The Land of Plenty: Woowookarung Regional Park

Kim-barne Wadawurrung Tabayl… Welcome to Wadawurrung land.

Woowookarung Regional Park, established in 2016, lies within Wadawurrung land, which encapsulates the Geelong, western Melbourne and Great Ocean Road areas. Woowookarugung Park unites the borders of Ballarat East, Canadian and Mount Clear; and is populated with roos, mountain bikers, echidnas, mineshafts, birds, horses, walkers, dogs, and wildflowers.

The Maranganna birds (or the Australian Wood Duck, chenonetta jubata) occupy aquatic locales of Australia's eastern states. You wouldn’t expect to find them amongst the Stringybark and budding wildflowers, but they characterise the land. The heathy grasses and open forest provides a safe hideaway for the ducks. The surrounding waterways – the Yarrowee River, Lake Esmond, White Swan Reservoir, the unnamed creeks and ponds and any area flooded by the winter downpours – act as habitat for these ducks.

And as they explore the lands surrounding their semiaquatic homes, in search of food or refuge, they remind those visiting Woowookarung that we are an element of all of the land which we inhabit, not just the scenery we see directly before us.

The area of Woowookarung Regional Park existed as Basalt mining country, yet the total gold production of the area is completely unknown, as all mines were private or alluvial. Therefore, many of the mine shaft locations are unknown, partially collapsed or hidden, only discovered and mapped in the last 50 years by prospectors. The Woowookarung Regional Park boasts minimal signage as well as unnamed, informal tracks which promote complete insertion into distraction-less land.

The word ‘Woowookarung’ means “land of plenty”. A plentiful supply of gold, of air, of trees and shrubbery and food and shelter, and hideaways and stolen cars as well as extensive undertone of threat.

The mottled Wood Duck are here, in this place with no consistent waterways. Although beauty exists here, danger does as well, no matter how blindly we believe it cannot. The raw and unrefined tracks which encompass the ingenuousness of the space likewise involves unsealed roads laden with holes, rubbish. Woowookarung’s distance from central, urban Ballarat gives space to breathe, yet its location between Mt Clear and Canadian facilitates a pathway for stolen vehicles to be transported around the outskirts of policed area. When Woowookarung was established as a public park, it was marked “everyone’s land”. It really does mean everyone, the people who run and the people who want to hurt the runner. The dogs who roam and the dogs who strike when they perceive an attack. The mine shafts, the people who explore their openings, and the people who live in those mineshafts because it is the safest place for them, or because it will hide their identity from law enforcement.

If a friend, a 20-something young man at the peak of his fitness feels unsafe running through this area on his marathon training, there must be something to be feared. And there is. 2 disappearances, 1 year apart, women running alone, mothers, lost for months on end. Samantha Murphy, the most recent disappearance, is still missing. She is believed to be dead, a 22 year-old local man is in police custody for murder, his motive still unknown. A beautiful landscape cannot facade this. Woowookarung has become the label for danger, grief and a community who fears their own members. We are faced by a duck out of park, there is palpable caution in the air.

The beauty of this place does not mean everyone is safe here. In that way, an unsafe landscape cannot facade the beauty, the gift of this “rugged bushland” between the Wadawurrang people and the current inhabitants of the land.