This year marks the tenth anniversary of a group of actors coming together to make Sydney’s Parramatta River swimmable again. Lead Convenor Charity Mosienyane spoke with one of the Parramatta project’s leads, Sarah Holland-Clift, about what our own initiative can learn from this Sydney success story. 

In 2014, Sydney’s Parramatta River Catchment Group (PRCG) launched their plans to make the Parramatta river swimmable again by 2025. A decade on, the group has successfully implemented five swimming sites along the river with more in the pipeline. 

The ‘Our Living River’ project has many parallels to our own Swimmable Birrarung initiative. At the time, it was a wildly ambitious proposal. The PRCG is an alliance of local Councils, state government agencies and the community, which is driven by a small team of passionate staff. The team had to work together and up and down the river in order to meet their goals. The work was complex, messy and involved many steps sideways and backwards as well as forwards. Despite all that was stacked against them, the PRCG persevered, and the Parramatta River is now a shining example of what’s possible when we organise with joy and hope. 

Inspired by our friends in the north, we caught up with the original ‘Our Living River’ coordinator, Sarah Holland-Clift, to glean what the Swimmable Birrarung project might learn from the Parramatta’s success. Sarah grew up in the suburbs of Melbourne and spent much of her childhood playing along a tributary of the Birrarung. She later moved to Sydney, where she spearheaded the mission to make the Parramatta River swimmable again. She now lives on the Surf Coast, continues to work in river and catchment health and is a regular ocean swimmer.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length. 

Early wins are important 

Sarah Holland-Clift: “Shortly after launching Our Living River, we opened Lake Parramatta to public swimming for the first time in 72 years. With Lake Parramatta, there’d been a lot of work by agencies over a 15-20 year period that was helping to improve the water quality. All it took was for Parramatta Council to start testing the water quality to determine whether it could be opened and then provide the infrastructure for the public to safely access it. So we tested the water and we realised that – surprise! – the site could be opened.

Parramatta Council was the host agency to the PRCG at the time and was very supportive. The Lord Mayor of Parramatta was also the chair of the PRCG at the time and there were some great champions within the Council who helped make it happen. They really invested in getting the site up and running. Launching that site, and being able to say ‘people can swim here for the first time in 72 years’, sparked everyone’s energy around the fact this was possible, and the idea that ‘the river was swimmable once, and it can be again’. In Melbourne, the Birrarung’s Yarra Yabbies swimming group is gold for this because they’re already swimming in the river.”

Growing river literacy: swimmable when, where, for whom?  

SHC: “One issue we had was that people were worried about the bull sharks in the river. And so we were clear from the beginning that we wouldn’t necessarily be swimming the length of the river – we had to create some boundaries and reality around the vision. So we asked the community where they wanted designated swim sites and acknowledged that in other sections you might not want people swimming. Instead you may want to walk along its bank, have a picnic or enjoy the wildlife. When dolphins came up the river, it created a lot of excitement. In the case of the Birrarung, it might be platypus, rakali or even Salvatore the Yarra seal. A ‘swimmable’ river means swimmable for animals too, not just humans.

It was important for us to understand our community’s aspirations and barriers to swimming, so we invested in a statistically significant survey of the population, which included focus groups to refine the questions and then a survey rolled out randomly to 1100 people across the catchment. This enabled us to put things in perspective when concerns came up, and plan for how swimming sites should be designed. For example, more than half the people said they’d prefer to swim in the river if it took them half as long to get to as the beach. Also, pollution and water quality (not sharks!) were the main concerns about swimming, but two thirds of people said that publishing water quality results would make them likely to swim.”

Recruit champions to the vision 

SHC: “Ambassadors are so important. When we first launched, the media went for their go-to academics. Interestingly for us, some of those academics started out being quite serious - saying things like, ‘it’s a noble vision, but I’m not sure it’s going to be possible’ and so on. So we invited those academics to become our ambassadors and not only did they become great spokespeople for the vision and how we could achieve it, they also helped us with the science needed to make it happen.

We had academic ambassadors, sports ambassadors, politicians and community Riverkeeper ambassadors. All of these people could be called on to speak on behalf of the campaign, which strengthened the message and saved the media from just hearing from us all the time.

We also had many allies within our member agencies, who invested so much time, energy and expertise to help us make this vision a reality. You really can never underestimate the value of those incredible allies.”

Ground it in robust science

SHC: “Having the vision is great, but we also needed a clear roadmap to how it would be achieved. We spent a lot of time advocating to anyone who would listen, to build support and investment in developing our Masterplan. It wasn’t straightforward, but we just took every funding opportunity, leveraged loads of goodwill and tapped into some great minds to eventually pull it all together into our clear ten steps to a living river with designs for our first three sites. Sydney Water, the EPA and some of our key member Councils came on board in a big way to make it happen. 

All the while, it was also important to keep delivering on the ground. A great example was our ‘Get the Site Right’ sediment and erosion control campaign, which saw Council officers and the EPA head out together every six months to inspect building sites along the river. It has now expanded to over 20 councils across Sydney with compliance rates improving.”

Get the governance right 

SHC: “We had a great alliance of agencies in place, but we recognised that current waterway governance was confusing and complex. We needed a lead state agency with sufficient powers, funding and whole of government support to drive delivery of the Masterplan, while everyone else still played their part. Getting buy-in from all members for Sydney Water to take the lead coordination role for the Masterplan delivery was critical – and they’ve stayed on the journey ever since. They’ve even expanded to other parts of Sydney under the banner of the ‘Urban Plunge Movement’. The PRCG has remained at the helm though to lead the alliance and keep everyone working together.

We also recognised that Aboriginal leadership in waterway governance is critical. Traditional Custodians have the longest connection and working relationship with the area and so should be a priority for inclusion in any research, review or design of policy. We listened with an open heart and open mind about what this could look like and the work on this continues.

Politically, Councillors and Mayors were important because they are passionate about their local patch. We had a nominated Councillor representative from all 11 councils. When the vision was put forward, they all wanted a swimming site in their local patch. We had a list of historic swimming sites along the river to make the idea real for people, and some councils wanted to add new sites that weren’t even on the list. It took on a life of its own.

Through their support, our councillors, local MPs and senior government officials certainly helped enable the vision become a reality.

“Swimmable” has always been more than just swimming 

SHC: “It’s important to define a ‘swimmable’ river as being more than just swimming – and to be inclusive of those who don’t swim. It’s not dissimilar to going to the beach. How many people go to the beach just to have a walk or to play with their kids in the sand? When you actually go into the water, there’s often not that many people out there. But everyone wants the beach to be swimmable so they can enjoy it for all of those other reasons. A river is no different. 

From a messaging perspective, we’d say: ‘A swimmable river means more than just swimming.’ We worked with our stakeholders and community to define the key elements of a swimmable river, and these were: an engaged community who loves and cares for their waterway; business opportunities that enable thriving local businesses; healthy ecosystems in the river, catchment and natural creeks; quality facilities for events and recreation and improved public access such as cycleways and walkways.”

Involve the community in everything and make it fun (!!!)

“Whether it’s voting for a swim site, choosing their favourite plant or animal mascot, helping out with litter pick-ups, participating in surveys, attending events, sharing their opinion – community input is everything for a project like this. And don’t forget to make it fun! That’s why people attach to something – because it’s fun. As soon as you get too bureaucratic and serious people just kind of switch off. We dressed up in floaties, turned our iconic species into mascots, had themed family fun days, and celebrated everything every step of the way. We laughed a lot! Enjoy the journey team Swimmable Birrarung, and have fun!”

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