ARTISTS Sharyn and Sandra Egan, who grew up around Bibra Lake, are crossing their fingers the EPA’s blunder will kill the Barnett/Abbott governments’ renewed push to build Roe 8.

The pair is so appalled by the state of the southern wetlands they’ve dedicated their latest exhibition Boodja Kep, at Freight Gallery, as a lament to broken country.

“I walk around the lake and think to myself ‘how would our ancestors feel about what we have done to the place’,” Sharyn says. “But I also think ‘what are our grandkids going to get—what are we leaving them?’.

“People just dump their rubbish anywhere—all over places that were sacred to our ancestors.”

• Sharyn and Sandra Egan’s exhibition laments the broken country of Bibra Lake. Photo by Steve Grant

When the pair was growing up, Nyungar families still camped around the lakes, as their forebears had done for tens of thousands of years.

But Sandra says as members of the stolen generation she and Sharyn had no contact with them.

It was only in later years the pair learned about the families, and say it’s curious they ended up moving back into the area.

The exhibition ends Sunday.

by STEVE GRANT