Leakage as resistance along Cooks River

Leakage as resistance along Cooks River

The human urge for fluvial efficiency is a desire that partners dreams of human mastery, of colonial resource stripping, of entitlement. Leakage is becoming a tragic euphemism for the meagre seepages that escape the various forms of infrastructural, legal and political plumbing that channel the wealth and goodness of the planet along the same routes as global economic wealth. Increasingly, leakage is what is available for all the rest of life on Earth. When leakage is assumed as a problem to plug, it is important to question whom it is assumed these flows should be directed towards. Once this channelling is probematised, leakage can be repositioned as a site of resistance against assumptions of human exceptionalism. The Cooks River in Sydney, named after Captain James Cook, who identified the low-lying swampy country of the Wangal, Gadigal and Gameygal people as ideal for British colonial settlement, was dammed, dredged, and edged in hard embankments through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The floristically rich swamp became simplified into a drain for removing waste and riverbanks that could be developed into urban land uses. This paper will follow the story of Cooks River drainage that diverted the abundance of the region into narrow channels flowing towards capital. It will explore leakage along the river as resistance and consider how these leakages are assisting decolonising efforts.