October 29, 2024 • 50 mins
In this episode of History Now, Emily O’Gorman and Taylor Coyne reflect on how history can be understood and written from more-than-human perspectives.
History Now seminars explore current and compelling issues affecting the practice of contemporary history. It is a long-running series of public talks and discussions, bringing new perspectives to all aspects of historical practice. This year History Now is a collaboration between the History Council of NSW (HCNSW), the State Library of NSW and the Australian Centre for Public History (ACPH) at UTS. History Now 2024 is programmed by Jesse Adams Stein (Vice President of HCNSW / Member of ACPH).
Associate Professor Emily O’Gorman is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow based at the Department of History and Archaeology at Macquarie University, Sydney. Her research is situated within environmental history and the interdisciplinary environmental humanities, and is primarily concerned with contested knowledges within broader cultural framings of authority, expertise, and landscapes with a focus on rivers and wetlands. She is the author of Flood Country: An Environmental History of the Murray-Darling Basin (CSIRO Publishing, 2012) and Wetlands in a Dry Land: More-than-human Histories of Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin (University of Washington Press, 2021; MUP 2024).
Taylor Coyne is a PhD Candidate in urban and historical geography at UNSW, Sydney. He is also a Project Officer in the Connection with Country design team at the Sydney-based practice Yerrabingin. Taylor works in the space of creating meaningful, community-centric, culturally inclusive water sensitive urban design through ecologically and historically contextual storytelling. Taylor’s research focus is on the history, politics and design of eastern Sydney’s urban stormwater infrastructure. In particular, asking how and why Sydney’s waterscapes came to be the way they are today, and whose knowledges and experiences have been included and excluded in the way these spaces have been designed, planned, managed, and governed. All of Taylor’s research interests are threaded together by the overarching aim to address matters that are important to marginalised communities in Sydney, with a particular focus on bringing First Nations knowledges and histories to the fore. Taylor is working towards addressing how landscape architecture and environmental history might come together to incorporate Sydney’s swampy more-than-human histories.
Professor Warwick Anderson is the Janet Dora Hine Professor of Politics, Governance and Ethics in the Discipline of Health and leader of the Politics, Governance and Ethics Theme with the Charles Perkins Centre. From 2012-17 he was ARC Laureate Fellow in the Department of History and the Center for Values, Ethics and the Law in Medicine. Additionally, he has an affiliation with History and Philosophy of Science at Sydney and is a Professorial Fellow of the School of Population and Global Health at the University of Melbourne. As an historian of science, medicine and public health, focusing on Australasia, the Pacific, Southeast Asia and the United States, Anderson is especially interested in ideas about race, human difference, and citizenship in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In recent years, his research has focussed on the conceptual development of disease ecology and planetary health, i.e., the population health impacts of climate change.
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Jesse Adams Stein (00:16):
Good afternoon everyone.
Thank you for joining us andI'm glad that we all found the
new venue in the Metcalf Well.
Welcome to this session ofHistory Now 2024.
My name is Jessie Adams-Steenand I'm the Programme Director
for History Now 2024 and Irepresent both the History
(00:38):
Council of New South Wales andthe Australian Centre for Public
History at UTS.
Today's topic is more thanhuman histories and I am
delighted that we are joined byDr Emily Gorman and Taylor Coyne
, and tonight's chair isProfessor Warwick Anderson, who
I will introduce shortly, andWarwick will introduce our
(00:58):
speakers Before that.
I'd like to start byacknowledging the country on
which we are holding this event.
We are on Gadigal country andstanding here at the State
Library of New South Wales, weare on the top of the hill close
to Warrane (Sydney Cove) and(Wahganmuggalee) Farm Cove.
I'd like to acknowledge thatthe Gadigal are the traditional
(01:19):
custodians of this country andacknowledge that we are on
stolen land.
Before we dive into more thanhuman, I would like to give you
just a little bit of backgroundabout History Now as a series.
It's a long-running publichistory talk series with the aim
to bring excellent historicalresearch into public discourse.
(01:42):
We feature professional andacademic historians as well as
experts who use historicalresearch into public discourse.
We feature professional andacademic historians as well as
experts who use historicalresearch in their practice.
History Now has had severaliterations and organisers and
homes over the years, and thisyear, in 2024, history Now is a
collaboration between theHistory Council of New South
Wales, the Australian Centre forPublic History.
(02:03):
It's a collaboration if it'sthe one person who's part of the
two things and we alsoacknowledge we have venue
support from the State Libraryof New South Wales and we thank
them for the use of this space.
We started this year in Marchand after this session we will
have one more to go in November,so it's been running hot all
year.
Look at all those amazingspeakers here and if you're
(02:26):
listening to the recording lateron, you can find a full event
program through a quick searchengine inquiry.
I'd like to introduce our chairfor today's event, professor
Warwick Anderson.
He is the Janet Dora HineProfessor of Politics,
Governance and Ethics in theDiscipline of Health and leader
of the Politics, Governance andEthics theme within the Charles
(02:46):
Perkins Centre at the Universityof Sydney.
He also has an affiliation withhistory and philosophy of
science at Sydney University andis a professorial fellow of the
School of Population and GlobalHealth at the University of
Melbourne.
As an historian of science,medicine and public health,
Anderson is especiallyinterested in ideas about race,
(03:07):
human difference and citizenshipin the 19th and 20th centuries.
In recent years, his researchhas focused on the conceptual
development of disease, ecologyand planetary health, for
instance, the population healthimpacts of climate change.
Please join me in welcomingWarwick.
(03:32):
Thank you, thanks very much.
I was enjoying that.
I thought it might go on foranother five or ten minutes,
thought you'd only just gottenstarted.
That was a very impressive listof speakers up there, I should
(03:52):
say.
I once spoke at this forum manyyears ago over at UTS, and I
think I drew all of four peoplein the audience.
So the fact that this venue isalmost full really attests to
the appeal of both Emily andTaylor, of course.
So today we'll be hearing aboutmore- than- human histories.
(04:14):
In that title, the hyphen isdoing a lot of work.
So just this morning actually,I got an email from the Academy
of Humanities, and they wereasking Fellows of the Academy to
explain perhaps why thehumanities weren't seen as
(04:34):
compelling as they should be.
And I said to them well, youknow, maybe we should be
thinking more about climatehistories, environmental
histories, more than humanhistories, in fact, in an era of
climate change and biodiversityloss and the destruction of the
(04:59):
Earth's life support systems.
So I think it's very timelythat we learn more about these
more-than-human histories.
Some of you may know, though,that more-than-human histories
aren't exactly new.
I mean, I trained many yearsago as a historian of medicine
(05:20):
and biology and of course youhave more- than- humans in those
histories, even if they aremere microbes and it's usually
just there as examples ofpathology.
But in more- than- humanhistories, as I understand it,
I'll learn more now, the humanis much more thoroughly
(05:43):
de-centred in the historicalnarrative agencies distributed
to non-human actors or figures,and perhaps one could almost
call it an 'ecological' style ofhistory.
So think about this.
As we hear some more.
I do have a few issues.
(06:06):
I wonder whether they'll bedispelled.
One is the focus on charismaticvertebrates.
I suspect Emily will be lookingmore at arthropods - maybe not
- Certainly in her other workshe has.
But also I just wonder aboutthe limits of how much one can
ever truly de-centre the human.
(06:26):
I mean, I think as humans weare sort of almost compelled to
think about everything else inrelation to ourselves.
So I wonder but it is notnon-human history, of course, it
is more- than- human history.
So anyhow, we'll find out moreabout that soon.
(06:53):
I'll just introduce fairlybriefly the two speakers and
we'll first hear from AssociateProfessor Emily O'Gorman.
She's an ARC Future Fellowbased at the Department of
History and Archaeology atMacquarie University.
Her research is situated withinenvironmental history and the
interdisciplinary environmentalhumanities, and it's primarily
(07:16):
concerned with contestedknowledges within broader
cultural framings of authority,expertise and landscapes.
Her focus, as many of you willknow, is on rivers and wetlands.
She's the author of FloodCountry an environmental history
of the Murray-Darling Basin2012, and Wetlands in a Dry Land
(07:39):
More than Human Histories,there you go.
More Than Human Histories ofAustralia's Murray Darling Basin
in 2021.
And, I think, reprinted in 2024.
Taylor Coyne we'll hear fromafter Emily.
Taylor Coyne's a PhD candidatein Urban and Historical
(08:01):
Geography at UNSW here in Sydney.
He's also a project officer inthe Connection with Country
Design team at the Sydney-basedpractice, Yerrabingin.
I'd like to hear more aboutthat at some point.
Taylor's research focus is onthe history, politics and design
(08:22):
of eastern Sydney's urbanstormwater infrastructure.
In particular, he asks how andwhy Sydney's waterscapes came to
be the way they are today andwhose knowledges and experiences
have been included or excludedin the way these spaces have
(08:43):
been designed, planned, managedand governed.
Taylor is working towardaddressing how landscape
architecture and environmentalhistory might come together to
incorporate Sydney's swampy,more-than-human histories.
Emily O'Gorman (09:03):
Hi everyone and thanks so much for the
introduction, Warwick.
I really appreciate it.
Before I go further, I'd justlike to acknowledge that we're
meeting on the country ofGadigal people and I pay my
respects to elders past andpresent.
Thank you all so much for beinghere tonight and a huge thank
(09:23):
you to the organisers,especially Jesse.
I really appreciate all thework you've done, not just
organising this particular forumbut organising this series.
And also a big thank you to theHistory Council of New South
Wales and UTS, as well as StateLibrary of New South Wales
(09:47):
Library of New South Wales.
So I will start by giving abrief overview of the emergence
of more- than- human historiesas an approach and as a set of
ideas as I understand it.
So this is my perspective onhow it's emerged and the
approaches within it, and thenI'll give a brief example of how
I've used this in my own workexamining histories of wetlands
in the Murray-Darling Basin.
So this is from my most recentbook that Warwick mentioned,
(10:07):
which is on sale at the bookshopjust outside, very pleased to
see that there.
So, more- than- human historiesin general terms bring
approaches in multi-speciesstudies and more- than- human
scholarship into atransformative dialogue with
environmental history.
So it's trying to bringtogether different groups of
(10:28):
scholarship.
Environmental history emergedin the 1970s within the
discipline of history as aradical new mode of inquiry that
aimed to examine theinteraction of people and
environments, to reveal newhistorical narratives in which
nature was an active agent.
Multispecies studies andmore-than- human scholarship are
(10:49):
interdisciplinary modes ofinquiry that have been
consolidating cognatescholarship, emerging from many
disciplines over the last decadeand a half.
I'll spend a bit of timefocusing on the latter, newer
fields of inquiry rather thanenvironmental history per se.
