Memoryscoping the Bunurong Coast: A project-based PhD speculating on the intimate and complex histories of a personally significant place
Riddled with game trails, worn by heifers, mares, wombats and wallabies.
I pause by the ambling creek to admire the beautiful skeletal boughs – misshapen ghostly and grey, clutching at the early morning gloom.
It’s deathly quiet here hidden from view.
Photograph: Coastal Wattle, Wreck Beach Farm, Cape Paterson, 2017; Rees Quilford; digital;
This work was developed on the unceded lands and waterways of the Boon wurrung and Woi Wurrung language groups of the Kulin Nations. Much of the fieldwork, including visitation, writing and documentation, was undertaken on the lands of the Bunurong/Boonwurrung people.
The Bunurong/Boonwurrung people are the first storytellers of these lands. Their sovereignty was never ceded. This is, and always will be Aboriginal Land.
I respectfully acknowledge the Ancestors and Elders, past, present and emerging.
In terms of my position as a visitor on those lands, I state my lineage and purpose. I am Rees Quilford. I am a fourth-generation settler of Welsh-Irish descent. I am a writer, communications professional and a PhD candidate with RMIT University.
I was born and currently live on Bunurong/Boonwurrung land. I try to tread lightly, understand my place and listen to what it’s telling me.