Welcome, everyone to 100 Climate Conversations and thank you so much for joining us. As always, I’d like to begin by acknowledging the Traditional Custodians of the ancestral homelands upon which the Powerhouse museums are situated. We respect their Elders, ancestors, and we recognise that their sovereignty was never ceded. To the Gadigal people whose land this talk is being recorded on, I acknowledge that the colonisation of this continent started here. I acknowledge your resistance and your resilience and that despite violent attempts, your cultures, land and your people are still here. Today is number 90 of 100 conversations happening every Friday. The series presents 100 visionary Australians that are taking positive action to respond to the most critical issue of our time the climate crisis. We’re recording live today in the Boiler Hall of the Powerhouse Museum. Before it was home to the museum, it was the Ultimo Power Station. Built in 1899, it supplied coal powered electricity to Sydney’s tram system right into the 1960s. So, in the context of this architectural artefact, we’re shifting our focus forward to the innovations of the net zero Revolution. My name is Rachael Hocking, I’m a Warlpiri woman from the Tanami Desert in the Northern Territory, from a little community called Lajamanu, which is about 500 kilometres southwest of Katherine. I’ve lived and worked on Gadigal land for most of the past eight years as a journalist, editor, curator, sometimes mentor, depending on who you ask. Clint Hansen is an Iman countryman and Indigenous research fellow at RMIT University, undertaking his PhD in environmental engineering. He’s invested in sharing knowledge regarding his ongoing learnings on Country and water. Hansen is combining his passion of caring for Country and his postgraduate research, which is guided by his community and his Elders to protect the cultural values of water both above and below the ground. Really honoured to have you join us today. Please welcome Clint.

Thanks sis, it’s great to be here. And on that note, I’d also like to acknowledge that we’re gathered here today on Gadigal Country and pay respects to their Elders, both past and present and also those that may be with us here today. And not only that, but just honouring and acknowledging my old people, and Elders that have brought me here to this day that I bring with me throughout my research and the way I conduct myself. And it’s great to be here. Number 90, huh?

Number 90. Thank you, Clint. And thanks for that reminder. We bring our old people with us everywhere. On that note, do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself and where you’re from? You’re an Iman man, but you’ve lived all across the continent.

Yeah, I have. So, my background is – I’m an Iman fella, so if you don’t know where Iman country is, it’s in central Queensland. You may have heard the town of Taroom before. The Great Dividing Range is one of our borders. We also border with the Wakka Wakka mob with a meeting place there through a place called Cockatoo Creek. But there’s also some special burial grounds and meeting places there, and then also from those connections to that place, I didn’t grow up on Country. I grew up on Darumbal Country in Rockhampton where I spent most of my life until I was 21. And then to give you a bit more context, I left school when I was 15 to do an apprenticeship. I used to like going fishing more than school, so I went fishing in the Fitzroy River to catch barramundi and live prawns and jump into croc infested water with a couple of brother boys. But that led me into a trade that then led me into realising I was doing a lot of engineers work for them and where I grew up in Rockhampton, it’s a very industrial place like a lot of people work in the mines. I was offered a position at the time to work in the mines as a fitter machinist as my trade and I chose not to based on the way I was raised from my mother and caring for Country. And then through that I moved away from that particular trade, living in Meanjin for about a year and worked in the race car industry with Red Bull Racing. And then I realized, and the reason I’m here in engineering now, I wanted to go back to school. So, leaving school at 15, I wanted to do sustainable systems engineering, but I wanted to do mechanical engineering, right? So, I had people coming to me and engineers in particular in that particular field who’d ask me to design stuff for them. And a lot of my intellect and hand to eye coordination skills in this field weren’t recognised like I wasn’t an engineer, I was just a tradie, right. So, I was like, I need to go back to school. And then I ended up at a place called RMIT University in Melbourne. And the reason I ended up there is because they have vocational education where I could do the VE before an undergrad. So yeah, I’ve lived in Rockhampton on Darumbal Country, Jagera and Turrbal Country in Meanjin and now on Wurrung Bunurong Country in Naarm Melbourne.

It’s a really interesting journey Clint, but it’s also pretty familiar for a lot of mob who you know, not growing up their entire lives in community, lived around, spent time on Country and a lot of time off Country and taken a while to find that path into that career path that aligns with our values and our passions. You speak about this pivotal moment that kind of fits within this shift from mechanical engineering to sustainable systems. When you were at a community meeting with a gas supply company and members from your family and community were asking some pretty important questions.

That’s correct.

What were they asking at that time?