In broad terms, multi-speciesand more-than-human scholarship
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has argued against humanexceptionalism and instead aimed
to re-situate humans withinmultiple dynamic relationships,
only some of which are human,including with plants, animals,
fungi and elements and forceslike water, wind and fire.
It has developed in oppositionto notions that there are fixed
and impartial ways of knowing,particularly in the sciences,
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through the purity of categorieslike nature within Western
traditions.
Instead, it has sought tosituate particular ontologies
within shifting sets ofrelationships between humans and
non-humans, in which power isuneven and agency is manifold.
Importantly, these approachesinclude an attentiveness to
(11:55):
multiple human as well asnon-human voices and agencies,
and examination of racialideologies, class and gender are
central.
Indeed, an explicit goal ofmultispecies studies is drawing
attention to heterogeneity inmore-than-human worlds.
It is about paying attention todifferences and the specificity
(12:16):
of lived natural culturalentanglements.
These approaches are based onnotions of co-constitution of
humans and non-humans and seekto enact a situated ethics and
politics.
Multispecies studies, and more-than- human scholarship, have
come to sit within the field ofenvironmental humanities, so
there's a bit of nestinghappening here.
This field has emerged andrapidly grown internationally
(12:40):
over the last two decades inresponse to contemporary
ecological challenges such asthe climate emergency and mass
species extinction.
Scholars have argued againstthe definition of these issues
as purely environmental, ratheraiming to provide nuanced
understandings of significantproblems that are inescapably
both social and environmental.
(13:01):
Environmental humanities hascome to be used as a term for
grouping together environmentalsub-disciplines such as
environmental philosophy,environmental anthropology and
environmental history, amongstothers, and increasingly to
describe an interdisciplinaryfield with its own concepts,
shared concepts, concerns andapproaches.
(13:22):
In the latter sense, theenvironmental humanities has
consolidated emerginginterdisciplinary work in many
places, including that of theEcological Humanities Group in
Australia, which has some longerroots and a particular history
that I won't go into right now.
The relational approaches ofmultispecies studies and
more-than-human scholarship havediverse roots.
(13:45):
In general terms, theseconsolidate work that began to
emerge in multiple disciplinesfrom the turn of the 21st
century, which gave rise to newsub-disciplines.
This included the scholarshipof cultural geographers such as
Sarah Whatmore and Jamie Lorimer, that helped to form the field
of more-than-human geographies.
(14:05):
And that of anthropologistslike Heather Paxson, Anna Tsing,
Eben Kirksey and StefanHelmreich, that laid the
foundations for multi-speciesethnography.
The work of these scholars wasalready interdisciplinary and
built upon the arguments offeminist science and technology
studies.
Scholars such as Donna Haraway,who advocated for a radical
decentering of the human, forthe importance of recognizing
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human co-becoming with manyother organisms and forces, and
for the need to rethink therelationship between science and
society, including situatingthese and other knowledges.
They also engaged with thearguments of science and
technology studies scholars suchas Bruno Latour, who proposed
actor-network theory as a way ofexamining multiple
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relationalities.
Environmental philosopher ValPlumwood's critiques of
dualisms, such as nature andculture, and her repositioning
of humans within ecologicalterms and non-humans within
ethical terms have also beentaken up within more recent
scholarship.
In many ways, all of this workturned anew towards materiality,
(15:11):
with growing scholarlyattention evident from the early
2000s.
In so doing, it turned awayfrom traditional social
constructivism as it had emerged, while still recognizing the
importance of situatingknowledges.
Indeed, far from being narrowlyfocused on materiality,
multi-species studies andmore-than-human scholarship
(15:32):
emphasise the need to considermore-than-human worlds as full
of meaning as well as matter, asinescapably cultural and
material.
It is vital to examine shiftingand diverse ways of knowing,
including our own as researchersand readers, as these guide
actions and, in so doing, helpto shape worlds in relation with
a wide array of non-humans.
(15:52):
An emphasis on co-constitutionhas meant that some of these
scholars have started to rethinkhistories in more- than- human
terms, people outside thediscipline of history.
This shift included Tsing'sexamination of the way humans
and fungi have shaped eachother's histories, including
through their entanglement inagriculture, and anthropologist
(16:13):
Tess Lea's engagement withmosquitoes as co-authors of the
City of Darwin.
Indeed historians have alsosought to show the dynamic roles
of other organisms, from AlfredCrosby's Ecological Imperialism
to Harriet Ritvo's work onanimals in Victorian England and
the contributors to a morerecent collection titled the
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Historical Animal, who argue forthe importance of taking animal
perspectives seriously andbehaviours seriously, including
in the making of films, as notonly subjects but co-creators of
films.
These works have often soughtto examine historical encounters
between humans and animals, andthis is a point Warwick raised
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about an emphasis on vertebrates.
As such they have not alwaysexplicitly aimed to contribute
to multi-species andmore-than-human scholarship,
which has a slightly differentemphasis, and this emphasis is
on diverse relationships, notjust with animals, extending to
plants, non-human forces likevolcanoes and so on.
While more-than-human andmulti-species scholars and
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environmental historians havebeen slowly edging towards each
other, a sustained andtransformative dialogue has been
somewhat slow to emerge.
Some, like environmentalhistorian Greg Mittman, have
argued that those in his fieldhave been resistant to embracing
relational and diverseontologies, which is a key
aspect of more-than-humanapproaches.
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Perhaps this has been astumbling block.
However, there is now a growingbody of historical scholarship
that is explicitly engaging withthe fuller suite of
multispecies and more-than-humanapproaches and environmental
history, trying to bring theseapproaches together to explore
the agency of other biota inshaping "human in brackets
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histories, while also beingattentive to shifting and
diverse ways of knowing humanand beyond.
So I am an environmentalhistorian as well as engaging
with the environmentalhumanities, as Warwick has
mentioned in the introduction,and I've used more- than- human
approaches in researching andwriting a recent book on the
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history of wetlands in theMurray-Darling Basin, and here's
a map of the Murray-DarlingBasin.
It is, very briefly, a largeriver system that covers 1, 7th
of Australia and my interest inwetlands sort of stem from the
fact that wetlands in the regionhave declined significantly
across the 20th century due todiversions for irrigation and
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drainage for agriculture in thisparticular region.
And that's the MacquarieMarshes, which is the area I'm
going to focus on very shortly.
And this is another map of thebasin which I think is important
to show.
So you can see here differentAboriginal groups within the
basin and just outside it aswell.
(19:11):
So the short example that Iwould like to give is from a
chapter that centres on Wailwind, aboriginal women's weaving
practices and the MacquarieMarshes.
Macquarie Marshes is a Ramsarlisted wetland of international
importance in north central NewSouth Wales, australia where
that red dot was.
(19:34):
So here, an engagement withcontemporary Wayilwin women's
practices draws us into a more-than- human history that is
often entirely absent fromdocumentary archives formed
within British colonial powerstructures.
This chapter developed itsanalysis from my discussions
with Wayilwin woman DanielleCarney-Flakelar pictured here
(19:55):
with the yellow backpack withwhom I've subsequently
collaborated on other projects.
So we're sort of in an ongoingconversation that has developed
into a collaboration.
Danielle told me that weavingwith semi-aquatic reeds and
sedges from the marshes is oneway that Wayilwin Women continue
to connect with country andwith multiple generations.
Wayilwin Women have used theseplants to weave baskets, mats
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and other items for manygenerations.
Weaving, in Danielle's view, isco-becoming.
These connections are shaped bythe plants themselves which
flourish within particularcountry.
Danielle explained that in theMacquarie marshes there are
particular properties of weavingwith the sedge from the marsh
because you harvest it right,it's right out of the ground,
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it's green, you weave it andthen it dries as it becomes
tight on itself and it has itsown personality, I suppose.
"You know you've got this itemhere, and its green and lovely,
and it becomes.
" That's a quote from Danielle.
The weaver and the plant havedetermined the new form
together, but with a range ofother influences, human and
non-human, that have shaped theplant and the person.
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The importance of the propertiesof particular plants in shaping
woven items have meant that inmany places Australian
Aboriginal people haveencouraged plants to grow in
particular ways through burning,which shapes the
characteristics of the plant.
Cool fires can encouragestronger fibres, which create a
different, stronger weave tothat of fibres from plants that
have not been burnt in this way.
Danielle emphasised that forWayilwin people, weaving cannot
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be separated out from otheraspects of caring for country
and there are other knowledgesand practices that must be
nurtured alongside weaving, likeburning, language and medicine.
Knowledge exchange within andbetween different Australian
Aboriginal cultures is animportant part of fulfilling
responsibility in tendingcountry.
Sharing knowledge between women, including through and about
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weaving practices, isparticularly important, Danielle
noted, because of the culturalknowledge that is specific to
women.
It also helps to buildleadership confidence amongst
women.
Accessing parts of the MacquarieMarshes can be difficult, with
some parts encompassed withingrazing properties and other
parts under New South WalesNational Parks and Wildlife
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Service state governmentmanagement.
In recent years, weaving as acultural practice has become a
way to gain access to wetlandslike the Macquarie Marshes,
which have been managed asprotected conservation areas.
Danielle explained that"weaving is a way we open the
door to country, to say that we,as Aboriginal people want
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access for cultural practice.
Issues around access to themarshes have been ongoing since
British colonisation in theregion, spearheaded by
pastoralists in the 1830s.
By the 1880s the marshes werehemmed by pastoral properties
and in 1900, parts of themarshes, totalling 40,000 acres,
were declared a game reserve bythe New South Wales State
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Government.
Some pastoralists were grantedoccupier's licence for these
marsh blocks, which becameconcentrated into the hands of a
few people.
These gave them governmentauthorization to graze their
stock there, predominantlycattle, before the introduction
of sheep in 1927.
By then, grazing cattle in thewetlands was acknowledged by
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many to be damaging thevegetation.
Large sections of the marshesbecame fauna reserve in 1955,
with many of the birds listed asprotected under state acts.
Parts of the marshes werelisted in the Ramsar Convention
in 1986, with the areas extendedin 2000 and 2012.
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Throughout this period, Wayilwinpeople's access to and use of
the marshes was limited invarious ways, compounded by
government policies ofsurveillance and forced removal,
a practice that extended fromthe colonial era well into the
20th century and arguably totoday.
However, Wayilwin people used avariety of strategies to
maintain connections to country,including working on pastoral
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stations.
We might consider contemporarydisputes about the management of
wetlands as natural culturalplaces as a continuation of
disputes about Aboriginalpeoples' legal rights to country
.
Danielle emphasised that,despite government policies
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supporting Aboriginal people'saccess to and use of areas under
national parks and wildlifejurisdiction, in her experience
access has not always been easy.
In her words, in the past itdepended on the manager at the
park at the time and theirattitude as to whether you get
access to sedge and other plantsout there as well.
