I acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and abroad, and their continuing connection to culture, community, land, sea and sky. I pay my respect to Elders past, present and future.

This ‘reading’ is actually listening to an interview recorded as part of the ABC series ‘Conversations’ with Richard Fidler. ‘The Secret History of the Native Hibiscus’ is an interview with Aunty Fran Bodkin, a descendant of the D’harawal people of the Bidiagal clan, from the southern parts of Sydney. Aunty Fran is a scientist, but she first learned about the natural world from her mother.

Listen here.

I love this interview because it is recorded on a walk through the Australian Botanic Garden at Mount Annan. Aunty Fran talks a lot about plants, of course, but her stories are also about cities and infrastructure, and the ways we can learn about living things even in the city. She recalls learning the names and uses of plants as a child, and also the names of all the train stations in NSW, so she could get home from anywhere. She tells a story about catching the train to Tempe station with her mother. At the Cooks River, which she said had beautiful white sands when she was a child, they watched the bull sharks, and at Liverpool, the eels. Throughout her life she has honed her observations skills, which makes her a great scientist and storyteller. She talks about associative ecologies, and the ways people have been part of such ecologies for tens of thousands of years.

Aunty Fran is fun to listen to. Even with more than eighty years of stories to tell, she has a light voice full of laughter.

The Cooks River was named for the pelican, Goolay’yari and was the landing place of the great whale, Guwarra, during the dreaming.

You can listen to more of Aunty Fran’s stories about Sydney here.