In her book Understory, Inga Simpson shows that no matter how well you know a place, and how long you might live there, you can always be surprised by some new aspect of its shape, its story, and its inhabitants. She shows, too, how perceptions can be shaped by the stories we have heard about the place and the assumptions we bring with us to that place - and how this can sometimes blind us to significant facets of the place and its stories.
Almost forty years ago, soon after I had moved to a valley that had once been the forested home of the Darkinjung People, I was working behind the bar at the Tavern that was the hub of the larger of the two villages in The Valley. Wollombi drew its name, it was believed, from the language of those prior occupants, and signified either a meeting of waters, or a meeting place near the waters. The other village was smaller, had a Spanish name - Laguna, possibly from a former soldier of Wellesley's Peninsula Campaign - and possessed only a Wine Bar.
A stranger of around fifty years of age came into the bar and bought a beer - he looked around and eventually asked after certain local names and families - many of them unknown to we newer residents, and most, long departed. He was not, it turned out, a stranger to The Valley, but we were strangers to him. He had grown up in a narrow gully at the back of one of the many dairy farms that dotted the area during World War Two. After the war, he had left in search of work, as so many young men did. Indeed, by the time I moved there, only one dairy was still operating, and the family that ran it were all well past retirement age.
He asked me, after a while "What happened to the hills? Why did they let the place go like this?"
I asked what he meant, and he launched into a story about the hard work done by he and others, during and just after the war. He pointed out the many forested ridges that surrounded the basin in which the village sat, nestled at the confluence of three small rivers.
"We had all those ridges clear" he said indignantly "and now they've let all the trees grow back"
He and his fathers, uncles, and neighbours, had ring-barked almost every tree on all the ridges visible from the tavern (which had been a wine bar, too, when he was young) and many other ridges further up and downstream. He obviously felt that all their sweat and hard work had been wasted through neglect - he thought that the current landholders should have been vigilant and active in preventing any regrowth by trees.
His tone and words told me that he believed that what they had done had been the right thing - an effort to expand the area of pasture available to the local dairies, at a time when the production of milk and butter was a vital contribution to the war effort, and a valuable addition to the local economy. No doubt that was the story told to the farmers by the agricultural advisors of the day.
Now the hills were covered in forest again - a thriving mix of Ironbark, Stringybark, Grey Gum, Rough Barked Apple, and Blue Gum - and no local farmer would think to clear those steeper slopes again.
The erosion had been terrible, and long stretches of the Brook and of Yango Creek had seen deep, fish-filled waterholes fill with sand. The grass growth had been worse without trees than with, and the forests were now valued as a resource that could be selectively cut through for logs, pit timber, fence posts, and firewood, as well as providing sheltered areas for the cattle during the worst of the heat and cold.
The new arrivals and younger people in the bar at the time were astounded at the story he told of dust, sweat, and hillsides covered in stark, silver-grey skeletons of the earlier forests - to us, the existing forests looked as if they had always been there - and yet he had been helping to kill those former forests only forty years earlier. It was not the first time, either, as I subsequently was shown a very old photo of the hill behind the Wine Bar at Laguna, and it, too, was bereft of trees, though earlier and later photos showed plenty of them on the hill behind the buildings. That picture dated to the end of the nineteenth centurey. It seems the the fortunes of the local forest ebbed and flowed over the decades.
The few members of the older families still living in the area could have told us that story, though none did - directly. One old ex-dairyman liked to recall, in a puzzled voice, how the area had been suddenly swamped by a surfeit of wombats, and that this had happened at the same time as all the koalas had vanished. It was a mystery, he said, that no one had ever explained.
If we looked closely enough, the clues were there. Although the trees that were killed in the great ringbarking effort had mostly fallen or been felled, and had been burned in piles, or carted away for firewood many years before that afternoon in The Tavern, there were still ancient stumps - mossy and half rotten - lurking in the shade of the new forest. The man's story opened my eyes, and I soon found many more stumps as I walked the shady hillsides - some of them of a truly remarkable size.
One day, I wandered up across the western ridge of my farm - I had not had it long and was still exploring it a bit at a time. I found a half a dozen truly enormous Blue Gums - tall, straight, and metres in circumference. I wondered how such trees had survived, but the clue was in the shape of the gully they grew in - the confirmation came a while later when I talked to one of the older timber cutters in the area.
His comment? "That gully had a double dog-leg in it. The logs wouldn't shoot down, couldn't get a dozer up there to drag them out, and couldn't get a track close enough on the ridge top to winch them up. We had to leave them" He sounded so disappointed that he was never able to find a way to get at those trees.
Later on, I heard a story about trees that were even bigger, and still standing. At the end of a narrow dirt road that snaked along the ridges of the Watagan Range, and plunged down deep, shady gullies to the upper reaches of the Brook that flowed through my paddocks, a small clearing had been set aside within the State Forest for campers. The trees that surrounded that clearing, on the banks of a clear, pebbly stream, were huge. Five or six people might have been able to link hands around the trunk of one of the smaller ones; to see their tops seemed impossible - they were too close to the clouds.
The Darkingjung, Awabakal, and Wonnarua Peoples walked among vast forests of such trees for tens of thousands of years - now a few dozen of those trees remain in odd corners of the range to remind us of what once was here. When I had first bought the hundred acres of creek flat and ridge country that was to be my farm, I had walked among trees that seemed astounding in their size - yet it seems that almost all of them were barely moving into a stage we could call mature, especially compared to those might Grandfather Trees still lurking in their hidden corners.
