It Rained
While recent rains have troubled residents all along the Murray river, with families needing to evacuate their homes, several levees breached and agricultural land and infrastructure inundated, many Coorong locals and stakeholders, recognise that these recent outflows have been a welcome refreshing to the once drought stricken Murray-Darling system, helping to sustain native plants and fish stocks that have been slowly recovering since the Millenial drought broke in 2010.
What some might not know is that following record low water levels in the Murray river at the end of 2009, Ngarrindjeri elders, including Uncle Moogy and Tom and Ellen Troverrow, decided that a gathering of Murray river First Nations representatives, for ceremony and dance was needed for the health of the Coorong and it’s peoples to return, so an expedition was organised.
Having travelled more than 2’300km’s , stopping at significant sites along the Murray and Darling rivers and throughout the basin, to dance and to sing, to hold ceremony and to share creation stories, a group finally arrived near to the end of the river at Lake Albert in Meningie. There, at Brown’s beach they danced and sang again, until the skies opened up and it began to rain.
When Ngarrindjerri elder Uncle Moogy arrived at what might be called, his ‘personal dancing ground’, in the Coorong, the drought broke and it rained more than ‘cats and dogs’ !
by Isa Brown May 2024