Her experiences point toongoing effects of fortress
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conservation approaches withingovernment agencies rooted in
both ideas of wilderness and arange of colonial era legacies
that clearly still need to bechallenged.
Relationships with landholders,especially graziers whose
properties border the marshes,have become important in
accessing particular areas,including for ceremonies.
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She said "we're right in theheart of the marsh, still
getting access through just ahandshake agreement, and the
landholder there who we've had agood long relationship with
ensuring that the nextgeneration is connected with
responsibility to maintain ourconnections to country.
" Well, when many Aboriginalpeople throughout the Basin
continue to exercise theirresponsibilities to country.
Wayilwin and many Aboriginalpeople throughout the basin
continue to exercise theirresponsibilities to care for
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country even when access isdifficult or near impossible.
Country, like weaving, is woveninto the world in multiple ways
.
Danielle explained that"Aboriginal women are still very
connected to our roles andresponsibilities.
This is her words fromtraditional law and we have to
adapt in the role because wecan't get on Country.
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Our purpose is to nurtureCountry, people and culture.
"Being in discussion with
Danielle, going to the MacquarieMarshes and researching the
history of this wetland draws usinto a consideration of the
more- than- human histories andfutures, not only of wetlands,
but also the more- than- humanhistories of British
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colonisation, protected areamanagement and women's past and
ongoing connections to Country.
In researching this book aboutwetlands in the Murray-Darling
Basin, I found myself turningtowards more- than- human
approaches for interdisciplinarymethods, including interviews
and oral histories, listening tomultiple voices, and for
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examining multiple agencies andunderstanding and accounting for
the diverse ontologies andnon-human worlds I was
encountering, and also foraddressing questions of justice
and asymmetrical power relations.
I needed more- than- humanhistories to bring together
approaches in environmentalhistory, which is still
incredibly valuable, and more-than- human scholarship, which
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are also incredibly valuable.
I'm currently building on thiswork to develop a more- than-
human history of internationalwetlands conservation post 1945,
to examine why wetlands becamea focus of international
conservation efforts and whatsome of the consequences have
been.
But more on that will have towait for another time.
So I'll wrap up there, thankyou.
(27:30):
And that's the cover of my bookin case you'd like to read it.
Warwick Anderson (27:35):
Thanks very much, Emily.
You've more than kept the time.
You've come in early, so that'sgreat, Thanks.
A lot More time for discussionthen.
No arthropods in the shortversion of the talk, but there's
plenty of mosquito agency inthe book, which I recommend
(27:55):
highly.
And now we hear from Taylor
Taylor Coyne (28:04):
Thanks, Warwick.
Thanks, Emily, that was great.
This is what I'm going to bepresenting on tonight, but
before I begin I'd like toacknowledge country, acknowledge
country and the custodians ofcountry here we meet tonight on
the unceded lands and waters ofthe Gadigal people.
Respect to elders, past andpresent, and to any First
(28:25):
Nations people here tonight.
I honor your connections toyour lands and waters.
The struggle for Indigenousjustice endures here in Sydney
and for Indigenous peoplesacross the seas who all share in
the collective fight againstthe enduring and current impacts
of colonisation.
My name is Taylor Coyne.
I'm an environmental historian,slash historical geographer and
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critical design theorist -Modes of thinking which thread
together geography, history anddesign, and which ask broadly
how have different people indifferent places shaped and been
shaped by differentenvironments at different times?
The overarching theme to all ofmy work is water, in particular
, how stormwater infrastructureshas emerged in settler colonial
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cities like Sydney, whatpolitical and economic systems
were driving this emergence,which individuals were entangled
in these processes and,importantly, how are these
infrastructures and thesecomplex socio-ecological spaces
being reconceived of today?
A large feature of my work isto consider stormwater
infrastructures not aspolitically neutral artefacts
(29:29):
but as complex socio-ecologicalsystems situated within messy
governance and managementstructures with contentious
design paradigms, shaping theirfutures.
Stormwater infrastructures -Drains, for all intents and
purposes - are part of thehydrosocial cycle.
These are systems of waterwhich move not simply as aqueous
H2O, but water systems whichalso reflect the relationship
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between humans and the more-than- human world, a
relationship that varies greatlydepending on cultural,
political and economic context.
This interplay of nature,infrastructure and human agency
is starkly illustrated incolonial encounters, where
different worldviews on theenvironment were highlighted as
(30:13):
novel.
To help guide us through how tomake sense of these novelties
tonight, I'll be sharing thispaper in two parts.
Part one speaks to the waySydney's more-than-human
environments have beendocumented by colonial figures.
The eel becomes a mascot forthis colonial fascination with
an apparently bizarre Antipodeannature.
Part two then progresses tounpack the broader colonial
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rationale for why these spacesand these more-than-human
inhabitants were treated withsuch contempt and disgust.
What was underpinning the logicfor the channelisation of
creeks and the draining ofswamps?
This is concluded by areflection on what all this
might mean for how Sydney'senvironmental histories and
environmental politics canbenefit not only from
considering but amplifying andcelebrating the web of
(30:56):
more-than-human life that thiscity's infrastructures now
nurture.
Part one (30:59):
the more-than-human histories of Sydney's silent
swampscapes.
One of the earliest one of thecolony's earliest documentations
of more-than-human life wascaptured by George B Worgen in
his 1788 account of earlycolonial Sydney.
Here the lived experiences witha diverse, more-than-human
world, as seen through Worgen'sinteraction with Gadigal people
(31:21):
and Gadigal animals, becomes aprominent feature.
Worgen recalled his time inSydney in a journal of a First
Fleet surgeon.
In his recollection he providesa detailed description of the
search for food in the emergingcolony.
In doing so he provides a richoverview of the more- than-
human inhabitants who werepresent at that time.
He writes "I was one day on ashooting excursion and fell in
(31:44):
with a tribe of the natives.
While I was with them, a crowsettled in a tree that was
within shot.
On leveling my gun at it, oneof the natives ran up to me in a
hurry, clapped his hand overthe muzzle of the piece and
cried out several times bow, bow, bow, bow, meaning, as I
conjunctured that I was not tokill it, for they had seen the
effects of the gun, I compliedwith his request and laughed off
(32:06):
the offence I had seeminglygiven, at which he laughed
likewise and seemed mightilypleased.
Worgan continues, "of reptileshere are snakes, scorpions,
centipedes, lizards and goannas.
The insects which provetroublesome are mosquitoes,
sandflies and red and black ants.
Here are spiders of variouskinds, butterflies and several
(32:26):
sorts of beetles, and some fewbees have been seen.
He then turns his gazeunderwater.
The harbours of this coast arewell stocked with a variety of
fish, and we have never sat downto dinner without a dish of one
kind upon the other Upon thetable since our arrival here.
Very often the boat is sosuccessful as to catch enough
for the whole ship's crew, andtwo or three times we have been
(32:48):
able to supply the officer'stable on shore.
But since the approach of thewinter the fish have become
scarce.
Perhaps they go northward asthe cool weather comes on and
return to the southward with thesummer.
Oysters, cockles and musselsare to be got here for little
trouble, and one very smalllobster has been caught and
wonderful to tell it was red.
Enormously large sharks arevery numerous in the harbours
(33:10):
and very destructive to otherfish as well as to our lines and
hooks.
" Wogan's reflections of theabundant more-than-human life in
Sydney illuminate a fascinationwith their abundance and
apparent peculiarity, wherereferences to animals that make
sense as being from home sharksand lobsters, ants and
butterflies allude to an attemptto provide a rational reference
(33:32):
for how to comprehend thisenvironment.
The story of the Crowhighlights that there is a
misunderstanding of the kinds ofrelationality which Gadigal
people had with theirmore-than-human kin.
Wogan's description of Gadigalanimals is, all things
considered, quite substantial,but it is clearly not exhaustive
and doesn't come close toacknowledging the true diversity
(33:52):
, abundance and wonder of theanimals here.
While the fish get a pronounceddescription in Wogan's writing,
even these aren't encompassing,and there is one particular fish
species that is pressinglyabsent from his list: the eel.
The eel is also absent fromcountless other records of
Gadigal animals by colonialexplorers and people here.
(34:13):
What contentious, extensivedescription of New South Wales
fauna.
For example, in his December1790 entry from A Complete
Account of the Settlement ofPort Jackson, goes into
extraordinary detail on theregion's more- than- human
beings.
Indeed, he writes four immenseparagraphs on the kangaroo, one
entire paragraph dedicated tomethods for killing them.
There simply isn't enough timeto read this account in full,
(34:36):
but from this specificrecollection I've highlighted
here it speaks to the very realvalue attributed to these beings
food.
For me, though, it is theanimals not mentioned in these
writings which speak volumes.
As someone quite infatuatedwith the eel, its absence in
these early accounts is pressing.
Even Governor Arthur Philliprecalls some animals in his
(34:57):
writings, but these focus mostlyon birds, and where fish are
mentioned, the sharks takeprecedent and there is no
mention of the eel.
But where all these figuresmentioned so far almost
seemingly purposefully, omit theeel.
(35:18):
Other writers in Sydney's earlycolonial environments do mention
them, if only briefly.
In Appendix 4, mode of Living,from David Collins, an account
of the early colony of New SouthWales, volume 1, published in
1798, there is one mention ofthe eels, this time in the
context of Indigenous peopleliving near the
Darabin-Hawkesbury River.
"They Aboriginal people,collins writes resort at a
certain time of the year, themonth of April, to the lagoons
where they subsist on eels whichthey procure by laying hollow
pieces of timber in the waterinto which the eels creep and
(35:42):
are easily taken.
A short and to the pointrecollection how eels are being
woven into Indigenous foodcultures.
Beyond writing, there are twomajor illustrations of Sydney's
eels which I've been able tolocate in the archives this
painting by Joseph Lycettshowing Aboriginal men spearing
an eel on the shores of theDaraboon, and this illustration
from seaman and artist GeorgeRapier in the late 18th century,
(36:04):
showing what I will call anattempt to illustrate the eel.
But both Collins' account andRapier's illustration lack
nuance and there is a lack ofecological situatedness and
sociocultural context, somethingthat has been substantially
addressed in the work of awriter who came much later, Obed
West.
In the interest of time andoverwhelm.
(36:26):
I won't read this aloud either,but there are key phrases from
West's text which are relevant.
Importantly, there is a firmacknowledgement of a specific
locale in his writing.
This is Boxley's Lagoon, aplace which has largely been
silenced from Sydney'scontemporary urban geography,
but a place that has much tooffer to those attuned to
environmental transformationsand those concerned with
(36:47):
interpreting and representingthe transformations of these
places to the public.
In 1883, Obed West penned thisarticle in the Sydney Morning
Herald, recollecting on hisyouth in Sydney.