I had made that all too common human mistake, and assumed that what I could see was what had always been that way. In truth, that is so rarely the case, and if we look and listen carefully, the stories that will tell us what had gone before, and what might come again, are there, waiting. But don't leave it too long - so many of those older story tellers are leaving us, and leaving behind no written or pictorial record.
Tuesday 31 October 2017
Saturday 28 October 2017
Among the Trees
Inga Simpson has, with her latest work A Life with Trees, given us a poignant story of the constant tension between the dreams and desires we humans try to impose on "our" land, and the drives and needs of the manifold occupants - plant and animal - that were in and on that land before us, or that have arrived from elsewhere to enjoy the side-effects our decisions and actions have wrought upon that land.
Within its pages there is a resonance with my own life amid tree and pasture, and the attachment I formed to the landscapes within which I lived, and, at times, made my living. Like her, I have moved more than once, and cleared and planted, trying to add my dreams and desires to the existing ecology, and like her I have had to compromise between dreams and the counter forces of nature and economics.
I have been enchanted by the grandeur of a place, and by the miniscule wonder and beauty that reveal themselves to the quiet traveller or sojourner. The first view of any landscape, large or small, always contains more than the observer can take in. We think we see it all, but our brain, as it usually does when confronted with large amounts of information via the senses, filters and simplifies - bringing to our consciousness the "big picture" first, and then the more easily identifiable aspects, with an emphasis on things about which we already have some knowledge.
Another view, in different light, weather, or season, and different aspects are highlighted - the big picture changes shape and gains texture. Finer details begin to come to our notice, until we make that all too common mistake and think we know all about the place, and fully understand it.
Then the light changes again, or the temperature, or rain falls, or fails to fall when expected - and the view changes again as we notice previously overlooked details. Carefuly nurtured plants die of drought, drowning, or unseen disease, while self-sown seedlings that weren't obvious only weeks before are suddenly flourishing. Perhaps they were there all along, rendered invisible by our ignorance, or even misidentified as weeds.
Mature trees that somehow escaped notice for years, even as we lamented the absence of that species, appear under our nose (or over our heads), and supposedly rare and endangered ground orchids suddenly, and briefly, carpet a ridge top in flowers - no matter how long we dwell in a place, it can always surprise us. And so we add to our knowledge of place, and as the surprise fades, we again grow smug about our understanding - until the next new discovery.
The store of knowledge contained in Indigenous lore is astounding, but should not surprise - there have been many millenia of gathering knowledge, arranging it, piecing it together, and passing it on for future generations. The Australian First Peoples have been living with this place for so long that they have seen it change as the most recent glaciation cooled the planet and lowered the oceans, and they have seen it change back as the planet warmed.
They have seen old homes and fishing spots drowned by the rising oceans, and adapted as deserts grew, and forests moved and changed - all the while adding their observations and understanding to the songs that hold their memory. Now they are seeing it change again, as human technological ability and desire for dominance once more overtakes human understanding and ethics.
A lifetime cannot be enough for a complete understanding of a place, an ecology - be it a forest, as in Inga's case, or a shore, or a marsh. When trees can live for centuries, even passing a millenia or more in the sun and the wind, how can one person ever fully understand a forest? But that person can live in the forest, and learn its rhythms, and love it -though those people who choose such a path are ever more often finding themselves at odds with that other branch of humanity, who, for whatever reason, see in a forest only a short term picture comprised of dollar gains and dollar costs.
Humans are creatures of story, and it is story-tellers like Inga who help people see the view that they may not previously have noticed - to see the intricate, essential to all of us, life that, without such seeing, they could too easily trample underfoot, or consign to the blade of the bulldozer or the teeth of the chainsaw.
Understory tells of that tension between the needs imposed by "economics" and "society", and the needs of life itself - the constantly growing, moving web that makes our world liveable and beautiful, and without which no amount of money or economic growth would be of any use to the human race at all. It is a story that has been told in other forms, about other places, by so many people - it needs constant re-telling, for all our sakes.
Within its pages there is a resonance with my own life amid tree and pasture, and the attachment I formed to the landscapes within which I lived, and, at times, made my living. Like her, I have moved more than once, and cleared and planted, trying to add my dreams and desires to the existing ecology, and like her I have had to compromise between dreams and the counter forces of nature and economics.
I have been enchanted by the grandeur of a place, and by the miniscule wonder and beauty that reveal themselves to the quiet traveller or sojourner. The first view of any landscape, large or small, always contains more than the observer can take in. We think we see it all, but our brain, as it usually does when confronted with large amounts of information via the senses, filters and simplifies - bringing to our consciousness the "big picture" first, and then the more easily identifiable aspects, with an emphasis on things about which we already have some knowledge.
Another view, in different light, weather, or season, and different aspects are highlighted - the big picture changes shape and gains texture. Finer details begin to come to our notice, until we make that all too common mistake and think we know all about the place, and fully understand it.
Then the light changes again, or the temperature, or rain falls, or fails to fall when expected - and the view changes again as we notice previously overlooked details. Carefuly nurtured plants die of drought, drowning, or unseen disease, while self-sown seedlings that weren't obvious only weeks before are suddenly flourishing. Perhaps they were there all along, rendered invisible by our ignorance, or even misidentified as weeds.