So some of the questions they were asking and to give a bit of context to this, this was that a PBC native title meeting as Iman people we had native title at the time and in federal court in 2016, which was a formal recognition of our country and kin and our connection to that Country. From that process you go to annual general meetings and you meet with proponents, and some of those proponents are from the extractive industry, the gas industry. At this time I was doing mechanical engineering undergrad and I just asked Mum I said, okay, so this company is talking about the gas supply security project and these thousands upon thousands of wells that they’re going to be drilling on our Country. I said to Mum, I said, Oh, you’re an Elder within this space. Can you ask this question on my behalf? Because I didn’t you know, I didn’t want to speak out of time or anything. And she said, like, what happens to the wells once they’re depleted and you take all the gas out of our Country? And the response was very disrespectful. It was chauvinistic. They talked down to my mother. They didn’t respect her knowledge as an Elder within our community. And they just said, Oh, we fill it up with cement, clear 100 square metres of land, and then tap the well and then that’s all good. And I thought, well, hang on, that doesn’t sound really good. You’re putting on natural materials into a natural place. What happens underneath the ground. And then not only what happens underneath the ground, what happens to the water underneath the ground, and then the natural environment of which you’re clearing in order to cement that well pad. And then that led, you know, I was very disheartened by this. This was in Rockhampton on Darumbal Country, and I come back during mid-semester break to the Ngarara Willim Centre, an Indigenous education space at RMIT. I had a lot of very dear, a lot of friends there I was sitting around you know thing what am I doing mechanical engineering for? Like, you know, I’ve done that for ten years as an apprentice and trade on the tools. I’d like to learn about other things and more sustainable futures and imagining transforming futures for our mob. Because in that space, talking with the gas company, I didn’t feel like I had the Western whitefella knowledge in order to be able to reciprocate that yarn back and say, ‘hang on, these are our concerns based on this scientific evidence’. So I picked up a program hand booklet and there was a sustainable systems engineering undergrad with honours at RMIT, and I never heard of that field before. I think even people here today may have not heard of sustainable systems engineering.

So how would you describe it?

So it’s a bit of a melting pot of all the different engineering, but based on things like lifecycle assessment of materials design, human-centred design, life cycles, bringing on the person that you’re designing something with through that whole holistic approach and, you know, remote area power supply and things like this. I learnt how to build homes off grid and how they would survive off grid and things like this, and then thinking out a more sustainable mindset as an engineer, because historically engineers haven’t been thinking in that way until recent years because of the climate crisis we currently find ourselve in.

And so when you read about this course and you eventually got into it, what areas were you looking to focus on?

The areas that I really enjoyed was around water hydrology, hydro geology, my honours project, which was in the final year of that Sustainable Systems, was working with my supervisor who I’d met through some mentoring I’d done with some young Māori and Koori kids around the country, and he suggested, ‘Hey, there’s this project on water, you’re really passionate about water, Clint, do you want to come and work with me on this and a couple other students and an industry partner and University of Queensland and a paediatrician doctor who was based in Boorloo on Whadjuk Noongar Boodja?’. And I said, ‘Yep, great, that sounds amazing’. So that I really enjoyed and that was all about looking at chemical constituents and toxins in drinking water for community in WA. And that led to working with the paediatrician who theorised that chronic kidney disease and Blue Baby Syndrome, which is pretty heavy, that its infant mortality rates was linked to the nitrate in uranium that was occurring in this community’s drinking water, which occurs via the 100 year old gold mine in that area, but also occurs naturally within the rock sediment underneath the ground. And I got really invested and interested in research at this stage of my honours as well, as much as a full on doing an engineering undergrad – it had the water component, it had the blackfella component was working with a community there was relationship building. And I didn’t just want to think about here is these three different technologies that we wanted to implement via shipping container to this community to clean their water, which was reverse osmosis, iron exchange and solar distillation. It was a pilot project to see which one of those technologies would be best. Then we could implement them in other communities that had these issues. And I wasn’t really interested in the tech of that sustainable engineering and how to clean water. I was really interested in the social aspect of that. So that was things like desktop research looking at the Ombudsman’s report, why is a basic human right of clean drinking water not afforded to our mob in these areas, which is really disgraceful and in the year that we were in at the time, which was 2020. So I looked at that social aspect and, and literature and why was that problem there? So to answer your question, that’s what sort of moulded my, I guess view of engineering. And then I started to just thought that the more holistic engineering approach, which falls into the sustainable systems as well.

Totally. Really connecting like access to water as a human right issue. And I think what’s really clear through your speaking there as well is that you have embedded an approach that considers other mobs’ perspectives, especially when you’re working on Country that’s not your own. So I want to know if you could take us there to talk through some of those processes of navigating cultural protocol. When you enter into these yarns on Country that’s not yours.

Yeah, of course. So at first I’d met with Dr Christine Jeffrey Stokes who is still working on this, who’s a paediatrician, and she does dialysis work to and from community based in Perth, and she’s married to the senior law man of this particular Goldfields community.

Well, that’s helpful.

Yeah, it was really helpful for that cultural protocol. But there’s still seemed to be a bit of a barrier in between me talking with Uncle and her, like between her and she was a medium for that. However, I did things as appropriate as possible. And if not having me on this team of two other students and industry partner in two different universities helped because I was that like going oh No, that’s not how we operate. You can’t just go in with this quick fix of technology. We’ve got to think about this more deeply. And what does this actually mean for community long term? And is this technology actually viable? You know, who is maintaining it? What sort of training is being delivered to the community so that they can be self-sufficient, self-determining within their own futures of that clean water rather than that outsider perspective, even myself coming from a different community coming in and like, hey, we’re going to fix your problem, which we know doesn’t work. So I looked at things like the Centre for Best Practice, which is based in that Northern Territory area, and they give guidelines and governance principles around how to engage with technology and remote communities. So we’ve looked into that and followed those guidelines.

