Jock Gilbert and the RMIT Landscape Architecture program have been building a relationship with Culpra Milli Aboriginal Corporation (CMAC) through projects on Culpra Station since 2014. The projects arise from this relationship and aim to address the corporation’s vision of facilitating culturally appropriate enterprise opportunities for Aboriginal people through engagement with Country on Culpra. In their work, CMAC and RMIT have focused on the design of infrastructure to support two strands of enterprise alongside agriculture: cultural education and tourism.
In mid-2021, the NSW Department of Environment and Heritage, Local Land Services Western Division commissioned Charles Massy and RMIT to produce a report outlining strategic approaches to culturally, environmentally and economically appropriate land management in support of a range of enterprises.
The project team spent four days on Culpra Station in late June 2021, hearing stories, walking Country, sharing meals, and observing and reading landscape. Drawing upon this research, in addition to eight years of previous work, the resulting report identified a suite of interrelated enterprise opportunities and outlined strategic approaches toward the design and development of infrastructure to facilitate these. From both a regenerative and a cultural perspective, the report also identified ways that such enterprises might strengthen and enrich land management objectives and outcomes – in recognition that the design of enterprise, infrastructure and land management are intrinsically interrelated. The project proposal that most clearly manifests these connections is the Boomerang Billabong Rehydration Project (BBRP), an infrastructure project conceptualized through story. With clear regenerative environmental land management outcomes, the BBRP provides a platform for culturally appropriate enterprises based on education and
