West Beach Pavilion, St Kilda – 14th August 2024
Our day on the shores of Nairm on Boonwurrung country (St Kilda Beach) was everything we hoped for and more. The weather was mild, perfect for being on the beach, a botanical walk on the foreshore, and participating in a citizen science program. William Pepper (Uncle Willie) gave us an extremely generous welcome to the Country. He conducted a smoking ceremony on the foreshore using a range of Indigenous plants, including the Cherry Ballart, which we use as a metaphor in our Centre for how we cooperate and support one another as a research community.
We swept the aromatic smoke over us and gathered around the fire for yarning right through to lunchtime. It was an inspiring conversation, with time for reflection and questions. Reece, who brought along his ARC research team, shared this reflection: Thank you so much for yet another uplifting and inspiring day. My key takeaway was Uncle Willie’s beautiful answer in response to Lewellyn’s excellent question about what can we do? ‘Just being here…and learning’.
What a great message. How hard is that? Not a high bar of expectation is it? Just listen and learn… Ask questions about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders’ cultures, be open, listen, and learn, so simple, yet so powerful.
After a delicious lunch on the deck of the West Beach Pavilion, we headed off for a foreshore walk and talk, learning all about Port Phillip before colonisation (the first tall ships arrived in 1812) and in deep time, when Nairm, now one of the biggest bays in the world, was a valley with biodiverse wetlands making it rich hunting and gathering grounds. We learned about the more recent decolonisation of the foreshore, with more plans ready for action and the Indigenous plants and fauna. The final event of the day involved us performing citizen science with a project focused on microplastics. We used quadrats (square metres) along a transect (line from high water to low water along the width of the beach) to measure (by collecting) the various plastics we found. We recorded the details and handed in our collections. This data is used in a larger project that the Port Phillip Bay Eco Centre manages.
Plastics in the form of recognisable plastic objects include nurdles (the small blobs of multi-coloured plastic that are manufactured into plastic items) and microplastics (which as the increasingly small plastic bits that break down over time – but are never gone). Plastics are becoming insidious, and nanoparticles of plastic have been found in blood and breast milk. This is a serious problem; the enormity and complexity of it were overwhelming… and many of us found it hard to stop searching.
Check out the Port Phillip EcoCentre | Connecting Our Community website.