That’s really great when you’re working and bringing this paediatrician into your research as well that adds a whole layer of complexity.

Yes.

Especially like the scope is huge you know, looking at access to water and connecting it to these health issues that have been rampant in our communities, especially comparatively to the mainstream. So what did you find between the connection? If you did find anything between the connection of uranium and nitrate in the drinking water and the health that young people in particular were experiencing?

Yeah. So Blue Baby Syndrome is one chronic kidney disease is one that was in the nitrate uranium. And this is you know, you can do eco-toxicological testing of water, right. And that test for things like heavy metals, trace metals, organics, inorganics, things that may occur naturally depending on the natural environment underneath the ground of that drinking water. But we found also that there was effects from the gold mine that have been there for over 100 years causing this. Not only that, in modern days, the proponents, that being some of the miners in that areas were actually dosing the water to make it more aesthetic with chlorine. And that was anecdotal evidence from community members that had say, you know, burnt mouth too much chlorine in the water. So there’s those sorts of issues as well. And not only that, the nitrate uranium and these sorts of chemical constituents were above the Australian drinking water guideline standard, which just shouldn’t be allowed. So even here on Gadigal Country or the water I have here is way lower than that, mind you, well under the Australian drinking water guideline where over there it’s above and just above that standard the way it should be. And that’s linked to that chronic kidney disease and Blue Baby Syndrome.

So were you able to differentiate where that had impacted the uranium nitrate levels in groundwater compared to naturally occurring uranium?

Well. Yes and no. It is tricky. There’s isotope tracing you can do within groundwater to check where different aquifers may meet and interact with each other based on where that naturally occurs and where it doesn’t. We didn’t go into that far, we were more interested in how do we get this water clean for this community as quick as possible and make that a viable technology for the future. And then, you know, looking at things like the Ombudsman’s report and other communities where that could be actually applicable because it’s rampant in Western Australia and Northern Territory in particular.

Especially around communities like Yuendumu which was right in the middle of my Country. What did you find? What were the early learnings of the trials that you were able to run with Goldfields communities?

It was during the C word, which I won’t say, so that’s pretty full on. So we didn’t actually get to go to community and deliver it. I’d followed on as a supervisor in my PhD and supervised for undergrad environmental engineering Honours students who continued on the project. I didn’t just want to drop it and they themselves they started testing the technology in Preston and places down in Naarm to figure out which was most viable. But it was really tricky logistically to get water samples from community and keep them at a certain temperature bring them to us to test in a lab. So we got to the stage of building the machines and stuff like this.

How many trials at the moment do you think the community is interested in looking at for long term access to cleaner ground drinking water?

Well, as many as possible, really, like I think with the pilot project. There’s a nuance to it. So say if you have reverse osmosis and iron exchange or solar distillation, solar requires sun power, right? With reverse osmosis, you have a membrane that cleans water, and then that membrane can be replaced after a certain month period. However, what is the logistics of getting a membrane to 8 hours north east of Kalgoorlie, where this community doesn’t even have an air, like flying doctors sort of thing? So there’s areas where you’ve got to think, okay, we’ve tested the three techs. Which one is the best for this community, which may not be the same as for other communities.

And so you started off looking into this sustainable systems research at RMIT. It took you to the Goldfields in WA, a long, long way from home for you and then eventually did go back home and you started to look at what the challenges your mob were facing with getting clean drinking water as well.

Yeah, and the reason for that was working with this community, you know, it was great. It was very rewarding was a time where I was like, okay, I’m in my undergrad engineering degree and I’m having real world impact with mob. This is a possible thing. We’re potentially, you know, doing something great here. It’s appropriate. However, I started to realise when you know, that cultural protocol and aspects come into play more and more, I turned that into a PhD I was very passionate about it. And then three months into my PhD after my honours, which is crazy, I went from five years of an undergrad to a PhD, who wants to go to uni for ten years. But anyway, so that first year of my PhD through, you know, reflexivity, thinking of my positionality as an outsider working with this community. Thinking back to that time of, you know, the yarn with Mum, the constant meetings where forced into with these proponents back home, coal steam gas and coal is rampant in central Queensland. It’s massive. And these issues I was like, I need to do something and give back to my own mob. I have this skill set now that I’ve moved away and acquired and been privileged enough to gain. I want to help out with the coal steam gas and the water on Country. And I’ve met through some of the work I’d done with my Honours an ecologist lawyer and my supervisor who’s a hydrogeologist, which is just a fancy scientific word for an underground water scientist. And he’d mentioned that there was this Fairview Water Release Scheme back home that Santos was proposing regarding releasing toxic water into the Wardingarri River, which is the Dawson River that runs through my Country, through to Wulli Wulli Country, right up into Darumbal Country, through Gangulu Country, right out to Sea Country, and Woppaburra Country. So that was going to affect all these different mobs that I have relationships with through, you know, family ties, you know, marriage through cousins and things like this. And I thought, hang on, it’s time to change my field. And I was like, ‘Can you change your PhD within this time?’ So I changed my PhD to focus on that problem, focusing on country and that toxic water potentially being released by this company into the Dawson River.

