Sounds in the Silence

Away from our beloved Mountains for a week, we couldn't resist the chance to regain some altitude, and drove to the top of Mount Vincent, one of the highest points between Coopernook and Lansdowne, north of the Manning River.  It was an interesting drive, often at little more than walking pace, through damp gullies and up steep, rocky ridges - always surrounded by soaring tree trunks.

We did so because my wife's mum and aunts had told many fond tales of their childhood days at Langley Vale, a village now vanished, that once thrived near the Langley Bros Timber Mill, on the Lansdowne River.  The men of the family had worked at the mill, or cut timber for it, and the children had walked for miles across neighbouring farms and followed the old Langley Vale Tramway up through the forested gullies and ridges to picnic on the rocky heights of Mt Vincent.

The first thing that struck us was the view.  Vast sweeps of farmland and forested ridges, cut through by slow winding rivers, spread out to the south and near west.  Further out to the west, mountain ranges framed the sky, while north west soared the jagged remnants of old volcanoes, now clothed in temperate rain forest.  Even northeast, the ocean view was partially obscured by a sudden mountain. 

Distant towns, and the city of Taree were tiny specks in the vista, and a long white line of surf marked the edge of Australia and the beginning of the Pacific Ocean.

The second, notable thing was not the silence, but the sounds we could hear coming to us from miles away - cows bellowing in paddocks half a kilometre below and several kms away - the siren of an ambulance - first heard while it was still ten kms away, drawing nearer until it stopped somewhere in the village of Lansdowne.  A dog barked, and we looked down to see a tiny black speck, far below, helping its master muster cattle.

Though we live in the middle of the Blue Mountains National Park, in one of the little towns threaded like shiny beads along the Great Western Highway, and thus imagine we are in a quiet place, the silence further out, away from the surf-like roar of highways and main roads, and the accumulated hum and grumble of myriad airconditioners, mowers, cars, stereos, and businesses, is at a different order of magnitude.

Most humans now live in an ocean of sound unlike anything that has existed for most of the history of the human race - back in the village, sitting in the sun on the front verandah of the aunt's house, I was privy to every conversation in houses a hundred metres away, to the half-cocked first crowing of a young rooster on another block, the distant conversation of cattle and farm dogs, and the many birds that patrolled the yards and gardens in their constant search for food, shelter, and company.

 Silence can seem a distant memory if too many of these guys are about, though.

That I could hear  all these things so clearly (despite old ears battered by decades of violent noises and now awash in the cricket like tones of tinnitus) is testament to the amount of noise we now inflict upon ourselves and the world around us.

We adapt to the background noise after a while, just as our noses adapt to ambient smells, and our eyes to the light available.  Yet even as we adjust our perceptions, and filter out the input our brain classifies as least important, we are still buffetted by it - often to the point of significant physical and psychological stress. 

So, when you feel the need to wander among the trees, or to sit on a rock and listen to the water tumbling downstream, or to luxuriate in the crackling warmth of a campfire, far from the hustle and bustle, perhaps you are not, as some would have it, being self indulgent.  At some deeper level, you are seeking what you need for the sake of your own wellbeing.

A Blast From the Past

Unless you cross the Blue Mountains by way of Bell's Line of Road, your journey does not take you through Lithgow, but rather through the burgeoning suburban sprawl of Bowenfels, to the south and west of Lithgow proper.  The Great Western Highway, multi-laned as it passes Lithgow, swoops and dives in and out of  gullies  and river valleys, and sweeps around the shoulders of hills on its approach and its departure.

In the winter, bare oak branches and smokey fireplaces give a sense of age and permanency to the place, yet nothing is where it once was.  The Western Highway once came nowhere near Lithgow as it angled south west of Hartley before straightening to run due west across the hills as far as Campbell's River, and then cutting north into Bathurst, along the west bank of the Macquarie River.

Lithgow began to gain in significance as coal, and then iron ore, were discovered, mined, and smelted, in the late 1800's.  In 1901, the first steel poured in Australia came from the Eskbank works at Lithgow.  Around 1906, construction commenced on what was, for seven years, Australia's only blast furnace, the remains of which still stand.

It took until 1929 for the Great Western Highway to be realigned to pass close to Lithgow, and then out to Wallerawang and Portland, before climbing over Mount Lambie.  By then, the long-sighted were already contemplating the likelyhood of another Great War, and Lithgow became even more important, having had, since 1912, the Lithgow Small Arms Factory at its centre.

Thirty years after the Small Arms Factory opened, Australia was not only at war with the expected enemy - Germany - but facing assault from a Japanese military that had some of the most effective air power on the planet at the time.  The Factory - source of so much of the weaponry and ammunition that kept Australian troops in the fight - was no longer safely tucked away in the hinterland, protected by a mountain range, an army, and distance, from any seaborn assault.

