, 106, 118, 176, 228 Paterson, Banjo, 81–82 patriarchy, 9, 38–39, 230–31, 232, 234–35 Perth, Western Australia, 8–22, 36, 52, 76–77, 80, 105, 140–214; Town Hall, 168–69. See also Re-imagining Perth’s Lost Wetlands Perth’s Metropolitan Regional Scheme (MRS), 185 “Phasing Out the Mangroves” (Adamson), 77, 78–79, 84 philia. See swamp-philia Phillip, Captain Arthur, 100 photography, 8, 10, 20, 51–52, 62–64, 168, 177 phytocentrism, 100 phytogeography, 100 phytography, 100 phytopoetics, 71 Pickett, Shane, 20, 36–37, 39, 44, 51, 61–62, 74 the picturesque, 20, 51–52, 63, 232 Piguenit, W. C., 51, 54 Pinjarra Plains, Perth, Western Australia, 203 plant affectivities, 118–19 plant biography. See phytography plant charisma, 112 plant ecology, 83–84, 100–102 Plant Ecology (Clements and Weaver), 101–2 plants. See hydrophytes

248

Index

Plant Succession and Indicators (Clements), 101 “Poem 9” (Watson), 78, 79–81, 83, 85 poetry, 8, 10, 20, 44, 71–88, 228. See also ecopoetics poiesis, 71, 75 Poisson, Jules, 120 Porter, Dorothy, 73, 78 postcolonialism, 14, 79. See also colonization; decolonization posthumanism, 11–12, 75, 118, 199 Preston, William, 105 prototaxis, 198 qi, 17 Racecourse Lagoon, Uralla, New South Wales, 5 Rainbow Serpent, 11, 19, 33–34, 35–43, 61, 231 Rainbow Spirit. See Rainbow Serpent Rainbow Spirit Elders, 35, 39–43 Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance, 10, 75, 76, 86, 151–57, 196, 209–10 Raunkiær, Christen C., 101 red river gum (Eucalyptus camaldulensis), 81 re-imagining, 21, 167, 169, 177, 184 Re-imagining Perth’s Lost Wetlands, 21, 163, 165, 166, 175, 177–80, 179 ribbon weed (Vallisneria spp.), 102 Riggert, Tom, 148 Rischbieth, Bessie, 147, 158n1 river sheoak (Casuarina cunninghamiana), 99, 119–23, 121 Roe, John Septimus, 105, 178, 184 Roe 8 campaign, Perth, Western Australia, 9, 12, 74, 143–45, 154–56, 184–89, 187, 188 Roe Gardens, Perth, Western Australia, 184–85 Roe-Hillman map, 177, 178 Roe Swamp, 149, 170, 185, 188 Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne, Australia, 55–56

sacrality, 19, 34, 36, 43–44, 231 sacred ibis (Threskiornis aethiopicus), 60–61, 75, 83–84, 85, 141 sacred places, 42, 80, 200, 208–209, 235 Sagan, Dorion, 198 salinity, 10, 82, 120, 122 sanctuarism, 34, 43, 82, 84, 211 “Sandy Swamp” (Wright), 77 Schouw, Joakim Frederik, 100 Seddon, George, 148, 176 semantics, 9–10, 22 sense of place, 21, 153, 175, 196, 201, 204–5, 228 A Sense of Place (Seddon), 148 the senses, 72–73, 87, 106, 118, 198–99, 208 Serres, Michel, 44 Silent Spring, 147–48 Single Noongar Claim, 165 slime, 53–54, 63–64, 228 Smyth, Robert Brough, 109–10 Snowy Mountains Scheme, 87 Solnit, Rebecca, 12 songlines, 170–71. See also Aboriginal Australian cultures Southwest Australia (or south-western Australia), 8, 11, 36, 38, 47n22, 61, 74, 104, 113, 157, 201, 232 “The Spirit of Cranes” (ballet), 212 sporocarp, 107–11. See also nardoo sporocarp consciousness, 110–11 Star Swamp, Perth, Western Australia, 149 Stewart, Douglas, 82 “Still Glides the Stream, and Shall Forever Glide” (Streeton), 56 Stirling, James, 164, 233 Stone, Alfred, 176–77 Story about Feeling (Neidjie), 14–15 Streeton, Arthur, 56, 57, 60, 62 the sublime, 20, 33, 36, 51, 53–54, 63, 228, 232 Sundarbans, Bangladesh, 207, 211 supererogation, 201–2, 206, 207 sustainability, 20, 71, 158

