James Boden

PAAKANTYI SANCTUARY
Wentworth, NSW, Australia

The prosperity of colonisation in rural Australia has prevailed by the usufruct of adjacent natural resources. Settlements along the banks & tributaries of the Murray River typifies this phenomenon - its townships prospered at the cost of adjacent riparian landscapes. The use of the river and its banks are fraught with political, social & environmental controversy, rendering them and their infrastructures purposeless.

Wentworth, the self-professed “South-western gateway to outback NSW” is positioned at the convergence of the Darling and Murray Rivers. Thegoa Lagoon, west of the township, is a landscape of indigenous and natural importance. 160 years of poor land management has left irreparable scars, resulting in the promotion of Lawsonian landscapes & significant archaeological sites further afield.

The project removes ‘benign’ infrastructural elements from the town (the former brickworks, abandoned Curlwaa School and retired river crossings) and re-erects their materials on the scars of the lagoon site, flipping their ingrained agency from town to lagoon, between wet and dry. The resulting structures are nostalgic offerings to better connect the residents and visitors of Wentworth to a regenerating lagoon. The inlet is inhabited by a shelter for non-secular services, seed drying and brick-making. The Wentworth Levee becomes a new promenade connecting to the north of the town. A bird hide occupies the outlet of the lagoon. These structures form connections with the cemetery to act as a catalyst for prolonged regeneration over an extra-human timescale.