Peta Clancy

birrarung ba brungergalk, for The Soils Project, explored the confluence where brungergalk meets the birrarung on Wurundjeri Country in Healesville. Wurundjeri Traditional Custodian Brooke Wandin writes that brungergalk is the Woiwurrung name for the Watts River and means "rotten logs." Since colonisation, the water flowing through brungergalk has been perceived as a resource and a commodity. The confluence where the two waterways meet is a place where Wurundjeri Traditional Custodians have been visiting and spending time for thousands of years. Since invasion, significant sites such as this have become inaccessible to Traditional Custodians, as much of Country is now in private hands. Through my work, I hope to contribute to the conversation about the in/accessibility of waterways and Country for Traditional Custodians. Through the project I was honoured to visit the place where brungergalk meet the birrarung with Brooke Wandin. This was the first time Wurundjeri Tradtional Custodians had visited this part of their Country for over 100 years.

The wallpaper print in the installation is a reproduction of a hand-coloured photograph by Nicholas Caire titled Junction, Yarra and Watts River (from the National Gallery of Victoria collection), which depicts the confluence around 1880. This photograph was used to create a postcard view of the land that offered a colonialist and objectified perspective. Installed over the wallpaper print are photographic prints of the confluence, created through a performative process whereby I return to Country with photographs I have previously created at the same location, show them to Country, cut into the prints, and rephotograph them in situ. These images feature multiple views of Country to explore multiple timeframes, histories, and perspectives.

In Australia, historical photographs of landscape/place/Country often frame Country as an object to capture or obtain—depicting it through an extractive, resource-driven lens. I am interested in exploring other ways of knowing Country through photography. My photographs form a visual record of the confluence for future reference by Wurundjeri Traditional Custodians.

I would like to thank Wurundjeri Traditional Custodians for their generosity enabling me to photograph on Wurundjeri Country.

The Soils Project 5 August – 12 November 2023, brings together 13 practitioners and collectives from Australia, the Netherlands and Indonesia to explore the complex and diverse relationships between environmental change and colonisation.