Walking across an unassuming pedestrian bridge covered in graffiti in Sydney’s south, you’d never know the riverbanks beneath were the centre of the Aboriginal civil rights movement 100 years ago.
Salt Pan Creek, on Bidjigal Country between Peakhurst and Padstow about 30 minutes from Sydney’s CBD, was a place where political radicals preached ideas that would ultimately lead to the foundational concepts of the Uluru Statement from the Heart — which asked for formal recognition of First Nations Australians.
“This is not something that’s new to us or our country, this is an ask that’s been going on for many, many decades through many iterations,” Wiradjuri woman Bridget Cama told the ABC’s Indigenous Affairs Team.
“It’s our unfinished business.”
This unfinished business, documents and photographs from Salt Pan Creek, has been curated by Ms Cama who is the co-chair of the Uluru Youth Dialogue — part of a group of First Nations representatives who mandated the Uluru Statement.
“It was very rare at this time for Aboriginal people in New South Wales to own freehold land,” said Ms Cama.
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The little-known history of Salt Pan Creek features in a truth-telling exhibition at Sydney’s Hurstville Library.
It’s part of Towards Truth — the truth-telling project by Uluru Dialogue — one of the groups that mandated the Uluru Statement, which was delivered at a historic 2017 conference in the red centre after 12 regional dialogue meetings across the country. The statement called for three major reforms: an Indigenous Voice to Parliament enshrined in the constitution, Treaty and Truth-telling.
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