Does art imitate life, or does life imitate art? An oft asked question, but the apparent assumption is surely wrong - that one might be true does not mean the other must be false. Why did I even ask the question?
Yep - I'm once again lost in the pages of an interesting book, one that began simply enough but soon began to reveal layers of interwoven complexity that had me questioning my own perceptions - not only of the words I was reading, but of memory, understanding, and my experiences with life and other people.
My encounter with The Menagerie of False Truths developed from a simple beginning that soon took on twists and turns that echo its contents. Awake before dawn, and not wanting to disturb a sleeping household, I often put earplugs in and turn on my tiny pocket radio. At 5 am on most Saturdays of the year, the ABC Sydney station, as well as the one on the Central Coast, broadcast a show called The Big Fish.
The name, and even the promotional material, imply a show that might largely be a one hour fishing report from various correspondents around New South Wales, when in fact it is a radio stage, across which parade a remarkable array of characters, who tell fascinating, informative, and (mostly) amusing stories about people, fish, nature, weather, and, sometimes, politics.
This particular morning I tuned in a bit late, and found myself listening to the host, Scott Levi, questioning a chap about some exotic location in which he had been fishing for trout. The speaker, eventually identified as Greg French, was articulate and erudite, and it became apparent that he had written a number of books. A casual angler myself, I had not previously encountered his work - audio or published - and made a mental note to check the catalogue of my local library to see if we held anything by him.
We did, though we are not yet in possession of his latest book - Water Colour - but held other items by him, including "Menagerie" It was a title strange enough to pique my curiosity, and I ordered it sent up from the branch at which it had been reposing.
It swirls, as the pages turn, from disturbing, to amusing, to tragic, and back to disturbing, all the while informing as well as questioning. French touches on - digs into - aspects of perception and mis-perception, understanding and mis-understanding, ability and its lack, art, life, arrogance, humility, love, anger, grief, and suffering.
Each new understanding, though, came with an awareness that there must have been much more that I had missed - a re-reading will be in order, along with diversions to investigate concepts and information previously unmet.
At the heart of this novel are the perceptions, understandings, and behaviour that arise from the differences of mind and thought that society refers to as Autism, or The Spectrum, and the effects that those differences send to ripple out through families and communities that surround such people. It can be too easy to forget that each of us has a particular way of perceiving and understanding the world around us, and that of course affects our responses to the world and the life in it, including other people - what we see and hear may well be quite different to what they see and hear and feel.
Like fingerprints, each world view has its own unique whorls and curls and patterns - fingerprints, like world views, are meant to help us get a grip on the world around us; each pattern, though unique, still does its job, though some do not fit their surroundings as well as others.
The world we live in is complex, from micro to macro, beyond our ability to fully understand - but understanding it is a journey worth taking. Surprises are guaranteed, but so is delight.
Showing posts with label ecology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ecology. Show all posts
Monday, 3 September 2018
Tuesday, 5 December 2017
Cherax - Destructor, or Constructor?
Cherax Destructor - the common yabby of farm dams and creeks across a vast swathe of Australia, has made a home for itself in all sorts of odd places. It is not a native of the upper Blue Mountains, but has been here for quite a while. The grandkids and I have caught them on many occasions in Jamison Creek, beside the orchard, or in the Wentworth Falls Lake. Recently I found a number of small specimens inside the stomach of a Redfin Perch caught in the lake, and I am sure they are one of the reasons that the cormorants hang around the lake, as well.
It surprised me though, when I found it lurking in a tiny little rill that runs down the back of our place. I had seen an adult in there a while back, over 50 metres up from the main creek, and wondered if it was lost - and then the holes appeared in the banks of that miniature creek.
The debris from the excavation ended up strewn across the stream, just downstream. Heavy rain washed leaves into the pool that had formed, and when I cleared the blockage, yabbies only a few centimetres long scurried back into the hole. Within a day or two, the stream was blocked by another wall of sand and gravel.
I cleared it again, and again, and each time it was back within a night or two (cherax are prey to kookaburras, currawongs, foxes, and who knows what else - darkness is their friend) and each rebuild was bigger and better than the last. It took me a while to understand that this was no random construction - all the material excavated from the tunnel was neatly piled across the stream, forming a small lake around the tunnel entry. Not only that, but the water in the little pool above the dam was running through the tunnel and re-entering the stream about 750 mm downstream. Perfect for a female yabby nurturing eggs or babies.
At the beginning and end of the above video I focus on the point at which the water flows out of the downstream end of the tunnel and back into the stream. I have never seen a yabby do anything like this before, and wonder if anyone else has seen such behaviour.
