Solastalgia: A Water Story

by Jane Hylton 

There are lessons to be learnt from water, nature’s gift to humanity, which can teach us how to live in harmony with the earth and in peace with one another. In Africa, they say, “We don’t go to the water ponds merely to capture water, but because friends and dreams are there to meet us”.[i]

***

It is late November and the newly installed barrier of sand and rock across the narrows between Hindmarsh Island and the cliffs at Clayton Bay effectively captures the waters still flowing down the Finniss River from the Adelaide Hills. Just upstream of this dam the un-seasonally hot, dry winds of two weeks ago dried up the last vestige of water out of our Lagoon, sucking the little bit of moisture that had held on in the middle, deposited by this year’s winter rains. Not even mid-November and we experienced a heat wave that a South Australian February would be proud of – temperatures in the very high thirties for several days in a row set some kind of record not seen since late the century before last.

I call it our Lagoon, but of course it isn’t, it belongs to everyone. Dunn’s Lagoon was, until recently, a significant wetland capable of accommodating several thousand birds. Their chortling, honking and raucous quacking as they settled down to roost at night was easily audible from our place, with the sound of frogs competing for airplay. We positioned our house to look at it, and would often take our boat in there and moor in the reeds against Goose Island. I’m no twitcher, but I also used to occasionally record the types of birds we saw around the place, including what I could identify on the Lagoon. Quite by chance the other day I came across the book in which I kept these notes and various entries make for poignant reading – “30.8.97: Lagoon - four to five hundred black cormorants and a hundred or so pelicans; Sunday 2 & 3 August 98: Lagoon - flock of fifty Pacific duck, cormorants, maybe a thousand coots”. Entries for a patch of wetland we used to call Kindaruar Pond (on a property of the same name) and at a spot that was once the water’s edge at Point Sturt read like a who’s-who of the water-bird world – stilts, black swans, Pacific black ducks, crested and fairy terns, sandpipers, spoonbills, several types of heron, egrets, swamp hens, native hens, ibis.

Reading these brings back decade-old memories of leaving at dawn for my eighty-odd kilometre drive to work in Adelaide, and being awestruck by the sight of dozens of Royal spoonbills working the shallow waters of Kindaruar Pond, their elegant plumage catching the new, pink light of sunrise. Grazing in the nearby paddock were hundreds of Cape Barren geese. I even did little watercolours and pencil sketches, evidence of my formerly covert mark-making. In one, the morning light is reflected in the water and I remember a few sessions when I rose early to do a series of watercolours from on our front deck, watching the sun come up over the Lagoon. The dried out plain that our house now looks towards leaves me feeling uninspired and hollow. More recently the mark making has focussed inward in an attempt to make some sense of what is happening in this once abundant and now silent, sandy world.

***

One February morning during the height of this year’s summer, as I took in the sunrise across the Lagoon, a gentle mist hung over the flat, barren expanse. It took me a moment to realise it was not water vapour, as it might have been sometimes during the years before the Lagoon dried out, but smoke. It had blown and drifted across from devastated parts of Victoria, where towns and lives had been destroyed in a mere moment by savage and relentless fires. Having travelled west on the prevailing winds, some of it had settled in this now dried-out lowland. This smoke carried with it sadness and grief, shock and disbelief, and recalled the heroism of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. As it nestled into the sorry remnant of the once magnificent wetland, I was struck by the irony of this confluence of national disasters, one so sudden, dramatic and tragic that it shocked the entire world, the other so slow moving that many Australians, even as I write, remain blithely unaware.

In this same year and only weeks after these horrific fires, large areas of Queensland were flooded by torrential rain. In a stunningly selfless gesture that moved the nation, many of the people who were affected donated their relief monies, provided by the government, to the victims of the bushfire. Recently more flooding and violent storms in Queensland took lives and left people homeless, their precious possessions damaged beyond repair. Even after this second bout of devastation yet another act of supreme generosity was reported in the news, as businesses in the Queensland coastal city of Noosa got together to donate much-needed holiday respite to the survivors of Black Saturday who, months later, face a lifetime battle to come to terms with the loss of loved ones and friends, entire townships, and the fundamental infrastructure of their existence.

