Capertee Weaving and the Water Ceremony

By Alex Wisser

On the 14th of November, a handful of Capertee residents, myself and fellow travellers on the Capertee Weaving Water Project woke at four in the morning and travelled to the top of Dunville Loop in The Capertee Valley.  We were met by traditional custodian Peter Swain and several of his family, and drove in procession along the base of the escarpment to a stream crossing the road where we parked and gathered in a circle.  Ochre was passed around as Peter worked to get the fire going in the Coolamon.  This was our first attempt at a water ceremony along the Capertee River.  Despite a good bit of early morning confusion, it began at the moment of sunrise, as planned.  The sun crested the cliffs to the North, somewhere above the source of the small tributary that flowed across the road as Peter smoked the circle of people gathered and spoke to us of what we were doing here, on this road at this river in this valley. 

 The Water Ceremony, he explained, was originally performed as a collective expression of the various clans that lived along a water course.  They would meet at its source, as we were doing, and throughout the Ceremonial Season, the ceremony would be performed along the river. As the water moved from country to country, the ceremony was reperformed, acknowledging the connection that water made between the peoples that lived along its course, that shared the life it distributed across Nation boundaries.  This was continued until the river reached the sea.  This ceremony would only last one day. As it was the first attempt, it had been decided that we would start small, with the idea that it could be repeated in following years with other clans invited to participate.

A large quartz stone was found and the ceremony began.  The stone was smoked, and then passed around the circle. As each of us held the stone, we were asked to put into it the energy of that which we wished to contribute to the river: a wish, a desire, a hope, a feeling: whatever we would like to send down the river.  After the stone had been passed around the circle, it was lowered into the river where the energy that we had invested in it would be carried away by the flowing water.

This might not sound like a particularly challenging thing to do, but it was also not a simple act. I cannot say how anyone else in the circle felt about what we were doing, but for me, inside the privacy of my own thoughts, there were voices that niggled at the earnestness of what we were doing.  What right did I have to be here?  Wasn’t this some kind of childish pretending?  To put my doubts into words is to formulate them as something more definite than they were but there they were, swirling around in my head as usual, undercutting the world around me with their protective shield of skepticism.  Peter had explained that painting with ochre allowed the ancestors to see you, and so, this kind of self-consciousness was understandable. I let these thoughts do their bit, being old enough to know that they are easily exhausted by their own energy.  The sincerity of what we were doing was enough for me to put aside my reservations and quietly participate.  Into the stone I put not a wish or a desire, and not a hope or a single word of intention, but instead I gave to it only the silence that I had in me.  The river did not want me to tell it what I thought.  I knew this much.

We were also invited to select individual stones that we could put our personal thoughts into and we quietly dropped these into the stream. We repeated the ceremony several times, stopping at two other spots along the river before gathering at Glenn Alice Hall for lunch.  Here we were met by a much larger group of people who ate with us and the ceremony was once again repeated.  The stone was again passed around and smoked and then lowered into the river by another member of the group. 

We continued down the valley, stopping next at The Capertee Water Weaving project, a rambling 21 metre long artwork of woven organic material that traced the contour of a small hillside, made by the Capertee community under the guidance of lead artist Leanne Thompson.  The work, as with the ceremony, is part of our larger project to generate a community wide consideration of the hydrology of the valley, integrating cultural interventions like these ones with the delivery of workshops in Natural Sequence Farming techniques and a scientific understanding of the hydrology of the valley.  The rambling structure of wicker circles, bound together into a crazy fence on the hillside in the middle of the valley had about it an irrepressible energy.  It is rare that a community engaged artwork is able to carry the kind of spontaneity and life that this work projected.  

Again we moved down the valley, and arrived at our final station, at Coorongooba, where Coorongooba creek met the Capertee River.  From here it continued through the mountains to become the Colo River before joining the Hawkesbury on the Eastern Plains and from there flowing out to the sea.  A spot had been chosen and a tree selected.  A carving was made into the tree, in a design based on the meeting of the two waters at Coorongooba. The audience was invited to apply ochre to the design.  We performed another ceremony, circling the tree in a gesture of gratitude. 

