Note: Creek photos generously donated by local resident (name withheld)
With winter rains, the creek is flowing. Out walking last week there was no stepping over stones to get to the other side. The creek was alive, coursing its well-worn channel, enticed as ever by the laws of gravity towards the Loddon, to join the Murray, to empty into the ocean. I sat and listened. What is it about the sound of moving, bubbling water that so compels, that draws us in? At the creek’s edge there is only the sound of pure music, of water tumbling, cascading between stones, earth, roots, branches. The song of water touching everything in its path. A Psalm reverberating between the banks.
I have entered a sacred world. Everything is animate. I am mesmerised. A blue superb wren joins the song. Ears alert to the chatter of buff-rumped thornbills darting in and out of callistemon, once again thriving along the creek. My eyes dip beneath the water’s surface, watch the lively dance of refracted sunlight and shadow on stones. Out of their warm casings come my bare feet, slipping into the cold wet rush, testing for steady footholds. From inside the creek bed I survey the landscape: branches of woolly tea-tree, stands of phragmites further downstream, the vertical camber of the western bank, the shade of river reds, a paddock of kangaroo and wallaby grass, a stone wall skirting the hills, in the distance along the fence line the gnarled rough trunk of eucalyptus melliodora, yellow box, statuesque, those same branches outstretched for who knows how many years, clusters of delicate leaves bunched together like heads of broccoli.
I try to imagine what the creek has witnessed, this ancient meandering gathering place, this spring-fed life source, this bountiful commons for flora, fauna and humans alike. Like a goldminer prospecting, I am besieged with possibilities in the form of questions: what companions has the creek nourished and what visitors hosted? What passages has it enabled and what crossings forded? What flows has the creek carried and what landscapes carved? What depths has it reached? What minerals flushed out? Who’s thirsts have been quenched? What images reflected? What losses has the creek borne and what revivals has it welcomed?
The creek is our next history in story theme and we will gather in spring, along its banks. Some of those same questions will be reflected upon by our memory keepers: Eric and Joy Sartori, Beth and Ric Higgins, Lawrence and Paul Righetti and Greg Pridmore. Walking the breadth and depth of Yandoit has brought me into conversation with our local elders and memory keepers: septuagenarians and octogenarians still farming, bee keeping, milking, fencing, revegetating, wood collecting, stone-masoning, gardening, wine making, pruning. Our walking, talking historians, whose memories and stories are garments they daily wear.
For me the creek is metaphor for our local history in story. History alive and flowing through our community, winding its way, fluid, between past, present and future. Stories and memories tapped as if underwater springs. History as conversation, the spoken word, exchanges vibrant as bird song along the creek’s length. Stories treasured, flushed out like gold. Stories, generous as spring rains, replenished with every telling. Renowned and lesser known narratives planted in our imagination like riparian seedlings. Tales suspended, like the old swing bridge, between memory and telling. Community stories enlivened and safeguarded in the telling, in the listening and in the recording.
A platypus in the creek
What do the creek and the recounting of stories share in common? Both contend with boundaries, interfaces between public and the private. Both are contested spaces, offering divergent perspectives, each shaped by experience, outlook, time. In the case of our creek even its name is disputed. The creek and stories are subject both to linearity and circularity- the chronological flowing downstream from the past, the circuitousness meandering between time zones, activating memories like underwater springs. Like the creek, stories undergo times of scarcity and times of plenty, streaming and energised as with rain, depleted and fragmented as with drought. Just as the creek hosts humans, fauna and flora, so also the relating of stories create gathering places, locales where body and spirit can be nourished. Both the creek and stories have interior and exterior vantage points, places for telling and places for listening, meeting points and confluences, tempos varied and fashioned as with deep pools, rapids and weirs. Both the creek and stories traverse known and unknown terrain. Both harbour surprises.
Each story shared is another tributary flowing into the creek, combining to form a larger body of stories that meander through our community. Stories that draw us in, like the sound of moving water, to a sense of place here. Stories, like the word tributary, that ‘bring together, add, bestow’. In bringing together, in adding, each story becomes a gift bestowed.
Narratives precious like family photo albums, framing generations of connection to this place, living on and with the land, unearthing Dja Dja Wurrung ways of being and artefacts, snap shots of earliest white settlement. Narratives in indigenous communities are often told by a number of elders. In this way stories avoid becoming static because they are shaped by the relationship between narrator and audience and consequently each individual story may have countless variations. Our history in story sessions use a similar approach. Stories initiated by one voice, elicit memories and reflections in their recounting, invite additions and deviations. At the confluence of memory, spoken word and relationship something fresh and living is created.
This post on our community website is designed to create a complementary story space, a companion to our history in story. Over the past year Yandoit has hosted three history in story gatherings, each focussed around a theme: the main street; Yandoit Hills stone houses and vineyards; the churches and settlement. The blog reflects on each community gathering, starting with our first- the main street. The blog invites us to pursue conversations started, to immerse ourselves in this bounty of narratives, each like a tributary or spring feeding into the creek. Like our history in story the blog is a space for remembering, for enlisting the gift of hindsight. It is another confluence, a place where stories meet, where present, past and future merge.