So before we dig into a bit more of your PhD and what it’s exploring. Can you paint a picture of what water means for you as an Iman man and what stories you have about water on your Country.

Yeah, of course. So the stories I have even off Country getting raised, I’ve always have an affinity with water. We were blessed enough to have a pool growing up, Rockhampton’s a hot place and just being able to swim, being able to wash away any negative thoughts and emotions. Some great advice I was given by Dr Graham Gee, who’s an Indigenous male psych. I’d volunteered through Culture is Life at the National and International Indigenous Suicide Prevention and helped run the youth stream over on Whadjuk Noongar Boodja. And I had a bit of a full on time there, you know, its a heavy topic. And he said, ‘Oh, Clint, you know you’re based in Naarm, why don’t you go down Boonwurrung Country and wash off all that in the water in the waves and just forget about that?’ So that’s a little story that I take on still, too, today. And then even growing up in Rocky you’ve got places like Yeppoon and Emu Park, where you’d go for a swim, try and surf bodyboard, you know, you take the dogs, go fishing and all those sorts of things, catch mud crab, go out in the tinny. So there’s always been a relationship with water with me and in particular on Iman Country. And in recent years with this research just being there and you can feel the spirit of the water, the Moondagai, the medium of water in itself is a medium to wash away that bad energy and spirit as we know culturally. So it holds a huge importance for that to not be poisoned in any way, shape or form.

The way you’re talking right now reminds me of Dr Anne Poelina and their fight for Martuwarra, this conversation of rivers and waterways and natural environment around us as living beings, as requiring personhood status.

Yeah, definitely. And that sort of yarn has come up recently with Aunty Kaylene Butler, who I’ve grown up with and knows me since I was a young fella. And she mentioned to me after she seen some of my research through surveys and she’s like, ‘Oh Clint, we’re in treaty negotiations in Queensland, is there any way we can get some sort of more firmer legal representation for the Wardingarri through personhood?’. And that’s where you fall into things where this research can potentially help assist with that, you know, and help the whitefellas and the governance and legislation realise and recognise that that is a spiritual being that needs to be protected and have its own legal personhood. I think again, Aunty Anne Poelina is amazing what she’s doing with the Martuwarra. I think that was one of the first academic journal papers where the Martuwarra had an authorship, you know, that’s within that journal, which is a great thing.

It’s beautiful. And I think this is where the conversation exists for a lot of our mobs historically. It was never a question that decision making about the environment had to include the environment and their interests. You know, the trees’ interests, the sands’ interests, the waters’ interests.

The way I look at it, like I talked about lifecycle assessment earlier and systems thinking like sustainable systems engineering is about systems thinking and, you know, there are eight different archetypical behaviours we have in the world. You know, there are fixes that fail that you can build up with causal loops and stuff like this. When we think systemsly that falls into an Indigenous way of being doing and knowing. Like from a water perspective and what I’ve learned over the years is like you can think of the stygofauna, which is a microbiota that live underneath the ground of our feet right now in the water table that rely on that clean water and the way it is organically, naturally made up that then feeds sacred spring sites, whether they be for women’s business, men’s business, simply to have a drink, have a yarn. Meeting places kept us alive and sustained us. And that’s beautiful, clean drinking water seeping out of the ground. We call those groundwater dependent ecosystems that then feed life into places like the Wardingarri River. You know, the Wardingarri is an ephemeral river, which is another fancy word that means it doesn’t flow constantly all the time. It semi pools in the top end. So in the upper reaches, those springs are very, very important. And that groundwater that feeds those springs where they stygofauna live, feed some of that river and keep that flow maintaining those groundwater dependent ecosystems have cultural value and ecological value. Some of the cultural values that totemic species, one of the clan groups within Iman nation is the turtle. And some of the turtles not only have that cultural value, but then from a western lens, they have, they are critically endangered like the Fitzroy River Turtle or the White Throated Snapping Turtle, and they have sighted being seen in those places and they are only alive because of those springs and that groundwater flow that feeds that area and that pool. You know, some of the local farmers, they go there swimming in summer and it’s good for them in that. And they call it the turtle pools. You know, I imagine a transformative future where they say the language name for that place and realise and understand that connection was once there and it still is there.

And I think it’s really important to take people into not just what your Country looks like, but what it feels like as well. So what are the biggest threats? How do proposed and current coal steam gas projects threaten the health of Wardingarri?