Index

Swamp (Chinna), 72, 77 swamp deficit disorder, 197 swamp-philia, 21, 87, 195–214 Swamp Riddles (Adamson), 78 swamps. See wetlands swamp stonecrop (Crassula helmsii), 102 Swan Coastal Plain, Western Australia, 10, 13, 76–78, 148, 196, 200, 201, 203, 204, 233 Swan River, 16–18, 52, 73, 80, 147, 164, 166, 168, 175–78, 179, 180, 184–85, 233 Swan River Colony, 18, 163, 232–33 Swan River Protection Society, 147 Symbiocene, 36–37, 43–46, 231, 237n37. See also Glenn Albrecht symbiosis, 34, 45–46 Taoism, 16, 18–19, 61 Tasmanian Wilderness Society, 195 Taylor, Andrew, 73, 77–78 theology, 19–20, 33, 39–43, 231. See also ecotheology Thieret, John, 107, 111 Third Swamp (Hyde Park), Perth, Western Australia, 148, 170, 181–82 Thoreau, Henry David, 12, 22, 44–45, 84, 195–96, 199–200, 207–10, 228–29 threatened ecological community, 151 Tiner, Ralph, 102 Tower Hill Wildlife Reserve, Warrnambool, Victoria, 52 “Truth” (Hill), 75, 82–83, 85–86 tuart (Eucalyptus gomphocephala), 10, 151–52 Tucker, Albert, xi, 20, 51–52, 60–61, 75, 83–85 Ungern-Sternberg, Franz Baron, 103–4 “Up ‘Long the Billabong” (Dennis), 72, 82 Urban Bushland Council, 180 urban environments, 149, 180, 185–86

249

urbanization, 16, 20, 77, 167, 195 Useful Native Plants of Australia (Maiden), 111 Vera, Lorese, 87 vibrant matter, 11 Victorian Exploring Expedition, 108 virtue, 44, 116, 197–98, 202, 206–7 von Guérard, Eugene, 20, 51, 52–55, 57–58, 64 von Mueller, Ferdinand, 117 “Waagle and Yondock Story” (Pickett), 74 “Walking” (Thoreau), 12, 195, 229 “Wallis Lake Estuary” (Murray), 77–78 “Walzing Matilda” (Paterson), 81–82 “war against nature” (China), 212 Warming, Johannes Eugenius Bülow, 83–84, 100–101 “Water-Gardening in an Old Farm Dam” (Murray), 87 “The Waterhole” (Boyd), 59–60, 59 waterlily (Nymphaea spp.), 99, 111–16, 112, 123 Watson, Samuel Wagan, 20, 72–74, 78–81, 83, 85, 86, 87 Waugal (Waagle, Wagarl, or Wagyll), 11, 13, 35–38, 42, 47n15, 61, 74, 80, 113. See also Noongar Weaver, John Ernst, 101–2 Webb, Hugh, xi, 9, 34, 37, 64 Weller, Archie, 7–8, 14 Western Australian Wetlands (Giblett and Webb), xi, 9, 21, 64, 231 western swamp tortoise (Pseudemydura umbrina), 153 wetland heroism. See paludal heroism wetlands:activism, 8, 20, 75, 141–214; attitudes toward, 154, 155, 157, 181–82, 184, 188, 197, 227; as biocultural agents, 8, 21, 74, 88; classifications, 72–73, 75–77; cultures of, 8, 21–22, 73–74, 88, 109, 175–89; discourses of, 9, 10,

