[SydPhil] Reminder: HPS Research Seminar, Monday 17, April 2023 at 5:30pm

[HPS Admin]

School of History and Philosophy of Science
RESEARCH SEMINAR
[The University of Sydney]
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A Wide & Open Land: a journey through landscape, language & identity in Western Sydney's Cumberland Plain
Peter Ridgeway

Dates: Monday, 17/4/2023
Time: 5:30pm
Venue: F23, Michael Spence Building, Level 5, Room 501
How to register: Free, no registration required
Zoom Link: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/85722285732<https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/I4kaCYW8NocDkZyYzCGBB8Y?domain=t.e2ma.net>

Abstract: The Cumberland Plain Woodland is one of Australia's best known and most critically endangered ecosystems. The landscape is immediately recognisable: a flat basin of fertile land ringed by rugged sandstone walls; two opposing worlds sharing almost none of their biodiversity between them.

The human community identifies along almost identical boundaries with this ecological community, a cultural landscape so linked to landscape that its ecological name has entered common public use.

But this landscape of the mind did not exist just 40 years ago. The Darug, Gundungurra and Dharawal people divided their world by rivers, and still do; the vast Plain surrounded by sandstone is not in their world. Perhaps uniquely in Australia, the settler communities who invaded the West adopted Aboriginal landscapes of identity; until very recently the community of Campbelltown identified not with 'the West' but with the Illawarra, adopting the relational landscape of Dharawal Country in preference to geographical proximity.

Working for 20 years as a conservation ecologist in the Cumberland Plain I have become fascinated by how identity has been invented, framed, and misused, and how an ecological concept framed in the late 1980s has not only served in conserving an ecosystem, but extended to frame the dominant social identity of millions of Australians.

These thoughts culminated in my decision to walk this landscape end to end, meeting farmers, traditional owners, property developers and conservationists along the way, seeking to understand what 'the West' means. In the book which resulted I explore the entangled lives, histories and ecologies of one of Australia's most diverse and contested landscapes.

Bio: Peter Ridgeway is a conservation ecologist from Western Sydney where he leads the restoration of Cumberland Plain Woodland and its endangered plant and animal species. He works extensively with local Aboriginal communities, farmers, community groups and government to save one of Australia’s most critically threatened landscapes. In 2019 he walked 179 kilometres across rural Western Sydney to highlight the destruction of 'the West' and its impact on our communities both human and natural, subsequently publishing his account in A Wide & Open Land: walking the last of Western Sydney’s Woodlands.
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