Just as I start to wonder how this place can possibly be a conservation project, Rene pulls up behind another truck. We’ve reached the end of the road, where suddenly a vast wetland comes into view, spilling out across the horizon in front of us. I gasp, doing a double-take between the lifeless field in the rearview mirror and the lush wetland ahead.
We step out into the windy winter sunshine. From my vantage point on top of the embankment I can see water flowing from the wetlands through a pipe beneath our feet, flowing out into the dry shrubs on the other side of the road.
Even in non-flood years, the entire area is a haven for resident birds like galahs (a watermelon-pink cockatoo), white-plumed honeyeaters and the endangered Australian painted snipe.
The brothers tell me that just a few weeks ago, most of the land was brown and bone dry, like the country we passed during our drive. But the land is incredibly resilient. “You just have to treat it right and love it and it will come back,” says Jamie. This water is the first to flow across Gayini since construction ended, and already the country is coming back to life. And when the water returns, Jamie says, so do the birds.
And in an unusual arrangement, Rene explains that the conservation work on both properties will be funded in part by sustainable grazing on sections of the land that were already converted to pasture.
As we get back in the car, Jamie tells me that this is just one of more than 1,000 cultural sites on Gayini, including hearths, shell middens, trees scarred from bark harvesting, and burial grounds. But after listening to Jamie and Rene, I realize that these sites are not anthropological curiosities — they’re vital touchstones in a living culture.
Aboriginal Australians practice the longest continuous human culture on earth, and the brothers explain that their culture is inextricably tied to the land: without one they cannot have the other. But European settlement disrupted that connection, depriving First Nations people of both culture and country.
But things are changing. Rene and Jamie have visited these places since they were children, walking across the country, practicing their culture, and paying respect to their ancestors buried across the landscape. Gayini is home; the country sustains and fulfills them in a way that no other place can.
I’m learning to read the landscape after few days with Jamie and Rene. Looking out on the sun-drenched country, I can pick out the subtle, water-carved depressions, the low sand ridges, and distant creeks marked by gum trees. I see where the water will flow, when the floods come and the birds descend on Gayini.
I think back to the handwritten poster I saw hanging on the homestead wall, left by consortium members when they gathered to discuss their long-term vision for this country: “That the traditional custodians of Gayini heal its lands and waters, and in return, Gayini heals its people.” I believe it.
A version of this story appeared in the Winter 2019 issue of Nature Conservancy Magazine .