A Barkindji elder who grew up on the banks of the Darling River and a painter who grew up above a Sydney pub are the unlikely pair behind a new exhibition about the decline of the river.

The partnership came about when Sydney artist Justine Muller's car broke down in Wilcannia, in far western New South Wales, which led to her meeting Badger Bates, a local elder and one of the region's most prolific and renowned artists.

Three years on, the collaboration has become the record and expression of a movement bringing attention to the decline of the third-longest river in the country and the culture associated with it.

The forgotten river

Badger Bates grew up in Wilcannia on the Darling River, or "Barka" as it is known to Barkindji people, and almost all of his art has been about his people's connection to the land and water.

"It's our river all the way from Bourke down to Wilcannia," he said.

"Our traditional name is Barkindji wimpatja, which means Darling River blacks."

The river has come to a standstill four times in the last decade, with some blaming government mismanagement and over-allocation of water to irrigators upstream.



Recent environmental releases of water into the river have failed to appease locals.

'Dying in the mud'

Hand carved mussel shells by Badger Bates. ( Courtesy: Jason King )

Hand carved mussel shells are a centrepiece of the exhibition. Mr Bates said he wanted to make the point that mussels are just one of the creatures environmental flows could not help.

"When they put an environmental flow down, the mussels don't swim away, they just stay there in the mud and they die," he said.

"That's why I carved these because if we don't carve them soon, they're just going to turn to dust and just rot away."

Mr Bates said the purpose of the exhibition was simple.

"Our message is, 'Please you government people, let us have our water back'," he said.

"Give us a natural cultural flow and leave it alone."

Ms Muller, the daughter of a publican who spent most of her life in Sydney, has been in Wilcannia for a large part of the past three years.

She said it took very little time to see the how important the river was to the community.

"As I learned more and more, I started to understand what was happening to the river and how that affected all the families, culture, history — everything was tied to the river," she said.

"Being a white woman who comes from the city, water is something we take for granted. I don't have an identity tied up with something like a river.

"It was really captivating to me."

Two histories

A river bed reconstructed from river sand and the clay footprints of more than 200 Wilcannia residents. ( ABC Broken Hill: Aimee Volkofsky )

While Barkindji culture is intrinsically connected to the health of the Darling River, the artists hoped their exhibition would emphasise the importance of the river's health to everyone in the region.

"It's not just for us Barkindji people, it's for everyone that lives on that river," Mr Bates said.

This connection and common ground between cultures and histories is expressed throughout the exhibition.

A series of paintings of local Indigenous identities appears on hammered tin, a material brought to Wilcannia by non-Indigenous industry and adapted by Indigenous people to build river shacks.

That connection is also found in the centrepiece of the exhibition: a reconstructed river bed, littered with sticks, feathers, old bottles, rusted metal and the clay footprints of more than 200 Wilcannia residents.

Ms Muller said she hoped the work would make that connection to the river stronger for all people.

"There are two histories in Wilcannia — there's a white history and black history," she said.

"At one point it was a thriving town with a very rich [Indigenous] culture that was still intact and a big steam boat industry, which carried very important vessels through.

"There were these two cultures side by side that have slowly been destroyed as the river has been destroyed."

Can art save a river?

Banners from past rallies for the Darling River hang in the Broken Hill Regional Art Gallery. ( ABC Broken Hill: Aimee Volkofsky )

How to manage the Murray Darling Basin and its resources has been one of the longest running and complicated political debates in Australia's recent history.

Curator Ineke Dane said she saw the exhibition as an opportunity to take the story out of the news cycle.

"This is an ongoing story that needs to be talked about," she said.

"It's not just about a people in a region losing their culture, it's about all of Australia."

Ms Dane said she hoped the exhibition also communicated the strength and resilience of the Wilcannia community.

"It's not just about the degradation of the river," she said.

"It's about the strength and resilience of a community that has suffered greatly at the hands of higher powers and corporations that they have little or no control over."