On this particular February morning, as I wrestled with my own drought-induced demons, I found it difficult to reconcile these events and place them into some kind of context that made any sense. How could I even come close to saying to someone sifting through the charred remains of their house, looking for precious remnants of what made it home, that our entire community too is suffering? How could I possibly explain to someone sloshing about in the muddy mess left by an incredible excess of water, that the smelly black ooze of our mudflats should never have been so cruelly exposed – indeed never have been exposed before – and with such dire long-term consequences?

Where I live is a tiny township on a stretch of water often described as the Lower Murray. It is in a region badly affected by drought and over-extraction of water from the Murray-Darling river system. I often think that ‘Lower Murray’ is a misleading name for this location. It is in the heart of what was, until just a short time ago, a vast network of broad, shallow wetlands that form part of the southern reaches of Lake Alexandrina. Recently we – Rob and I – came across a nineteen twenties map which described the waterway on which we live as ‘The Goolwa’, the same term sometimes used during the mid-nineteenth century. Goolwa is the Ngarrindjeri word for elbow and is also the modern name of Australia’s only registered inland port. Its Indigenous meaning accurately describes the stretch of water that runs from the narrow channel between the mainland and Hindmarsh Island and then curves around the island’s western end towards the Goolwa Barrage and the sea mouth of the Murray River system.

Lakes Alexandrina and Albert, plus the nearby Coorong and the Murray Mouth, form a complex of waterways fed not just by the Murray but by several other significant tributary sources. When they are running, the River Angas and the Bremer River flow directly from their headwaters located in the Mount Lofty Ranges, into Lake Alexandrina. Currency Creek and the River Finniss both flow into the Goolwa channel, and thus to Lake Alexandrina itself, draining part of South Australia’s wettest region. After winter rains the Finniss flows strongly, following its natural course around the easternmost tip of Hindmarsh Island and down the Mundoo Channel, where the refreshing waters mix with those of the Murray, heading for the Lake and Coorong.

This was once a land of abundance. Before the arrival of white man the Ngarrindjeri people led a relatively settled and stable existence here, fishing, hunting and gathering in the coastal, estuarine and inland freshwater areas. In 1975 Australia was the first signatory to the Ramsar Convention, and in 1985 this region – Lakes Alexandrina and Albert, the tracts of swamp lying between them, the islands in the Lakes and the Coorong – was declared a Wetland of International Importance. All of this sprang from a 1971 convention in the Iranian town of Ramsar, where the delegates expressed deep concern at “ … the worldwide loss of waterbirds and their wetland habitats”.[ii] This gathering recognised the need to protect wetlands that are annual destinations for thousands upon thousands of migratory birds flying extraordinary distances from places like China, Japan and Siberia. A string of these wetlands dotted across the world supply the birds with feeding grounds, places to rest and safe havens for breeding. The path of flight has been imprinted into their behavioural patterns for millennia and each season sand-pipers, stilts, snipe and many other species take to the air, instinctively knowing the wetlands will sustain them on their journey. Australia was a proud and self-confident signatory to the Ramsar Convention, and our concurrence helped to lock in protection of the environment at the other end of the birds’ migratory flight. Now on the news I hear – to our embarrassment and shame as a nation – that this, once one of the richest of these wetland destinations, might be removed from the agreement because it is becoming incapable of adequately supporting these birds. Rising salinity in the Coorong and sand storms kicking up off the vast tracts of open space around the Lakes make sustaining life almost impossible, and areas that should be covered with water are now bound by miserable beds of withered reeds and rushes.

Nevertheless, birds are pragmatic creatures – I guess any creature is when it comes to survival and especially if it has just flown several thousands of kilometres. During last year’s winter and early spring some of the waders selected as an alternative the new, broad beaches of our western foreshore, and commenced fossicking for something to eat. Spoonbills and egrets joined the migrants, and gathered in large, elegant flocks in the shallows. Sadly though, a lot of what they sifted through was dead. About eighteen months ago, as the water receded alarmingly and the salinity rose well above levels safe for consumption by any creatures, including human or bovine, the first wave of dead fresh-water mussels appeared. At first they bobbed up and floated in the warm, salty, shallow waters, then they beached on the new shore, literally in their thousands. Forced open by the warmth of the day’s sun, their shells lay scattered like pairs of flightless wings all over the muddy sands. 