By 1942 it was obvious that if a Japanese carrier force were to reach the waters off Sydney, the Small Arms Factory at Lithgow would be an obvious and easily attainable target.  If you know where to look, there are three sets of concrete bunkers and gun emplacements that were built in the hills around Lithgow, with the purpose of fending off such an assault.

Two are now derelict and over grown, lurking high on the ridges to the east - above the Zig Zag Railway near Clarence - and south - near the road to Hassan's Walls.  The other - more or less to the west - has been restored, and has three 3.7 inch guns in place.  It is thought that the guns now in the bunkers were made in Canada or Britain, as Australia manufactured only static versions of this weapon, and these ones are the mobile version.

It was hoped that the batteries would interfere with any high level bombing attack that might be launched against the town, should one penetrate that far inland without being broken up RAAF fighters (should any have been available near Sydney at the time).

The battery at Bowenfels can be reached by leaving the GWH at Kirkley Street and driving a short distance.  It is worth a short walk to stand among the concrete and masonry bunkers and gun emplacements in which the soldiers waited each day for an attack that, thankfully, never arrived.  Since its restoration, it must be one of the best presented of the World War II sites in Australia.

My grandfather travelled down from Leura to work, late in the war, in the Small Arms Factory, alongside so many other Australians - the damage that a squadron of Japanese bombers could have done to the factory and surrounding homes does not bear thinking about.

Now, small factories, homes, schools, a hospital, and retirement housing, is spreading across the hillsides around the site, which was once ensconced in cow paddocks well outside the town it was defending.  It's hard to imagine war ever coming this close to Australian homes again.

The Mists of Memory

How's your memory?  Cluttered?  Neatly organised and cross-referenced?  More or less absent?

Do you know how your memory works?  Are you one of those people who digs and searches in vain, only to have the answer appear sometime during the early hours of the next morning?  Or, are you one of those who have constructed an elaborate "palace of memory" that allows you to locate and examine a vast array of carefully stored facts and figures?

How do they do it?  My grandmother seemed able, whenever recounting even the most minor of incidents, and without losing the thread of the story, to digress into the relationships, address, employment status, character flaws, and personal life of each new character as they entered the story - taking twenty minutes to relate an event that my grandfather would have told in two.

My mother in law has a similar skill, and is able to apply it to stories dating back almost eight decades.  My father had a phenomenal memory for names and faces, and the histories, addresses, and vehicles associated therewith - a handy skill in his case, as he spent decades as a police detective.  It was nothing for him to recite from memory - accurately - the contents of a thirty page statement of evidence.
 
I have several friends who have the ability to remember not only the names of everyone in their extended families, but most or all of the people with whom they worked, or went to school, church, and university with.  If that were not bad enough, they also seem able to remember their birthdays and marital status, as well as the names and birthdays of their children and grandchildren, and the birthdays of all the spouses of the people they know.

I have enough trouble remembering the names of all the grandkids in my family, let alone their birthdays, and as for the spouses or partners of children and step-children and siblings, well, for that I would need to do some sort of undergraduate course.  There are other things - facts, figures, events, scientific equations, and all sorts of interesting incidents of both dramatic and humorous nature - that have stuck; don't ask me why, I really don't know.

Moments of great embarrassment dating back to my first decade of life seem to have clung to existence in my memory banks, no matter how much I wish they would just fade away.  And, of course, the moments of crisis - fire, flood, disaster - all lurk to trip me up at unexpected moments.

And yet, on one occasion recently, I decided to draw up a list of people I had known when I lived in The Valley (as its residents call it) during a period between forty and twenty years ago. I had been thinking about doing a small essay on an aspect of the history of the place, but could only recall a few faces, and fewer names.

Once I began typing, each name called up others that would otherwise have escaped memory, and before I knew it, ten pages of two line entries - a name, and the reason I knew them - had been filled.  Many of those names were ones I would not have been able to reach directly, if someone had asked me "Who was that person that........?" but associations helped build a web of relationships and stories.  Memory - truly strange.

Remembering and forgetting are such crucial aspects of not only our daily lives, but of our development from childhood, onwards, and of vital importance to our education system, medical science, and politics, and yet we do not have anywhere near a complete understanding as to how memories are formed, stored, and retrieved.  As a field of science, memory is one of constant conflict and debate, as is the field of consciousness, with which is it is so closely intertwined.

We do know that there are all sorts of triggers that can invoke memory at unexpected moments - scents, sights, sounds, music, emotions - and those invocations can be wonderful, or poignant, or traumatic.

As writers, we rely on our memory to hand us a flow of interesting words, facts, scenarios, and emotions that we can use to create our stories.  It's a wonderful feeling when the pen is gliding across the page, racing to keep up with the flow of interesting words that have bubbled up to the level of consciousness.  One idea leads on to the next, and another, and before you know it, a story has spread from the top of the first page to halfway down the twentieth.  People, places and incidents you might otherwise have struggled to recall have galloped back into view, vying for a place - even if disguised - in your latest literary effort.