Mature trees that somehow escaped notice for years, even as we lamented the absence of that species, appear under our nose (or over our heads), and supposedly rare and endangered ground orchids suddenly, and briefly, carpet a ridge top in flowers - no matter how long we dwell in a place, it can always surprise us. And so we add to our knowledge of place, and as the surprise fades, we again grow smug about our understanding - until the next new discovery.
The store of knowledge contained in Indigenous lore is astounding, but should not surprise - there have been many millenia of gathering knowledge, arranging it, piecing it together, and passing it on for future generations. The Australian First Peoples have been living with this place for so long that they have seen it change as the most recent glaciation cooled the planet and lowered the oceans, and they have seen it change back as the planet warmed.
They have seen old homes and fishing spots drowned by the rising oceans, and adapted as deserts grew, and forests moved and changed - all the while adding their observations and understanding to the songs that hold their memory. Now they are seeing it change again, as human technological ability and desire for dominance once more overtakes human understanding and ethics.
A lifetime cannot be enough for a complete understanding of a place, an ecology - be it a forest, as in Inga's case, or a shore, or a marsh. When trees can live for centuries, even passing a millenia or more in the sun and the wind, how can one person ever fully understand a forest? But that person can live in the forest, and learn its rhythms, and love it -though those people who choose such a path are ever more often finding themselves at odds with that other branch of humanity, who, for whatever reason, see in a forest only a short term picture comprised of dollar gains and dollar costs.
Humans are creatures of story, and it is story-tellers like Inga who help people see the view that they may not previously have noticed - to see the intricate, essential to all of us, life that, without such seeing, they could too easily trample underfoot, or consign to the blade of the bulldozer or the teeth of the chainsaw.
Understory tells of that tension between the needs imposed by "economics" and "society", and the needs of life itself - the constantly growing, moving web that makes our world liveable and beautiful, and without which no amount of money or economic growth would be of any use to the human race at all. It is a story that has been told in other forms, about other places, by so many people - it needs constant re-telling, for all our sakes.
Tuesday 24 October 2017
The Graduate
Recently I watched The Graduate (Dustin Hofman, Anne Bancroft - music by Simon and Garfunkel) - made in 1967, the year of The Summer of Love. The USofA and the world in general was in the throes of great social change. The waves made during that summer spread through society - its morals, work, culture, and politics. The Graduate seemed to be meant to reflect the cultural clash between the generation that had survived World War Two, and their children.
At the time it was promoted as both a drama and a comedy - now, at times, in modern eyes, it seems quite creepy, and I struggled to find any humour in it at all. Almost everyone in the movie is trying to impose their will on someone else. Hofman's character seemed very wooden by any modern standard of acting - was that meant to depict some internal emotional turmoil, or perhaps an attempt to show a character we would now describe as "On the Spectrum"?
His treatment of the ultimate target of his affections - Elaine, the daughter of his lover - can only be described as stalking, and the denoument at the wedding looks more like an abduction than a mutual flight into a romantic future. Although Elaine finally reacts against the demands of her parents and older relatives by fleeing the church in which she was about to marry the man her parents had chosen for her, their reactions to each other as the bus takes them away from the church left this viewer wondering if she was already beginning to wonder which future was the frying pan and which the fire.
I was in High School when this movie was released, and not quite old enough to be allowed in to the cinema to watch it on my own. If I had seen it then, I wonder what effect it might have had on my developing adolescent personality. The music was great, but the plot and resolution of the movie were disturbing, to say the least, and must have seriously confused many an adolescent as they went through that difficult time of trying to establish an identity of their own.
How, I wonder, would I have reacted to that movie, as a teen? Watching it for the first time in my sixties was to see it through the eyes of someone who has personally experienced, as well as observed in others, the complications, both joyous and tragic, that love and lust can bring to life. I am sure the two viewpoints are vastly different - have you belatedly watched a movie that was part of the canon of your youthful times, and how did you find it, compared to the way it was received back then?
At the time it was promoted as both a drama and a comedy - now, at times, in modern eyes, it seems quite creepy, and I struggled to find any humour in it at all. Almost everyone in the movie is trying to impose their will on someone else. Hofman's character seemed very wooden by any modern standard of acting - was that meant to depict some internal emotional turmoil, or perhaps an attempt to show a character we would now describe as "On the Spectrum"?
His treatment of the ultimate target of his affections - Elaine, the daughter of his lover - can only be described as stalking, and the denoument at the wedding looks more like an abduction than a mutual flight into a romantic future. Although Elaine finally reacts against the demands of her parents and older relatives by fleeing the church in which she was about to marry the man her parents had chosen for her, their reactions to each other as the bus takes them away from the church left this viewer wondering if she was already beginning to wonder which future was the frying pan and which the fire.
I was in High School when this movie was released, and not quite old enough to be allowed in to the cinema to watch it on my own. If I had seen it then, I wonder what effect it might have had on my developing adolescent personality. The music was great, but the plot and resolution of the movie were disturbing, to say the least, and must have seriously confused many an adolescent as they went through that difficult time of trying to establish an identity of their own.
How, I wonder, would I have reacted to that movie, as a teen? Watching it for the first time in my sixties was to see it through the eyes of someone who has personally experienced, as well as observed in others, the complications, both joyous and tragic, that love and lust can bring to life. I am sure the two viewpoints are vastly different - have you belatedly watched a movie that was part of the canon of your youthful times, and how did you find it, compared to the way it was received back then?