A final water ceremony was performed at the meeting of the two waters, at sunset, completing the cycle. The day was finished off around the fire at the campsite above the river.

Thinking back over the day, I found it to be an odd combination of cultures.  In contrast to the reverence of the ceremony, the artwork stood as an exuberant celebration on the hillside. The meaning of the various parts of this day seemed to balance in contrast to one another.  The performance of an ancient ceremony and the construction of a completely new-born thing.  Against the backdrop of the valley, the two can be brought together as the spectrum of culture. The one was the opportunity, so rare in our modern experience, to pay respect to the world of which we are a part, and the other was our capacity, as a part of that world, as a participant of that landscape, to produce life, to express its joyful fleeting energy, its effulgence and fecundity.  The artwork participated in the life of the grass and the expression of the wild flowers that surrounded it, as the ceremony participated in the silent weighted and impenetrable persistence of rocks over which water flows to the sea.

This project was made possible through funding support from the above

Three solar energy concepts that will surprise and delight...

Mark and Bjorn are developing an on-farm solar energy project with horticulturalists Erika Watson and Hayden Druce of Epicurean Harvest (in Hartley). After meeting on the farm the four of them have exchanged some exciting ideas via email which we really needed to share with the world… In this post we have included some pictures from Epicurean Harvest’s November ‘I’ll be damned! farm resilience’ fundraiser event, when they opened their gates to a couple of hundred people who were treated to food, tours, music and talks. As a result they are well on their way to being able to fund the installation of some P.A. Yeomans-style keyline water conservation and irrigation infrastructure on their farm in 2019. Brilliant.

This is Erika

Email 1 - Mark writes…

…We are keen to start throwing some ideas back and forth with some of the concepts we were talking about on our visit. Ideas around how to be more creative in re-thinking the ways we move water around a property and what unconventional ways we can use energy that is self sufficient. And of course how to make it look amazing!  

In our meeting we went down a few paths not limited to solar powered little buggies that transport hose and pump water around the paddock. We discussed the ideas of retractable dam covers and floating solar. We played with the concept of the whole farm being one big energy producing entity and how to relate that concept into an artwork.

Let us know some of your thoughts, also if you'd still like to work with us on this? Where you'd like to see it go and how it can benefit the farm?

Email 2: Erika writes…

…Our ideas are obviously coming from our own context, but applicable to the exciting movement happening in the agricultural space. We are also 2 people with science degrees and creative backgrounds (Hayden music, me painting).

After you visited we went though in more detail the ideas we had thrown out there in the initial email. With a bit of space we have had more thoughts on those and the applicable nature for wider uptake as an artistically beautiful and agriculturally functional piece of solar science.

Below I have fleshed out thoughts/concepts more, and knowing you don't have a trillion dollar budget, aimed high with the idea of concepts translated into more financially achievable outcomes.

Floating Panels:

We discussed the dam and water (obviously our biggest issue and ongoing threat to livelihood). We aim to have the dam in place/built by February. If the panels went over this, we were thinking instead of floating it would be better to be a shelter. Floating as we mentioned would block air flow and light to the dam, affecting biology, also the surface would fluctuate with rainfall or use and perhaps be problematic for panels resting in the water’s surface. A structure built over the dam or part of the dam, perhaps to look like carved tree trunks or woven from materials (thinking of your bamboo Mark, but perhaps would need to be in metal in the dam then to wood if needed and the garden by the bay in Singapore), panels as leaves/canopy. Functionally this would reduce evaporation, still allow light through for dam life, and contribute to farm power needs. The tree/s a direct relationship to real trees/plants, photosynthesis and power of solar energy. The trees that were in the water (ie "planted" at the bottom of the dam), would have to go in, at least in part, before it filled up... its highly unlikely we would empty it to do the project, I'm sure you totally understand that! This sounds epic, Hahaha! But thought I'd flesh out what I can see on this end. This would be beneficial to our farm and dam project, but also to many farmers, who look to bore/groundwater as a source of irrigation as it doesn't evaporate... until you use it. We don't want to use groundwater, water in the ground/soil is the best place for it to be! Taking it up, throws it into the atmosphere, and moves it into the different water cycles around the planet. Water vapour contributes to 60-85% of the greenhouse effect. Workshops/engagements could be on photosythesis and photovoltaics, water cycles, carving, weaving, structural integrity...

