WINTER—SPRING - Canberra 100

Strange Bedfellows
Image: Lindy Allen.
20 April
As part of One River and to celebrate the Centenary
of Leeton, Centenary of Canberra history and heritage
adviser, Dr David Headon, will discuss the international
links between Leeton, Canberra and Chicago as part of
Leeton’s Art Deco Festival in April 2013. Nestled within
the Murray-Darling Basin near the Murrumbidgee River,
Leeton is a world-renowned art deco town designed by
Canberra’s own Walter Burley Griffin.
Streets within Leeton Shire feature 35 buildings listed
on the Australian Institute of Architects’ Register of
Significant 20 th Century Buildings, such as the landmark
Roxy Theatre. But this impressive statistic represents only
part of Leeton’s unique design heritage. The town can
rightly boast a rich national and international narrative.
The 2013 Leeton Art Deco Festival includes a cocktail
party at the Roxy, classic cars, Psychic Town Tours, brunch
in the gardens at the Historic Hydro, an antique fair,
markets, music and a movie projection onto the historic
Walter Burley Griffin water towers on the Saturday night.
Historic Hydro Motor Inn, Leeton
www.leetontourism.com.au
One River
throughout 2013
Image: Lindy Allen.
One River is a multi-state and territory project
recognising the national capital’s location within
the Murray-Darling Basin, and its connection to the
watery heart of the country. One River will encourage
people to tell their story, to listen to others’ stories
and ultimately to create a new narrative about our
relationship with this most iconic of Australia’s
waterways. One River will link South Australia,
Victoria, NSW, Queensland and the ACT. It will be
forged by creative minds of all kinds working within
local communities.
Regional Australia faces a great many challenges, no
more so than in the Murray-Darling Basin. This project
will draw out the layers of complexity in human grief
and joy, and explore those places in ourselves where
we often fear to go. In recent years, river communities
have increasingly turned to the arts for the expression
of their passion and their concern. One River will
draw inspiration from the many projects about
water that have occurred in river communities
and in cities - water as a finite resource, rivers as
a source of renewal and those projects with more
overtly political messages. By linking the national
capital to communities throughout the basin via the
river system, One River allows us to build on the
experience of this body of work, to foreground the
issue of water and place it on the national stage.
Components of the One River program include ten
creative collaborations with artists and communities
throughout the Murray-Darling Basin. There will
be a new radio play project in which a script-writer
will draw on secret or forgotten stories offered by
schools and community groups. These stories will
form the basis of a ten episode play. The related
photographic project invites people to upload to the
One River website a photo of their favourite part of
the river at their favourite time of day, as a special
birthday tribute to Canberra for 12 March 2013, the
100 th birthday.
For the first time in almost 200 years, as part of
One River, the traditional owners of the lands around
the Murray Mouth, the Ngarrindjeri, and the clans of
the headwaters of the Murray and Murrumbidgee,
the Ngunnawal, Ngambri and Ngarigo people,
will connect the source to the sea by revitalising
an ancient ceremony. The Ngarrindjeri people,
represented by elder Major ‘Moogy’ Sumner and the
Tal-kin-jeri Dancers, will travel to Canberra and the
surrounding regions in September 2013 to join the
Ngunnawal nation and other Indigenous peoples for
the Murra Bidgee Mullangari River Ceremony — to
heal the river and reinvigorate cultural ties between
the source and the sea. As initiator of this ceremony,
Major Sumner said, “These are friendships that existed
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canberra100.com.au