The
Creek Project: a narrative intervention in the catchment of the Lachlan River, NSW
I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do?’
if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories
do I find myself a part?
Alasdair MacIntyre
NEW! Understanding place through narrative: changing who we are and the places we love with stories >>
Preprint version of an essay to be published in 2008 in Making Sense of Place edited by Frank Vanclay, Jeff Malpas, Matthew Higgins and Adam Blackshaw for the National Museum of Australia. >>
Once upon a time, a young girl found a stone in a dry creek bed on her family’s farm. It was pitted and worn and seemed to nestle into the palm of her hand as though it had been made for her, or at least for someone with a hand the same size as her’s. .... More [pdf 70kb] >>
 Growing
up on the tragically degraded Gunningbland Creek in the 1960s.
The channel has been excavated, the riparian vegetation cleared,
the wetlands drained and European Carp have displaced native
fish species. Now at last we are attempting to repair the damage
done by past agricultural practices. From the Findlay Family
Collection
Understanding Place Through Narrative presents a theoretical framework for the Creek Project. The essay is based on my presentation to Senses of Place: exploring concepts and
expressions of place through different senses and lenses,
a conference hosted by the Place Research Network, National Museum
of Australia, Mountain Festival, and the Community, Place and
Change Theme Area of the University of Tasmania in Hobart, 7-9 April, 2006, and draws on an innovative academic research project completed in 2005 for a Masters in Social Science. More
>>
River stories: genealogies of a threatened river system >>
I
write this in a small rural town in central New South Wales
beside a river that is slowly meandering towards its terminal
wetland, the Great Cumbung Swamp, in Australia’s Murray-Darling
Basin. More
>> (pdf 179kb)
Romancing
the grindstone on Gunningbland Creek >>
The
days are lengthening, crops are ripening, and the air is sweet
with Spring as I write. For the first time in years of drought
there are pools of muddy water in Gunningbland Creek, the ephemeral
stream that meanders across our farm .... More
>> (pdf 143 kb)
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Page last revised 21 January 2008. |