Tuesday 17 October 2017
Book Review
Last Hope Island, by historian Lynne Olson, is a moving and informative book that takes the reader, by way of personal stories, deeply into the heights and depths of Europe as it slid towards, suffered through, and struggled to recover from, World War II.
Many histories of major events tend to follow a similar road - attempting to take the reader on a linear journey along the time line that runs from an arbitrary beginning through to some official end. Olson doesn't obscure those moments, but cuts away the often confusing morass of "facts and figures" by showing us the involvment of individuals, as well as of various groups.
Many of these individuals - their actions, behaviour, and personal qualities, good and bad - will come as a surprise to even the best read devotee of this part of recent human history. Likewise the involvement of many national groups - politicians, military personnel, and civilians - who recognised the need to escape and resist Nazi control, and for various reasons, ended up in Britain. Many arrived during those darkest of days, during and after Dunkirk, though there was also a remarkable exodus of Poles and Czechs who managed to reach Britain before the invasion of France, Belgium, and Holland, and who went on to do great things in the what looked like being Britain's last stand.
I won't spoil the surprises to be found in this book other than to say that the tales that Olson relates will offer you great insights into acts of heroism, brilliance, tragedy, triumph, cowardice, and bungling that are rarely remembered nowadays - and into the reasons the world took the shape that it did in the second half of the twentieth century.
Many of those acts have slipped from the official histories - sometimes for good reason, and sometimes to protect people in high places. You will find in these pages some names that will suprise you, and you may gain a fresh understanding of the lives and actions of those people over the decades after the war ended - though there are some who wonder if that war did end in 1945.
The book also shows just how sadly history does repeat itself, and I wonder if you, as I did, will find at many points some very poignant and disturbing parallels with the world we are living in today.
Many people and peoples were betrayed - before, during, and after the war - for reasons that were later glossed over as "matters of state" or "grand principle" but were, at the time, decisions made on the basis of prejudice, personal ambition, or personal ignorance. Olson's writings cannot but help to make us wonder just how many of our current leaders are acting the same way.
Look closely and you will find more than one "war hero" who is famed for some action that shortened the war and saved many lives, who at some other time made a decision that had the opposite effect.
No single book could possibly encompass the entirety of a period like World War II, but Olson, in this book, has cut to the heart of some of the most crucial, world-shaping moments of that time, and has done so in an eminently readable fashion.
Many histories of major events tend to follow a similar road - attempting to take the reader on a linear journey along the time line that runs from an arbitrary beginning through to some official end. Olson doesn't obscure those moments, but cuts away the often confusing morass of "facts and figures" by showing us the involvment of individuals, as well as of various groups.
Many of these individuals - their actions, behaviour, and personal qualities, good and bad - will come as a surprise to even the best read devotee of this part of recent human history. Likewise the involvement of many national groups - politicians, military personnel, and civilians - who recognised the need to escape and resist Nazi control, and for various reasons, ended up in Britain. Many arrived during those darkest of days, during and after Dunkirk, though there was also a remarkable exodus of Poles and Czechs who managed to reach Britain before the invasion of France, Belgium, and Holland, and who went on to do great things in the what looked like being Britain's last stand.
I won't spoil the surprises to be found in this book other than to say that the tales that Olson relates will offer you great insights into acts of heroism, brilliance, tragedy, triumph, cowardice, and bungling that are rarely remembered nowadays - and into the reasons the world took the shape that it did in the second half of the twentieth century.
Many of those acts have slipped from the official histories - sometimes for good reason, and sometimes to protect people in high places. You will find in these pages some names that will suprise you, and you may gain a fresh understanding of the lives and actions of those people over the decades after the war ended - though there are some who wonder if that war did end in 1945.
The book also shows just how sadly history does repeat itself, and I wonder if you, as I did, will find at many points some very poignant and disturbing parallels with the world we are living in today.
Many people and peoples were betrayed - before, during, and after the war - for reasons that were later glossed over as "matters of state" or "grand principle" but were, at the time, decisions made on the basis of prejudice, personal ambition, or personal ignorance. Olson's writings cannot but help to make us wonder just how many of our current leaders are acting the same way.
Look closely and you will find more than one "war hero" who is famed for some action that shortened the war and saved many lives, who at some other time made a decision that had the opposite effect.
No single book could possibly encompass the entirety of a period like World War II, but Olson, in this book, has cut to the heart of some of the most crucial, world-shaping moments of that time, and has done so in an eminently readable fashion.
Saturday 14 October 2017
Village Life
Do I live in a village or a town?
I once lived in a village that had so few houses that it would barely have deserved the title hamlet, but for the church, school, fire brigade shed, and the trading post/wine bar/fuel stop/stockfeed store that formed its centre.
Now I live in a town that most of its residents refer to as a village. Wishful thinking? Or perhaps the locals are applying the designation of village merely to the commercial core, with its little row of shops facing the railway line and highway in a straggly "L" shape?
My Geography teacher, so many years ago, would probably have called it a large town, and been adjudged correct by authorities. Perhaps it is a medium sized town with a number of village areas comprised variously of the shops and the older residential precincts close by, with another couple of older villages along the creek and ridge lines that lead to the grand feature of the district - Wentworth Falls - plus those late arrivals that have pushed outwards beyond easy walking distance of the railway station, along rocky ridges, through twisted gums and native scrub, to the heights that offer a panorama of The City on The Plain.
