Listening to Country at Bundanon

As we approach NAIDOC Week 2025, Built Environmental Heritage Group is proud to launch our inaugural BEH Group Heritage Trail beginning on Dharawal and Dhurga Country at Bundanon. If you've seen it on our social media, this is our accompanying blog.

This particular trail is not only a celebration of culture, creativity, and country but also a reflection on how built environments can respond meaningfully to the landscapes and histories they inhabit. Located on the banks of the Shoalhaven River, Bundanon is an extraordinary site where First Nations knowledge, ecological care, and contemporary art converge.

Bundanon sits on the traditional lands of the Dharawal and Dhurga language groups. We acknowledge the Wodi Wodi people of the Dharawal Nation as the Traditional Custodians of this Country and honour their enduring relationship with land, water, and culture.

Here, every feature of the landscape, its escarpments, trees, river bends, and open plains, carries stories of resilience and care passed down over generations. The BEH Group Heritage Trail invites all of us to walk with purpose, to listen deeply, and to respect the living heritage of Country.

The trail focuses on the award-winning Bundanon Art Museum and the Bridge for Creative Learning, designed by Kersten Thompson Architects and opened in January 2022. The architecture was conceived to sit lightly on the land, with a deep sensitivity to both ecological processes and cultural meaning.

The subterranean museum is built into the hillside, protecting the collection from bushfire while maintaining a visual continuity with the natural landscape. Above ground, the Bridge for Creative Learning spans a gully, providing spaces for education, performances, and collaboration. It's not just a building—it’s a cultural gesture, inviting reflection and dialogue between people and their surroundings.

Sustainability is at the heart of the design:
• The entire precinct operates off-grid, powered by solar energy and battery storage
• It uses on-site water harvesting and waste treatment systems
• Bushfire protection is integrated into both the architecture and materials used

This makes Bundanon not only a national cultural treasure but also a model for environmentally responsive design.

Bundanon was gifted to the Australian people by artist Arthur Boyd and his wife Yvonne in 1993. Their vision was to create a place where people could be inspired by the same landscape that fuelled Boyd’s artistic practice.

Today, Bundanon supports exhibitions, artist residencies, educational programs, and cultural partnerships that reflect the diversity and depth of Australian creative life. It continues to foster conversations between contemporary art and traditional knowledge systems.

The launch of the BEH Group Heritage Trail aligns with the 2025 NAIDOC Week theme:
“The Next Generation: Strength, Vision & Legacy.”

It is a timely reminder of how we design, build, and interpret our environments today shapes what we pass on tomorrow. Bundanon exemplifies this ethos where cultural continuity, environmental care, and contemporary creativity are not in competition, but in harmony.

Currently on display is the powerful work by Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara artist Betty Kuntiwa Pumani. Known for her luminous depictions of Antara, her mother’s Country in the remote north-west of South Australia, Pumani’s work is both a personal and cultural cartography, layered with ancestral knowledge and ceremonial significance. In maḻatja-maḻatja, meaning "those who come after". Pumani continues the intergenerational practice of honouring Country through painting, passing down stories through brushwork, colour, and movement.

Her work at Bundanon was for me a powerful visual echo of this year’s NAIDOC theme, reminding us that legacy is not static—it is actively made and remade through cultural continuity, care, and creative expression.

Follow the links below to find out more about

NAIDOC 2025 https://www.naidoc.org.au/

Bundanon https://www.bundanon.com.au/art-museum/?srsltid=AfmBOooyG7GcewUUr2ku49cnFwwuwIW3ospMyv8xzhtXA3GN_3TEDDwg

Betty Kuntiwa Pumani

 https://www.bundanon.com.au/betty-kuntiwa-pumani-and-david-sequeira/?srsltid=AfmBOoqbYQLwf77xpUvYqQhkAkHRro-cNg_H4ESVnzcIyR1Lm3QB6ns

Kerstin Thompson Architect https://kerstinthompson.com/projects/bundanon-art-museum-bridge