The stage for Desert Equinox 10th Anniversary (DE10) is part of the Broken Hill Regeneration Area (known locally as ‘the Regen’): a precious ring of environmental reserves that surround the city and are reserved solely for regeneration of native vegetation.

Prior to colonisation the arid zone, although naturally dry most of the year, supported a wide range of vegetation that was resilient against drought and heat and could thrive on the zone’s nutrient-poor soil.

From the 1830s onwards, as the settlement of Broken Hill grew into an outback city on the traditional lands of the Wilyakali people of the Barkindji Nation, the traditional owners were forcibly dispossessed by colonial settlers. The European-style farming and the mining that followed resulted in the region being stripped of trees and other vegetation, which in turn caused widespread soil erosion. What was left was a denuded landscape characterised by incessant dust storms.

Although many of us today consider environmental protection and regeneration to be contemporary concerns, work on this pioneering natural regeneration project in the arid zone of NSW began over a century ago.

Local residents Albert and Margaret Morris – a mining company employee and a dressmaker respectively – were both keenly interested in botany. In 1920, concerned about the damaging dust storms and the loss of indigenous flora and fauna, they helped found the Barrier Field Naturalists Club, an active group that laid the foundations for the Regen and is still active today.

The Morrises became internationally renowned experts in Australian arid zone flora, conservation and regeneration, and the club urged the state government to fence in areas around the outskirts of Broken Hill to allow natural regeneration of vegetation. Work on the first such area, fencing in two reservoirs (now known as the Zinc Lakes) in Broken Hill, was commenced in 1936, and other areas followed.

After Albert Morris died in 1939, Margaret Morris and other members of the club continued the work. Two decades later, in 1958, Albert’s dream of encircling the city with regeneration areas became a reality, and to this day the residents of Broken Hill are benefiting from the vision of the Morrises and their fellow club members.

The wetlands area hosting DE10 was one of the first (pre-WWII) areas of regeneration, and is currently jointly managed by Landcare Broken Hill and Broken Hill City Council. It is the only regeneration area currently open to public use, and is frequently visited by bushwalkers and ornithologists.

BHAE, ERIA, Barrier Field Naturalists Club, Landcare and Broken Hill City Council hope to work together again in the future to present another suite of solar artworks on the soon-to-be reopened Imperial Lakes site to the northeast of Broken Hill.