The Coorong wetlands on the coast of South Australia are a liminal place that marks the junction between the Murray-Darling Basin and the Southern Ocean. It is an iconic wetland known for its bird life with a history of being in constant transition and change. The shifting movement between sea, freshwater and land fosters various forms of more-than-human life.
The Coorong is a Ramsar-listed wetland and so these shallow, dynamic lagoons are often seen as natural, given that they are a national park. The efforts of the state and federal governments since the 1970s has been focused on conservation: on preserving these wetlands as natural places thereby largely framing these lagoons as separate from humans and culture.
But, as Emily O’Gorman points out in her Wetlands in a Dryland the Coorong is a deeply historical place that has been shaped by the entangled changes to human and nonhuman lives.
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