Wit(h)nessing: Desert Mammal Extinctions to Illawarra Micro-Ecologies and more

^{Banner image: Detail of the front cover of Maralinga, the Anangu Story by Yalata and Oak Valley Communities with Christobel Mattingly (Allen & Unwin, 2009).}

Environmental Humanities (EH) is an emerging interdisciplinary field of research and practice at the University of Wollongong, Australia.

The first Environmental Humanities Symposium in the Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts [Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities 2020] at UoW took place over two days, December 7–8, 2017.

Presentations were intentionally kept short at ten minutes for all speakers.

My paper:

Wit(h)nessing: Desert Mammal Extinctions to Illawarra Micro-Ecologies and more.

It drew from (1) Chapter 8 of The Trace of An Affective Object Encounter: A picture postcard, its provocations, and processual becomings (2016, PhD thesis) https://ro.uow.edu.au/theses/4725/

(2) Wit(h)nessing, my contribution to the Living Lexicon, Environmental
Humanities (2018) from that work, https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-4385617

This work continues to unfold.

_{Front cover of Maralinga, the Anangu Story by Yalata and Oak Valley Communities with Christobel Mattingly (Allen & Unwin, 2009)}

_{A visiting party of Yellow-tailed Black-Cockatoos pausing to drink at the old concrete water trough that now serves resident, travelling and migratory birds. And the occasional ringtail possum. Here, where I live on Wodi Wodi and Yuin Nation lands, Dharawal language country, in the Wingecarribee district of the Illawarra uplands. The trough is a repurposed farm artefact, originally used by others to water sheep and a horse. The water comes from a small ground spring and rainwater dam, a two-minute flight, a seven-minute walk, southeast. The drinkers are very aware of me, just 30 metres away near the door of the house-studio. They let me enjoy them, at a comfortable distance. They linger. It is a hot afternoon. They are locals and welcome guests. [“It is not the ‘Southern Highlands’, settler people,” I heard them say]. Photograph: 19 March December 2017.}

https://soundcloud.com/echographies/yellowtails-amegilla-210214

https://soundcloud.com/echographies/march-crickets-and-thunder

Related