In this particular piece, herecalls the environments across
Redfern and Surrey Hills and thelarge swamp which was known as
Boxley's Lagoon, the location ofwhich has been articulated from
West's recount by a horse raceas being near Mount Carmel and
(37:11):
between Redfern Street andGeorge and Pitt Streets.
As a historical geographer, myobsession with maps is extreme.
This map from between 1820 and1840 shows the northern section
of a series of swampscapes.
By working with West's articleas a reference point, these
environments begin to make senseto us.
Many of the dry areas to thesouth were set aside for
(37:34):
settlers, their names stampedonto parcels of land shown here.
Others, like Sydney Common,were set aside for public use.
We now know Sydney Common by anentirely different name.
Centennial Park.
West of Sydney Common and northof Mount Lachlan is an unnamed
semi-aqueous waterscape.
Using West's street name crossreferences, we can articulate
(37:57):
Boxley's Lagoon as being here -what is now Redfern Oval and
Redfern PCYC.
The historical swamp that Westwas noting was an incredibly
rich, ecologically rich swamp.
Birds of all kinds as well assmall mammals and a variety of
plants, including a mammoth ninefoot diameter black butt tree.
(38:18):
This was a verdant and abundantenvironment full of all kinds
of more- than- human life, andin addition there was, of course
, the eels.
Sydney's eels move through muchof the waterscapes across what
we now call Sydney and West's.
Clear articulation of theirpresence here at Boxleys Lagoon
(38:39):
is quite expected from those ofus who know and have situated
the lagoon amongst otherswampscapes of Sydney's.
Boxleys Lagoon is part of thewider network of swamps, marshes
, lagoons, creeks, rivers andstreams which stretch out from
the ridgelines around SurreyHills, paddington, waverley and
Randwick down to Botany Bay.
At this point I acknowledgethat my work on these
swampscapes would not be madepossible without the work of
(39:01):
former State Library of NewSouth Wales research fellow,
Rebecca Hamilton.
For Boxley's Lagoon, it now nolonger sings with frogs and
water birds, save the ibis,apart from when heavy Sydney
rains in undate the sportsfields.
The waters here have beensilenced, but, like all
historical waterscapes that nolonger speak, if you go there
and listen deeply, listen, waterlife and the eels can be heard.
(39:25):
Today, Sydney's eels movemostly under our feet, in drains
and pipes across the city.
So it makes sense then, thatthey remain as a somewhat
separate part of our daily life.
But the eel story is one whichis increasingly becoming more
and more sought out and more andmore well known.
Sydney's native eels, the shortand long fin eel, are
(39:46):
cataridormous, meaning theyspend most of their lives in
fresh water but migrate to theocean to spawn.
Their life cycle isextraordinary.
After spending up to 30 yearsin fresh, sweet and bitter
brackish waters of swamps,creeks and rivers, they embark
on their journey into saltwaterover 2,000 kilometres north to
(40:07):
the Coral Sea, where theyreproduce and die.
The larvae, carried by oceancurrents, eventually return to
the same waterscapes as theirparents to begin the cycle anew.
The journey of the eels isindeed captivating.
It marvels and astounds toconsider that these slippery
little fish are able to travelsuch immense distances.
But this astonishment at theeels isn't a new phenomenon.
(40:29):
Countless records fromnewspapers across the 19th and
20th century profess wonder atthe eel.
The history of eel astonishmentis actually something which
dates back millennia.
Early Greek philosopherspondered not only of the journey
of the eel to their breedingspot, but also of their breeding
functions more broadly.
The attempt to articulate thisbreeding behavior, along with
(40:49):
many other eel oddities, is partof the work being done by
Alexis Farr at University ofWollongong.
Her work unravels what hasturned into a quite violent
scientific obsession with theeel dissecting, injecting,
isolating, tormenting and, forall intents and purposes,
torturing the eel, all in thename of scientific inquiry.
So, while the eel representstenacity and adaptation, it has
(41:12):
become a body to be viewed asobjective and measurable.
The eel is emblematic of thecolonial desire to locate and
control In a lingering legacy ofcolonization.
The early accounts ofattempting to make sense and
locate the animals here havecontinued to be manifest in
contemporary science's tenaciousresolve to make sense and
locate the eel.
This remarkable migratoryjourney of the eel speaks not
(41:35):
only to the resilience of theeel but to the
interconnectedness of land andsea, of river systems and
oceanic currents, a connectivitythat the colonial project
sought, often violently, tosever.
And so, paradoxically, bydraining wetlands, redirecting
watercourses and introducingpollutants into the river
systems, colonial authoritiesdisrupted these intricate
(41:56):
socio-ecological relationships,rendering waterscapes almost
uninhabitable and driving manyspecies, including the eel, into
being even more elusive.
Part 2.
Miasma Mania.
In Sydney's swampy environments,the eel has become entangled
with the broader structures ofcontrol and manipulation that
waters also have been.
(42:17):
Whether dammed for the creationof milling industries, diverted
for flood protection or drainedfor sanitisation ambitions.
Swamp waters have been thesource of disdain and malice
since the very beginning of thecolony.
In a dispatch sent to the LordSydney dated May 15th 1788,
governor Arthur Philip recallsthe situation which led him to
(42:38):
relocate the fleet from BotanyBay to Sydney Cove, a story
which I'm sure many of you arefamiliar with.
He writes when I consideredBotany Bay being so very open
and the probability of theswamps rendering the most
illegible situation unhealthy, Ijudged it advisable to examine
Port Jackson.
When Philip did eventually cometo Port Jackson, he noted,
(43:02):
quote nothing can more fullypoint out the great improvement
which may be made by theindustry of a civilized people
in this country than thecircumstances of the small
streams which descend into PortJackson.
They all proceed from swampsproduced by the stagnation of
water after rising from thesprings.
When the obstacles which impedetheir course can be removed and
free channels opened throughwhich they may flow, the
adjacent ground will graduallybe drained and the streams
(43:23):
themselves will become moreuseful.
At the same time, habitable andsalubrious situations will be
gained in places where atpresent perpetual damp prevails
and the air itself appears tostagnate.
But what was it exactly thatrepulsed Philip so much?
The conceptualisation of dirtyswamps has become a hallmark of
(43:44):
colonial ventures across theBritish Empire, from the
backwaters of Mumbai, the bogsof Ireland, the southern jungles
of Malaysia through to the dankforests of Canada.
These hybrid, semi-aqueous,semi-terrestrial environments
have been embroiled in vitrioland contempt for centuries.
And where might much of thisdisdain have come from?
Well, like most things imperial, it is the Romans, first
(44:07):
century AD.
Vitruvius, the Roman architectand engineer, wrote for when the
morning breezes blow toward thetown at sunrise, if they bring
with them mist from marshes and,mingled with the mist, the
poisonous breath of creatures ofthe marshes to be wafted into
the bodies of the inhabitants,they will make the site
unhealthy.
Miasma Vitruvius is referringto miasma.
(44:27):
An unpleasant or unhealthysmell or vapour was considered
the cause of diseases likemalaria, typhoid and diphtheria.
The word malaria, for example,is a composite word which comes
from the medieval Italian forbad mal and air area, which is
an acknowledgement of the kindof swampy settings around the
Italian peninsula whichexperienced early cases of the
disease.
(44:47):
And while the Britishpreoccupation with miasmic
environments came from theRomans, the Romans were also
drawing on the ancient Greeks,like Hippocrates, who described
diseases like marsh fever, theimperial legacy of swampy
environments as dangerous,unproductive and for lack of a
better word disgusting has beenentangled in these historical
webs.
As such, the removal of swampsand marshes was seen as crucial
(45:11):
to ensuring the health ofsettlements across a whole range
of empires, including theBritish Empire.
Here in Australia, EmilyO'Gorman notes that in other
settlements, like in Toowoomba,Queensland quote "people's views
of swamps as miasmic wastelandsseems to have meant that they
were inclined to use them todispose of unwanted matters
which exacerbated their miasmicqualities.
(45:31):
End quote Sydney's lagoons andswamps like Boxley's Lagoon in
Redfern, were perceived of asmiasmic, and so people treated
them as waste disposal sites, ina positive feedback cycle of
sorts, because these swamps wereconceived of as dirty.
When the swamps showed signs ofdegradation, they became
treated as places of refuse,often for waste like animal
carcasses and discardedindustrial material, which was
(45:54):
most likely the actual cause ofthe diseases.
Because of this conflation, themore than human beings which
inhabited these spaces becamerelegated to equally
contemptuous status.
Eels and mosquitoes, yes, butalso bats, lizards, frogs,
spiders and many others.
The environments of thesecritters became utterly
transformed the creeks intodrains and swamps, and the
(46:18):
swamps most often into sportsfields and parks.
This was the emergence of thesanitary city in every way, for
at the same time as there wasthis environmental cleansing
taking place, societal shiftswere pushing towards even
greater conservatism and a wantby many officials to rid the
city of all manner of untowardcharacters In challenging
(46:40):
colonial contempt for swampcreatures.
In Sydney, we are not merelyrevisiting the past.
We are dismantling adestructive legacy that saw
nature as something to be tamed,controlled and exploited.
These critiques force us toconfront how colonial ideologies
degraded environments, silencedindigenous knowledges and
dismissed the value of creaturesvital to the web of life.
Today, as we face a world inecological crisis, this
(47:03):
reflection compels us toreimagine our relationship with
the natural world, not asconquerors but as custodians.
By reclaiming the significanceof these so-called undesirable
spaces and undesirable species,we open ourselves to new
possibilities for ecologicalrestoration, environmental
justice and a future where humanand non-human life thrives in
harmony.
(47:25):
While there are efforts tonaturalise urban stormwater
infrastructures across citiesaround the world, we most likely
cannot reproduce historicalenvironments that once existed
in Sydney prior to invasion infull.
The systems of climate, ecology, geomorphology and hydrology
have changed so much thatattempting to insert singular
species back into this settingor reorienting waterscapes back
(47:47):
to their historical flows wouldmost probably result in failure.
Now don't get me wrong.
Work like what's being donehere in Brisbane or Sydney's
Johnson's Creek are magnificentsteps in the right direction.
But with the ability to craft abuilt environment that draws on
historically contextualreference points from culture
and not just ecology, we cancreate more meaningful,
ecologically and sociallyregenerative systems.
(48:10):
Design, especially designingwith country, has the power to
shape how stories are told,whose stories and with what
narratives.
Considering more than humanhistories can be a generative
step in reconceptualizing therelationship between designers
and historians, and how thesestories are told can be
remarkably innovative andprofoundly powerful.
(48:31):
These stories are told can beremarkably innovative and
profoundly powerful.
Whatever work happens, itshould be guided by confronting
and actively dismantling thedamaging colonial stories that
have been causing so much hurtto so many lives, human and more
than human and, in their place,tell stories which highlight
tenacity and celebrate thesplendour of our life, which
flourishes here in Sydney, thisswampy city.
