Central Land Council

Life on the Barwon

Cheryl Crawford from Brewarrina

Brewarrina, in western NSW has a rich Aboriginal heritage containing sites, 5000 year- old fish traps built by Aboriginal people and still in use today, burial sites, and ceremonial grounds.

Cheryl Crawford

Cheryl Crawford is employed to develop a project to preserve the fish traps in the Barwon River and monitor water and fish stocks. The fish traps are dry walls built of rocks in the river and fish was traditionally central to the diet of Brewarrina's Aboriginal people.

"This project came about because in 2000 NSW fisheries came out and were worried about native fish stocks not getting through the weir. When the council put in the weir they redirected the river and now lots of those traps are covered in vegetation and some need restoring. We put a compromise to the Government that if they assisted us to preserve the fish traps we would undertake their water quality monitoring, Cheryl said.

"We still use the fish traps - fish are a big part of our diet and the kids still get out there and use them to catch cod, golden perch, silver perch, catfish and carp.

"We are also developing the old mission into a conference centre and at another site we've got a megafauna site - animals which have been extinct for 35000 years which we are also involved in," she said.

Ms Crawford said the conference had been a huge success for her.

"Not many people still speak their language in Brewarrina - only bits and pieces and its amazing for me to come here and hear people talking so fluently. It's sad really that we lost so much culture."

"I have learnt a lot from this: met lots of interesting people, and possibly found a couple of funding sources but the biggest thing I'm getting out of it is learning so much."