ere, we are in an ancient landscape suspended in time. We are on Whadjuk Noongar Boodjar, the Country of the Whadjuk Noongar people. Cared for over generations. We could be hovering here a thousand years ago. Hues of flora – buttery, emerald, hazel – paint a gradient between the gradual dunal rises and claypan flats. At our feet, a thick crust of land is smudged by fungi and water, soaking and drying like a sponge, a microcosm of the tapestries of streams and wetlands across the whole of this Boodjar (Country). We see scratchings of kwindas (southern brown bandicoots), native bees stuck to braided drosera beneath an old-growth shrubland. Against the sun, the ngoolark’s (Carnaby’s black cockatoo’s) screech and flicker, perching to feed on mundjit (Banksia menziesii). The Kartamoarnda (the black hills or Darling Scarp) press down upon this landscape and feed it with water, reminding us that the flows are deep