250

Index

22, 34, 73, 74, 79, 88, 210; drainage, 16, 54, 72, 152, 157, 167, 176, 177, 181, 183, 210; education, 150, 153, 158, 186; ethics of, 14, 73, 197–98, 201–3, 205; and germ theory, 83; and the Gothic, 83, 87; as heritage, xii, 8, 9, 11, 12, 17, 18, 21, 75, 88, 147–49, 153, 157, 164, 167–68, 170, 186–88, 187, 196, 209, 211; liminality, 9, 200; loss of, 11, 15–16, 21, 76–77, 79–80, 87, 147–48, 152, 155–57, 169–70, 175–76, 180, 189, 206; nomenclature, 72, 103, 113, 117, 201; reclamation, 9–10, 19, 72, 76–77, 80, 103, 165, 168–69, 189, 210; rehabilitation, 150, 153, 234; revaluing, 169; sentience, 75, 79–80, 88; surveying, 79, 84, 105, 167, 177, 178, 184; and the uncanny, 9, 20, 51, 63, 83, 111, 114, 199, 230, 232; values associated with, 7, 12, 21, 64, 87, 153, 177, 184, 186, 189, 199, 235; as wastelands, 9, 73, 84, 210; wetlandscape, 20, 53–55, 58–60, 64, 75, 77, 79, 86, 118, 207, 232 Wetlands Conservation Society, Perth, Western Australia, 20, 150–51, 205 “Where Reeds and Rushes Grow” (Ashton), 55

white-faced heron (Egretta novaehollandiae), 84 wilderness, 34, 52, 189, 195, 229, 231, 235 Wild Fruits (Thoreau), 208 Williams, Raymond, 227–30 Wilson, Alexander, 230 Wilson, E.O., 196–99 Wolseley, John, 85 Wood, John George, 110–11 World Wildlife Fund (WWF), 210 Wright, Judith, 20, 74, 77 Xu, Xiujuan, 207, 211–12 yam (Dioscorea spp.), 13 Yandruwandha people, 108–9. See also Aboriginal Australian cultures Yarra River, Victoria, Australia, 55–56 Yellow River Delta, China, 212 Yolganup, Western Australia, 14 zamia (Macrozamia riedlei), 165 Zhalong Nature Reserve, China, 207, 211–12 zoopoetics, 71

Contributor Biographies

Danielle Brady, PhD, is a senior lecturer in communications, media, and cultural studies and coordinator of higher degrees in the School of Arts and Humanities at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia. With postgraduate qualifications in both science and arts, she currently teaches research methods and supervises students across a range of disciplines, including communications, arts, and design. She is particularly interested in working collaboratively on projects that benefit communities. Recent collaborative projects include communication and design aspects of a satellite-based fire mapping system for regional communities in Western Australia and re-imagining Perth’s lost wetlands in order to preserve those that remain. Li Chen received her PhD from the School of Arts and Humanities at Edith Cowan University, Perth, Western Australia. Her ethnographic study, Chinese Diaspora and Western Australian Nature (Perth Region): A Study of Material Engagement with the Natural World in Diasporic Culture, examined multiculturalism and environmentalism in the Chinese-Australian community of Perth. Before relocating to Perth, Li was a documentary filmmaker and journalist in China. Since her PhD completion, she has been working with environmental conservation and community development NGOs in Perth as a researcher and writer with an international perspective. Her research appears in the journals Heritage and The Conversation. Nandi Chinna, PhD, is a research consultant, poet, and activist. Her poetry publications include Swamp: Walking the Wetlands of the Swan Coastal Plain (2014), Alluvium (with illustrator Andrea Smith, 2012), How to Measure Land (Byron Bay Writers Festival Poetry Prize winner, 2010), and 251