At that time we noticed that a lot of these shells were covered with a strange encrustation, and we found out later that this is the coral-like casing of the bristle worm. It thrives in saline waters and grows on any firm stationary or near-stationary object that lies under the water. In areas such as Goolwa boat hulls became covered, motors, propellers, the bases of marina posts, the enormous supports for the Hindmarsh Island bridge, buoys, rocks, mussel shells – the growth encased and immobilised them all. Then with horror, walkers on these new beaches discovered another, helpless victim. Dead and dying tortoises covered in this growth had struggled to the surface and eventually made it to shore, having made a choice between drowning under the crusty weight or becoming victims of foxes on land. There were hundreds of them and some, judging by their size, would have been several decades old. Among them were pitiful survivors, struggling with the cruellest of fates as the casings of the bristle worm grew ever so gradually across the openings in their shells where their head, legs and tails should be able to protrude. In the port of Milang, where the jetty that once regularly accommodated paddle steamers is now surrounded by sand, the local primary school students rallied and collected the survivors, chipping off the encrustation and cleaning them up. Tortoises aren’t particularly expressive creatures, but they are plainly relieved when the growth is cleared from around their tails and the built up matter inside their shells is released.

***

Eventually though, as the smell of rotting mussels diminishes, everything stops. There are no more birds, except crows picking at leftover bits of tortoise or mussel. In fact, suddenly crows seem prevalent when there were hardly any here before, their mournful cawing jagging at our nerves. The beaches seem endless and a few people go for long treks from Clayton Bay, way up into the area where the Finniss River enters the Goolwa channel. Walkers along the base of the cliff, now a rocky, exposed shore, find and gather masses of old bottles and other rubbish, thrown into the water by people on the cliff top or who have been fishing from the wind-formed caves halfway up the cliff face. We find a dry, exposed snag wrapped around by dozens of thwarted casts of fishing line, the still-attached sinkers and hooks having been abandoned to the murky waters. We find dead carp – even these invasive survivors now begin to struggle with the salinity levels – and we are amused to find a pair of swimming goggles encased with bristle worm. Along and around a fully-exposed reef, once traversed by blissfully unaware dinghy sailors or hit by less fortunate skippers with deeper keels, lies an ancient outboard motor, an encrusted mobile phone, broken oars, batons from sailboats and various strange articles used as moorings, now covered with worm casings and 200 metres away from the water’s edge. 

As all this happens around me I feel a kind of creeping sadness. People in the community I live in become quiet, and the only thing anyone can talk about is the water. It simultaneously bonds us and divides us and I feel a helplessness settle on me that I am sure others must be feeling too. I keep a wary eye on Rob’s moods, as our much-loved water-based business shrivels up. I am told that in Milang a number of people are on suicide watch. Often people express disbelief, because understanding how such a monumental disaster could happen when the signs have been so clearly evident for so long, is beyond comprehension. Then I discover there is a word – solastalgia – that names what I am feeling. It is described in a tiny article in the Clayton Bay community newsletter, just above the local beauty therapist’s ad and opposite a page promoting a forthcoming fund-raising quiz night. “Solastalgia”, I read, is the “ … form of homesickness one gets when one is still living at home”. People feel it when the “familiar markers of their region – the physical and sensory signals that define what they understand as ‘home’ – gradually vanish …”. It is strangely comforting that someone has thought about this problem in sufficient depth to describe it with such breathtaking accuracy. Enlightened, I realise I am not depressed or even unhappy, I am just feeling solastalgic.[iii] 

***

It’s now three weeks since the huge pumps that had been installed on the dam were switched off and removed. On the foreshore of Clayton Bay instead of the vast beach we had almost become accustomed to, we again have water. The reef is covered, the boat that was grounded has re-floated and the moorings, hastily fitted with new chains and marker buoys by various opportunistic claimants, are again submerged and ready for securing boats. The grasses, weeds and little native groundcovers that had colonised the foreshore are underwater and the bulrushes have begun to sprout. The swamp rats have moved out of their tunnels through the dead reeds and taken to higher ground, the snakes have moved up onto the grassy edges and the frogs – deathly silent for so long – are chorusing like there’s no tomorrow. The local boat club’s marina is no longer high and dry and on-water activities have been resumed with enthusiasm.

