The following article is reproduced with permission from "The Source":

STEELS CREEK STITCHERS

Long Yarra Quilt

Artists and poets are expressing what the Yarra River means to them on intricate quilts. Jenny Brown reports

Graphic stories and profound emotions about the Yarra River are being stitched together on hand-made quilts in a community project that began quite by accident.

The Long Yarra Quilt project was initiated by Kate Whitehouse, who in 2003 walked the length of the Yarra with three friends. The 240-kilometre walk took three weeks and on the big bends of the river, where the group would camp overnight, local people would arrive to sit around camp-fires and share stories, history and knowledge of a watercourse that is so central in their lives.

Ms Whitehouse, an environmental education officer with Nillumbik Shire, marvelled at the way people felt so connected to the Yarra and were so inspired by it. "Like them, we had so deeply dropped into being with the river," she says.

When she finished the walk, Ms Whitehouse, who is dexterous with a needle and thread, felt compelled to express her feelings in a spontaneous poem.

The poem says in part:
Three weeks with sun and rain and feathers
I saw the first trickles of our sweet river

From that simple impulse emerged the Long Yarra Quilt project, which is giving many people a canvas on which to say what the Yarra means to them.

"I saw it as a way to give people a graphic voice to celebrate the river," Ms Whitehouse says.

It is anticipated that up to 12 Yarra-related quilts may be created as the project unfolds municipality by municipality.

Three quilts-from the Shire of Yarra Ranges, Steels Creek Stitchers and the first from Manningham – have been completed, framed and publicly displayed. These quilts, the work of more than 60 people, have set an example and the tone of things to come.

"Now the second Manningham quilt is being put together, Nillumbik is just starting and we are asking people in Banyule to join in," says Ms Whitehouse.

By the time the whole river story is patched together - hopefully all the way down to Williamstown –the black-bordered quilts might contain hundreds of individual A4 panels.

All will be hand-sewn originals; painted, patchworked, made with decorative fabric and threads. Each is a unique visual facet of a special bond between people and an important natural place.

"Each person who has participated holds part of the story of the river," Ms Whitehouse says. "The quilt is allowing them to tell their side of the story-and the whole story of the river.

"I can see how much love and effort people have put into their pieces, and how very different are their many voices and stories of the same river."

There is wonderful detail and form to observe. And in the detail there is plenty of poetry, including this stanza by someone who sewed .herself in simply as Justine:

... the rain poured and the river flowed, Old stones, turned, ancient and calmed, flattened, softened, smoothed, Turning: fluid fresh, take me home ...

Essayist Wendy Chew, of Reefton, contributed a saying she once heard on the radio and has never forgotten: The forest is the mother of the river

"It's such a poetic phrase," she says. "And the wisdom of it! The longer I live on the river, the more I understand the beauty of the wilderness and the purity of the water."

Ms Chew's panel - which was under- painted and overstitched by her creative daughter, art illustrator Ju-yuen - forms the central panel from the Shire of Yarra Ranges.

Instead of 12 small panels, the Steels Creek Stitchers chose to make one big narrative panel of sky, flying eagle (Bunjil), hills, hot-air balloons and a snaking river. Lollypop trees, platypus, fish and a happy girl floating down the bends on a lilo also make an appearance.

Jane Calder of the Steels Creek Stitchers, a group of Yarra Valley women from Steels Creek and Yarra Glen who meet together regularly to stitch and sew, says they decided to involve children in the project. "The adults created the background and the children created the images and symbols," she says.

Students from Christmas Hills, Dixons Creek and Yarra Glen primary schools contributed the template drawings for the figures that appear on the sewn storyboard of the two square metre quilt. The effect is storybook naivety.

Some of the panels that are being made into quilts representing Manningham have also been created by schoolchildren.

Denni Egan, Anthea Tsaousis and Emily Drew, all aged 10 and students of Carey Grammar, Donvale, are studying the ecology of the Yarra. They decided to create images of platypus and dragonflies on hand-made felt panels.

Their art teacher, Jeanette Jennings, says: "When the girls were thinking about what they wanted to do, they chose creatures that live in and along the river because they know that the river is the key to the creatures' survival.

"Whenever I can, I try to take the artroom outside and so for us, the river is a really rich resource."

Like so many stitchers and quilters who are being gathered into the fabric of the project, the Carey girls were thrilled by what they made, says their teacher. "They know that the work belongs 'out there' and are not works of art that belong on a fridge," Ms Jennings says.

Kate Whitehouse has no idea what shape the Long Yarra Quilt project will ultimately take. She hopes it might make up a major textile exhibition and ideally, she'd like to see the finished quilts go back to their communities for permanent display.

"It's still unfolding," she says. "It was just an idea I had and I can't believe how people have embraced it."

The finished quilts have been shown at Montsalvat and the Abbotsford Convent as part of the Connect to the Yarra exhibition, which is supported by Melbourne Water.

They were displayed alongside David Roberts' evocative black and white photographs of his 2004 canoe trip along the Yarra (see The Source, June 2006).

The exhibition will be at Scienceworks from 14 October to 12 November, with a special Connect to the Yarra community day to celebrate National Water Week on Saturday 21 October.

For more information, visit:
   www.izone.net.au/~yarraquilt
   melbournewater.com.au/ouryarra

Melbourne Water’s The Source, September 2006