Yeah, so the project specifically I was working on at the start of my PhD was the Santos Fairview Water Release Scheme, and that was basically we have this problem where there’s a lot of coal seam gas wells in central Queensland, there’s a gas supply security project and they’re expanding wells. Like I think there’s another 7000 on the way. It’s huge. And part of this project, Santos has to submit to the government a water management plan and an environmental impact statement around how their particular works is going to affect the water. So just a bit of a background, think of the underground as cake layer. So we have like Iman Country has beautiful sandstone outcrops. It’s such a beautiful sandstone, you know, all that sort of stuff, that’s closer to the surface and that’s made up of the Jurassic period, Walloon Coal Measures. So underneath from that period, the Jurassic period where the Walloon Coal Measures, we have what’s called the coal seam, which is where the coal seam gas lies. Hence the name coal seam gas. It’s not natural gas that occurs within the aquifers. You think of that cake layer, just going back to that, we have different sedimentary basins within the Great Artesian Basin on Country, which is the largest underwater body, an aquifer in this whole nation. It goes over four different states and I wouldn’t be able to even guess how many different mobs that would affect as well. And it outcrops on Iman country where the Surat Basin lies within it. And that cake layer like you have different layers of sediment and soil and things like that. And water moves through potentially all of them as impenetrable layers and they target the coal seam formation. Part of that coal seam actually has water pressure in it so its water within the coal seams. It’s not natural. That’s why it’s called coal seam gas. They have to de-water that aquifer to remove the gas. A pipe is drilled in and then also hydraulically fracked on a horizontal. Sometimes they use chemical toxins called benzene to help frack and move the coal seam apart. But they also need to remove the water pressure. That water pressure holds the gas within it. So you have different atoms and whatever else you know within that chemical. And then that goes back to the surface and they have to remove what’s called now the co-produced water, which is full of all this nasty stuff and the gas. The gas will go to the processing plant and then shipped and exported overseas. And then the co-produced water needs to be – what happens? What’s the life cycle of that, right? It’s coming out of the ground. They’ve removed it. You’ve got your gas, you’re making your billions of dollars. And this particular project was proposing to release that co-produced water from holding ponds on Country into the Wardingarri, and that was at unspecified amounts, up to 100 megalitres a day. And they said the toxins would be diluted due to high flow days. So their idea was when it floods on Country and Iman Country’s beautiful floodplain country. We’re going to release all these nasty toxins and because there’s lots of flow, we’re not going to worry about all the toxins that are coming out. It’s gunna be diluted. And then the other side of that project was they currently release reverse osmosis water. You heard me talking about that technology early with membranes so they do the co-produced water which is unclean and they hold it in holding ponds and then they do reverse osmosis water, which is being so called clean. Reverse osmosis is on the up, you know, set efficiency. And you have what’s called the effluent water, which is the wastewater that comes out of RO that can’t be cleaned. And then they release some of that and they were applying to release from 30 megalitres a day up to 15 or 18 into a wetland, Oxbow Lake Wetland. And then the co-produced water they were wanting to release. So part of my research looked at the cultural reasons as to why that shouldn’t happen. The springs that are already endangered in that area, the groundwater dependent ecosystems, the different sacred sites which aren’t incorporated often into cultural heritage management plans or Indigenous land use agreements. So part of that project was wanting to release these toxins into surface waters from underneath the ground.

I want to dig into a little bit more about those spiritual impacts, particularly to the threatened species, that are in the area as well. Have you seen some of those impacts already?

Yeah, I think the river like in itself, even pre extractive industry like upon colonisation, you have like these people wanting to have farms and moving into Country, clearing land for sheep. Finding places on country where it was good to use these water drilling holes into the ground for bores to feed their animals and their crops and things like this that they’ve benefited from financially for many years and generations. And not only that, that’s changed Country and climate and culture, but you have also things like weirs. There was a massive dam proposal, the Nathan Dam on Country that affected – that was going to affect Wulli Wulli and Iman Country that thankfully didn’t go ahead because of the environmental impacts. And one of the reasons that didn’t go ahead is because of the Boggomoss Snail which is really important and it only lives in this particular spring area. But there is things like the Glebe Weir already on Country where a bunch of Country has been flooded. Now there’s tree species that are dead and things like this. And then also culturally, I’ve seen changes in a place called Palm Tree Creek where one of my descendants is from, and that’s a very, very important place to my family, my immediate family that I have a custodianship of in order to protect that area. It’s also a nationally recognised wetland, I believe, because you have the Carnarvon Fan Palm. So you go into the middle of the bush on Iman Country and you’ll see a palm tree. You know, you’re not at the beach, you’ll see a palm tree. It’s a beautiful, beautiful place and it just takes your breath away and there’s change is happening to those areas that are matters of national environmental significance as well. So these are the issues that are being raised. And not only that, there’s making the seen unseen it’s a saying, I believe Gomeroi groundwater scientist Bradley Moggridge said at World Water Day last year and it’s about that underground water as well. And the cultural value of that that I spoke about. You’re not only poisoning that with the toxins you’re using to frack it, but you’re – it’s called depletion and drawdown of that water because you’re releasing it into and then, you know, it’s now where is it going? You know, they’re holding it in ponds. But there is the Queensland Gasfields Commission and part of law and legislation at the moment is there has to be so-called beneficial uses of co-produced water. One of those uses is filling up water trucks and spraying them on the dirt roads for dust mitigation. So that’s a good thing because it’s dust mitigation. However, we as scientists and Traditional Owners are worried about seepage of those toxins into waterways and things like that. And through some of our research, we’ve found elevated levels of the chemical content, boron and just downstream of where they’re releasing some of this RO water. So that’s also high levels of salinity, different ph levels. And then when you’re on country, like my one and only paper that I’ve released so far as part of the Hydrology Water Resource Symposium, which I urge some of the viewers to check out, there’s anecdotal quotes from my cousins being on Country and during a field trip last year, and normally when you go on Country, you know you’ll wash yourself with the water and let Country know you’re there. They couldn’t do this in this area because it was full of algae and microbiomes. And that was part of the reason of that was from the gas company in the works I’ve been doing in that area, releasing those things.