And then there are your characters - what sort of memory do they have?  Sharp and detailed? Fading?  Or even that sad patchiness of recall that can come with the onset of dementia?  Is their memory accurate?  Are they telling the reader, or the detective, or their spouse, or their children, the truth?  Do they believe it to be the truth, or do they understand that they are playing someone false? Have they even created false memories for themselves, in denial of painful reality?  How does their memory compare to that of the other characters, or to the facts known to the omniscient narrator?  Such disparities can trip a writer very badly, or be intentionally used to keep the reader guessing right up to a final, satisfying ending.

In short - no matter how good you think your memory is or isn't, and no matter how low an opinion you may have of your writing skills, it is all in there, somewhere, waiting for the opportunity to dance across the stage of memory or the page of creativity.  It will have that opportunity if you only start writing or typing. Go for it - you will surprise yourself.

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.

 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.

Flowers of Memory - the Travelling Rose

My wife and a colleague were discussing a practice at some childcare centres where a child is given a seedling of a tree or bush to care for - when they are old enough to leave for school they can either take the growing tree home to plant or to the school if permission is given for it to be  planted there.

It made me recall the plants that have travelled with me as I have moved from place to place - there is the thornless, yellow, banksia rose that has come to each new place as a cutting from the place I had just left.

It is here at Wentworth falls as both a hedging plant and as a bonsai, cuttings of which I brought with me from a bush at our last house in Quakers Hill, which was struck from the rose that climbed over the outside dunny at the farm at Glyn Marchog, which was struck from the one I grew at the Old Northern Trading Post.

That, in turn, was cut from the yellow rose that climbed with the black muscat grapes across the north and west sides of the veranda at the farm at Murray's Run (about 8 or 9 kms from the village), which in turn came from the one near the house at Toongabbie, which was struck from the one my grandfather had by his aviary at Killarney Vale, which he grew from cuttings of the big one that climbed about the barn and cottage at North Parramatta, which, finally, was struck from the one next to the house at the family dairy at Wentworth Falls, around the end of World War 2.

What a journey, over the course of generations, in the form of carefully nurtured cuttings carried from old homes to new homes, that rose has made.  I wonder if the yellow banksia rose that I found growing among the weeds on a fence line here at Gwenmere shared a common parent with the ones that were growing on the dairy that once stood only three kilometres or so from where I now type?

This house stands on the same side of Jamieson Creek, though a bit further upstream, as did the dairy that fed and employed a great-grandfather, grandfather and grandmother, great-aunt, father, uncles and aunt, and assorted cousins, fosterlings, and boys from other properties about the village.  The yellow banksia rose is often seen climbing over fences in the village, especially in the older parts - sometimes in company with a beautiful white flowering sibling.  Gandpa had some of the white rose, too, but it seemed less robust than the yellow, and did not complete the long, roundabout journey with its sister and I.

Of course, there are other plants that have travelled with me too - in pots, or as cuttings or seeds or seedlings.  The bonsais are easy to move, the great lumping orchid pots less so - but they too have a long history.  Some of the orchids were handed on from grandpa, some from an old man across a long ago fence, whose  departed wife had nurtured them and won ribbons for their beautiful blooms, back in the forties, fifties, and sixties - probably in the same orchid society grandpa attended.

All of them have stories longer than my memory, and many parts of those stories are now forgotten.

How sad that is.  Here in Australia there are folk from the First Peoples who are trying to save the language and stories of their ancestors - just as other people in other lands are also doing for their own stories.  It must be terribly difficult for them when they have so often been pushed far away from the lands in which their stories grew and flourished.

My heritage is, from what I can find in the records, mostly Anglo-Celtic.  Those peoples, too, had a time in their past when the stories and genealogies were passed on from old to young through song and poetry.  The Celtic Bards were famous for the vast storehouse of information that they carried in the memory.

But was it just "in their heads"?  Or, was it, like so many of the Australian Aboriginal songs and stories, intimately linked to the landscape - the rocks, hills, streams, lakes, trees and plants, animals and insects?  Was that a part of the terrible shock so many of the early European arrivals seemed to suffer?  That their stories were adrift, unmoored, and unattached to the landscape they now walked through?

We define ourselves and our world with our stories.  The plants I have carried with me for so many decades are linked to stories and characters now long past - but not forgotten, thanks to those gorgeous blossoms that remind me each year of the other people and places in that long story of my family.

If I travel through those places where, in past years, I settled for a while, I can still find signs of my presence - flowers and trees I planted - houses, fences, barns and stockyards I built.  I can see them and straight away be pulled back into the memories of the people and happenings that made up my life in that place.  Though one place I find it hard to drive past, knowing that house I had built there, and the trees and gardens I planted and cared for, have all vanished beneath carpark paving and a double line of townhouses.

How awful it must be to be cast out of the landscape - by war or migration - in which your story was formed, or to have the landscape torn up and replaced with something alien - as so often happens now in The City on The Plain - Sydney - as the developers and politicians tear down the landmarks of so many stories in pursuit of dollars and power.