From the outset the communities around both Lakes were adamant that building the regulator at all was a distraction that avoided addressing the only serious option, to release enough fresh water from further up the Murray-Darling system to buy critical survival time. But amid active, heartfelt protest it was built anyway. For several weeks the pumps installed on it extracted water from the upstream side and poured it into the downstream side – ostensibly to make a pool of sufficient depth between it and the Goolwa Barrage, to neutralise acidification of previously unexposed soils. A tenacious group of protesters asked enough awkward and knowledgeable questions to cause delay in the construction and by the time it went ahead nature herself had done a fine job of neutralising the acid, as good rains in the Adelaide Hills caused the various tributaries, especially the Finniss River, to flow strongly. This river is now prevented from taking its natural course past Hindmarsh Island and making its annual contribution to Lake Alexandrina, but instead is stopped in its path, its waters held captive between the Clayton Bay dam and the Goolwa barrage.

For a while the construction of the dam and the protests that surrounded it caused this little place no-one has ever heard of to be the centre of headline news. Visitors flocked daily to the top of the cliffs to look down on the progress of the sand pile as it edged its way through the water, its weight pushing great piles of mud up from the bottom of the channel. We are assured this giant, mounded wall will be removed once the Murray’s flows return to normal and deep in our hearts we are certain this will be a long, long time coming. We wonder if it will even be physically possible. There were meetings with officials to discuss where the dam so many of us did not want should be located and we hoped it could have been positioned a little further upstream. There its effect would take in a bit more wetland, and provide some vital wildlife refuge in Dunn’s Lagoon. But instead it has been built in a very visible location, where at least it can be seen by all as irrefutable testimony to environmental mismanagement. On the western side there is deep water held by an unnatural wall of sand and stone and on the eastern side, only meters from it a houseboat sits beached dozens of metres from the water, having been caught more than eighteen months ago by the receding levels. When the prevailing south-westerly winds blow strongly, as they do so often at this time of year, the deep water is pressed up against the dam creating increased levels in Clayton Bay. On the other side the water is blown upstream, causing exposure of extensive muddy flats, littered with dead mussels and tortoise shells.

The dam has divided the newer part of the Clayton township neatly in half. The view on the side we live on, looking east, upstream towards Point Sturt and Lake Alexandrina, is a seemingly lifeless scene of sand and – in some parts – a sorry, narrow little strip of water. Towards the west the other half looks across a full bay happily adopted by swans, ducks and pelicans. Lovers of water sports ski, sail and windsurf and, if you’re looking towards the glorious sunset, you could fool yourself the problem has somehow miraculously been resolved. Now there is a new feeling added into the solastalgic mix – that of guilt. While the residents of towns and settlements around Lake Alexandrina and Lake Albert – Milang, Meningie, Narrung, Raukkan – ponder their futures and feel abandoned, some Clayton Bay people express a sense of discomfort and unease, as if they are somehow to blame for the lack of water elsewhere. I can’t help thinking that in a country with a less apathetic population this all would be the stuff of which civil wars are made.

Jane Hylton, Clayton Bay, November 2009

[i] Barlow, Maude. Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water. Melbourne, Black Inc., 2008. (First published in Canada by McClelland & Stewart, 2007, and in the United States by The New Press, 2008).

[ii] Department of Environment and Heritage, Government of South Australia. Coorong, and Lakes Alexandrina and Albert Ramsar Management Plan, September 2000.

[iii] Clayton Bay Community Association Chronicle, June/July 2009; the word solastalgia was coined by Glenn Albrecht from the School of Environment and Life Studies at the University of Newcastle, who points out that these feelings are “eerily similar to those of indigenous populations … forcibly removed from their traditional homelands”.