Girramay Elder Christopher Kennedy reflects on his deep connection to the land, highlighting the importance of waterways and trees in protecting Country, and how the impact of colonisation, land clearing and agriculture have transformed the landscape.
Video transcript
Christopher Kennedy (Girramay Elder)
“When our old people used to walk on the Murray and Davidson Creek trees used to line those creeks protecting the banks and topsoil. Every bend in every waterhole, it is all significant to us and has a name in our language.
My name is Christopher Kennedy, I’m a Girramay person. Also, I have a language name as well it’s called Mullagowie which means mulla or hand and gowie means a spirit or a ghost. We used to come here all the time, you know, hunting when we was kids.
Since then, you know, like Country have changed and some places that are untouched is, you know, the natural beauty of it. Other changes are where colonisation have came through and put up houses and pulled down the trees or knocked down the land to clear it to put in a cattle industry or something like that.
Because once you take the trees away you’ve got nothing there that stops the flood waters from washing everything into the waterways. So trees play a very important part and the more trees they take the more worse it gets.
Whatever pesticides and stuff they put into the soil up here when the big rains come it washes them out and they go into the water systems and all the tributaries that run into the river and so on the river runs into the ocean and takes all of all the stuff out there and that impacts onto the Great Barrier Reef.
Old Claude Beeron on his Country down there when they cleared the land he was only a young fella. He said his father and mother broke down and cried because they was clearing Country. That’s how much it means to us. It’s our home, it’s our livelihood, it’s everything that we rely on. It takes care of us and we take care of it.”