Thank you.
Jesse Adams Stein (49:01):
I'll just close off tonight's event with a
few of the acknowledgements andthank yous in relation to
History Now, as well as thankingour speakers and chair.
First of all, thank you to theHistory Council team, none of
whom are here right now, butthey've all helped tremendously
previously Catherine Shirley,Amanda Wells and Lauren Chater,
as well as to the HistoryCouncil's executive committee.
(49:22):
Thank you also to the StateLibrary of New South Wales, in
particular the events team,Callum MacLean and Lydia Tasker,
and the Australian Centre forPublic History at UTS History
Council.
As always, we want toacknowledge our cultural
partners, which you can seelisted here, including our major
funder, new South WalesGovernment, via Create New South
(49:42):
Wales.
And finally, I just wanted topreview the next history now,
the final one for the year,which is next month, the 6th of
November, wednesday 5pm in thisspace the Ethics of Crime
Histories with Meg Foster,Rachel Franks and chaired by
Nerida Campbell.
Again, it's free and you canregister for it on the State
(50:03):
Library's What's On page.
Thank you all for being such awonderful, attentive audience.
Really enjoyed it, and thankyou once again to our speakers.
Thank you.
Good afternoon everyone.
Thank you for joining us andI'm glad that we all found the
new venue in the Metcalf Well.
Welcome to this session ofHistory Now 2024.
My name is Jessie Adams-Steenand I'm the Programme Director
for History Now 2024 and Irepresent both the History
(00:38):
Council of New South Wales andthe Australian Centre for Public
History at UTS.
Today's topic is more thanhuman histories and I am
delighted that we are joined byDr Emily Gorman and Taylor Coyne
, and tonight's chair isProfessor Warwick Anderson, who
I will introduce shortly, andWarwick will introduce our
(00:58):
speakers Before that.
I'd like to start byacknowledging the country on
which we are holding this event.
We are on Gadigal country andstanding here at the State
Library of New South Wales, weare on the top of the hill close
to Warrane (Sydney Cove) and(Wahganmuggalee) Farm Cove.
I'd like to acknowledge thatthe Gadigal are the traditional
(01:19):
custodians of this country andacknowledge that we are on
stolen land.
Before we dive into more thanhuman, I would like to give you
just a little bit of backgroundabout History Now as a series.
It's a long-running publichistory talk series with the aim
to bring excellent historicalresearch into public discourse.
(01:42):
We feature professional andacademic historians as well as
experts who use historicalresearch into public discourse.
We feature professional andacademic historians as well as
experts who use historicalresearch in their practice.
History Now has had severaliterations and organisers and
homes over the years, and thisyear, in 2024, history Now is a
collaboration between theHistory Council of New South
Wales, the Australian Centre forPublic History.
(02:03):
It's a collaboration if it'sthe one person who's part of the
two things and we alsoacknowledge we have venue
support from the State Libraryof New South Wales and we thank
them for the use of this space.
We started this year in Marchand after this session we will
have one more to go in November,so it's been running hot all
year.
Look at all those amazingspeakers here and if you're
(02:26):
listening to the recording lateron, you can find a full event
program through a quick searchengine inquiry.
I'd like to introduce our chairfor today's event, professor
Warwick Anderson.
He is the Janet Dora HineProfessor of Politics,
Governance and Ethics in theDiscipline of Health and leader
of the Politics, Governance andEthics theme within the Charles
(02:46):
Perkins Centre at the Universityof Sydney.
He also has an affiliation withhistory and philosophy of
science at Sydney University andis a professorial fellow of the
School of Population and GlobalHealth at the University of
Melbourne.
As an historian of science,medicine and public health,
Anderson is especiallyinterested in ideas about race,
(03:07):
human difference and citizenshipin the 19th and 20th centuries.
In recent years, his researchhas focused on the conceptual
development of disease, ecologyand planetary health, for
instance, the population healthimpacts of climate change.
Please join me in welcomingWarwick.
(03:32):
Thank you, thanks very much.
I was enjoying that.
I thought it might go on foranother five or ten minutes,
thought you'd only just gottenstarted.
That was a very impressive listof speakers up there, I should
(03:52):
say.
I once spoke at this forum manyyears ago over at UTS, and I
think I drew all of four peoplein the audience.
So the fact that this venue isalmost full really attests to
the appeal of both Emily andTaylor, of course.
So today we'll be hearing aboutmore- than- human histories.
(04:14):
In that title, the hyphen isdoing a lot of work.
So just this morning actually,I got an email from the Academy
of Humanities, and they wereasking Fellows of the Academy to
explain perhaps why thehumanities weren't seen as
(04:34):
compelling as they should be.
And I said to them well, youknow, maybe we should be
thinking more about climatehistories, environmental
histories, more than humanhistories, in fact, in an era of
climate change and biodiversityloss and the destruction of the
(04:59):
Earth's life support systems.
So I think it's very timelythat we learn more about these
more-than-human histories.
Some of you may know, though,that more-than-human histories
aren't exactly new.
I mean, I trained many yearsago as a historian of medicine
(05:20):
and biology and of course youhave more- than- humans in those
histories, even if they aremere microbes and it's usually
just there as examples ofpathology.
But in more- than- humanhistories, as I understand it,
I'll learn more now, the humanis much more thoroughly
(05:43):
de-centred in the historicalnarrative agencies distributed
to non-human actors or figures,and perhaps one could almost
call it an 'ecological' style ofhistory.
So think about this.
As we hear some more.
I do have a few issues.
(06:06):
I wonder whether they'll bedispelled.
One is the focus on charismaticvertebrates.
I suspect Emily will be lookingmore at arthropods - maybe not
- Certainly in her other workshe has.
But also I just wonder aboutthe limits of how much one can
ever truly de-centre the human.
(06:26):
I mean, I think as humans weare sort of almost compelled to
think about everything else inrelation to ourselves.
So I wonder but it is notnon-human history, of course, it
is more- than- human history.
So anyhow, we'll find out moreabout that soon.
(06:53):
I'll just introduce fairlybriefly the two speakers and
we'll first hear from AssociateProfessor Emily O'Gorman.
She's an ARC Future Fellowbased at the Department of
History and Archaeology atMacquarie University.
Her research is situated withinenvironmental history and the
interdisciplinary environmentalhumanities, and it's primarily
(07:16):
concerned with contestedknowledges within broader
cultural framings of authority,expertise and landscapes.
Her focus, as many of you willknow, is on rivers and wetlands.
She's the author of FloodCountry an environmental history
of the Murray-Darling Basin2012, and Wetlands in a Dry Land
(07:39):
More than Human Histories,there you go.
More Than Human Histories ofAustralia's Murray Darling Basin
in 2021.
And, I think, reprinted in 2024.
Taylor Coyne we'll hear fromafter Emily.
Taylor Coyne's a PhD candidatein Urban and Historical
(08:01):
Geography at UNSW here in Sydney.
He's also a project officer inthe Connection with Country
Design team at the Sydney-basedpractice, Yerrabingin.
I'd like to hear more aboutthat at some point.
Taylor's research focus is onthe history, politics and design
(08:22):
of eastern Sydney's urbanstormwater infrastructure.
In particular, he asks how andwhy Sydney's waterscapes came to
be the way they are today andwhose knowledges and experiences
have been included or excludedin the way these spaces have
(08:43):
been designed, planned, managedand governed.
Taylor is working towardaddressing how landscape
architecture and environmentalhistory might come together to
incorporate Sydney's swampy,more-than-human histories.
Emily O'Gorman (09:03):
Hi everyone and thanks so much for the
introduction, Warwick.
I really appreciate it.
Before I go further, I'd justlike to acknowledge that we're
meeting on the country ofGadigal people and I pay my
respects to elders past andpresent.
Thank you all so much for beinghere tonight and a huge thank
(09:23):
you to the organisers,especially Jesse.
I really appreciate all thework you've done, not just
organising this particular forumbut organising this series.
And also a big thank you to theHistory Council of New South
Wales and UTS, as well as StateLibrary of New South Wales
(09:47):
Library of New South Wales.
So I will start by giving abrief overview of the emergence
of more- than- human historiesas an approach and as a set of
ideas as I understand it.
So this is my perspective onhow it's emerged and the
approaches within it, and thenI'll give a brief example of how
I've used this in my own workexamining histories of wetlands
in the Murray-Darling Basin.
So this is from my most recentbook that Warwick mentioned,
(10:07):
which is on sale at the bookshopjust outside, very pleased to
see that there.
So, more- than- human historiesin general terms bring
approaches in multi-speciesstudies and more- than- human
scholarship into atransformative dialogue with
environmental history.
So it's trying to bringtogether different groups of
(10:28):
scholarship.
Environmental history emergedin the 1970s within the
discipline of history as aradical new mode of inquiry that
aimed to examine theinteraction of people and
environments, to reveal newhistorical narratives in which
nature was an active agent.
Multispecies studies andmore-than- human scholarship are
(10:49):
interdisciplinary modes ofinquiry that have been
consolidating cognatescholarship, emerging from many
disciplines over the last decadeand a half.
I'll spend a bit of timefocusing on the latter, newer
fields of inquiry rather thanenvironmental history per se.
In broad terms, multi-speciesand more-than-human scholarship
(11:12):
has argued against humanexceptionalism and instead aimed
to re-situate humans withinmultiple dynamic relationships,
only some of which are human,including with plants, animals,
fungi and elements and forceslike water, wind and fire.
It has developed in oppositionto notions that there are fixed
and impartial ways of knowing,particularly in the sciences,
(11:35):
through the purity of categorieslike nature within Western
traditions.
Instead, it has sought tosituate particular ontologies
within shifting sets ofrelationships between humans and
non-humans, in which power isuneven and agency is manifold.
Importantly, these approachesinclude an attentiveness to
(11:55):
multiple human as well asnon-human voices and agencies,
and examination of racialideologies, class and gender are
central.
Indeed, an explicit goal ofmultispecies studies is drawing
attention to heterogeneity inmore-than-human worlds.
It is about paying attention todifferences and the specificity
(12:16):
of lived natural culturalentanglements.
These approaches are based onnotions of co-constitution of
humans and non-humans and seekto enact a situated ethics and
politics.
Multispecies studies, and more-than- human scholarship, have
come to sit within the field ofenvironmental humanities, so
there's a bit of nestinghappening here.
This field has emerged andrapidly grown internationally
(12:40):
over the last two decades inresponse to contemporary
ecological challenges such asthe climate emergency and mass
species extinction.
Scholars have argued againstthe definition of these issues
as purely environmental, ratheraiming to provide nuanced
understandings of significantproblems that are inescapably
both social and environmental.
(13:01):
Environmental humanities hascome to be used as a term for
grouping together environmentalsub-disciplines such as
environmental philosophy,environmental anthropology and
environmental history, amongstothers, and increasingly to
describe an interdisciplinaryfield with its own concepts,
shared concepts, concerns andapproaches.
