AEON Issue Fourteen December 2021
Dani Finch Deputy Head of School Classes K–6
Reflections on The Ord As Sydney passes the end of its thirteenth week in lockdown, the fact that Year 11 was, a few short months ago, paddling down a river in remote Western Australia seems like fantasy. And yet, it happened!
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hat began with a 3,000km plane trip from Sydney into Darwin was followed by a 4am start next morning to travel 830km by road through the Northern Territory and into Western Australia. Our destination, Lake Argyle and The Ord River – just outside of Kununurra in the East Kimberley. On Highway 1, on the Northern Territory side of the Western Australian border, The Kimberley announces itself with boabs. These elephantine trees let you know in no uncertain terms that you are entering an extraordinary place. The section of the Ord that we will paddle runs 55km from the dam wall (built in 1971 for irrigation and power) to Kununurra. Our entry to the river is at the dam's PAGE
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outlet, and after brief instructions, we're off with everything we need for the next three days packed into our canoes, and all at once, we are alone in the wilderness of the Kimberley. Our little community is comprised of our 2021 Year 11 cohort, Glenaeon's Outdoor and Environmental Education staff members Scottie Williams and Kristen Gardner plus two Outdoor Ed sessional staff and one 'everything outdoors-loving' Deputy. Paddling just after the dam outlet requires mostly steering, leaving ample opportunity on the first day to take in the red sandstone cliffs fringed by reeds, pandanus and paperbarks. I experience a now-familiar sensation as the river takes us. My chest lightens and expands as the environment
demands that I slow down, attend and be present. For me, it's a physical expression of the words of Dr MiriamRose Ungunmerr Baumann of the Ngan'gityemerri language from Daly River in the Northern Territory and Senior Australian of the Year: To know me is to breathe with me; to breathe with me is to listen deeply; to listen deeply is to connect. This is sound, the sound of deep calling to deep. Dadirri, the deep innerspring inside us, we call on it, and it calls on us. We are River People; we cannot hurry the river; we need to move with the current and understand its ways. I'm not a river person. I'm a Sydney person, a city person with the mixed