It surprised me though, when I found it lurking in a tiny little rill that runs down the back of our place. I had seen an adult in there a while back, over 50 metres up from the main creek, and wondered if it was lost - and then the holes appeared in the banks of that miniature creek.
The first hole - angled down into the left hand bank of the stream, beneath the long blades of grass.
The debris from the excavation ended up strewn across the stream, just downstream. Heavy rain washed leaves into the pool that had formed, and when I cleared the blockage, yabbies only a few centimetres long scurried back into the hole. Within a day or two, the stream was blocked by another wall of sand and gravel.
Mixed in with the sand and mud was gravel up to 40mm in diameter - not bad work for a little creature that is often only 100 - 200 mm long itself
I cleared it again, and again, and each time it was back within a night or two (cherax are prey to kookaburras, currawongs, foxes, and who knows what else - darkness is their friend) and each rebuild was bigger and better than the last. It took me a while to understand that this was no random construction - all the material excavated from the tunnel was neatly piled across the stream, forming a small lake around the tunnel entry. Not only that, but the water in the little pool above the dam was running through the tunnel and re-entering the stream about 750 mm downstream. Perfect for a female yabby nurturing eggs or babies.
At the beginning and end of the above video I focus on the point at which the water flows out of the downstream end of the tunnel and back into the stream. I have never seen a yabby do anything like this before, and wonder if anyone else has seen such behaviour.
Friday, 17 November 2017
An Unintended Consequence of Steam Power.
In a country that is so often as dry as large swathes of Australia can be, a swimmable, fishable lake is a wonderful thing. I am fortunate to live only five minutes walk from such a place - the only one of its kind that is open to the public across the width of the Blue Mountains.
The wall of the dam is visible at the end of the leafy tunnel.
If you Google-Map-cruise along the Great Western Highway as it traverses the Blue Mountains - 60 kms from Lapstone to Mount Victoria - you will see a number of lakes wedged into the upper reaches of the valleys that cut across the great plateau. Only one - the Glenbrook Lagoon - is natural, the rest were constructed at various times during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries for water supply purposes. Several, including Woodford Lake, Wentworth Falls Lake, and another at Lawson that was later replaced by the public swimming pool, were built for the railway as it traversed the Mountains. The line reached the hamlet of Weatherboard (now Wentworth Falls) in 1867.
The dam across the upper reaches of Jamison Creek, Wentworth Falls, was brought into service in 1908 as a replacement for a smaller, unreliable reservoir on the north side of Lawson. Wentworth Falls Lake was intended as a reliable source of water for the steam locomotives on the Blue Mountains line, that were, at the time, the fastest and most reliable mode of transport from Sydney to the agricultural lands beyond the ranges. In the late eighties or early nineties, substantial work was done to the wall and spillway to improve the safety of the dam, and, in recent years, the local council has carried out improvements and additions to the picnic areas.
The 150th anniversary of the arrival of the railway at Wentworth Falls
The steam locomotives are almost gone from the Mountains line now, though occasional historical operations, mainly using the locomotives from the Valley Heights Rail Museum, still puff past the lake on their way to Katoomba or Mount Victoria, to the delight of the many locals and visitors who throng to the 10.5 hectare lake for picnics, kayaking, sailing, swimming, and fishing. A couple of times each year, the navies of the world also come to visit the lake. Do the visitors ever wonder at the way the level of the lake varies so little?
The lake sits in a basin that is fed by several small streams and some of those particular marvels of the Blue Mountains, the hanging swamp. Sometimes, in long dry spells, Jamison Creek downstream from the lake slows to a silent trickle, and the lake level drops by several centimetres, but those wonderful natural sponges that are formed by the hanging swamps continue their measured release of water into the streams, keeping the lake alive. In the same way, they provided the Darug people with water, food, and other resources, across the millenia, and made easier the westward journey of Blaxland, Lawson, and Wentworth, when they searched for a road to the western plains.
While the tourists frolic, and the locals seek relief from the heat, a great variety of life also thrives in the cool depths of the lake, or among the reeds and forest around its margins. Its surface is constantly disturbed by the ducks, water hens, fish, long necked turtles, and insects, that live there. Around its shores can be seen possums, wallabies, and a fascinating variety of reptiles and frogs - and there is almost always blossom to be seen, if you look carefully. If you can't see it, watch the honey-eaters and crimson rosellas - they know.
Further reading:
[PDF]Jamison Creek Catchment Floodplain Risk Management Study and Plan
www.bmcc.nsw.gov.au/download.cfm?f=13B3A74E-423B-CE58...Tuesday, 31 October 2017
Seeing the Trees within the Forest
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.
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.
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.
