Kumarangk | remember a small island peaceful and slow where the fresh and salt waters meet. a ferry used to cross these waters. pelicans take a free ride to stand wise and proud waiting for fish and dreams to catch — until that bridge. how sad the people who cannot slow down to ride with a pelican. lower lakes churn memory toward her wide-open mouth so we taste blood and bone resting deep and shallow while casuarinas sigh sing and cry up the wind. reeds push through her silty skin to be picked and dried and soaked to weave precious stories of Old Ones. from fish traps to midden sites her sand dunes drift-settle-shift and rest so everywhere a trace of her on tides — from birth-life-death to birth. all past-present-futures pump from the land our brown body. this small island. they said she fabricated her beliefs but we know there is no horizon to the stars and her seven sisters will never end. we will know her fight for justice and ngatjis and babies and ancestors for as long as it takes. as long as it takes for a small island. Ngarrindjeri yarluwar-ruwe. known by some as Hindmarsh Island. always Kumarangk. these cultural flows.

Charlotte | every Saturday morning the Tuckwell boys walk a familiar route along the river’s edge for fish to buy. the best catch in the district they say. scaled- trimmed-gutted and honoured with care. they cut through town to trace a slight rise behind Armfield Slip and stop just before reaching the railway line. Walker’s Camp. they call it the outskirts but Old Nanna Charlotte calls it her beating heart. the last semi-traditional people in Goolwa they say. respected and proud. renowned fishers and weavers and fighters in white wars. her pulgi is rough with iron sheets and hessian bags on a spread of thorny weeds. inside is beautiful and clean. neat as a pin. come midweek she delivers her catch across town before landing herself on Old Lady Tuckwell’s deep verandah. they drink hot tea from bone china. she smokes her pipe. the young Tuckwell boys see her as a grumpy old woman. a mystery pungent with river-gifts. it’s 1936 and she is eighty-five years witnessing. she knows colossal invasion and colonial-entitlement as dangerous and deep as the river is wide. townsfolk with pitchforks hunger for prime-land while she sleeps. on the quiet chill of the darkest new moon her camp covertly torched one winter’s night. horror flames. impossible to contain. Old Nanna Charlotte fades as river- sorrows churn and rise to meet her plight. her blood-memory streams toward that canoe tree place where she finally rests so we remember. from womb to womb and the force of time see her glow with the moon to shimmer blackened tides. these cultural flows.

Karra | slow agitations occupy tributaries with dredging and fracking and South- East drains. concrete networks channel fresh flood-plain waters out to sea. we are drought-stricken storm-beaten and flooded with grief. salt-crystals rise with ignorance while domestic taps run putrid in shades of cloudy-to-black. ‘Public Notice Boil Water Alerts’ are stapled to country town trees: Water used for drinking or food preparation should be brought to a rolling boil to make it safe. Children should take bottled water or cool boiled water to school (Walgett, New South Wales); Children must avoid swallowing water or getting water up their nose when showering, bathing or playing with water (Oodnadatta, South Australia); Boiling the [arsenic-poisoned] town water will not make it safe to drink and bottled water should be used for drinking, food preparation, making ice, cleaning teeth and gargling (Uralla, New South Wales). our sacred Country under siege might best be conjured from the perspective of fish. small spotted and swift or giant Elders of the deep. they glide strong and quiet. carve rivers as stories and stories as rivers to feed and glisten and spawn new life. blue-green algae fully thrive to bloom then die. oxygen levels fall and asphyxiation levels rise. Karra. Old River Red Gums carrying centuries of story lean in to witness. fish thrash wildly at her roots then chase stagnant shallows toward a slow gentle float. they rest in their millions as layers of riverbank sediment transform to hot dried clay. these mighty trees bearing floodwater stains recognise massacre and drop another limb with the weight of despair. as lifelines give way to a thirsty greedy chain of water-thieving infrastructure our Elders seek reflections of home and weep. they demand — ‘who will honour the fish?’. these cultural flows.

Yartapuulti | small at the wharf’s edge. face west across the water to see a $2 billion redevelopment all lit up in neon satisfaction. this high-rise high-density waterside housing for the rich. this glittering neo-colonial backdrop reflected on her black night’s river. face west across the water to this potent site. Lartelare’s birthplace and remnants of home. she is keeper of the black swans. Yartapuulti. this river flooded with story carries memory on undercurrents that pull and twist in surprising directions. moments are captured and dragged down to settle with sediment. seep into past-present-future memory. imprint on fine silted skin. this translucent familiar is like a drop of essence. a spill of blood. a lingering trace as black-swan ripples hold our gaze. as the river swells dive in to drink it all then dissolve on time luring deep-deeper toward shards of light that slice and glide. a soft sliding fade where sun cannot reach. where surfaces no longer glisten. this is the quietest-dark and never still. search for memories on currents and decades of protest. find flags flying peace and torrent-rage. generations of bloodshed and tears drive the tides to open-up to taste it all. sweet solidarity reflects new neon- light-stories on a dark moon and we are still awake in the land of sleep. we are still afloat on the land of grief. here at this site we remember. we miss our beloved elder-Aunty-wise friend. Aunty Veronica. this float of imaginings flows straight to her heart and together we watch campfires lit up all the way to Outer Harbor… just like fairyland. no high-rise-neon-light-dreams here. only Lefevre-Peninsula-Love on a quiet drift. these cultural flows.

Cultural flows | we are mangrove and rock hole and fresh water spring. we are mighty drifts of brown-green-blue to seep and drain from vein to outlet to river and sea. we rest with midden sites and blue whale bones and sandy ridges and chenier plains. we find memories of old ways interrupted and sit with Elders who know how to stay awake in this land of sleep. we are inherited responsibility so future generations will know this once-upon-a-time perfectly balanced magnificent web of life. they will know to hold space for lands-waters- spirits-skies. they will know to carry culture and lore and epic beauty forward as whole and fragmented and vibrant and disrupted. we are ocean life spawning in seagrass blankets. we are tidal marshlands labouring hard to ebb-flow and lure fish and crabs and snails to creeks at high and low tide. these flows can’t be calculated by suits and assessment tools in scientific spreadsheets but are lived and loved between waves of story and blood-memory-honouring. like salt-of-the-earth we rise to settle-unsettle survive and thrive and we refuse to disappear. these cultural flows.