‘Burning Love’, Living Ngurra: Healing Country, Healing Hearts and Sharing Minds in Dharug Country

‘Burning Love’ is not just the title of a song sung by Elvis Presley. It is a metaphor for the traditional custodial practice of using cool guwiyang (fire) to care for the environment by Indigenous peoples across the continent called ‘Australia’ for more than 65,000 years. As such it is not only a practice for maintaining Ngurra (Country), but it involves intimate relationality with specific presences, places, and people. As such it involves love: the deep understanding that our wellbeing, today and into the future, relies on Ngurra. Just as in the human realm of love and caring, we understand that our wellbeing relies on the wellbeing of those we love. As such, ‘burning love’ differs vastly from the current fire ‘hazard’ reduction processes that are failing to protect property, human lives, and biodiversity. This paper engaged with revitalised intimate relationality that underpins Dharug women’s connection to Ngurra through a research project near a waterhole in a government run National Park, in the northern suburbs of so-called “Sydney, Australia”. The project involved restorative healing using cool guwiyang to care for Ngurra. This paper weaves three perspectives that reflect the cross-cultural realities of today’s Dharug Ngurra-as-city. Those perspectives include Dharug and other Indigenous knowledges and practices, ‘restorative environmental justice’ principles and Western scientific monitoring approaches. It is argued that a sustainable pathway can be found that is healing to both Ngurra and the hearts and minds of humans within urban contexts under threat from ever encroaching ‘development’ and climate-changing crises.