Solar Powered Buggy:

We move cows/livestock almost daily or sometimes faster (depends on pasture quality etc) to enable grass to grow, and exudates to pour into the soil, improving organic matter. Many farmers moving towards regenerative agriculture do this, and a big blockage for uptake of these methods is the labour involved. That of carrying and moving fencing and watering infrastructure. An amazing designed "buggy" that holds and moves an IBC (1000L) of water, a water trough, stores fencing equipment (lightweight) and acts as a remote energiser for the fencing would be AMAZING. Obviously powered by solar. It would be super cool if it was remote controlled. This would suit pastured poultry, small herds of livestock suck as goats, sheep and even cows. This concept would have to be upscaled to apply to larger farmers with larger numbers of livestock. As an artwork, it would be up to design to translate the multifunctional coolness of something like this (i'm kinda seeing some sort of kinetic sculpture, even steam punk thing or a even streamline and sleek, or totally made of recycled materials to translate ease of uptake). Solar energy of course feeding the freedom of regenerative farming. Workshops/engagements can be on art as kinetic multifunctional use, solar energy, animals are part of a sustainable landscape...

Whole Farm Solar Energy:

I had the idea of what I was calling ribbons on the contour. Below the drainages cut for the dam (on contour), this is where forestry can take place and watered passively but instead of planting trees (a time vs wow factor to consider), a landscape sculpture that, like contour forestry, is below the dam drainage contours, built as a long tube (perhaps only needs to be 30cm tall?), woven out of logs, sticks, branches, filled with composted/ing materials and seed bombs of grasses, herbs, forbs, etc, faster growers than trees (which can also go in, but later in succession – also an important concept in regenerative farming). Increasing the biodiversity, solar harvest and a whole farm approach to sculpture. Workshops/engagements can be on biodiversity and ecosystem processes, photosynthesis and solar, sculpture across landscape...

This is Hayden

Email 3: Mark writes…

Erika! Awesome.

Floating Panels:

This is cool, bamboo would be great for the canopy, but it doesn’t do so well in direct sunlight for long. I’ve attached a photo of a project I did in Larjamanu where we wove disused aluminium cables from power lines. I can’t stop thinking Kinetic sculpture and maybe the solar power lowers the canopy in during the sunniest times of the day and opens it back up later when the sun goes away. Also floating barges are relatively simple to make, and don’t need to cover the whole space but might just float about. Plus they make really interesting platforms for sculptural work.

Solar powered Buggy.

The more I think about this the more I feel like farmers are just going to be like, well why not just put the IBC on a trailer and tow it around. Also it keeps on feeling like a ‘start up’ idea rather than a creative project. What do you guys think? BUT there are still creative solutions to this problem that would be really fun to play with. These sprinkler tractors https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTsEzqwjS0I (video complete with inspiring music) I was talking about in our meeting the other day, I’m thinking of as a fun model to scale up… not sure yet how useful it would be but it would be fun.

Whole Farm Solar.

Yeah this is great, this to me is a great spot to use woven bamboo, and let it naturally decompose once the growth around it gets thick enough.

Your enthusiasm is awesome and its contagious!

Lets keep chatting!

Email 4: Bjorn writes…

My thoughts at the moment are that the solar over dam idea sounds most practical. I really love the buggies, but agree it's kinda #startup. Floating solar is generally seen as a pain not worth the effort in the industry, so using the space of the dam without using floats and while respecting the solar requirements of the water would be really neat.

Looking forward to see where we can go with the next development!