Soggy Homes – The wonder of wetlands
For the past six months I’ve been living a fairly surreal existence. Working on wetlands by day, and sleeping under giant wetland plants and animals by night. A Growling Grass Frog the size of a small car in one corner of the bedroom and some two meter tall orchids casting spooky shadows above my head at night. Paired with a giant crayfish, a super-sized Ancient Greenling and a colossal Bright-eyed Brown butterfly it might sound like some sort of weird recurring dream. In fact it is the result of my creative partner (Megan Nicolson) and the staging ground for a wetland themed exhibition which has just opened at the Warrnambool Art Gallery.
Megan and I have often combined our interests to bring together ecology and the arts; the Mt Burr campaign cross-border exhibition, the Waste Not exhibition and seminar series, and the “Small Things” festival to name a few. But this time Megan has gone it alone, drawing on some great local knowledge and photos from our NGT colleagues to shine a light on some of the rarest of plants and animals, whilst also introducing the important role of wetlands to a young audience. While I’d like to think I was a big help, truth be known my focus on taxonomic correctness was not always greeted with enthusiasm.
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The exhibition is housed in the Family Learning Center at the Warrnambool Art Gallery and offers a sensory experience for children and adults alike. You can flop on the Growling Grass Frog or cuddle and cart around a Little Galaxias, all the while being surrounded by the sounds we have recorded during our wetland survey work. The gallery has even produced a field guide filled with fun facts and some activities.
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The exhibition runs until June 2021 so there is plenty of time to plan a trip to Warrnambool and drop in for a look. You can see the exhibition details – ‘In Soggy Homes: The Wonder of Wetlands’- here. Keep an eye out for further public programs, like a waterbug activity we ran on Saturday morning. Not everyone can come out and see the conservation work NGT is doing on the ground so I am really grateful to Megan for bringing the wetlands to the people, and helping share this important part of our regional landscape’s story.
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You can hear more about the exhibition and the types of programs we are running alongside it in these radio interviews from ABC South West Victoria from Monday morning.