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| For the first peoples, wetlands were fecund and generous places … |
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| Digital composite by Csaba Szamosy, for Imagine The Future Inc, 1996, created from photographs by James Ross, Mark Trengove, Ian McCann and Parks Victoria, with a C19th image by an unidentified photographer, contributed by Geelong Heritage Centre. |
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| Remnant wetland on the Little River rail reserve, on Victoria's basalt plain. |
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| Photo by James Ross. |
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Healthy native wetlands, rivers and streams are complex, interconnected communities of diverse life forms ranging from microscopic bacteria to towering eucalypts that could be centuries old.
They perform many fundamental biological functions, including water purification; flood protection; and pest, fire and erosion control. They also provide food and living spaces for a great diversity of co-dependent animals, including brolgas and black swans. A number of the wetlands on Victoria's basalt plains, such as the Floating Islands near Stoneyford and the crater lakes of Western Victoria, are also geologically unique.
For the first peoples, wetlands were fecund and generous places, the sources of great spiritual as well as physical nourishment. For years, however, many Europeans and other immigrant peoples failed to understand the cultural and ecological significance of these wet places. Wetlands were drained, used as sewers and rubbish dumps, or polluted and degraded in other ways. Even today a number of rivers and streams, including the Barwon, are so affected by salinity that water from them cannot be used for domestic purposes, or for irrigation.
Early Europeans did appreciate the pristine beauty and fecundity of the rivers, swamps and streams, however, and their recollections now read like idyllic dreams.
The challenges of conserving and restoring freshwater habitats to their pre-European condition cannot be underestimated, but more appropriate management strategies can be implemented as more sophisticated understandings are emerging about the complex interrelationships that keep wetlands healthy. And everywhere across the plain local people are working together to ensure that future generations can draw physical and spiritual nourishment from these wetlands, as the first peoples did in the past.
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| Kulin men, probably Watha wurrung, in a traditional bark canoe. This photograph is believed to have been taken on the Barwon River near Geelong, on Victoria's basalt plain, in the late nineteenth century. |
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| Photo contributed by Geelong Heritage Centre. Photographer unknown. |
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What are your stories about the freshwater wetlands, rivers, and streams of Victoria's basalt plain?
Copyright Imagine The Future Inc 2002.
Text by Merrill Findlay.
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