Rivers of Emotion An emotional history of Derbarl Yerrigan and Djarlgarro Beelier / the Swan and Canning Rivers 3 Please be aware that this booklet includes images and names of deceased people that may cause sadness or distress to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Front cover image: Shane Pickett Waagle – Rainbow Serpent, 1983 oil on canvas 91.5 x 183.5 cm State Art Collection, Art Gallery of Western Australia Purchased 1996 This image depicts the birth of the Nyoongar people of the south-west of Western Australia – the people arising from the water, as part of the Waagle – the Rainbow Serpent – as it creates the actual physical landscape of Nyoongar boodja – Nyoongar country – but also its people, who came into physical being at that time. Rivers of Emotion: Rivers of Emotion: An emotional history of the Swan and Canning Rivers is supported An Emotional History of Derbarl Yerrigan through funding from the Australian Government’s Your Community Heritage Program. and Djarlgarro Beelier/ the Swan and Canning Rivers, Edited by Susan Broomhall and Gina Pickering ATIONAL RUST Crawley, Uniprint, 2012. N T ISBN: 978-1-74052-260-1 Rivers of Emotion The Rivers tell us about ourselves, our communities and our values. The Rivers hold deep emotional significance for historic and contemporary peoples who have drawn upon them as a functional, pleasure and spiritual resource. There are now more than 1.5 million people living in the wider Swan Catchment which covers about 2000 square kilometres. There is not one story but many; stories bound by and experienced through emotions. An innovative website has been created for the community to share their experiences and feelings about the Rivers. These can be oral or written memories and stories, as well as soundscapes, landscapes, visual, aural and emotionscapes. These experiences will contribute to understanding this unique cultural landscape, and will inform an interpretation plan for riverside heritage trails. The Swan Canning Riverpark includes 72.1 square kilometres of public land and adjoining river reserve. The limits of the Riverpark stretch from Fremantle Traffic Bridge to Moondyne Brook just south of Avon Valley National Park, and Helena River, from the lower diversion dam; and Southern River from Allen Road crossing; and Canning River from Stinton Creek confluence. Swan River behind All Saints Church, Henley Brook © Gina Pickering 1 Towards Community Education and Wellbeing Frederick Rushbrook Clause, Setting Camp of the Naval Survey Expedition Clause’s Lagoon, Perth, Western Australia, c 1832, watercolour over soft pencil on paper, 22.2 x 33.6 cm, Janet Holmes à Court Collection. The past the Trust is fighting The National Trust of Australia (WA) The National Trust of Australia (WA) is both for is not only more inclusive conserves and interprets Western a Trust for government and community. and reaching back to deep time Australia’s heritage (natural, Aboriginal Since 1959 the Trust has worked to - it is also a landscape in which and historic) for present and future promote cultural heritage for the long- it is possible, indeed necessary, generations. It is custodian of four term social, economic and environmental to practise a politics of care for places of outstanding heritage value benefits it brings to the community. one another.1 along the Rivers including No 1 Pump Station at Mundaring, Woodbridge at The Trust continues to work in Woodbridge, Peninsula Farm (Tranby) at partnership with government agencies Maylands and Gallop House in Dalkeith. and the Perth community to provide stewardship, heritage services and In 2008 the Trust developed the innovative programs which lead to statement of significance for the Swan greater understanding, engagement and River based on the UNESCO world appreciation of the heritage values of heritage model and in 2011 completed Perth’s unique river landscape. an audit of heritage values of the Swan Canning Riverpark. Gina Pickering The National Trust of Australia (WA) 2 | RIVERS OF EMOTION Hydraulic Affections For even as little brookes lose here in terms familiar to them; they left “Our rivers have seen many changes in their names by their running frustrated and disappointed. how we value and manage them, from and fall into great Rivers, and the pre-colonial Noongar inhabitants the very name and memorie of By the eighteenth century, fluvial and their beliefs and traditions to colonial great Rivers swallowed up in the technologies were re-shaping European settlement and a philosophy towards Ocean; so by the conjunction of agricultural productivity. Water, and development and commercialisation. divers little Kingdomes in one, its active management, was a critical Today support for the conservation of are all these private differences component to continental economies, our river system is no longer partitioned and questions swallowed up.2 and it was with this interventionalist by cultural barriers, and the Noongar mentality that the French and then and Caucasian communities are just When James I opened