Nature really is unquashable.

Nature always finds a way to come back, to poke through the cracks, to stick around on the margins and await the day that better conditions arrive. No matter how we try to control, shape or suppress it, nature is there, waiting to make itself known to us.

First up in this episode we're talking about the Gumbramorra Swamp, the vast wetland that used to cover most of Marrickville and still lurks underground, waiting to rise up and flood the suburb during big rains. We're joined by Sue Castrique, who's just published Gumbramorra: Water, Place and People, and Uncle Terry Lennis, a local Dharug and Dharawal elder, who consulted for Inner West Council on the recently unveiled restored wetland at Mackey Park.

And in the second half we're going along to the Goolay'yari Cooks River Bioblitz, part of a global event called the Home River Bioblitz, where participants act as citizen scientists for the day, logging their sightings of bugs, lizards, birds and whatever else on the iNaturalist app. At this community event bringing together science, art, food and fun, we speak to organisers and participants and go chasing the Pink-Fingered Marsh Crab.

Together these stories demonstrate that these natural processes and ecosystems are still there, surviving and sometimes thriving even after two-plus centuries of colonisation, concreting and environmental crisis.

And of course we have all your River News for September 2026.

Guests: Sue Castrique, Uncle Terry Lennis, Milly Caley, Zuhairah Dindar, Erin Machin-Hall (TrashFish)

Host/producer: Niall Edwards-FitzSimons

Music by: riverkid

Thanks to all of our guests, to everyone we spoke to at the Bioblitz including Katie, Roie, Kelly, Theo, Daisy and Sally, and also to Zoe Ferguson.

This episode was produced on the lands of the Gadigal and the Bidjigal and we pay respect to elders past and present.

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