Rivers and Resilience: Aboriginal People on Sydney's Georges River.
Toussaint, Sandy
Rivers and Resilience: Aboriginal People on Sydney's Georges River.
By Heather Goodall and Alison Cadzow.
Sydney, NSW. University of New South Wales Press, 2009.
Pp.i-xii, 1-288, plus Endnotes and Index.
Price AU$39.95
Rivers and Resilience contemplates Aboriginal life in and around Sydney from the 1830s to the present. Featuring the Georges River in New South Wales as vantage point, the work extends understandings about people's interactions with an urban waterway and the riparian environment of which it is a part. The qualifies of such an approach are two-fold: a complex and hitherto 'hidden' layer of Australian history is revealed, and the significance of the human/river relationship is identified as a cogent means of interpreting past and present socio-cultural, emotional and economic life. Historians Heather Goodall and Alison Cadzow make plain at the outset their guiding line of inquiry: 'what is resilience and how have rivers contributed to it?' (p.25). Defining resilience as a process of 'regrowth which takes account of the current changed conditions but draws its roots from a rich heritage' (p.249), archival documents, unpublished reports, newspaper items, historical society newsletters, theses, old news reels, photos and maps, are combined with a selection of interviews with Aboriginal men and women who either currently live near the Georges, are related to people who did, and/or have an extended relationship with it. Extracts from recent Aboriginal land, environmental and heritage meetings in New South Wales, help to ground and give further life to the breadth of historical data. Goodall and Cadzow are also keen to discuss how individuals and families make place meaningful, especially how people 'continue to "make locality" long after they have left it' (p.16). These are key epistemological issues of interest across the social sciences and the humanities including, in a slightly different guise, for native title research.
The river as both place and as a means of facilitating mobility and evasion permeate the text, and the authors have little difficulty concluding that the Georges River was and is central to place-making, resilience and Aboriginal survival (pp. 19-20; 280-281). In the second chapter (titled 'Re-thinking the River') readers are introduced to key persons and places: Pemulwuy, Joe Anderson (also known as King Burraga of the Thirroul Tribe) and Sait Pan Creek, an important location along the Georges River. The point is made, for instance, that whilst Pemulwuy is renowned as a 'resistance hero', he is not known as a man from Sait Pan Creek (p.26), yet such an affiliation was an important cultural identity marker. Readers are also introduced (on p.28) to another Sait Pan Creek man, Joe Anderson, who in the 1930s and 1940s was actively engaged in upholding the rights of Aboriginal people to live near, and to continue to make use of, the river's natural resources. Anderson, and the political entanglements in which he was involved, is treated in greater depth in Chapter Six.
Chapters Three to Seven focus on particular families via the historical intertwining of their lives with the river. Readers learn, for instance, how settler expansion in the early 1800s led to the encroachment of freshwater sources formerly accessible to Aboriginal groups only. Some of the more complex interactions between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people are also discussed, such as the case of William Rowley whose cultural knowledge of the river environment was 'valuable to white interests in the area' (p.70). On the other hand, Rowley and his wife are later described as moving to Salt Pan Creek to a community developed by Joe Anderson, a shift that helped to support Anderson's claim for local Aboriginal ownership of the area. Elsewhere, stories are told about Aboriginal protests against the expansion of horticultural projects by settlers (pp.73-76), the courage of Lucy Leane who petitioned the colonial government to have her cultural rights recognized for the 'purposes of carrying on trade on the Georges River' (p.77), and about Biddy Giles's daughter, Ellen, who played a vital role in the establishment and viability of the Salt Pan Creek community by 'having a continuing association with the church.... [and by] making a cash income from selling wildflowers ... that grew along the Georges River' (p.120). Of rich interest in these stories is evidence of a constant socio-cultural and economic connection between families, an interconnection that is consistently intertwined with the ecology and history of the Georges River.
Life as a result of migration to the city and the policies of assimilation in the 1950s underpin much of Chapter Eight: 'Herne Bay to Green Valley: Judy's River 1960-1980'. Whilst the chapter's title is a little misleading because the content is not only about 'Judy's River' (perhaps an outcome of the interest to constantly intersperse persons with place overtime), Goodall and Cadzow observe how moving, 'thousands of inner-city families into the hostels along the already poorly resourced working-class suburbs of the Georges River led to tensions ...' (p.192). But, as a counterbalance to these tensions, it was also the case that the river helped many adults and children to survive these conditions, a claim that accords with the authors' interest in resilience: 'The place children went to for a real escape was the river ... Sait Pan Creek was used less for swimming, but it was where they would go for crabs, prawns and fishing ...' (pp.192-193).
The rest of Chapter Eight is less engaging, in part because the authors seem unable to settle on the main points they wish to make. Nonetheless, via narratives and historical sources they continue to emphasise links between families and the river. Housing and prejudicial issues that arose in later decades are also explored, and some of these are tied back into river connections. With a view to highlighting the ongoing value of water, Goodall and Cadzow claim that the teenagers with whom they worked 'were building up a new way to understand the country they had come to: they were, after all, "river girls"!' (p.213).
The less focused quality of Chapter Eight is also evident in Chapter Nine, whereas Chapters Ten and Eleven creatively and cogently circumvent the text's guiding themes: how is place constructed and made meaningful by Aboriginal men, women and children in urban locations, and what part do rivers play in how resilience is enacted? Locations such as Sait Pan Creek, and figures such as Joe Anderson, are also revisited. The contemporary efforts of present-day Aboriginal people, such as the Tharawal Land Council's actions to protect Georges River areas and, reflecting change over time, the tutelage of Aboriginal lecturers who now take TAFE students on field trips to study the river environment and its history (pp.281-282), is also discussed.
Rivers and Resilience adds a distinctive layer to Aboriginal history in New South Wales, one that some may not have been aware of before. The text contains a range of important comparative insights, and the integration of historical detail with contemporary, qualitative interviews and other sources is mostly used to great effect. The focus on Georges River life in the locale of Sydney also presents a definitive starting point within the backdrop of Australia's colonial history.
That rivers like the Georges hold 'secrets' and stories waiting to be unravelled is one of the text's messages. Another is that there is ample room for more work to be done about urban dwellers and their relationship to rivers, especially by historians and town planners, some of whom continue to regard people as Aboriginal only if and when they are defined by 'their rural homelands' (p.278). These are valid concerns that might have benefited from closer discussion, it would also have been useful (and perhaps advantageous to the problems posed) to include anthropological work about Aboriginal beliefs and practices in Australian urban settings. Being Black: Aboriginal cultures in "settled" Australia (edited by Ian Keen, 1988) is just one omission; another is the seminal work in Diane Barwick's unpublished ANU PHD thesis (1963) and also her chapter in the book edited by Keen (1998). Nonetheless, I was intellectually and emotionally carried by people's stories and activities, and encouraged by their resilient use of the river to facilitate both mobility and evasion during different moments in history. Rivers and Resilience also explicates the heuristic value of identifying human/river relationships as a means to interpret human sociality and cultural life more broadly.
Sandy Toussaint
The University of Western Australia
