Susan Island Women's Visit
On the beautiful morning of Wednesday 20th September Clarence Valley Council was thrilled to partner with the Nyami Julgaa Women’s group to take 25 local aboriginal elders and women out to visit Susan Island.
Susan Island holds great significance to the Nyami Julgaa group, who are the cultural custodians of the island and have a close and ongoing relationship to the place and its rainforest. The women in this group have worked hard over the years to support and advise bush regeneration efforts by National Parks and Wildlife Services and the Susan and Elizabeth Island Recreation Land Manager, and are now seeing the revival of indigenous flora and fauna on the island that have traditionally been used for food, medicine and technology.
Council supported this women’s visit to Susan Island by providing food, transport, safety, and other planning logistics. We were also excited to work with the Gumbanggyirr Rangers from Ngiyambandigay Wajaarr Aboriginal Corporation for the first time, who assisted with boat transport and safety procedures on the day.
Council is fortunate to be able to support this type of community engagement thanks to the grant it received through the LGNSW Flying-fox Habitat Restoration Program. The Susan Island Nature Reserve, with its intact remnant floodplain rainforest, is a seasonal home to Grey-headed and Little Red flying-foxes each year. Clarence Valley Council has launched the Susan Island: Restoring to Reduce Conflict project to restore further flying-fox habitat on the island while also working to develop a greater understanding of flying-foxes amongst the community.
Flying-foxes hold an extremely important environmental role as seed dispersers and pollinators and are intricately linked to the health of our forests, the other wildlife that depend on these forests and the communities that are connected to them like the Nyami Julgaa group on Susan Island.
As part of the Susan Island: Restoring to Reduce Conflict project and events like this women’s visit, Council hopes to demonstrate the link between flying-foxes and their importance to the island’s natural rainforest and significant cultural heritage. We look forward to creating more opportunities for community engagement with flying-foxes and Susan Island through this project.