Thursday, 20 April 2017
Something new in the garden.
For a couple of days over the Easter weekend my back gardens were noisy and busy with grandchildren, climbing trees, hunting yabbies, chasing butterflies, and generally having all the fun that children have when given time and space, and freedom to use both as they wish. At some point the noise changed - a rhythmic tapping joined the more chaotic background noise of children enjoying a large lawn on a sunny day.
Somehow the ten year old - the oldest child present on that weekend - had dragged a small pallet up into the willow tree by the poultry run, and had begun securing it in a space between four large branches. She had made a ramp out of spare planks to help her get the pallet into the fork, her grandmother had raided my workbench for a hammer and nails, and construction of a tree house had begun.
A few months earlier, it had been a tipi by the creek, using fallen branches and prunings gathered from various corners of the gardens. I am always intrigued by the things the children will do, make, and build, when they are left to their own devices - even the most screen-fascinated cousin could not resist the siren call of other children enjoying the outdoors. One child with a good idea will quickly attract a crowd of helpers and collaborators.
Before the tree house, there had been chalk art on the deck, and a group effort gathering firewood for Grandma's campfire - though there was an ulterior motive in that, as they know Grandma usually has a packet of marshmallows tucked away somewhere in the pantry.
When the children have gone back to their respective homes, the garden can seem quiet - but never for long. Stand still and listen - myriad small, piping voices and fluttering wings tell of the arrival of an uncountable flock of Silvereyes (Zosterops Lateralis), pausing for refreshments in my garden as they migrate north for the winter.
They are uncountable simply because they are never still for more than a second or two as they flit and whirl from fisssured bark, to twig, to branch, searching under every leaf for the tiny morsels - aphids, scale insects, ants, tiny grubs, moths - that they need to fuel their journey. How something so tiny can travel so far is truly a wonder - and in spring they will pass through on their way back to their nesting places. For a while, the flock descended on my cabbages, and it was wonderful to behold the way each bird searched the top and bottom of every cabbage leaf, delicately cleaning it of all pests. Then, with a sudden outcry, they fled into the trees along the creek, as a pair of screeching cockatoos raced overhead.
Soon, it will be red-browed finches flocking through the gardens, and when they are gone, the fairy wrens will have the place almost to themselves again, as the first frost and snow descends to change the season. Not long after that, the magpies and currawongs will be gathering grass and twigs for spring nesting. Even now, before winter has arrived, the satin bower bird can be heard rehearsing his repertoire as he begins to stake out a territory against the return of warmer weather.
Somehow the ten year old - the oldest child present on that weekend - had dragged a small pallet up into the willow tree by the poultry run, and had begun securing it in a space between four large branches. She had made a ramp out of spare planks to help her get the pallet into the fork, her grandmother had raided my workbench for a hammer and nails, and construction of a tree house had begun.
A few months earlier, it had been a tipi by the creek, using fallen branches and prunings gathered from various corners of the gardens. I am always intrigued by the things the children will do, make, and build, when they are left to their own devices - even the most screen-fascinated cousin could not resist the siren call of other children enjoying the outdoors. One child with a good idea will quickly attract a crowd of helpers and collaborators.
Before the tree house, there had been chalk art on the deck, and a group effort gathering firewood for Grandma's campfire - though there was an ulterior motive in that, as they know Grandma usually has a packet of marshmallows tucked away somewhere in the pantry.
When the children have gone back to their respective homes, the garden can seem quiet - but never for long. Stand still and listen - myriad small, piping voices and fluttering wings tell of the arrival of an uncountable flock of Silvereyes (Zosterops Lateralis), pausing for refreshments in my garden as they migrate north for the winter.
They are uncountable simply because they are never still for more than a second or two as they flit and whirl from fisssured bark, to twig, to branch, searching under every leaf for the tiny morsels - aphids, scale insects, ants, tiny grubs, moths - that they need to fuel their journey. How something so tiny can travel so far is truly a wonder - and in spring they will pass through on their way back to their nesting places. For a while, the flock descended on my cabbages, and it was wonderful to behold the way each bird searched the top and bottom of every cabbage leaf, delicately cleaning it of all pests. Then, with a sudden outcry, they fled into the trees along the creek, as a pair of screeching cockatoos raced overhead.
Soon, it will be red-browed finches flocking through the gardens, and when they are gone, the fairy wrens will have the place almost to themselves again, as the first frost and snow descends to change the season. Not long after that, the magpies and currawongs will be gathering grass and twigs for spring nesting. Even now, before winter has arrived, the satin bower bird can be heard rehearsing his repertoire as he begins to stake out a territory against the return of warmer weather.
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