Living Colour Studio

Part of the series Reconciliation for Whites with Colour, this work is an enquiry into the land at Iramoo Sustainable Community Centre, 35 hectares of land on the edge of Deer Park housing estate in Melbourne’s West. This housing estate floats disconnectedly from these grasslands of Iramoo, the Woiwurung word meaning ‘grassland’.

Reconciliation for Whites is not only a matter of acknowledging Aboriginal Rites and Rights. It’s an ongoing enquiry into re-connecting with this land as a living being, acknowledging it as a valuable part of a severely threatened eco-system.

iramoo@vu is thus a conversation with the Western Plains Basalt grasslands at Iramoo Sustainable Community Centre.

These grasslands which once surrounded Port Phillip Bay have become the most endangered Australian eco-system since it was declared by the Department of Conservation in 1996 that only 0.01% grasslands remain. So many more grasslands and animals have been destroyed since then.

Iramoo is now a Sustainable Community Centre in the grounds of Victoria University and a centre for researching and replanting threatened indigenous species of the area such as Spiny Pimelea, Button Wrinklewort and Mr Curly Sedge.

For more information about volunteering at Iramoo, visit the WWF-Australia web site. For more information on Victoria’s basalt plains, visit Redreaming The Plain, an e-journal about sustainability.