Follow the Creek

[water trickling] So before colonization and before this land was used for industry and housing and farming, you can imagine that it was a habitat for so many creatures and a place where so many diverse plants grew.

Imagine kangaroos, wallabies, possums, bandicoots nosing through an understory, quolls, echidnas shuffling, brolgas stepping through the grasses, cockatoos, lorikeets, seagulls, ducks paddling in the creeks, and the waters would've been alive with fish and tortoises and shellfish, which of course is hard to imagine in the dirty waters of our present city.

So if none of that wildlife and water is really left, how do we even know that there ever was a creek here? Holly O'Neill, another member of the Follow the Creek team, explains.

So Blackwattle Creek is really interesting.

It's right in the heart of the city.

Um, it's right next to UTS, where we all study and work, and according to the archive maps that we've found, Blackwattle Lane used to be Blackwattle Creek or Blackwattle Swamp, depending on which part you're looking at.

And so right in front of us, there's this clue to what used to be there, this street that used to be a creek.

And the kind of lovely thing about these clues is they're so often in street names.

So often it'll say, like, Waterfall Street or, like, Creek Road.

And, like, you have these lovely clues in the name.

Um, and Blackwattle Lane is one of those, because there is this fabulous kind of pointing that's happening, and if you literally just dig a tiny bit beneath the surface, we kind of come to learn that actually this was a place that used to be a creek, um, and had a very big connection to water.

Over here, there's just some little hints to help trace where water was.

You'll find a eel and an ibis and a marker of Blackwattle Swamp, which is actually our destination today.

Of course, as with all places in Australia, Blackwattle Creek has an Indigenous history too.

In terms of our, um, you know, our records, our history, um, here in these places and evidence of our existence here, there's so much to be found and so much to be seen and understood

understoodAnd there's still so much in place.

A lot of people will think that, you know, we've been completely erased from space, which we largely have.

Um, but from our perspective, we still see so much that reminds us that we're here and that we belong.

So Blackwattle Creek, um, is an incredible part of country here.

You know, we like to think about Sydney and these urban areas now as saltwater or coastal country, but, um, a really important part of the sandstone escarpment here is the freshwater that runs down through country.

It doesn't take much to fossick around some of our waterways and around the, the shores and the banks and find shell collections and find little bits and pieces that people have overlooked or they haven't looked in this particular place, but there's still so much magic out there to be found.

Um, particularly in, like, the cracks and the crevices, we'll find old plants that weren't meant to be there pop up [laughs] from, like, heirloom stock that's in the soil and in the mud.

It's like you can't hold back country.

It's still there.