The Flooded Forest (Re-post)

A short film by Rory McLeod and Peter Yates. Plus the original text...

This was an early post from December 2023, deserving (I think) of a lot more than the 186 views it has enjoyed. I offer it as a partial antidote to some of the vile human politics of our times. A reminder of what we hold precious and why we resist.

The Flooded Forest (or What I did on my Holidays)

Way back in 2019, (remember?), my son Rory and I made a spur of the moment decision to make a film about the catastrophic fish deaths that occurred on the Baarka (Darling River), in Western New South Wales. Rory is a film-maker/cinematographer, and I am an anthropologist, so we had the skills to research and produce a film that came to be called “When the River Runs Dry”. It won awards in the US, it was virtually ignored in Australia. I won’t go into the content now, except to say that it was a sorry story of corporate greed, environmental destruction and the capture of political processes by powerful forces. It was also a story in which money won out over the trillions of lives that make up a vast river system, among the losers the (human) Gamilleroi and Baarkinji traditional owners of that river.

When the River Runs Dry was a cry of pain and anger. But it was not enough. We still wanted to articulate a crucial point: that a river, certainly this river, is not what people think it is. This river is many things: it is a living being, a manifestation of the Dreaming. It is a pulsing, vein of vibrant life in a harsh baked landscape. It does not run according to the rules of engineers or irrigators, though it has been wracked and depleted by their quest for control for many decades now. Still, when the rains fall in central Queensland, no-one, not even the most determined engineer can halt the flood that will course down those ancient channels and spread across the flat, flat land.

So the rains fell, and the flood came, and Rory and I excused ourselves from Christmas festivities, and drove 1000km north to meet the waters. Along the way an idea formed for a new project to be called “The Good Flood”, to show that a misbehaving river is truly a wonderful thing.

You can’t book a flood, you just have to be there when it happens. Not that this is so difficult – the flood pulse moves down the system quite slowly, so that if you are too late in Walgett, you can head on downstream and catch it in Brewarrina, or Bourke, or Louth…

So we spent several days out in remote parts, in intense heat with often tropical strength humidity, and certainly tropical strength mosquitoes. Actually, I’ve lived in Arnhem Land, and worked in Niger in the rainy season, and I have never experienced mozzies like those. Repellent worked a little, but, (despite the heat), we had to be covered head to foot, and still they bit us through our clothes.

Our friend Josh tells us that consciousness has a hum…well, I have heard it, and it wanted to eat me. It wanted me to give of myself to fertilise and renew that vast floodplain. If it had had its way, I’m sure I would be little more than a dry, shrivelled, empty sack lying under a tree with bones poking out. The hum was ubiquitous, day and night, though sometimes it was more frantic, and more panic inducing than other times. As darkness fell at the end of the day, we had no choice but to retreat to our mozzie domes and sweat in breathless heat until sleep caught up with us. At dawn, an army of hungry insects lurked, drawn to the scent of our blood-filled bodies, awaiting the inevitable moment when we would have to arise and get on the with the day.

It is hard to describe the scale of things. There are several Sydney Harbour’s worth of water flowing down those rivers every day, spreading steadily outwards across thousands of square kilometres of dry plain. At the edge is the merest trickle, as the water runs into deep cracks in the silty black soil. As I said, the land is incredibly flat, and though you might seem to be a long way from the flood, in reality you may be mere centimetres above water level – a level that was rising 30 centimetres a day, and would ultimately rise, who knows?...Another three or four metres? One morning I woke to find that the flood had crept across the dry cracked black soil as I slept and my little mozzie dome was now a reluctant and inelegant raft. The nylon material floated up around my bedroll so I stayed remarkable dry, but on emerging, I not only had to deal with the distracting onslaught of mozzies, but the now calf-deep unctuous grey mud that pulled an untied boot from my foot, and smeared itself over everything.

We took a canoe with us, and paddled out onto the floodplain, which lay under anything from a few centimetres to several metres of water. The Australian’s amongst you probably know of the grand trees we call River Red-gums, and these and the other floodplain species are simply magnificent: ancient ‘Grandmother trees’, gnarled and contorted by the centuries. Rory held the camera. I controlled the boat. And so we moved silently, gently through a magical flooded forest, moving in wonder from tree to tree, drinking in this visual feast, and stopping to touch rough bark or smooth, and delighting in the curtains of tinkling leaves we brushed through here and there. The only sounds, (other than the mosquitoes), were the murmur of water here and there, and a rich fabric of birdsong. One day you may see the footage. Maybe that will hint at the beauty. I cannot begin to describe it with mere words.

Now, let me remind you: It was hot. It was so hot that the sun shining on the rubber of my shoes was burning the tops of my feet. There was not a breath of wind save what we generated with our own movement. Sweat trickled off our bodies and carried sunscreen and stinging repellent into our eyes. And there was those constant mosquitoes. Biting our hands, landing on legs, arms, faces, biting us through our shirts. What I’m getting at here is that it should have been hellish. But it was not. It was indescribably beautiful.

And through it all, beyond the hardship and the beauty, I was aware of something that felt a lot like joy. Coming from the trees. Those trees, all of them hundreds of years old, some of them thousands, with blossoms a-buzz with native bees and all manner of waspy creatures, were bursting with an exuberant joy that cut through and negated all else. It was as though we were little children walking almost un-noticed through a great cathedral, amidst a congregation in full, glorious, joyous voice.

Dear friends. Never be afraid of hardship.