The rhythm is our storyline. It's where it feeds us. It is everything to everybody where the rivers are healthy, the people are healthy, where the rivers are sick, the people get sick, and we need to look after our rivers. 

My name's Scott Joly, a professor at Southern Cross University. I'm a landscape hydrogen chemist.

I've got a hundred plus sites all across the catchment, which is half the size of Switzerland, collecting sediments, bring them back, we'll analyse them at Southern Cross University, and this will provide us with a baseline of what the river geochemistry is like now, which means that we can assess any change in the future.

One of the most exciting and rewarding aspects is working with the community and First Nations and seeing how much people love the river and want to look after it. 

I volunteered because this is all about protecting the river. The river is everything here for the valley, it's where we gather what we celebrate.

It's the identity of the place where we live.

Scott said, would love to do this work about water quality, and I said, have I got the club for you? That's where it began to do. This massive 22,600 square kilometres of Clarence Valley catchment with 200 volunteers for our little tiny community, 55,000 people in the Clarence Valley.

It was an incredible commitment. Southern Cross Uni is taking nothing. Everything is being given back to community, and that is huge. A country talks to everybody who has the heart to listen. So if you're coming from your heart and you'll listen from your heart and you listen to our ways and walk that way.

Our future is about being together.