It feels like village life, though, as I work in my garden and accept compliments on its behalf from passers by, discuss the weather, give directions to tourists seeking the lake or the falls, or exchange news with a passing fisherman.
It feels like a village when you can greet storekeepers by name each day, and be named in turn by the quiet tide of patrons that flow in and out of the library each day that it is open. It feels even more like a village when particular Magpies, King Parrots, and Cockatoos come to talk to you when you are sitting on the veranda or working in the garden, and you can greet passing dogs by name.
So how big is a village, really, and why don't we all live in one? It feels a better place to be than the anonymous stacks of brittle concrete and flammable foam our developers and politicians seem determined to foist on most of the population.
I once lived in a village that had so few houses that it would barely have deserved the title hamlet, but for the church, school, fire brigade shed, and the trading post/wine bar/fuel stop/stockfeed store that formed its centre.
It is said that there has been some sort of inn or bar on this site (legally or otherwise) since 1837
Now I live in a town that most of its residents refer to as a village. Wishful thinking? Or perhaps the locals are applying the designation of village merely to the commercial core, with its little row of shops facing the railway line and highway in a straggly "L" shape?
My Geography teacher, so many years ago, would probably have called it a large town, and been adjudged correct by authorities. Perhaps it is a medium sized town with a number of village areas comprised variously of the shops and the older residential precincts close by, with another couple of older villages along the creek and ridge lines that lead to the grand feature of the district - Wentworth Falls - plus those late arrivals that have pushed outwards beyond easy walking distance of the railway station, along rocky ridges, through twisted gums and native scrub, to the heights that offer a panorama of The City on The Plain.
It feels like village life, though, as I work in my garden and accept compliments on its behalf from passers by, discuss the weather, give directions to tourists seeking the lake or the falls, or exchange news with a passing fisherman.
It feels like a village when you can greet storekeepers by name each day, and be named in turn by the quiet tide of patrons that flow in and out of the library each day that it is open. It feels even more like a village when particular Magpies, King Parrots, and Cockatoos come to talk to you when you are sitting on the veranda or working in the garden, and you can greet passing dogs by name.
So how big is a village, really, and why don't we all live in one? It feels a better place to be than the anonymous stacks of brittle concrete and flammable foam our developers and politicians seem determined to foist on most of the population.
Wednesday 11 October 2017
Another Case of "It seemed like a good idea at the time"
I was talking to a friend earlier today about vegetable gardens and how I manage mine. She mentioned raised beds - the discussion about why and why not they might be a good idea went off at a tangent, and I realised after we parted that I had forgotten to impart one lesson that I wish someone had offered me before I made my big mistake.
Something that seemed a good idea at the time, and something that others had recommended as a simple and permanent solution to one of my gardening problems - one that could eliminate the intrusions into my sacrosanct vegetable beds by those bitter enemies, couch and kikuyu grass - turned into a mammoth task of demolition and reconstruction.
"It seemed like a good idea at the time" - how often have those words come back to haunt the speaker? It can take years, it can take moments, but sooner or later, it will happen (though, thankfully, not in the terrifying manner in which it happened to a couple of recreational angling film producers, decades ago, who thought it might be a good idea to bolt the core of an old spin dryer tub to the back of their boat, fill it with chopped up berley, and head out for a day of deep water shark fishing - their subsequent, terror filled moments, as a great white shark longer than their aluminium runabout shook their boat from side to side while tearing off the berley bucket and a large chunk of the transom, made them much more careful about future good ideas)
In my case, a gentler and more persistent enemy meant that, after only a few years, I had to pull up 80 or so metres of sleeper-constructed edging I had used to build my raised beds, dig over the entire garden, and then rebuild it.
The problem? I believed the advice and advertisements that touted that supposedly wonderful product known as weed-mat; that ultra-fine, woven plastic cloth that is claimed to allow only moisture through, while keeping weeds and their roots out of the bed. My hope had been that I could then mow or trim right to the woodwork while the bed remained weed free.
Little did I know that it would become a sanctuary for the roots and growth nodes of some of the most aggressive runner grasses on the planet, sheltering from what should have been lethal assaults by my various gardening tools. Even potato and strawberry runners found their way in, and if that doesn't seem like a problem, well, in the Blue Mountains, both those species are willing and capable when it comes to taking over a garden bed - miss a skerrick of either when digging a bed over and they will be back.
And so I was once again reminded of something that my mother often said to me - "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is" - and anytime something seems like a miraculously good idea, always have another look at it, from as many angles as possible. After you have perused all sides, ask your friends and neighbours, too (and you grandpa, if he's still around - chances are he really has seen it all before, and, like many older people, has just been too polite to say anything until asked)
Something that seemed a good idea at the time, and something that others had recommended as a simple and permanent solution to one of my gardening problems - one that could eliminate the intrusions into my sacrosanct vegetable beds by those bitter enemies, couch and kikuyu grass - turned into a mammoth task of demolition and reconstruction.
Initial construction, done in winter time, with the first of the weed mat and sleepers.
"It seemed like a good idea at the time" - how often have those words come back to haunt the speaker? It can take years, it can take moments, but sooner or later, it will happen (though, thankfully, not in the terrifying manner in which it happened to a couple of recreational angling film producers, decades ago, who thought it might be a good idea to bolt the core of an old spin dryer tub to the back of their boat, fill it with chopped up berley, and head out for a day of deep water shark fishing - their subsequent, terror filled moments, as a great white shark longer than their aluminium runabout shook their boat from side to side while tearing off the berley bucket and a large chunk of the transom, made them much more careful about future good ideas)
In my case, a gentler and more persistent enemy meant that, after only a few years, I had to pull up 80 or so metres of sleeper-constructed edging I had used to build my raised beds, dig over the entire garden, and then rebuild it.
