Time to make rivers our lifeblood again

ONE of my fondest memories of the brief time my family lived at Uki when I was a child is of swimming in the Tweed River.

ONE of my fondest memories of the brief time my family lived at Uki when I was a child is of swimming in the Tweed River.

My whole family would regularly gather up towels and picnic things and stomp through the bush behind the general store to get to a little bend in the river where we could ride surf-mats down the small ‘rapids’, and generally splash about. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I heard the chemical levels in the river had been many times what could be considered safe for humans.

Judging from the new report handed down for parts of the Tweed river system, things still have a long way to go for the most northern of our Northern Rivers.

The report gives a similar reading to another done for the Richmond River a little while ago and points to just how thoroughly we are rejecting what should be one of our most valuable resources.

The Northern Rivers has good reason to regard its rivers with a little caution – it’s natural to be suspicious of something that could turn around and wipe out your home and livelihood if encouraged with enough rain. The only reason our towns and cities were established by the rivers is they made useful highways back before roads had been put through the Big Scrub.

But now it must be time to start turning our faces towards our rivers. Ballina is already doing this to tremendous effect around River Street. Brisbane, which has had a similar history with its river, turned to face its river about 20 years ago and has, partly as a result, been transformed into a cosmopolitan city equal to any. It makes sense to do the same here, but first we must stop treating our rivers like sewers.

Originally published as Time to make rivers our lifeblood again