Unforgetting: The Yarri and Jacky Jacky Memorial at Gundagai

There is a sculpture in the main street of Gundagai (NSW, Australia) that honours two Wiradjuri men, Yarri and Jacky Jacky, local heroes in the Great Flood of 1852. Unveiled in 2017, the bronze sculpture depicts the two men and a scribbly-bark canoe used to save settler townspeople from the floodwaters. The sculpture, unmissable in the town’s centre, reminds even the most forgetful onlooker of colonialism. Unlike many Australian monuments, this statue does not memorialise and legitimise colonialism or celebrate nationalism and White male “heroes”. Rather, it is a testament to the Wiradjuri men’s bravery, skill and compassion. Standing before the monument, I was dumbstruck. Why? Despite settler-colonial violence, land theft, oppression and dismissals of Wiradjuri warnings, the men risked their lives. The statue slowed me down, interrupted my trajectory. The Yarri and Jacky Jacky memorial invites passers-by into a space of encounter, feeling and thoughtfulness. In response, I follow a plurality of stories and the tributaries of the imagination to weave a tale of a complex shared Aboriginal–settler past and present.