Dr Helen Sheil
Swinburne University, Melbourne
Water — a connecting link
That waterways are at the heart of community life became increasingly evident in Gippsland when facilitators interested in the future of rural communities met with community members in an open ended approach to community engagement. These facilitation skills and knowledge were accredited at post-graduate level by a major university in 2001 (Sheil 2000). Water was consistently a uniting feature within communities despite historical and often bitter divisions on other issues. While Save the Snowy River campaign (Miller 2005) in Orbost is possibly the most famous, a similar unifying response became evident in other rural and urban communities.
Local knowledge of the life of a river is learnt over time through intimate experiences of rivers renewing and challenging lives. It has a different language, quality and sense of responsibility to departmental approach of management of a commodified resource. Bridging the cultures of public management and community involvement is a current challenge. A challenge that countries Japan and Canada have begun to make by introducing water levies in urban areas that return funds to rural communities in recognition of their stewardship role (http://www.nysefc.org/tas/NYCwatershed.htm). Our community stories can educate that water can become a guiding story towards a unifying culture if they are given a public presence (Sheil, Smith 2006, Caling 2005).
Email: Hsheil@groupwise.swin.edu.au