Riverine – by Kavita Bedford
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Cooks River, photo by Alison Klein
We moved to the river as a compromise. He dreamed of mountains while I yearned for the oceans. And as both were far from the other, and neither of us was ready for the fullness of such commitment either to the land or to each other, we decided to try life by a river. Betwixt and between.
The river slinks along the side of the city from the neighbourhood of Yagoona to Botany Bay, where the country was first settled by the British and where the airport now lies. When we first moved to the river, he worked all day visiting site locations, and was always scurrying between people and places. He liked moving, his limbs always twitching. My days were more sedentary. I worked alone and there were fewer places to visit beyond those in my mind. In the afternoons I often wandered along the river. On those days I would hardly see a soul. Sometimes a bewildered-looking mother pushing a pram would stop to ask for directions as an excuse to talk with me. Or other times, I would see the same old Chinese man and we would nod at each other. In the evenings, joggers would come out. But otherwise, the river and its walkways remained silent.
Then, it was as if the river was remembered. In the first month of the pandemic, the golden hour hit the river at six each evening. The skies were honey drenched. Hazy limbs of casuarinas stretched out. The smoke left over from the summer bushfires was still in the air, but easing. There was a mania. And fear was spoken aloud. But there was also a surge of strange pleasure, as people on footpaths shared the same string of emotions.
“There was a mania. And fear was spoken aloud. But there was also a surge of strange pleasure, as people on footpaths shared the same string of emotions.”
Flocks of people emerged from their buildings to take up running and bike riding; the pathways filled with the sound of bells tinkling as a sleek line of cyclists rushed past. Everyone called everyone up, and people would walk along the footpaths and talk about their lives.
Along one of the bridges, a small cabinet had been set up with a glass door; inside were books for borrowing or swapping. Take one, the sign said. Pelicans were painted on the cabinet in bold colours, and my partner and I agreed it was the sweetest book cabinet. But also that the books inside were terrible. In those early weeks, when there was electricity in the air and the energy between us was charged with hope, we said that we would collect all our unwanted books and fill this cabinet with glory.
When we first moved to the river, my partner and I had an idea that we would recreate scenes of European summers along our quiet and expansive riverway. We had both spent time living in Berlin, and we used to marvel at how groups of friends would gather for beers on tiny patches of grass along the canals off the Spree River. Musicians would strum guitars and artists would bring their charcoals and watercolours down to the banks. It was so vibrant. But, we would often say, so ugly.
Imagine, we’d said laughing, if they had a river like ours.
Imagine then, what they could do?
During those first weeks when the fear didn’t seem completely real, we threw down a rug and lay along the embankment with books. And people commented, oh what an enchanting idea, or, how lovely. But rarely did other people pause along the river. They were always biking, walking their dogs, and running.
By the end of the month we were told to go into lockdown and pick the people we would stay with. My partner wavered. He dismissed the fear and spent long periods of time bushwalking in the mountains with his friends. He wanted to move between people and places as he always had.
When my partner and I fought about rules, and guidelines, and who was vulnerable, and what is authority, and who gets to determine how we live, it felt like we were fighting about how we love.
At night, amid news of increasing deaths, early detections, and tips on how to stop the spread of this contagion, I read lines by the poet Natalie Diaz: ‘every story is a story of water’.
Daylight Savings ended. The golden hour came earlier, at 4 pm, and darkness spread more rapidly.
As the pandemic stretched over months, time ran tandem to the river. My days were linked to other city dwellers, whose sense of time, once ruled by workplaces, was now punctuated only by river walks.
“As the pandemic stretched over months, time ran tandem to the river. My days were linked to other city dwellers, whose sense of time, once ruled by workplaces, was now punctuated only by river walks.”
On certain days, the river was like glass, reflecting the sky back to itself.
One day, I watched a silver heron perched on a dead tree, bark and bird merging into one bar of light as the sun went down.
My partner stayed away longer and I felt myself growing moss in the space he had left behind. His commitment to me felt unclear. One night on a full moon, I walked beside the dark tangle of roots by the river, asking for a sign, and I spooked myself in the silence and had to jog quickly back home.
This could be a time to understand the ecology of things, my friend J said, as we walked her puppy along the embankment, 1.5 m apart, talking about what had become of our plans for the year. Who and what were we networked to?
My WhatsApp chats with friends across the world became filled with recommendations for meditation apps. Imagine roots, one teacher on a podcast said, going down through the floor, the soil, and finding the deeper roots connected to every living thing. This, her soothing West Coast American voice said, can be useful as meditation when lonely or disconnected, or we just feel the need to anchor ourselves. I thought of the mangrove roots of the river system, thick and entangled, absorbing our carbon and our sorrow, purifying the waterways and pulling us toward each other.
I read Olivia Laing reflecting on river civilisations – the Euphrates, the Nile and the Tigris, from which rose Sumer and Babylonia and Ancient Egypt. She wrote that she did not think it was a coincidence that the advent of the written word was nourished by river water.
