Stones Streams Stories and Dreams is a community cultural development project designed and delivered by Carolyn Rundell. It has explored the relationship between the people and the landscape of South West Victoria,  dominated by volcanic monuments and traces. There has been an attempt to use the creative arts to give meaning to this relationship.

 

Extensive workshops with schools and the wider community over 18 months offered opportunities to bring our present-day lives into a dialogue with the past and the future in this place. 

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We have been able to look back at the formation of this place through fire and upheaval to imagine the rich culture of the Gunditjmara people, the settlers colonising this wet landscape, draining the land for new crops and animals, the present issues of Geopark status, threatened native grassland communities, drought and a sustainable future.

 

There have been opportunities to walk through farmland and forest, visit wetlands and to explore the internationally significant geological sites formed by Kolor; Mt. Rouse, Tappoc; Mt. Napier and Budj Bim; Mt. Eccles.

 

We have looked at stones and streams because they seem so at odds with one another, yet both flow and seek the lowlands, and when allowed to team up, they create the most amazing wetlands, holding water through drought and replenishing the surrounding landscape with biodiversity and subterranean aquifers.

 

The project has been funded through the Helen and Geoff Handbury Fellowship and the support of RMIT University. Other supporters are the GSG LLEN, Hamilton Art Gallery, lab 3000, Glenelg Hopkins CMA and the schools from Heywood, Penshurst, Macarthur and Hamilton.