I mean, you’ve taken some of these questions already to Canberra. I wanted to actually get in to one of the wins that you had recently yarning with a lawyer and an ecologist. You submitted an application with scientific and cultural reasons why water shouldn’t be released into Wardingarri. What did the application argue? Was it similar to what you’ve yarned about now?

Yes, it’s very similar. It was based on what chemicals we were finding. It was also based on other independent scientific advice, like things like I said earlier, they were saying that dilution of this chemical constituent was an adequate mitigation measure for them being able to release it. So we brought up those concerns. I talked to Elders in Woorabinda at the mission and said, ‘Hey, this is goin’ on’. I did plain language presentations back to Community and Rocky and said, ‘Hey, do you even know about this project? This is what’s going to happen. And this is my so-called, I guess you’d say, expert opinion from my engineering background of what this means, but not only from that scientific perspective, that two way learning of this is what it means for us culturally as well. And some of these impacts are irreversible’. So we brought up those impacts and some of those reasons, like groundwater dependent ecosystems that rely on the groundwater not being drawn down. We brought up things like the critically endangered and threatened species as well. And why, you know, they’re at risk, you know, what are you doing? We heard from farmers where some of the turtles were laying eggs and this was like on banks. And then you also think about erosion caused by sediment and that sediment and erosion is caused by high levels of salinity and salts being released into the water, which then affects the microbiota, which is the food of which the turtles eat. You know, so there’s a whole plethora of ways in which we brought up both culturally and scientifically as to why this didn’t go ahead. And then there’s also the independent expert scientific committee who advise the Federal Government on matters of coal and coal seam gas. And some of these opinions were similar to ours. We went a step further and actually incorporated those cultural values and wanted the Federal Environment Minister to recognise that and realise like these are issues that should count, whether it is built within that Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. The ecologist lawyer they were very much like this is the legal way and this is what the whitefella laws is. Yep, that’s great. That’s how we can use it and make them realise. But here’s the blackfella way and the cultural reasons as well on top of that, and before I think the Federal Environment Minister could hand down their advice on this particular project, whether it would go ahead or need to be amended, Santos actually amended their project. It was funny it was just two days before I did a national seminar, at the Australian Rivers Institute, and it was a huge win where I was like, they’re no longer wanting to release the co-produced water. And I was like, ‘Oh my God, amazing’. This is the sort of impact we can have within the academic institution, but not only within the institution, working with your community and bringing them along for you, and that reciprocal ethical relationship with community members as both an insider of my community, but as an outsider in my positionality as a researcher.

So how do you see this experience being able to be replicated by other mobs and benefiting other mobs when they’re dealing within the constraints of federal legislation?

So some of the writing I’m even doing now speaks to things, you know, all over the country we constantly hear on the news – even this when I delivered one of my talks, I think it was on the first milestone a couple of years ago. The key point I made at the end wasn’t even for Iman country. I talked about Gomeroi mob and their country and the fact that Santos had just applied to just to extinguish their native title rights because they were staunch enough to say, hang on, no, we don’t want this to go ahead. So this research, yes, I’m not trying to homogenise the Indigenous experience like we talked earlier about drinking water as a basic human right in NT and WA communities. But then in central Queensland we have problems with yes, there is potentially effects for Baralaba and Woorabinda’s community for drinking water because of this. But not only that, we have those drawdown and depletion effects of the water and the cultural value of that water for our totemic species that identify as country and kin and, you know, lift up our spirit. And I recently attended the National First Nations Water Roundtable, and part of that was looking at all those different mobs and all the different water issues within our communities, right. And again, we got to think there’s different issues in different areas. But not only that, I heard from a deadly Uncle I think it was either Rene Woods or Grant Rigney. Grant’s doing amazing nation building with Ngarrindjeri and the Crown and a few things with water and head of Murray-Darling. And he said, you know, I was like, I really look up to these people because I’ve been in this space a lot longer than me and I’ve been in this spot for water for mob. And one of the pieces of advice he said is when we were coming up with this workshop Professor Anne Poelina and all these other amazing people there. One of the things that I really took away is that the federal legislation that we can reform – like soon we’re going to have the national environmental standard of significance for a new standard for Indigenous participation and decision making that not many people who are mob even know about is going to be a thing in the next 12 months.

