Cooks River I Want To Swim In You
My beloved Goolay’yari - Cooks River,
I wake up every morning to stare at you through my window. I ride my bike along your curves. I go on romantic solo walks along your banks at sunset. I can’t help but notice though, and I really don’t mean this as a slight, but you seem to be kind of… well… dirty.
I’m sure you’ve heard what people are saying about you. The Sydney Morning Herald called you “the most tortured, polluted urban river in the country.” I know you can’t help it, but don’t you think there could maybe be some truth to what people say?
I hope this is just a phase you’re going through. For the vast majority of your life you were flawless — sustaining life, providing fresh water, food, medicine, transportation.
A long time ago, people swam in your crystalline waters on summer days. You were an immortal goddess, natural, winding, growing and shrinking with the rains and the droughts. You were home to a seemingly infinite number of birds, fish, bugs. Kangaroos lived along your banks. I wish I could have seen you back then, in your glory days. You’re beautiful still, but it’s the beauty of an aging movie star who smokes two packs a day.
They filled in your wetlands, built dams, turned part of you into a concrete canal for stormwater and rubbish. You became a dumping ground for industrial waste, cyanide spills, mercury, copper, battery acid, diesel. Every poison you could imagine. The animals slowly fled or died off.
I imagine what it would be like to swim in you. If I didn’t die from poison or a brain-eating-amoeba, surely I would get very sick from something similar. Maybe the chemicals would be so toxic that my body would melt into you, liquifying and becoming river.
Your arms reach out across the south of Sydney, Alexandria Canal, hugging the airport, Wolli Creek – a waterway that is ungoogleable because they named a suburb after it. Smaller limbs run through the suburbs like fingers grasping onto the 500,000 people who live in your catchment.
Look, it’s not your fault you’re like this. They’re abusing you. We’re abusing you. When there is heavy rain, sewerage runoff ends up in you. Probably some of my poo is in you. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.
All around Sydney, on buses and trains, teenage boys with fishing rods over their shoulders flock to you. They reel their shining treasure out of your chocolate milky waters with a primal urge to barbecue and eat them, as is surely their nature.
I guess it’s a fairly benign way for teens to express their inherent cruelty. Or maybe the fish don’t mind. Maybe they appreciate it. Maybe they’re kind of goth fish that were planning on getting a lip piercing anyway, but were struggling to make it to Off Ya Tree because the one in Newtown closed.
For tens of thousands of years though, you were filled with mullet, a healthy and plentiful food source for all. The kind of mullets around here have changed drastically, now being on the heads of the fisherboys.
Baby, it’s all going to be okay, I know it. We all want to see you get healthy again. I see the Mudcrabs out there, a group of community members picking up rubbish with their plastic pincers. Everyone is obsessed with you. There are so many organisations and people advocating for you.
My greatest dream is to swim in you one day. I’ll walk up to Kendrick Park in the middle of the night and slide in off the rocks, letting you touch every inch of me. You’ll hold my hair in your hands. And you will smell like nothing. I’ll swim to Fatima Island and lie in the sand amongst the pelicans while you lick up against me. The sound of trains and planes and the Princes Highway will fade away. There is only the sound of running water, of fish, of wildlife, of laughter. Everyone will be there.
Love you forever,
Izzi
