Strathfield Council and the Strathfield-Homebush District Historical Society prepared and held an exhibition called Cooks River: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow at the Ironbark Gallery, Strathfield Council Library & Innovation Hub from 14 December 2023 to 11 February 2024.
From its source at Yagoona to its mouth at Botany Bay the Cooks River passes through Wangal, Gadigal and Gameygal lands. Since colonisation and industrialisation, much of the Cooks River and its tributaries have been significantly modified and degraded. Urbanisation, land clearing and population growth in the Cooks River Catchment have increased habitat loss and fragmentation. Decades of pollution and rubbish dumping have resulted in degraded water quality and aquatic conditions. The changing climate also increases threats to the health of our waterways and green spaces and increases pressure on the plants and animals that live here.
This exhibition explored the River’s past, its current challenges and its future. The exhibition identified how the River in Strathfield was changed from the ‘meandering creek with a series of pools with plentiful bird and aquatic life’ to a concreted canal with high levels of pollution and damaged and destroyed ecosystems.
The Cooks River provides an important biodiversity corridor of vegetated habitat in parks, reserves and gardens adjacent to the river. Over the years Cooks River has been fished, dammed, concreted, diverted and polluted – and rehabilitated. Strathfield Council is custodian of the Cooks River as it meanders through its LGA and partners with other organisations to improve both the health of the river and the liveability of the communities within its catchment. This exhibition explores the river’s rich history culminating in recent projects and initiatives that protect and conserve the river and its biodiversity.