Talk us through that quickly. So would you say standard of participation?

Yeah. So the way I see it, that could be a mechanism of which we can raise these issues through channels to be able to say, ‘hang on, this is what’s going on’. So I’m not a part of the people that create this standard, but I think it’s great that that is going to be a part of the national environmental standards falling under the EPBC Act, the Environmental Protection of Biodiversity Conservation Act. But then there’s things where, you know, Uncles and Aunties sometimes I believe one of them said to me, ‘Clint, the federal politicians can legislate something and recommend it. However, it’s up to the states to legislate it in courts.’. So one thing that works here may not work over there, but then I think even and it’s been 20 years since they’ve had change regarding water for one particular legislation because I just don’t want to pass it in the Senate. So there’s those sorts of barriers and issues, like I can say as much as I want. These are the cultural, scientific evidence, my viewpoint, my lived experiences as a Iman custodian, and man. However, the power still within them to be able to pass that. And then what is the implementation of that? We do have things I’ve learned of recently, like CAWI, which is the Committee of Aboriginal Water Interests, which I think it’s two or three mob from each state that advise the Federal Environment Minister. We also have things like the GABSAC, which I advise some of them through a small scholarship I got as part of the Department of Climate Change Energy Environment a few years ago, which is an acronym for the Great Artesian Basin Senior Advisory Committee. So some of my research has been disseminated and I’ve given presentations to people that sit on that board and that committee that then advise policymakers. So from some of that, things have come about where people in NT reached out to me and they’re like, ‘Hey, can you consult for us?’ Then I’ve had to be like, ‘Well, that’s not my community. There’s different issues. Let’s rethink this. There might be someone else better for that’. But yeah I think there is avenues growing as well. And I think the National Water Initiative and the commission of that is being reformed within the next 12 months as well. So part of that roundtable was about giving key recommendations to that so we can move forward and having opinions from all mob all over the country at this particular roundtable.

This is a bit of a tricky question. You can answer this however you like, but just listening to you yarn it’s so similar to so many of the yarns I have with black scientists. So I just want to know what advice do you have for other mob who are looking to come into this space? What advice do you have for them in navigating academic climate spaces in particular?

Yeah. So this is something I’m passionate about. Like even my cousin’s daughter, my young niece, she goes to Girls Grammar and Rocky. She rang me on the phone and she came in like oh you know, Uncle, I want to do this, what does this mean? And she was talking about marine biology. She was like, she didn’t say marine biology, but she was talking about, I’m in this year level what do I need to study in order to do? And I said things like, Don’t stress about your maths and physics and science. Like I myself left school at 15, like I said, in the start of this yarn I wanted to go fishing and catch barra and do silly things. So I don’t put pressure on younger mob coming through like you don’t – if you have passion about something, particularly climate change, particularly safe and clean, accessible water. Then you will succeed in that. And whatever you do in life, if you are passionate about that, it doesn’t – you don’t have to have that background. And there’s avenues as well, I would say, and I do this with some of the mentoring as part of the Victorian Indigenous Engineering winter school that we run yearly is I let kids know that there is support networks out there and you’re allowed to take up space in these places. And we are the first engineers and scientists of this land. There is immense value in that, even the wadjellas and gubbas are crying out for at the moment. There’s value in that. If we’ve survived this many years, surely there is some sort of input that we can contribute to climate change and the water issues in general. So I think igniting that passion that’s already there and letting them know that don’t be shy and be game. You can take up these spaces. You know, I never thought, you know, leaving school early doing a trade that I’d find myself becoming a potentially a doctor if I finish this if I do finish it in two years. So it’s possible you know, and it’s viable and it’s fine and there is Indigenous education centres like Ngarara Willim, Murrup Barak, Yulendj out at Monash all over the place. Many unis have those safe spaces. Just yesterday I went to the Jumbunna Institute at UTS to check that out and got to have a yarn with some people there. So there’s avenues for mob to succeed in the way in which we should for, you know, water and Country and climate, you know, give back to our families back home even if we are off Country.

I would make the argument that you leaving school at 15 to go fishing is a form of school unto itself, you know, spending that time on Country.

Yeah, definitely. I think like I said when we think about even that co-produced water being released, it wasn’t just me as a custodian of Iman country, it was my cousin’s wife, Ghungalu Country as well that that river flows through. Or Wulli Wulli Country, you know, or Dharumbal Country right out into sea country that would affect Woppaburra Country, Great Keppel Island, you know, so there’s many different mobs that are intertwined that this may affect and it’s a real honour for me to be in an Iman person, to be able to protect the waterways that then flow into those other mobs’ Country. But not only that, when I go back to Rocky, where I grew up, I can, you know, go to places like the Dharumbal Community Youth Centre and have a yarn to some brother boys I went to school with. Yes, I left early, but I still have that connection with them and they are like – ‘Oh are you doing this research that’s deadly, Clint. Like I didn’t know, you know. Oh, we’re worried about the Fitzroy Development Road, that they’re going to knock some scar trees down on Dharumbal Country. Is there any of that lessons you’ve learnt from the ecologist lawyer that you can help us out with? You know, our concerns there’. And that’s from that relationship building from a young age to now in that area where all that water flows that I’m connected to.

