LIVING WATER: visits [streams of reconnection]
visit 4 - Karen and the water hole
We always stop here to see Pecky Sparkles, she’s an azure kingfisher. Asta just loved Pecky Sparkles for years, but, after the flood we were quite sad because Pecky had disappeared as well as the nest in the creek banks. But she’s back with a baby, so, that’s really lovely that a year later we’ve got more than one Pecky Sparkle. This is Asta’s spot, she likes to stop here and look for Trevor the turtle who lives in here along with the yabbies and eels and all sorts. If you come down here at night with a torch you can see all those things in there. It’s really clear today, if we get a bit more rain it’ll muck up a little bit. It’s also a place to dump the bad energy, either coming in or going out of the house, and just take a minute to be calm. It’s that sacredness of water. When I was in Ireland last year my sister took me to two sacred wells. There’s just something about water … and its sound. Karen to Adam: Did something just bite you? There are quite big eels in there and very large spiny crayfish. We’ve never used them for food, we’ve never fished in here. When we first saw the eels, we talked about it, but I just feel like we’ve got to protect it, keep it there for the biodiversity.
On the Sunday, Adam was still in bed, and I went out on the veranda to have a look, and because I kind of knew what it looked like after Debbie, this time, I just came out and went “Oh fuck Adam, get out of bed!” because it was clearly much deeper than Debbie. I’d never seen it like that before. That’s when we got the canoe and went to the neighbours and the houses that were under. Immediately after the flood when the water had dropped, we came out to work out how are we going to access the property, which is an ongoing concern. As soon as we came down, I just stood at the creek and said “that’s it” I want to get out. It’s actually been quite hard to come down here for a long time, it just felt so heavy. Well, we just kept coming down to watch the water quality and see if it had cleared out. We wanted to know how much mud was in the bottom, whether we still had a deep swimming hole, which we do, but it’s not as deep, it’s still very full of debris … After all of the flood mud arrived, we felt very precarious. So Jake came one weekend and put a few rocks in, he carried them in and built steps. The trees are still there holding the banks until we can plant, so that’s good too.
It’s still full of life, it seemed quite dead after the flood because we weren’t seeing eels, but bit by bit it’s come back. The plants are taking longer, but they’ll get there. There’s a lot more sun hits it now because the flood ripped out so many trees and branches. It feels so different now its exposed because it sort of felt like a grotto kind of thing before. Now it feels very open. I can’t wait for everything to grow back. I haven’t done this before, but we were talking about why the debris is still here, why it hasn’t washed away. I was just having a feel of this, you can see how this debris has all landed against this tree and just welded together, and you can see why it hasn’t fallen because it’s filled with clay. All that clay that was carried down on the water has just kept everything in the trees. Yeah, that’s not going to fall out in a shower. Great building material actually. We did a wild earth course and we think that’s the stuff that’s washed down, it’s thick and a little bit redder than our normal soil here, and I feel it’s probably got a high iron content. We’ve tried putting it on garden beds and in with the mulch. And we’re back to swimming again, and having fun. Having Asta, and how much she loves being in there, and how good her swimming’s got just from having access to that. She wants to go in every day when she’s here, which is lovely.
We kind of knew we were going to be flooded in for a few days and we always reckoned we could eat out of the garden for several months. Even though the kids were worried about us we felt absolutely fine. We were cooking with our camping gear, we didn’t need power. But, “what if it was a complete collapse and there was no hope?” Can we meet all our needs? What’s the plan with the children? So, I grabbed a roll of paper and a load of markers, and we worked out our survival plan. We spent a lot of time doing that, which was really pleasant, I know it sounds negative, but it actually wasn’t ... We didn’t know about the tinny flotilla then, that people had self-organised and helped each other. I think it feels better when we spend time with activists who are trying to make things better. They’ve walked away from jobs and careers, and university, because they can’t see anything more important. Which is really sad. There’s a guy whose story I read on the Humans of Lismore Facebook page, whose house was flooded, and he was saying every flood brings him a gift, it was a really beautiful story. That makes me think about what I think is the biggest gift that this flood brought, which is going to make me cry, it’s that we’ve had an influx of young protesters, who’ve come because they see this is the frontline with climate change. So, we’ve got all these young people who are just incredible, and are out there ... I think they’re making huge changes in the community.