Journeying Ginninderra: Attending Country
Journeying Ginninderra: Attending Country was a deeply relational, Ngunnawal-led exploration of Ginninderra Creek, guided by Custodians Wally Bell and Karen Denny. Unlike previous Catchment Studio initiatives, this program intentionally focused on nurturing deeper connections with fewer participants, supporting meaningful engagement, cultural learning, and reflective practice.
Our Approach
This program brought together seven selected participants from diverse backgrounds, including the arts, ecology, community engagement, and environmental science. Participants embarked on immersive on-Country walks, supported by online sessions including the transformative Decolonise Your Mind (DYM) training and Ngunnawal language workshops.
We embraced Indigenous pedagogical practices such as:
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Attending Country: Slowing down, listening, and responding respectfully to Ginninderra Creek and its ecosystems.
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Storytelling and Re-storying: Using narrative and creative practice to deepen ecological and cultural understanding.
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Yarning Circles: Fostering safe, reflective spaces for challenging conversations about power, privilege, and positionality.
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Embodied Learning: Engaging sensory practices like water-listening, sketching, mud burials to build embodied connection to Country.
What We Learned
Going deeper instead of broader allowed for transformative personal growth and shifts in how participants relate to Country. Participants discovered new ways of seeing water not just as a resource but as kin and teacher, resulting in a significant shift toward relational accountability and reciprocity.
Everyday talk and informal dialogue emerged unexpectedly as powerful tools, facilitating profound reflections on positionality, colonial impacts, and relational ethics.
Creative Outcomes
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A short documentary film with following Ginninderra from the three head waters to two to one with a soundscapes captured from the creek.
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Collection of photographs documenting Ginninderra
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Community gatherings at Murrumbidgee and Soli’s Farm, celebrating collective learning and relational practice.
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Mud burial Rituals on Murrumbidgee
Journeying Ginninderra Documentary
Ian Houghton - Ginninderra Creek
How to Make Natural Paint
A tutorial by Dave the Mud Man as part of the Journeying Ginninderra events
River Play — Mud, Water, and First Remembering
March 23, 2025 — Murrumbidgee
We gathered at the river’s edge on a warm afternoon, families arriving with towels, notebooks, and open attention.
There was no stage. No central focal point. Instead, the creek held us.
Children moved first, into the water, into the mud reminding us that play is often the most direct way into relationship. What followed was a gentle unfolding:
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Mud stomping and mud burials
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Painting with ochres and natural pigments from Ngunnawal Country
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Poetry shared quietly between people
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Water listening, using simple equipment to hear beneath the surface
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Swimming, drifting conversations, and moments of stillness
The day carried a sense of permission—to not know, to not structure, to simply be with water.
At one point, a flock of black cockatoos moved overhead and stayed close as we walked. It shifted something in the group—an awareness of being part of a wider field of life, not separate from it.
What emerged:
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Water as an entry point into relational practice—not concept, but experience
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Play as a valid and necessary method of learning and connecting
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A softening of roles—participants, facilitators, observers dissolving into shared presence
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The beginnings of a collective memory—threads of previous creek walks being picked up again
Winter Fire — Story, Film, and Holding the Threads
August 9, 2025 — Murrumbidgee
In winter, we returned, this time gathering around fire.
Where River Play was expansive and open, Winter Fire brought a sense of holding. A drawing together of what had been experienced, seen, and felt over time.
The afternoon began down by the creek:
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A welcome yarn with warm drinks by the fire
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A mud rocket stove built by hand—both practical and symbolic, a gift shaped from earth
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Water listening continuing at the creek’s edge
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Sharing of Aaron’s Walking on Country Guide, inviting reflection and feedback
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Informal conversations between Ngunnawal Advisors, researchers, artists, and community
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As the light faded, we moved up toward the house.
Fire pits, blankets, and a simple screen created a temporary cinema—held outdoors, in relationship with place.
Film and storytelling program included:
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Water Memories — film and live poetry
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Following Sullivan’s: Learning Country
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Ian’s photographic journey of Ginninderra, layered with water soundscapes
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Journeying Ginninderra Film by Sammy Hawker.
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A short film on making natural paints
Food was shared across the evening—soup by the creek, then berry crumble, hot chocolate, and marshmallows by the fire. It felt less like an event, and more like a remembering.
What emerged:
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Film as a way of returning people to lived experience on Country
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Story held across multiple forms—image, sound, body, and voice
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Strengthening relationships between those who have been walking this work together
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A growing sense of Waterbodies as a living archive—not fixed, but carried through people
Outcomes and Ongoing Threads
These gatherings were intentionally light in structure, but they have generated clear and meaningful outcomes:
1. Strengthened relational networks
People who had walked different creeks, projects, and timelines came together—forming new connections and deepening existing ones.
2. Reconnection to practice
Participants re-engaged with earlier experiences Walking Country, Water Listening, creative responses through embodied and shared processes.
3. Emergence of a living archive
Photos, films, poetry, field notes, and memories are beginning to gather into a shared body of work held collectively rather than centrally owned.
4. Integration of art, science, and cultural knowledge
Water listening technologies, Ngunnawal cultural guidance, and creative practices sat alongside each other without hierarchy.
5. A shift in pace and approach
These gatherings reinforced that meaningful engagement with Country happens slowly, relationally, and without over-design.
Next Steps
Waterbodies continues beyond gatherings through an online community platform hosted on Mighty Networks.
This space supports ongoing connection, collaboration, and shared learning between participants—allowing relationships, ideas, and practices to deepen over time rather than ending with each event.
Access to the Waterbodies Network is offered to those who have completed the Decolonise Your Mind training. This ensures a shared foundation of understanding, cultural awareness, and relational accountability among members.
Within the network, participants are able to:
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Stay connected with others walking this work
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Share reflections, resources, and creative responses
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Contribute to the evolving Waterbodies story and archive
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Continue engaging with practices introduced through gatherings
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Support the ongoing development of Country-centred approaches
The platform acts as a living extension of the on-Country work—holding continuity between gatherings and supporting a slower, more sustained form of engagement.
Appendix
Expression of Interest Invitation
Waterbodies Event Invitation
kate's Reflection - Waterbodies Event