Mythology and community memory are important for environmental sustainability. For example, Bowral, a New South Wales country town, holds an annual bunyip festival to celebrate the memory of their place. (The bunyip is an Australian monster that scares children away from dangerous waters and also punishes wrong-doers those who misuse their environment's resources.) Bowral was built upon a swamp, gradually excavated into a township. One of its early industries was peat-cutting, but as the swamp slowly disappeared, so did the industry. The settlers started to remember earlier tales about the bunyip that lives in the swamp. They told themselves these stories to preserve what was left of the bunyip's habitat. Today, the township celebrates this re-emergence of the bunyip, as a guardian of the place. The land around them is inhabited and it has been embraced as a place for creative expression, rather than solely as a resource.

When individuals and communities have wanted to explain their specific connection to a particular place, they have often resorted to the excuse of animals. When a new freeway is developed, strategically we cannot declare that the land is important to us (let alone that it has spirit), because this is an unacknowledged and undervalued relationship for the west. Instead, we protest that the land is a habitat for cute animals such as koalas or for endangered species; animals have often been an acceptable reason for re-locating development. The strongest protests against the ongoing Mary River dam proposal on the Sunshine Coast have been on behalf of the Mary River Turtle, Cod and lungfish, and farmer's roadside signs add my cows can't swim'. Animals have allowed the west to covertly declare our strong relationship to local land, in a time when more direct statements threaten the generic sense of capitalist space.

The power of mytho-poetic beasts, like Bowral's Bunyip, lies in imagination. Their appearance and attributes are left to the fantasy of the individual. The monster's lores and desires can reflect or negate that which is. When Frankfurt's greenbelt seemed under threat by development, a monster emerged. This monster inhabited the natural greenbelt, a symbol of its wilder place. Created by an artist, the monster is a strange cross between a crocodile and a flying pig. It is green, of course. Now, Frankfurters (and tourists) wear lapel pins of the monster with the words Grungurtel Frankfurt' to remind them of its important habitat. The greenbelt, by becoming threatening, is no longer threatened.

By building a framework around such examples, they become a valued component of a social movement, rather than just one-off quirky events. The questions, Is it really true? Did he really meet a bunyip? Do they really believe in the Grungurtel?' are not important. Much like histories' question of memory, Did it really happen?' If we ask them, we are asking a form of Are they mad?' Whether or not the experience is real, we might value the metaphor seriously. By acting As If Bunyips mattered, or As If the Grungurtel exists, we open up deeper possibilities, we make space for a wilder connection to place. Such place-based monsters just might save the earth!

Learn more about this author, Tamsin Kerr.
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