(13:22):
In the latter sense, theenvironmental humanities has
consolidated emerginginterdisciplinary work in many
places, including that of theEcological Humanities Group in
Australia, which has some longerroots and a particular history
that I won't go into right now.
The relational approaches ofmultispecies studies and
more-than-human scholarship havediverse roots.
(13:45):
In general terms, theseconsolidate work that began to
emerge in multiple disciplinesfrom the turn of the 21st
century, which gave rise to newsub-disciplines.
This included the scholarshipof cultural geographers such as
Sarah Whatmore and Jamie Lorimer, that helped to form the field
of more-than-human geographies.
(14:05):
And that of anthropologistslike Heather Paxson, Anna Tsing,
Eben Kirksey and StefanHelmreich, that laid the
foundations for multi-speciesethnography.
The work of these scholars wasalready interdisciplinary and
built upon the arguments offeminist science and technology
studies.
Scholars such as Donna Haraway,who advocated for a radical
decentering of the human, forthe importance of recognizing
(14:27):
human co-becoming with manyother organisms and forces, and
for the need to rethink therelationship between science and
society, including situatingthese and other knowledges.
They also engaged with thearguments of science and
technology studies scholars suchas Bruno Latour, who proposed
actor-network theory as a way ofexamining multiple
(14:49):
relationalities.
Environmental philosopher ValPlumwood's critiques of
dualisms, such as nature andculture, and her repositioning
of humans within ecologicalterms and non-humans within
ethical terms have also beentaken up within more recent
scholarship.
In many ways, all of this workturned anew towards materiality,
(15:11):
with growing scholarlyattention evident from the early
2000s.
In so doing, it turned awayfrom traditional social
constructivism as it had emerged, while still recognizing the
importance of situatingknowledges.
Indeed, far from being narrowlyfocused on materiality,
multi-species studies andmore-than-human scholarship
(15:32):
emphasise the need to considermore-than-human worlds as full
of meaning as well as matter, asinescapably cultural and
material.
It is vital to examine shiftingand diverse ways of knowing,
including our own as researchersand readers, as these guide
actions and, in so doing, helpto shape worlds in relation with
a wide array of non-humans.
(15:52):
An emphasis on co-constitutionhas meant that some of these
scholars have started to rethinkhistories in more- than- human
terms, people outside thediscipline of history.
This shift included Tsing'sexamination of the way humans
and fungi have shaped eachother's histories, including
through their entanglement inagriculture, and anthropologist
(16:13):
Tess Lea's engagement withmosquitoes as co-authors of the
City of Darwin.
Indeed historians have alsosought to show the dynamic roles
of other organisms, from AlfredCrosby's Ecological Imperialism
to Harriet Ritvo's work onanimals in Victorian England and
the contributors to a morerecent collection titled the
(16:36):
Historical Animal, who argue forthe importance of taking animal
perspectives seriously andbehaviours seriously, including
in the making of films, as notonly subjects but co-creators of
films.
These works have often soughtto examine historical encounters
between humans and animals, andthis is a point Warwick raised
(16:59):
about an emphasis on vertebrates.
As such they have not alwaysexplicitly aimed to contribute
to multi-species andmore-than-human scholarship,
which has a slightly differentemphasis, and this emphasis is
on diverse relationships, notjust with animals, extending to
plants, non-human forces likevolcanoes and so on.
While more-than-human andmulti-species scholars and
(17:22):
environmental historians havebeen slowly edging towards each
other, a sustained andtransformative dialogue has been
somewhat slow to emerge.
Some, like environmentalhistorian Greg Mittman, have
argued that those in his fieldhave been resistant to embracing
relational and diverseontologies, which is a key
aspect of more-than-humanapproaches.
(17:43):
Perhaps this has been astumbling block.
However, there is now a growingbody of historical scholarship
that is explicitly engaging withthe fuller suite of
multispecies and more-than-humanapproaches and environmental
history, trying to bring theseapproaches together to explore
the agency of other biota inshaping "human in brackets
(18:06):
histories, while also beingattentive to shifting and
diverse ways of knowing humanand beyond.
So I am an environmentalhistorian as well as engaging
with the environmentalhumanities, as Warwick has
mentioned in the introduction,and I've used more- than- human
approaches in researching andwriting a recent book on the
(18:28):
history of wetlands in theMurray-Darling Basin, and here's
a map of the Murray-DarlingBasin.
It is, very briefly, a largeriver system that covers 1, 7th
of Australia and my interest inwetlands sort of stem from the
fact that wetlands in the regionhave declined significantly
across the 20th century due todiversions for irrigation and
(18:49):
drainage for agriculture in thisparticular region.
And that's the MacquarieMarshes, which is the area I'm
going to focus on very shortly.
And this is another map of thebasin which I think is important
to show.
So you can see here differentAboriginal groups within the
basin and just outside it aswell.
(19:11):
So the short example that Iwould like to give is from a
chapter that centres on Wailwind, aboriginal women's weaving
practices and the MacquarieMarshes.
Macquarie Marshes is a Ramsarlisted wetland of international
importance in north central NewSouth Wales, australia where
that red dot was.
(19:34):
So here, an engagement withcontemporary Wayilwin women's
practices draws us into a more-than- human history that is
often entirely absent fromdocumentary archives formed
within British colonial powerstructures.
This chapter developed itsanalysis from my discussions
with Wayilwin woman DanielleCarney-Flakelar pictured here
(19:55):
with the yellow backpack withwhom I've subsequently
collaborated on other projects.
So we're sort of in an ongoingconversation that has developed
into a collaboration.
Danielle told me that weavingwith semi-aquatic reeds and
sedges from the marshes is oneway that Wayilwin Women continue
to connect with country andwith multiple generations.
Wayilwin Women have used theseplants to weave baskets, mats
(20:19):
and other items for manygenerations.
Weaving, in Danielle's view, isco-becoming.
These connections are shaped bythe plants themselves which
flourish within particularcountry.
Danielle explained that in theMacquarie marshes there are
particular properties of weavingwith the sedge from the marsh
because you harvest it right,it's right out of the ground,
(20:41):
it's green, you weave it andthen it dries as it becomes
tight on itself and it has itsown personality, I suppose.
"You know you've got this itemhere, and its green and lovely,
and it becomes.
" That's a quote from Danielle.
The weaver and the plant havedetermined the new form
together, but with a range ofother influences, human and
non-human, that have shaped theplant and the person.
(21:11):
The importance of the propertiesof particular plants in shaping
woven items have meant that inmany places Australian
Aboriginal people haveencouraged plants to grow in
particular ways through burning,which shapes the
characteristics of the plant.
Cool fires can encouragestronger fibres, which create a
different, stronger weave tothat of fibres from plants that
have not been burnt in this way.
Danielle emphasised that forWayilwin people, weaving cannot
(21:36):
be separated out from otheraspects of caring for country
and there are other knowledgesand practices that must be
nurtured alongside weaving, likeburning, language and medicine.
Knowledge exchange within andbetween different Australian
Aboriginal cultures is animportant part of fulfilling
responsibility in tendingcountry.
Sharing knowledge between women, including through and about
(22:00):
weaving practices, isparticularly important, Danielle
noted, because of the culturalknowledge that is specific to
women.
It also helps to buildleadership confidence amongst
women.
Accessing parts of the MacquarieMarshes can be difficult, with
some parts encompassed withingrazing properties and other
parts under New South WalesNational Parks and Wildlife
(22:20):
Service state governmentmanagement.
In recent years, weaving as acultural practice has become a
way to gain access to wetlandslike the Macquarie Marshes,
which have been managed asprotected conservation areas.
Danielle explained that"weaving is a way we open the
door to country, to say that we,as Aboriginal people want
(22:41):
access for cultural practice.
Issues around access to themarshes have been ongoing since
British colonisation in theregion, spearheaded by
pastoralists in the 1830s.
By the 1880s the marshes werehemmed by pastoral properties
and in 1900, parts of themarshes, totalling 40,000 acres,
were declared a game reserve bythe New South Wales State
(23:03):
Government.
Some pastoralists were grantedoccupier's licence for these
marsh blocks, which becameconcentrated into the hands of a
few people.
These gave them governmentauthorization to graze their
stock there, predominantlycattle, before the introduction
of sheep in 1927.
By then, grazing cattle in thewetlands was acknowledged by
(23:24):
many to be damaging thevegetation.
Large sections of the marshesbecame fauna reserve in 1955,
with many of the birds listed asprotected under state acts.
Parts of the marshes werelisted in the Ramsar Convention
in 1986, with the areas extendedin 2000 and 2012.
(23:45):
Throughout this period, Wayilwinpeople's access to and use of
the marshes was limited invarious ways, compounded by
government policies ofsurveillance and forced removal,
a practice that extended fromthe colonial era well into the
20th century and arguably totoday.
However, Wayilwin people used avariety of strategies to
maintain connections to country,including working on pastoral
(24:08):
stations.
We might consider contemporarydisputes about the management of
wetlands as natural culturalplaces as a continuation of
disputes about Aboriginalpeoples' legal rights to country
.
Danielle emphasised that,despite government policies
(24:33):
supporting Aboriginal people'saccess to and use of areas under
national parks and wildlifejurisdiction, in her experience
access has not always been easy.
In her words, in the past itdepended on the manager at the
park at the time and theirattitude as to whether you get
access to sedge and other plantsout there as well.
Her experiences point toongoing effects of fortress
(24:56):
conservation approaches withingovernment agencies rooted in
both ideas of wilderness and arange of colonial era legacies
that clearly still need to bechallenged.
Relationships with landholders,especially graziers whose
properties border the marshes,have become important in
accessing particular areas,including for ceremonies.
(25:16):
She said "we're right in theheart of the marsh, still
getting access through just ahandshake agreement, and the
landholder there who we've had agood long relationship with
ensuring that the nextgeneration is connected with
responsibility to maintain ourconnections to country.
" Well, when many Aboriginalpeople throughout the Basin
continue to exercise theirresponsibilities to country.
Wayilwin and many Aboriginalpeople throughout the basin
continue to exercise theirresponsibilities to care for
(25:37):
country even when access isdifficult or near impossible.
Country, like weaving, is woveninto the world in multiple ways
.
Danielle explained that"Aboriginal women are still very
connected to our roles andresponsibilities.
This is her words fromtraditional law and we have to
adapt in the role because wecan't get on Country.
(25:58):
Our purpose is to nurtureCountry, people and culture.
"Being in discussion with
Danielle, going to the MacquarieMarshes and researching the
history of this wetland draws usinto a consideration of the
more- than- human histories andfutures, not only of wetlands,
but also the more- than- humanhistories of British
(26:20):
colonisation, protected areamanagement and women's past and
ongoing connections to Country.