On a winters morning, almost the last of the sleepers being replaced
The problem? I believed the advice and advertisements that touted that supposedly wonderful product known as weed-mat; that ultra-fine, woven plastic cloth that is claimed to allow only moisture through, while keeping weeds and their roots out of the bed. My hope had been that I could then mow or trim right to the woodwork while the bed remained weed free.
Little did I know that it would become a sanctuary for the roots and growth nodes of some of the most aggressive runner grasses on the planet, sheltering from what should have been lethal assaults by my various gardening tools. Even potato and strawberry runners found their way in, and if that doesn't seem like a problem, well, in the Blue Mountains, both those species are willing and capable when it comes to taking over a garden bed - miss a skerrick of either when digging a bed over and they will be back.
Still a bit wobbly, but beginning to take shape - without the constant re-invasion of paths and beds by the runners hiding in the weedmat - in future, the strategy is plenty of woodchips along the path, and a forked weeder to extract any insurgents
And so I was once again reminded of something that my mother often said to me - "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is" - and anytime something seems like a miraculously good idea, always have another look at it, from as many angles as possible. After you have perused all sides, ask your friends and neighbours, too (and you grandpa, if he's still around - chances are he really has seen it all before, and, like many older people, has just been too polite to say anything until asked)
Friday 6 October 2017
Those Freakish Moments
I have often noticed that people are killed or injured in incidents involving nature or weather that are deemed by the witnesses or the media to have been "freak" - a freak wave, a freak storm, a freak flood, and so on.
But, take those freak waves - how freakish were they, really? There is a growing body of science dedicated to understanding such waves - they do exist, but any properly taught rock fisherman, surfer, or boatie, knows just how life preserving are those minutes and hours spent standing back from the water, observing.
I learned while quite young that watching the rock platforms I was intending to fish from could be the most important 15 minutes of the whole trip. I also learned the hard way that even those 15 minutes of observation might not forearm me sufficiently against the waves that the complex interplay of wind, tide, and current could throw at me - and that even the most experienced fishereman in my family could not always predict all of them. Likewise, my years in the Boy Scouts were replete with lessons that helped me identify potential hazards when hiking, or camping, and techniques to deal with those hazards.
Failing to learn about the risks, and failing to maintain vigilance towards every aspect of the environment you are in will too often prove fatal - whereas learning about the risks inherent in that environment, and staying alert to them will vastly improve your chances.
As an example, how often do we see images or videos of people doing insanely dangerous things, like fishing for Barramundi while standing waist deep in muddy waters, only metres from a big, bold, brightly coloured "Beware of Crocodiles" sign?
In our socienty, signs, brochures, websites, and TV shows that inform and warn of the dangers of fire, flood, storm, slippery cliff edges, dangerous animals (and humans) and so many other risks, are abundant, and are too often ignored, or treated as mere entertainment, whose lessons need not be carried over into the real life of the viewer. Perversely, the more signs there are, the more inclined people seem to be to ignore them.
YouTube is awash with clips of people risking disablement, disfigurement or death doing risky things for the camera while their friends urge them on and laugh at their falls and collisions - the people from The Darwin Awards are never short of material to consider as they choose the annual winners of their "prize".
As someone who has lived, worked, and played in city, bush, river, and ocean, and who spent much of his life in some sort of emergency service (both paid and volunteeer) I can only ask, over and over, "Why?". Most people would be astounded to know how often the Blue Mountains Rescue services are called out to retrieve the body of another tourist who felt the need climb over the safety railings so as to add to their holiday snaps a selfy of themselves at the very edge of one of our many 500 metre high cliffs. One retired Police Rescue officer I know has often called such people out on their behaviour - it worries him so much that he finds it hard to enjoy the simple pleasures of walking one of our beautiful, cliff top trails.
I was fortunate - as a child and young adult I heard a lot of stories from family - fishers, farmers, police - that taught me a great deal about the risks.
Did it scare me into staying inside? Not at all - those stories were full of the clues and signs I would need to watch for, but also full of the sense of joy and adventure to be had in the wider world.
Those stories inspired me, even as they made me safer. Did they make my life risk and trouble free? No way - I was a young human, full of curiosity and over confidence. The stories didn't stop me from trying new things and going new places, but they also saved my life more than once.
More than ever the human race needs stories that honestly set out the risks and dangers that are inherent in our pasage through time and space, and not just the physical risks, but the moral and spiritual risks as well. The stories exist - the trick seems to bve connecting those who can tell the stories with those who need to hear them.
For people of my age, the fables and fairy stories of our childhood contained many of those lessons, and seem to have been designed, in some far distant past, by some wise old bard, for just such a purpose. A wonderful writer on this topic is Kate Forsyth - as well as writing some great fiction, she has written a number of works addressing the lineage and value of fairy tales, and given some excellent interviews on the ABC - well worth listening to.
In a world awash with so many stories of dubious worth or so little meaning, we need stories and story tellers that can help us, our children, and our neighbours, identify the stories of true worth.