Beautiful sharing of knowledge. And I think like you really touched on that, not just looking out for the water that’s on your Country, but how it flows into neighbouring mobs’ Country as well. But that just being part of reciprocal systems of if we take care of what’s underneath our feet and around us and everyone does their part for the Country, their custodian for those benefits will flow on to us as well.

Yeah, and it’s not a hidden, magical thing. Well, it’s magical in a sense, but there is avenues and places when you think about ethical conduct and reciprocal relationship building. Mob have done work within the Academy about ethics. If you’re not a blackfella, but you’re invested in environmental issues, then there is mob out there you should be talking to and engaging with appropriately. And there’s places and reports like the Lowitja health institute that have come up with ethical guidelines. It’s the National Health Medical Research Council’s keeping research on track. And that, you know, I myself have used that in my own ethical submission through HREP to do some of the interviews with Elders and ensure that I am myself as an insider within the community and an outsider, I’ve got ethical, reciprocal practice throughout this whole PhD and beyond. What does that look like? And incorporating Indigenous data sovereignty principles within that quantitative research as well.

You also mentor younger students in STEM. You talked a bit about, you know, encouraging young mob to not just focus on the math and science, but looking at what they are passionate about, where their values align. What’s one thing you wish you knew when you were starting out in your studies?

I think for me, university was a bit different because I come from a full time working life and going to uni, I was like, Oh yeah, 8am class, have a coffee, have an hour break, hang out with the mob and have a yarn at Ngarara Willim. Then I’ve got another class again. So knowing that as well would have been really great. Like oh, you know, it wouldn’t have been as scary for me to move away from my mother and family in Queensland down to Naarm Melbourne, I would have been like oh, there’s, you know, created community and family there. And one thing you should also know is there’s Elders within different institutions and universities that you can have amazing yarns with and have those cultural yarns with that ensure you’re doing things appropriately when you’re on someone else’s Country, but also you’re part of that community as well while you’re away from your own family and community. So make sure the young ones coming through know that and realise that as well is important.

Absolutely. Ngarara Willim was deadly. I remember the Wednesday free fried chicken lunch, back in the day.

Well there’s those things too insn’t it.

And Clint, outside of your studies and your research you also are creating your own website with information that people can follow if they want to see what you’re doing and how they can get involved. What’s the information?

Yeah, so the website is www.water-black.com and there you’ll see a little bit about the research, some videos that are delivered presenting some of this data and findings. But not only that, you’ll hear anecdotal evidence from some of the Elders and the interviews I’ve had with them about their concerns about the coal seam gas field and what’s happening on our country. And that falls into that Indigenous data sovereignty principles and making this research accessible to the broader community who aren’t only Iman, but other mob as well, rather than a paywall through an academic journal. So that’s really important that that’s there for that reason.

Looking ahead, I mean, you can look as far or as near as you want into the future, but what are your hopes for your Country and your waterways?

I guess my hope is that more people come on board, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, of realising these issues. I think often we talk about, you know, these huge projects like in the Beetaloo which is well and good and we should be aware of these. But I would wish that there is more talk like I’m doing now about these issues of coal seam gas in central Queensland that been happening, you know, and then growing exponentially since pre Mabo days, since that was legislated. So that being talked about more. But not only that, I’d like to be out of a job. I’d like to not have to protect water. I’d like, the fact that, you know, we don’t have to fight for toxins being released into waterways. I’d like for the revitalisation of cultural practices that rely on water, you know, like certain tree species that are endangered, that rely on those water bodies and groundwater dependent ecosystems to stay alive. And one day when I have kids, I want to be able to take them there and show them, like, look, your father’s helped keep this and maintain that. And that’s a beautiful, ongoing thing. You know, there’s a scarred tree I’ve done on Country that relies on that ground water, and I want that to be alive in 20 to 30 years time and longer to be able to pass that knowledge on to the future generations that are going to take up this huge fight of climate change and water for us into those future generations.

Thank you so much, Clint.

No worries. It was great yarning with you sis.

Yeah, beautiful yarn. Can we please have a round of applause for Clint? To follow the program online you can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And visit the 100 Climate Conversations exhibition or join us for a live recording, go to 100climateconversations.com.

This is a significant new project for the museum and the records of these conversations will form a new climate change archive preserved for future generations in the Powerhouse collection of over 500,000 objects that tell the stories of our time. It is particularly important to First Nations peoples to preserve conversations like this, building on the oral histories and traditions of passing down our knowledges, sciences and innovations which we know allowed our Countries to thrive for tens of thousands of years.