In researching this book aboutwetlands in the Murray-Darling
Basin, I found myself turningtowards more- than- human
approaches for interdisciplinarymethods, including interviews
and oral histories, listening tomultiple voices, and for
(26:42):
examining multiple agencies andunderstanding and accounting for
the diverse ontologies andnon-human worlds I was
encountering, and also foraddressing questions of justice
and asymmetrical power relations.
I needed more- than- humanhistories to bring together
approaches in environmentalhistory, which is still
incredibly valuable, and more-than- human scholarship, which
(27:04):
are also incredibly valuable.
I'm currently building on thiswork to develop a more- than-
human history of internationalwetlands conservation post 1945,
to examine why wetlands becamea focus of international
conservation efforts and whatsome of the consequences have
been.
But more on that will have towait for another time.
So I'll wrap up there, thankyou.
(27:30):
And that's the cover of my bookin case you'd like to read it.
Warwick Anderson (27:35):
Thanks very much, Emily.
You've more than kept the time.
You've come in early, so that'sgreat, Thanks.
A lot More time for discussionthen.
No arthropods in the shortversion of the talk, but there's
plenty of mosquito agency inthe book, which I recommend
(27:55):
highly.
And now we hear from Taylor
Taylor Coyne (28:04):
Thanks, Warwick.
Thanks, Emily, that was great.
This is what I'm going to bepresenting on tonight, but
before I begin I'd like toacknowledge country, acknowledge
country and the custodians ofcountry here we meet tonight on
the unceded lands and waters ofthe Gadigal people.
Respect to elders, past andpresent, and to any First
(28:25):
Nations people here tonight.
I honor your connections toyour lands and waters.
The struggle for Indigenousjustice endures here in Sydney
and for Indigenous peoplesacross the seas who all share in
the collective fight againstthe enduring and current impacts
of colonisation.
My name is Taylor Coyne.
I'm an environmental historian,slash historical geographer and
(28:47):
critical design theorist -Modes of thinking which thread
together geography, history anddesign, and which ask broadly
how have different people indifferent places shaped and been
shaped by differentenvironments at different times?
The overarching theme to all ofmy work is water, in particular
, how stormwater infrastructureshas emerged in settler colonial
(29:07):
cities like Sydney, whatpolitical and economic systems
were driving this emergence,which individuals were entangled
in these processes and,importantly, how are these
infrastructures and thesecomplex socio-ecological spaces
being reconceived of today?
A large feature of my work isto consider stormwater
infrastructures not aspolitically neutral artefacts
(29:29):
but as complex socio-ecologicalsystems situated within messy
governance and managementstructures with contentious
design paradigms, shaping theirfutures.
Stormwater infrastructures -Drains, for all intents and
purposes - are part of thehydrosocial cycle.
These are systems of waterwhich move not simply as aqueous
H2O, but water systems whichalso reflect the relationship
(29:52):
between humans and the more-than- human world, a
relationship that varies greatlydepending on cultural,
political and economic context.
This interplay of nature,infrastructure and human agency
is starkly illustrated incolonial encounters, where
different worldviews on theenvironment were highlighted as
(30:13):
novel.
To help guide us through how tomake sense of these novelties
tonight, I'll be sharing thispaper in two parts.
Part one speaks to the waySydney's more-than-human
environments have beendocumented by colonial figures.
The eel becomes a mascot forthis colonial fascination with
an apparently bizarre Antipodeannature.
Part two then progresses tounpack the broader colonial
(30:34):
rationale for why these spacesand these more-than-human
inhabitants were treated withsuch contempt and disgust.
What was underpinning the logicfor the channelisation of
creeks and the draining ofswamps?
This is concluded by areflection on what all this
might mean for how Sydney'senvironmental histories and
environmental politics canbenefit not only from
considering but amplifying andcelebrating the web of
(30:56):
more-than-human life that thiscity's infrastructures now
nurture.
Part one (30:59):
the more-than-human histories of Sydney's silent
swampscapes.
One of the earliest one of thecolony's earliest documentations
of more-than-human life wascaptured by George B Worgen in
his 1788 account of earlycolonial Sydney.
Here the lived experiences witha diverse, more-than-human
world, as seen through Worgen'sinteraction with Gadigal people
(31:21):
and Gadigal animals, becomes aprominent feature.
Worgen recalled his time inSydney in a journal of a First
Fleet surgeon.
In his recollection he providesa detailed description of the
search for food in the emergingcolony.
In doing so he provides a richoverview of the more- than-
human inhabitants who werepresent at that time.
He writes "I was one day on ashooting excursion and fell in
(31:44):
with a tribe of the natives.
While I was with them, a crowsettled in a tree that was
within shot.
On leveling my gun at it, oneof the natives ran up to me in a
hurry, clapped his hand overthe muzzle of the piece and
cried out several times bow, bow, bow, bow, meaning, as I
conjunctured that I was not tokill it, for they had seen the
effects of the gun, I compliedwith his request and laughed off
(32:06):
the offence I had seeminglygiven, at which he laughed
likewise and seemed mightilypleased.
Worgan continues, "of reptileshere are snakes, scorpions,
centipedes, lizards and goannas.
The insects which provetroublesome are mosquitoes,
sandflies and red and black ants.
Here are spiders of variouskinds, butterflies and several
(32:26):
sorts of beetles, and some fewbees have been seen.
He then turns his gazeunderwater.
The harbours of this coast arewell stocked with a variety of
fish, and we have never sat downto dinner without a dish of one
kind upon the other Upon thetable since our arrival here.
Very often the boat is sosuccessful as to catch enough
for the whole ship's crew, andtwo or three times we have been
(32:48):
able to supply the officer'stable on shore.
But since the approach of thewinter the fish have become
scarce.
Perhaps they go northward asthe cool weather comes on and
return to the southward with thesummer.
Oysters, cockles and musselsare to be got here for little
trouble, and one very smalllobster has been caught and
wonderful to tell it was red.
Enormously large sharks arevery numerous in the harbours
(33:10):
and very destructive to otherfish as well as to our lines and
hooks.
" Wogan's reflections of theabundant more-than-human life in
Sydney illuminate a fascinationwith their abundance and
apparent peculiarity, wherereferences to animals that make
sense as being from home sharksand lobsters, ants and
butterflies allude to an attemptto provide a rational reference
(33:32):
for how to comprehend thisenvironment.
The story of the Crowhighlights that there is a
misunderstanding of the kinds ofrelationality which Gadigal
people had with theirmore-than-human kin.
Wogan's description of Gadigalanimals is, all things
considered, quite substantial,but it is clearly not exhaustive
and doesn't come close toacknowledging the true diversity
(33:52):
, abundance and wonder of theanimals here.
While the fish get a pronounceddescription in Wogan's writing,
even these aren't encompassing,and there is one particular fish
species that is pressinglyabsent from his list: the eel.
The eel is also absent fromcountless other records of
Gadigal animals by colonialexplorers and people here.
(34:13):
What contentious, extensivedescription of New South Wales
fauna.
For example, in his December1790 entry from A Complete
Account of the Settlement ofPort Jackson, goes into
extraordinary detail on theregion's more- than- human
beings.
Indeed, he writes four immenseparagraphs on the kangaroo, one
entire paragraph dedicated tomethods for killing them.
There simply isn't enough timeto read this account in full,
(34:36):
but from this specificrecollection I've highlighted
here it speaks to the very realvalue attributed to these beings
food.
For me, though, it is theanimals not mentioned in these
writings which speak volumes.
As someone quite infatuatedwith the eel, its absence in
these early accounts is pressing.
Even Governor Arthur Philliprecalls some animals in his
(34:57):
writings, but these focus mostlyon birds, and where fish are
mentioned, the sharks takeprecedent and there is no
mention of the eel.
But where all these figuresmentioned so far almost
seemingly purposefully, omit theeel.
(35:18):
Other writers in Sydney's earlycolonial environments do mention
them, if only briefly.
In Appendix 4, mode of Living,from David Collins, an account
of the early colony of New SouthWales, volume 1, published in
1798, there is one mention ofthe eels, this time in the
context of Indigenous peopleliving near the
Darabin-Hawkesbury River.
"They Aboriginal people,collins writes resort at a
certain time of the year, themonth of April, to the lagoons
where they subsist on eels whichthey procure by laying hollow
pieces of timber in the waterinto which the eels creep and
(35:42):
are easily taken.
A short and to the pointrecollection how eels are being
woven into Indigenous foodcultures.
Beyond writing, there are twomajor illustrations of Sydney's
eels which I've been able tolocate in the archives this
painting by Joseph Lycettshowing Aboriginal men spearing
an eel on the shores of theDaraboon, and this illustration
from seaman and artist GeorgeRapier in the late 18th century,
(36:04):
showing what I will call anattempt to illustrate the eel.
But both Collins' account andRapier's illustration lack
nuance and there is a lack ofecological situatedness and
sociocultural context, somethingthat has been substantially
addressed in the work of awriter who came much later, Obed
West.
In the interest of time andoverwhelm.
(36:26):
I won't read this aloud either,but there are key phrases from
West's text which are relevant.
Importantly, there is a firmacknowledgement of a specific
locale in his writing.
This is Boxley's Lagoon, aplace which has largely been
silenced from Sydney'scontemporary urban geography,
but a place that has much tooffer to those attuned to
environmental transformationsand those concerned with
(36:47):
interpreting and representingthe transformations of these
places to the public.
In 1883, Obed West penned thisarticle in the Sydney Morning
Herald, recollecting on hisyouth in Sydney.
In this particular piece, herecalls the environments across
Redfern and Surrey Hills and thelarge swamp which was known as
Boxley's Lagoon, the location ofwhich has been articulated from
West's recount by a horse raceas being near Mount Carmel and
(37:11):
between Redfern Street andGeorge and Pitt Streets.
As a historical geographer, myobsession with maps is extreme.
This map from between 1820 and1840 shows the northern section
of a series of swampscapes.
By working with West's articleas a reference point, these
environments begin to make senseto us.
Many of the dry areas to thesouth were set aside for
(37:34):
settlers, their names stampedonto parcels of land shown here.
Others, like Sydney Common,were set aside for public use.
We now know Sydney Common by anentirely different name.
Centennial Park.
West of Sydney Common and northof Mount Lachlan is an unnamed
semi-aqueous waterscape.
Using West's street name crossreferences, we can articulate
(37:57):
Boxley's Lagoon as being here -what is now Redfern Oval and
Redfern PCYC.
The historical swamp that Westwas noting was an incredibly
rich, ecologically rich swamp.
Birds of all kinds as well assmall mammals and a variety of
plants, including a mammoth ninefoot diameter black butt tree.
(38:18):
This was a verdant and abundantenvironment full of all kinds
of more- than- human life, andin addition there was, of course
, the eels.