Parliament with English approached the Rivers. Were two cultures amongst many who now the above speech in 1604, he was they resources to assist settlement, or a call Perth home. If we, the population of calling for unity among the diverse hindrance to travel, communication, and Perth, expect that it is our right to reap communities or tributaries of his transplanted agricultural systems from the rewards our environment provides kingdom, to focus on what they shared Europe? Their differing expectations and (land, water, plants and animals) then rather than their differences. answers to this question help to explain we must accept as equally hasty our British rather than French settlement in overarching responsibility to do the right An important research priority for our the area. thing by an environment which provides Centre is to understand and enable so completely - not the most viable or all Australians to appreciate emotions Although emotions – from greed and the easiest, but the right thing. Ultimately in the European past upon which the pride, to love, frustration, and despair – we are united through our common foundations of Australia have been built, spurred on their activities and filled their responsibility.”3 for European emotions have shaped, journals and letters home, only a few of and continue to shape, our interactions the newcomers troubled themselves to Susan Broomhall with the Rivers in profound ways. consider the deeply-held feelings about Australian Research Council Centre of the waterways of the people they came Excellence for the History of Emotions, Rivers were vital to the identities and to dispossess. What are the emotional Europe 1100 – 1800 economies of early modern society. traces of these long-ago actions as we The motto of Paris, for example, is experience the Rivers today? fluctuat nec mergitur (we are tossed by the waves but do not sink) derived from Additionally, can we perhaps draw upon the powerful guild of the Seine River emotions to find common ground to boatsmen and versions of it appeared on care for the Rivers today? As 22-year- commemorative coins as early as 1581. old Wadjuk Noongar Ezra Jacobs-Smith has argued, Rivers would be key to how Europeans interpreted the landscapes they experienced in the Great Southland from their first recorded encounters in the seventeenth century. The Dutch, whose expertise in hydrology was well known in Europe, struggled to assess the Rivers 3 A Statement of Significance for the Riverpark In 2011, a new Statement of Significance The following Statement of Significance ÌÌ the Rivers provided Perth’s first for the Swan and Canning Riverpark identified this area of the Rivers as a transport and communication corridor was adopted by the Swan River Trust cultural landscape with natural and and demonstrate access to the upper following an audit of heritage values.4 cultural heritage significance for the reaches and downstream to Fremantle. The work was undertaken by the National following reasons: ÌÌ the Rivers provide evidence of Trust of Australia (WA) and completed a changing livelihoods, lifestyles and study which began in 2008 to identify the ÌÌ the Rivers’ landscape demonstrates the sustenance for all humans who have ending of the Gondwanaland period natural, Aboriginal and historic values of lived there over thousands of years. the Swan and Canning Rivers. Twenty- due to the breakup of the Indian and Australian tectonic plates following rifting one local government authorities which ÌÌ along the Darling fault line. the changing use of the Rivers for border the Swan Canning Riverpark industrial purposes from 1829 to the along with a range of cultural agencies present demonstrate evidence of ÌÌ the Rivers were formed by the contributed to the successful completion innovation and change in technology mythological serpent the Waugyl and industry. of this work. The following Statement according to Noongar tradition, and of Significance has been prepared on have continuing cultural importance ÌÌ the model used by the United Nations related to past and contemporary the Rivers and their banks have been Educational, Scientific and Cultural Noongar culture. used for passive and active recreation Organisation (UNESCO) for the purpose including swimming, fishing, prawning, crabbing, boating, walking, bird- of establishing world heritage listing. ÌÌ the Rivers’ environment is home to rare watching, horse racing and picnics, and priority flora listed on international and are linked to international sporting and state based registers. Local and international communities events including The Avon Descent share a future in the use, care and White Water Race. understanding of Perth’s most important ÌÌ archaeological discoveries in the river valley have extended the scientific natural and cultural landscape. ÌÌ the Rivers provide evidence of knowledge of the great antiquity (at least changing and contrasting systems 40 thousand years) of continuous human The Statement of Significance for of understanding, use and abuse, habitation in Australia.