They are often closer than you think. Have you spoken to that worn or weathered neighbour? That wear and tear was accumulated during the building of their life story - say hello and you might hear stories you need (and will enjoy)
But, take those freak waves - how freakish were they, really? There is a growing body of science dedicated to understanding such waves - they do exist, but any properly taught rock fisherman, surfer, or boatie, knows just how life preserving are those minutes and hours spent standing back from the water, observing.
I learned while quite young that watching the rock platforms I was intending to fish from could be the most important 15 minutes of the whole trip. I also learned the hard way that even those 15 minutes of observation might not forearm me sufficiently against the waves that the complex interplay of wind, tide, and current could throw at me - and that even the most experienced fishereman in my family could not always predict all of them. Likewise, my years in the Boy Scouts were replete with lessons that helped me identify potential hazards when hiking, or camping, and techniques to deal with those hazards.
Failing to learn about the risks, and failing to maintain vigilance towards every aspect of the environment you are in will too often prove fatal - whereas learning about the risks inherent in that environment, and staying alert to them will vastly improve your chances.
As an example, how often do we see images or videos of people doing insanely dangerous things, like fishing for Barramundi while standing waist deep in muddy waters, only metres from a big, bold, brightly coloured "Beware of Crocodiles" sign?
In our socienty, signs, brochures, websites, and TV shows that inform and warn of the dangers of fire, flood, storm, slippery cliff edges, dangerous animals (and humans) and so many other risks, are abundant, and are too often ignored, or treated as mere entertainment, whose lessons need not be carried over into the real life of the viewer. Perversely, the more signs there are, the more inclined people seem to be to ignore them.
YouTube is awash with clips of people risking disablement, disfigurement or death doing risky things for the camera while their friends urge them on and laugh at their falls and collisions - the people from The Darwin Awards are never short of material to consider as they choose the annual winners of their "prize".
As someone who has lived, worked, and played in city, bush, river, and ocean, and who spent much of his life in some sort of emergency service (both paid and volunteeer) I can only ask, over and over, "Why?". Most people would be astounded to know how often the Blue Mountains Rescue services are called out to retrieve the body of another tourist who felt the need climb over the safety railings so as to add to their holiday snaps a selfy of themselves at the very edge of one of our many 500 metre high cliffs. One retired Police Rescue officer I know has often called such people out on their behaviour - it worries him so much that he finds it hard to enjoy the simple pleasures of walking one of our beautiful, cliff top trails.
I was fortunate - as a child and young adult I heard a lot of stories from family - fishers, farmers, police - that taught me a great deal about the risks.
Did it scare me into staying inside? Not at all - those stories were full of the clues and signs I would need to watch for, but also full of the sense of joy and adventure to be had in the wider world.
Those stories inspired me, even as they made me safer. Did they make my life risk and trouble free? No way - I was a young human, full of curiosity and over confidence. The stories didn't stop me from trying new things and going new places, but they also saved my life more than once.
More than ever the human race needs stories that honestly set out the risks and dangers that are inherent in our pasage through time and space, and not just the physical risks, but the moral and spiritual risks as well. The stories exist - the trick seems to bve connecting those who can tell the stories with those who need to hear them.
For people of my age, the fables and fairy stories of our childhood contained many of those lessons, and seem to have been designed, in some far distant past, by some wise old bard, for just such a purpose. A wonderful writer on this topic is Kate Forsyth - as well as writing some great fiction, she has written a number of works addressing the lineage and value of fairy tales, and given some excellent interviews on the ABC - well worth listening to.
In a world awash with so many stories of dubious worth or so little meaning, we need stories and story tellers that can help us, our children, and our neighbours, identify the stories of true worth.
They are often closer than you think. Have you spoken to that worn or weathered neighbour? That wear and tear was accumulated during the building of their life story - say hello and you might hear stories you need (and will enjoy)
Sunday 1 October 2017
Risky Business in the Garden
I did a terrible, brutal thing to a couple of trees just recently. It wasn't their fault - it was mine. I had not allowed as well as I should have for the likely growth of a larger neighbour, in root or branch, and put two little apple trees in a spot that seemed perfect - until the Alnus Jorullensis grew faster than anticipated.
It stretched its leafy limbs out to cut off too much of the summer sun that the apples needed, and its larger roots intertwined themselves through the roots of the smaller trees. Four or five years passed before I was certain of my mistake, and a couple more before I found myself with the time and enthusiasm to attept a remedy.
After a fairly mild winter, the frost finally bit hard, the trees all fell dormant, and I struck; first with the heavy pruning shears, then the handsaw, and, finally, the mattock and the big spud bar. When levered up and onto their sides, they were far to heavy to move on my own - each root ball and tree combined weighed well over a hundred kilos. After considering how much more damage they could sustain and still survive, I went for the hydraulic option, and spent half an hour or so using the hose on the roots of each tree.
It was a good choice, as it happens - as the soil and stones fell away from the apple tree roots, it revealed a tangle of alder, kikuyu and couch grass roots that were threaded through the mass. Soon after, they were in their new home, close to some other apple trees, and well clear of the Alders.
They stood forlorn, almost completely bare of twig or bud, for a month or so, as I poured water at their feet every day, and begged their forgiveness - and then the first spring heatwave struck, followed closely by the second.
The few remaining twigs and small branches produced a few tentative green sprouts, and my hopes rose. Not too far, as the new growth was sparse, but there seemed to be a chance. More warm days arrived, and the undisturbed trees around the two new arrivals were flourishing. I tried to ignore them, not wanting to invest too much hope after the brutality I had inflicted, and that's why I did not immediately notice the miracle.