Sydney's eels move through muchof the waterscapes across what
we now call Sydney and West's.
Clear articulation of theirpresence here at Boxleys Lagoon
(38:39):
is quite expected from those ofus who know and have situated
the lagoon amongst otherswampscapes of Sydney's.
Boxleys Lagoon is part of thewider network of swamps, marshes
, lagoons, creeks, rivers andstreams which stretch out from
the ridgelines around SurreyHills, paddington, waverley and
Randwick down to Botany Bay.
At this point I acknowledgethat my work on these
swampscapes would not be madepossible without the work of
(39:01):
former State Library of NewSouth Wales research fellow,
Rebecca Hamilton.
For Boxley's Lagoon, it now nolonger sings with frogs and
water birds, save the ibis,apart from when heavy Sydney
rains in undate the sportsfields.
The waters here have beensilenced, but, like all
historical waterscapes that nolonger speak, if you go there
and listen deeply, listen, waterlife and the eels can be heard.
(39:25):
Today, Sydney's eels movemostly under our feet, in drains
and pipes across the city.
So it makes sense then, thatthey remain as a somewhat
separate part of our daily life.
But the eel story is one whichis increasingly becoming more
and more sought out and more andmore well known.
Sydney's native eels, the shortand long fin eel, are
(39:46):
cataridormous, meaning theyspend most of their lives in
fresh water but migrate to theocean to spawn.
Their life cycle isextraordinary.
After spending up to 30 yearsin fresh, sweet and bitter
brackish waters of swamps,creeks and rivers, they embark
on their journey into saltwaterover 2,000 kilometres north to
(40:07):
the Coral Sea, where theyreproduce and die.
The larvae, carried by oceancurrents, eventually return to
the same waterscapes as theirparents to begin the cycle anew.
The journey of the eels isindeed captivating.
It marvels and astounds toconsider that these slippery
little fish are able to travelsuch immense distances.
But this astonishment at theeels isn't a new phenomenon.
(40:29):
Countless records fromnewspapers across the 19th and
20th century profess wonder atthe eel.
The history of eel astonishmentis actually something which
dates back millennia.
Early Greek philosopherspondered not only of the journey
of the eel to their breedingspot, but also of their breeding
functions more broadly.
The attempt to articulate thisbreeding behavior, along with
(40:49):
many other eel oddities, is partof the work being done by
Alexis Farr at University ofWollongong.
Her work unravels what hasturned into a quite violent
scientific obsession with theeel dissecting, injecting,
isolating, tormenting and, forall intents and purposes,
torturing the eel, all in thename of scientific inquiry.
So, while the eel representstenacity and adaptation, it has
(41:12):
become a body to be viewed asobjective and measurable.
The eel is emblematic of thecolonial desire to locate and
control In a lingering legacy ofcolonization.
The early accounts ofattempting to make sense and
locate the animals here havecontinued to be manifest in
contemporary science's tenaciousresolve to make sense and
locate the eel.
This remarkable migratoryjourney of the eel speaks not
(41:35):
only to the resilience of theeel but to the
interconnectedness of land andsea, of river systems and
oceanic currents, a connectivitythat the colonial project
sought, often violently, tosever.
And so, paradoxically, bydraining wetlands, redirecting
watercourses and introducingpollutants into the river
systems, colonial authoritiesdisrupted these intricate
(41:56):
socio-ecological relationships,rendering waterscapes almost
uninhabitable and driving manyspecies, including the eel, into
being even more elusive.
Part 2.
Miasma Mania.
In Sydney's swampy environments,the eel has become entangled
with the broader structures ofcontrol and manipulation that
waters also have been.
(42:17):
Whether dammed for the creationof milling industries, diverted
for flood protection or drainedfor sanitisation ambitions.
Swamp waters have been thesource of disdain and malice
since the very beginning of thecolony.
In a dispatch sent to the LordSydney dated May 15th 1788,
governor Arthur Philip recallsthe situation which led him to
(42:38):
relocate the fleet from BotanyBay to Sydney Cove, a story
which I'm sure many of you arefamiliar with.
He writes when I consideredBotany Bay being so very open
and the probability of theswamps rendering the most
illegible situation unhealthy, Ijudged it advisable to examine
Port Jackson.
When Philip did eventually cometo Port Jackson, he noted,
(43:02):
quote nothing can more fullypoint out the great improvement
which may be made by theindustry of a civilized people
in this country than thecircumstances of the small
streams which descend into PortJackson.
They all proceed from swampsproduced by the stagnation of
water after rising from thesprings.
When the obstacles which impedetheir course can be removed and
free channels opened throughwhich they may flow, the
adjacent ground will graduallybe drained and the streams
(43:23):
themselves will become moreuseful.
At the same time, habitable andsalubrious situations will be
gained in places where atpresent perpetual damp prevails
and the air itself appears tostagnate.
But what was it exactly thatrepulsed Philip so much?
The conceptualisation of dirtyswamps has become a hallmark of
(43:44):
colonial ventures across theBritish Empire, from the
backwaters of Mumbai, the bogsof Ireland, the southern jungles
of Malaysia through to the dankforests of Canada.
These hybrid, semi-aqueous,semi-terrestrial environments
have been embroiled in vitrioland contempt for centuries.
And where might much of thisdisdain have come from?
Well, like most things imperial, it is the Romans, first
(44:07):
century AD.
Vitruvius, the Roman architectand engineer, wrote for when the
morning breezes blow toward thetown at sunrise, if they bring
with them mist from marshes and,mingled with the mist, the
poisonous breath of creatures ofthe marshes to be wafted into
the bodies of the inhabitants,they will make the site
unhealthy.
Miasma Vitruvius is referringto miasma.
(44:27):
An unpleasant or unhealthysmell or vapour was considered
the cause of diseases likemalaria, typhoid and diphtheria.
The word malaria, for example,is a composite word which comes
from the medieval Italian forbad mal and air area, which is
an acknowledgement of the kindof swampy settings around the
Italian peninsula whichexperienced early cases of the
disease.
(44:47):
And while the Britishpreoccupation with miasmic
environments came from theRomans, the Romans were also
drawing on the ancient Greeks,like Hippocrates, who described
diseases like marsh fever, theimperial legacy of swampy
environments as dangerous,unproductive and for lack of a
better word disgusting has beenentangled in these historical
webs.
As such, the removal of swampsand marshes was seen as crucial
(45:11):
to ensuring the health ofsettlements across a whole range
of empires, including theBritish Empire.
Here in Australia, EmilyO'Gorman notes that in other
settlements, like in Toowoomba,Queensland quote "people's views
of swamps as miasmic wastelandsseems to have meant that they
were inclined to use them todispose of unwanted matters
which exacerbated their miasmicqualities.
(45:31):
End quote Sydney's lagoons andswamps like Boxley's Lagoon in
Redfern, were perceived of asmiasmic, and so people treated
them as waste disposal sites, ina positive feedback cycle of
sorts, because these swamps wereconceived of as dirty.
When the swamps showed signs ofdegradation, they became
treated as places of refuse,often for waste like animal
carcasses and discardedindustrial material, which was
(45:54):
most likely the actual cause ofthe diseases.
Because of this conflation, themore than human beings which
inhabited these spaces becamerelegated to equally
contemptuous status.
Eels and mosquitoes, yes, butalso bats, lizards, frogs,
spiders and many others.
The environments of thesecritters became utterly
transformed the creeks intodrains and swamps, and the
(46:18):
swamps most often into sportsfields and parks.
This was the emergence of thesanitary city in every way, for
at the same time as there wasthis environmental cleansing
taking place, societal shiftswere pushing towards even
greater conservatism and a wantby many officials to rid the
city of all manner of untowardcharacters In challenging
(46:40):
colonial contempt for swampcreatures.
In Sydney, we are not merelyrevisiting the past.
We are dismantling adestructive legacy that saw
nature as something to be tamed,controlled and exploited.
These critiques force us toconfront how colonial ideologies
degraded environments, silencedindigenous knowledges and
dismissed the value of creaturesvital to the web of life.
Today, as we face a world inecological crisis, this
(47:03):
reflection compels us toreimagine our relationship with
the natural world, not asconquerors but as custodians.
By reclaiming the significanceof these so-called undesirable
spaces and undesirable species,we open ourselves to new
possibilities for ecologicalrestoration, environmental
justice and a future where humanand non-human life thrives in
harmony.
(47:25):
While there are efforts tonaturalise urban stormwater
infrastructures across citiesaround the world, we most likely
cannot reproduce historicalenvironments that once existed
in Sydney prior to invasion infull.
The systems of climate, ecology, geomorphology and hydrology
have changed so much thatattempting to insert singular
species back into this settingor reorienting waterscapes back
(47:47):
to their historical flows wouldmost probably result in failure.
Now don't get me wrong.
Work like what's being donehere in Brisbane or Sydney's
Johnson's Creek are magnificentsteps in the right direction.
But with the ability to craft abuilt environment that draws on
historically contextualreference points from culture
and not just ecology, we cancreate more meaningful,
ecologically and sociallyregenerative systems.
(48:10):
Design, especially designingwith country, has the power to
shape how stories are told,whose stories and with what
narratives.
Considering more than humanhistories can be a generative
step in reconceptualizing therelationship between designers
and historians, and how thesestories are told can be
remarkably innovative andprofoundly powerful.
(48:31):
These stories are told can beremarkably innovative and
profoundly powerful.
Whatever work happens, itshould be guided by confronting
and actively dismantling thedamaging colonial stories that
have been causing so much hurtto so many lives, human and more
than human and, in their place,tell stories which highlight
tenacity and celebrate thesplendour of our life, which
flourishes here in Sydney, thisswampy city.
Thank you.
Jesse Adams Stein (49:01):
I'll just close off tonight's event with a
few of the acknowledgements andthank yous in relation to
History Now, as well as thankingour speakers and chair.
First of all, thank you to theHistory Council team, none of
whom are here right now, butthey've all helped tremendously
previously Catherine Shirley,Amanda Wells and Lauren Chater,
as well as to the HistoryCouncil's executive committee.
(49:22):
Thank you also to the StateLibrary of New South Wales, in
particular the events team,Callum MacLean and Lydia Tasker,
and the Australian Centre forPublic History at UTS History
Council.
As always, we want toacknowledge our cultural
partners, which you can seelisted here, including our major
funder, new South WalesGovernment, via Create New South
(49:42):
Wales.
And finally, I just wanted topreview the next history now,
the final one for the year,which is next month, the 6th of
November, wednesday 5pm in thisspace the Ethics of Crime
Histories with Meg Foster,Rachel Franks and chaired by
Nerida Campbell.
Again, it's free and you canregister for it on the State
(50:03):
Library's What's On page.
Thank you all for being such awonderful, attentive audience.
Really enjoyed it, and thankyou once again to our speakers.
Thank you.
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