<
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/how-dare-you-do-this-how-defence-s-river-of-poison-put-thousands-of-years-of-culture-in-jeopardy-20230522-p5da6z.html>
"It’s one of Australia’s most spellbinding strips of coastline, where turquoise
waters lap against sandstone cliffs and ribbons of white sand curl around
unspoilt eucalypt forest.
Since word spread internationally that it harboured “the whitest sand on
earth”, Jervis Bay has become a tourist mecca, attracting more than 1.4 million
visitors a year.
But Aboriginal people have always known the beauty of this place. To the Koori
kids growing up in the village of Wreck Bay, this was home, and it was perfect.
Or so they thought.
“I was Moana in paradise,” laughs one of Wreck Bay’s elders, Aunty Vida Brown,
when asked to describe her childhood in the village on Jervis Bay’s southern
peninsula, 10 kilometres from the famous Hyams Beach.
With her 12 siblings, she spent her days swimming with stingrays, rock hopping
along the beaches, shrieking with laughter as they leapt off sand dunes into
the creeks. They devoured lobster, oysters and abalone fresh from the sea.
Occasionally, a grenade would wash up on the sand, collateral from the nearby
Defence base. And after a day in the water, the children’s skin would erupt
with painful sores and rashes: the first signs of trouble in little Vida’s
paradise.
Sitting in a school hall half a century later, battling breast cancer and on
dialysis for kidney disease, Aunty Vida finally learnt the ugly truth.
Wreck Bay was contaminated."
Via
Guardian Australia.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