Tiny buds, pink at first, but greening as they stretched and thickened, had appeared near the stubs of the branches that had been cut away before the move. Soon, more buds appeared at other spots along the previously smooth, grey-green bark, and within days they were opening out into rosettes of beautiful, soft, luscious pink and green leaves. A few of the surviving twigs even produced flowers, some of which appear to be setting fruit.
Why was I surprised, I ask myself now - after all, I have lived and worked in the bush of eastern Australia for quite a few years, and have often observed the miracle that occurs after bushfires have seared the forest and blackened or vaporised everything above ground. For while, all is white, grey, or black, but within weeks, those first tiny buds push through charred bark, or rise from hidden ligno-tubers, and soon the pink, red, orange and green rainbow of new growth in the eucalyptus and angophora forsts is everywhere.
The trees of the dry sclerophyll forest are so tough that I have seen trees with new shoots up to a couple of feet long fall over as long as three months after the fire attacked - victims of a hidden, smouldering cancerous spark that had entered through a crack and slowly, and persistently grown, as it chewed away at the timber between the bark and the termite-created hollow where the heartwood should have been. In an opposite fashion, the wind-shattered new growth of the willows along the creek, that were hurled down to their doom when roofs and windows were being rattled a few weeks ago, did not complain, but lay there in the damp fringes of the pools and rapids, putting out green leaves and tangles of white and pink roots.
While the bushman side of me understood that toughness, it thinks of the pampered and over nurtured trees and shrubs of the fruit and vegetable garden as too soft to withstand harsh treatment. But, of course, they are not as weak as we think - though plenty of water, seaweed solution, and dilute fertilizer all probably aided their recovery - and they remind us of just how persistent life is.
After all, everything now alive is descended from stock that somehow made it through massive ice ages, asteroid impacts, tectonic turmoil, and constant attacks from other life that desired to eat it.
Life, I have often said, is Persistent Organisation in Opposition to Entropy, and what a beautiful, wonderful thing it can be, and how sad that the one thing so much life on Earth seems unable to survive is the onset of Humankind.
The White Cockatoos like the Alders, despite the lack of food.
After a fairly mild winter, the frost finally bit hard, the trees all fell dormant, and I struck; first with the heavy pruning shears, then the handsaw, and, finally, the mattock and the big spud bar. When levered up and onto their sides, they were far to heavy to move on my own - each root ball and tree combined weighed well over a hundred kilos. After considering how much more damage they could sustain and still survive, I went for the hydraulic option, and spent half an hour or so using the hose on the roots of each tree.
It was a good choice, as it happens - as the soil and stones fell away from the apple tree roots, it revealed a tangle of alder, kikuyu and couch grass roots that were threaded through the mass. Soon after, they were in their new home, close to some other apple trees, and well clear of the Alders.
They stood forlorn, almost completely bare of twig or bud, for a month or so, as I poured water at their feet every day, and begged their forgiveness - and then the first spring heatwave struck, followed closely by the second.
The few remaining twigs and small branches produced a few tentative green sprouts, and my hopes rose. Not too far, as the new growth was sparse, but there seemed to be a chance. More warm days arrived, and the undisturbed trees around the two new arrivals were flourishing. I tried to ignore them, not wanting to invest too much hope after the brutality I had inflicted, and that's why I did not immediately notice the miracle.
Tiny buds, pink at first, but greening as they stretched and thickened, had appeared near the stubs of the branches that had been cut away before the move. Soon, more buds appeared at other spots along the previously smooth, grey-green bark, and within days they were opening out into rosettes of beautiful, soft, luscious pink and green leaves. A few of the surviving twigs even produced flowers, some of which appear to be setting fruit.
Why was I surprised, I ask myself now - after all, I have lived and worked in the bush of eastern Australia for quite a few years, and have often observed the miracle that occurs after bushfires have seared the forest and blackened or vaporised everything above ground. For while, all is white, grey, or black, but within weeks, those first tiny buds push through charred bark, or rise from hidden ligno-tubers, and soon the pink, red, orange and green rainbow of new growth in the eucalyptus and angophora forsts is everywhere.
The trees of the dry sclerophyll forest are so tough that I have seen trees with new shoots up to a couple of feet long fall over as long as three months after the fire attacked - victims of a hidden, smouldering cancerous spark that had entered through a crack and slowly, and persistently grown, as it chewed away at the timber between the bark and the termite-created hollow where the heartwood should have been. In an opposite fashion, the wind-shattered new growth of the willows along the creek, that were hurled down to their doom when roofs and windows were being rattled a few weeks ago, did not complain, but lay there in the damp fringes of the pools and rapids, putting out green leaves and tangles of white and pink roots.
While the bushman side of me understood that toughness, it thinks of the pampered and over nurtured trees and shrubs of the fruit and vegetable garden as too soft to withstand harsh treatment. But, of course, they are not as weak as we think - though plenty of water, seaweed solution, and dilute fertilizer all probably aided their recovery - and they remind us of just how persistent life is.
After all, everything now alive is descended from stock that somehow made it through massive ice ages, asteroid impacts, tectonic turmoil, and constant attacks from other life that desired to eat it.
Life, I have often said, is Persistent Organisation in Opposition to Entropy, and what a beautiful, wonderful thing it can be, and how sad that the one thing so much life on Earth seems unable to survive is the onset of Humankind.
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