Beyond simply knowing, the residents and dwellers of Brisbane sense that the lands on which we live and work were—and are—swamp: fed by rainfall, criss-crossed by waterways and wetlands. We sense it when unseasonable rain turns the streets back to creeks, ignoring what has been built there since Brisbane was established. Such an anthropocentric understanding of the floods, as “extraordinary” events (for instance, Queensland Rural and Industry Development Authority, 2022), belie the natural origins of the waters, which have visited these lands longer than humans have existed.

It was through colonial projects of domesticating the land to make way for urbanisation that these ancient waterways disappeared. No longer required by the residents of Brisbane, and decried as “nuisances” and cesspools of disease, the swamps and marshes were drained, redirected, or otherwise removed from public awareness. Without these natural drainage channels, the floodwaters have nowhere to go but into the places where we Brisbanites live, as seen in the devastating 1874 floods, through to today.

Such a fate is what befell the wetlands known as Barrambin. Situated among several ridges to the northwest of present-day Brisbane, Barrambin was the main source of freshwater in the area where the waters of the Brisbane River were too brackish to be consumed (“The Water Supply,” 1858). a meeting place for Turrbal communities long before the European peoples came, and decades after (Kerkhove, 2018), then a catchment of fresh drinking water for the colonial Europeans, who called it York’s Hollow. The swamp was drained in the 1880s to make way for the recreational reserve known as Victoria Park (“Drainage of York’s Hollow,” 1883)—a name and a function that it has retained to this day.

Now, all that visibly remains of Barrambin is a chain of ponds on the southeastern side of Victoria Park, labelled onsite as York’s Hollow. The legacy of Barrambin nevertheless persists: Australian ibis, often referred to pejoratively as “bin chickens,” continue to nest by these remnants of Barrambin, where they no doubt have done so longer than the lands have been named. Nothing evidences this history more than the storms that devastate Brisbane, during which Barrambin re-emerges in the patterns of overland flow. It is these ancient wetlands of Barrambin, the waterways that fed it, and the waterways it fed, that this project is interested in.

References

Drainage of York’s Hollow. (1883, June 16). Brisbane Week, 6.

Kerkhove, R. (2018). Aboriginal camps as urban foundations? Evidence from southern Queensland. Aboriginal History Journal, 42, 141–172. https://doi.org/10.22459/AH.42.2018.07

Queensland Rural and Industry Development Authority. (2022, June 22). Extraordinary Disaster Assistance Recovery Grants—South East Queensland Rainfall and Flooding. Queensland Rural and Industry Development Authority. https://www.qrida.qld.gov.au/program/extraordinary-disaster-assistance-recovery-grants-south-east-queensland-rainfall-and-flooding

The Water Supply. (1858, March 24). Moreton Bay Courier. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/3724281?searchTerm=the%20water%20supply%20york%27s%20hollow