Estuarine. Fluvial. Sediment. Brackish. Wet with light.
“Estuarine. Fluvial. Sediment. Brackish. Wet with light.”
My partner once told me that when he was young, the river used to be filthy. He and his brother used to take their bikes and ride along its winding paths. They held their noses at certain spots and pointed out the old tyres, bike frames and washing machines that had been dumped into the waterway. The trail led through industrial zones. Back then, with their bunkers, and wide car parks, and heavy-duty gates, and spotlights, and old discarded train carriages, these zones felt haunted.
The river had felt endless, he told me.
They could never build up the courage to reach the source of the river. There were days, he said, when they thought it didn’t exist. They dared each other to go that little bit further. But from fear, or the lack of a clear pathway, they eventually turned around.
As winter approached, I knew we weren’t flowing.
On a stormy day, I went for a run following the curves of the waterways. The clouds rolled in, the weak, bruised light licked the skyline, and I sweated.
On a morning, I walked along the embankment, greeting five pelicans who sat along a steel pipe by the bridge. I read online about the rehabilitation program that repaired the collapsing banks next to Tempe Reserve and how the birds had returned to the area. Sheas Creek used to form an intertidal zone where it joined the lower Cooks River and flowed into Botany Bay. Once, I read, this was all salt marshes and seagrass meadows, some of our most vulnerable ecosystems, dependent on the ebb and flow of the saltwater tide to stay alive.
On an afternoon, J and I walked past the houses that lined the river. Some were squat and wooden with gardens of ferns and succulents darkening their exterior. Others were light-filled exhibitionist spaces with large windows, eager to consume the view. We could see everything inside. At least it’s reciprocal, J said.
On an evening, I walked along the net of mangrove roots that gnarl and knot the dirt pathway. A moorhen skidded and ran across the water – a small miracle, before the light disappeared.
I read stories from across the oceans of other relationships breaking down during this time. I read of heartbreak in Brooklyn apartments, and meltdowns in London housing. The fear fell away as I walked up and down the river, as I caught light dancing on the water.
“I read stories from across the oceans of other relationships breaking down during this time. I read of heartbreak in Brooklyn apartments, and meltdowns in London housing. The fear fell away as I walked up and down the river, as I caught light dancing on the water.”
*
On a morning, I listened as children from the local primary school went for a walk along the river, learning about the local flora and fauna.
Ahmad did you see this one? It’s a melaleuca paperbark, said the teacher.
Remember this, okay, Ahmad? It might not be here when you’re older. Repeat the word. Melaleuca.
During the bubonic plague they would throw the dead into the river. It was hard to imagine this river choked by bodies.
On a solo walk in the twilight I imagined things that lived in the large of the mangroves, like a modern-day suburban Loch Ness. I felt a tremendous need building in me and, as I walked, I almost willed the river into a myth of creation or redemption. I sat by the river asking deeply self-absorbed questions, as though it were my spirit guide.
The whole world felt river-run.
On an afternoon, I walked past a bouquet of flowers tied around a tree. We will miss you, it read. Handwritten cards said: from your wife, your daughter, your grandchildren.
Lie here, one card said, in your favourite spot by the river.
Spring emerged.
River, River, River. I’m sick of these river walks, said my friend J, as we walked her puppy along the same route we had followed for months.
My partner came down from the mountain and we took beers and sat along the river. It was serene and we both got lost in our own thoughts as we watched the water ripple.
It’s strange, he said. Each day the current seems to move in a different direction.
Look, I said, pointing to a cormorant, sitting alone drying its wings. It has to do this, I said, because it doesn’t have the oils that other birds have in their feathers.
Finally, he looked at me. He said he questioned whether our love for each other had a future. And I thought of his childhood bike rides where he ran away scared before he ever found the mouth of the river. It might be good, he said, for him to move out and away from the river.
*
Yesterday has already vanished among the shadows of the past; tomorrow has not yet emerged from the future. ‘You have an intermediate space,’ wrote Olivia Laing.
The information plaques along the river describe mudbank ecology. Terrestrial ecology. Intertidal block pools. Sandstone blocks that have been cut to hold water when the tide recedes. The plaques explain how this in-between space has become home to unlikely seaweeds, shellfish, crabs and snails.
I think about how we are learning to live in the breakdown even before the world knows what it will become. The liminal. The woman before. The void. Amniotic fluid. The ability to flow like water.
How do we bear it?
Frida Kahlo said, ‘I do not think that the banks of a river suffer because they let the river flow, nor does the earth suffer because of the rains, nor does the atom suffer for letting its energy escape. To my way of thinking, everything has its natural compensation.’
Each day, I follow the conduits of the river moving towards their destination, my eyes drinking in the briny water as time pushes on, vast, slippery, riverine.
Where a river is today is not where it will be tomorrow. ▼
This work is part of our Australian Nature Writing Project suite
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