252

Contributor Biographies

Our Only Guide is Our Homesickness (2007). Her latest poetry collection, The Future Keepers, is forthcoming from Fremantle Press in 2019. In 2016, Nandi was Writer in Residence at Kings Park and Botanic Gardens in Perth, Western Australia. She won the 2016 Fremantle History Award for her history of Clontarf Hill, and was shortlisted for the 2016 Red Room Poetry Fellowship. For the 2017 Perth International Arts Festival, she collaborated with Amy Sharrocks and the Museum of Water on a community water poem and an interactive walking tour of lost water bodies. Rod Giblett, PhD, is honorary associate professor of environmental humanities in the School of Communication and Creative Arts, Deakin University, Australia. He is the author of many books that discuss wetlands, including Postmodern Wetlands: Culture, History, Ecology (1996), Cities and Wetlands: The Return of the Repressed in Nature and Culture (2016), and, most recently, Environmental Humanities and Theologies: Ecoculture, Literature and the Bible (2019). Philip Jennings, PhD, is emeritus professor of physics and energy studies at Murdoch University. During his academic career he conducted research on solar energy, radioactivity, surface science, and science education. He was also involved in interdisciplinary work, especially in environmental science and the history of science. In 1985, he helped to found the Wetlands Conservation Society of Western Australia and has been its president ever since. In 1993, he helped to establish the Cockburn Wetlands Education Center and has been the president of its Board of Management for the past twenty-five years. Philip is a member of the Western Australian Wetlands Coordinating Committee and the chair of the Beeliar Regional Park Community Advisory Committee. He recently co-edited a book on wetland conservation, titled Never Again: Reflections on Environmental Responsibility after Roe 8 (2017). John Kinsella, PhD, is professor in the School of Media, Creative Arts, and Social Inquiry at Curtin University, Bentley, Western Australia. He has written over twenty books of poetry, as well as plays and fiction, and maintains an active literary career as an editor and teacher. His recent poetry books include Firebreaks (2016), Drowning in Wheat: Selected Poems (2016), and Insomnia (2019). Christopher Kueh, PhD, has been a design educator/researcher, practicing information designer, and design strategist since 2002. He is currently a senior lecturer at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Western Australia. He

Contributor Biographies

253

has worked to apply design approaches to help organizations, nationally and internationally, to understand complexities and to develop creative directions. Christopher is currently working with The Smith Family and Anglicare on separate social projects that involve the application of Design Thinking as the means to inject people-centered design approaches in wicked social problems. Jeffrey Murray has been a Regional Indigenous Liaison Officer in Western Australia for the Australian Army with responsibilities to assist units to engage and participate in Indigenous communities and support local commanders on Indigenous and cultural issues. His previous roles have included cartographer, GIS and native title positions in the Departments of Planning and Infrastructure and Land Information (now Landgate). Since 2012, he has run Kareff Consultancy, an independent historical land research business mapping the history of land, people, places, and events and specializing in mapping and field-identifying Indigenous, traditional country, pre-European settlement. Glen Phillips, PhD, is honorary professor at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Western Australia, and director of its International Center for Landscape and Language. More than forty-five books of his poetry have been published. His poems also appear in over thirty anthologies and many national and international journals. Recent publications include Five Conversations With the Indian Ocean (2016) and In the Hollow of the Land: Collected Poems (2018). He is Patron of the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers Centre which he founded in 1985 and former national president of the Fellowship of Australian Writers. Many translations of his poems have been published in China, Italy, and other countries, and he has taught Australian Literature in universities around the world. John Charles Ryan, PhD, is a poet, ecocritic, and cultural botanist who holds appointments as postdoctoral research fellow in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at the University of New England in Armidale, Australia and Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Humanities at the University of Western Australia in Perth. He is interested in transdisciplinary teaching and research that cross between the environmental and digital humanities. He is the author or editor of the books Digital Arts (2014, co-author), The Language of Plants (2017, co-editor), Plants in Contemporary Poetry (2017, author), Southeast Asian Ecocriticism (2017, editor), and Forest Family (2018, co-editor).