Last weekend was a big celebration of the arrival, 150 years ago, of the railway at Mount Victoria in May 1868 - less than a year after the first train steamed into Wentworth Falls station, many miles to the east.  A great crowd turned out to see the sights, welcome the VIPs, and soak up the sunshine and the history.

Every year, Mt Victoria holds a Great Train Weekend - celebrating the role played by the railways in the history and development of not only that part of the upper Blue Mountains, but areas like Jenolan Caves, Lithgow, and the plains around Bathurst and Orange.

This year, it being a special anniversary, we were offered the spectacle of two different historical trains; one being an example of the workhorse of regional passenger service - the "tin hare" or rail motor - which first hit the tracks in 1923, and was still working what are now suburban lines, such as Blacktown to Richmond, until 1984.....

....and the other being one of the titans of the steam era in Australian rail - the Beyer Garratt AD60 Class Locomotive "6029"  The 255 tonne behemoth was a late arrival in NSW Railway service, first going to work in 1952, not too many years before diesel heralded the imminent end of steam power on the tracks of NSW

Am I betraying a level of nostalgia?  I guess so - as a child I would often wake to the rhythmic sound of the steam locomotives being brought up to working temperature and pressure, over in the shunting yards at Clyde, 3 or 4 miles away.  Later in the day, it was common for the boys of my group to gather on the bridge over the line, just west of Auburn station, competing with each other as to who was game (or silly) enough to pull back last when the locomotive charged under the bridge, sending its column of coal smoke and sparks swirling up into our faces.

It can be difficult in these days, when transport takes so many forms - trucks, busses, all sorts of modern cars - to understand just how significant these narrow ribbons of steel were to people who, until the trains came, had to walk for days or weeks to reach destinations that we now attain in minutes or hours.

Within a few years of the arrival of the rail at Mount Vic, as the locals call it, the line had reached down along the western Zig Zag to Lithgow, out through the vale to Wallerawang, and then on down the Fish River Valley to Bathurst and beyond.  Prior to that, heading west from Mt Vic was an arduous and dangerous journey. 

The descent of Victoria Pass to Hartley required the drivers of horse or bullock drawn wagons to chain a great log behind the vehicle.  Its purpose was to serve as a brake and prevent the wagon or coach from running over the draught animals and plunging down the cliffs into Hartley Vale or Kanimbla Valley.  Over a few years, the surplus logs began to pile up at the bottom of the Pass, obstructing the Great Western Highway.  It makes the modern journey seem blissfully easy - as long as you don't forget the speed cameras at the top and bottom of the mountain.

What Do You Know?

Write What You Know - that is one of the more commonly proffered pieces of writing advice that would-be authors encounter.  What does it mean?  Is it the truly profound advice that some claim it to be?  Is it a trite aphorism tossed off to hold more difficult questions at bay?

What do you "know"?  What is that I "know" that I can write about?  For those aspiring writers who feel, as so many people do, that the story of their own life is too ordinary to be worth writing about or from, that advice can feel like a door slamming in their face.  Many people take it to mean that they should be writing about the experiences of their own life; they look at the amazing stories already on the bookshelves and think "I can't compare to that"

The chances of that thought being correct are actually miniscule - you have lived, and loved, and feared, and had moments of courage and ecstasy - the thread of your life is woven with the lives of you friends, family, colleagues, teachers, schoolmates, and neighbours, into the larger tapestry of life.  Think "Six Degrees of Separation"  - it is likely that you have had a unique view of events and places and people that others would like to hear about, but you have failed to realize it because it seemed somehow commonplace or ordinary to you.

You may not know what you "know" but there are ways to discover that "knowing" - an exercise that I found interesting might also work for you. 

While trying to recall the name of someone I had known in a rural valley in which I had lived for a couple of decades or so, I realised that there were other names I had forgotten.  It was distressing - that community had been a big part of my life for a long time, and though I left there eighteen years ago, I felt I should still be able to remember those people.

So I started writing down the names of those I did recall, expecting, perhaps, to fill a foolscap page, but each easily recalled name evoked memories of incidents and occasions, which called up the names of others who had been in that particular story but whose names had, until then, escaped me. 

Those names had their own stories and memories, and the list grew, spreading onto the next page, and another, and another.  Before long, a threadbare list had begun to grow into a rich tapestry of memory - and I realised that a couple of hours had flown by, and there was still more to write down. 

Events and people I had quite forgotten turned out to be patiently waiting for their moment to rise to the surface, and thus remind me of other events and people who had faded into the mists of time. Try it - you might find the results quite interesting, and find all sorts of stories worth writing.  Even if you feel the real facts do not contain the makings of a famous biography, they might easily be embroidered into an interesting piece of fiction.

Another way to broaden your understanding of your own "knowing" is to listen to podcasts like the ones from Richard Fidler, on the ABC.  He and Sarah Kanowski present, each week-day, an interview with someone whose life has been deemed by others to be "interesting".  Many of those interviewees do not see their own life as interesting - but they are.  Some are quite amazing, and many will contain commonalities and congruences with your own life and the lives of your family and others you know.  They will give you a better sense of where your thread fits into the tapestry of human life, and where it might yet go.

Another source of encouragement and knowing can be in reading the history of particular periods in which you, your parents, or grandparents, have lived.  Again it is possible to discover that you were on the fringe of great events, and saw things that could add to the larger story if you were to write about them.  I have been reading a book called Radical Sydney and it is quite an eye-opener. 

Covering many crucial moments in Australian history, and relating them to specific locations within Sydney, it brings back to the surface many stories that officialdom would sooner we forget.  Some of those stories were about moments that I had been on the fringe of, or, sometimes, involved in, and showed me aspects that had not been visible from my viewpoint.  The seventies and eighties in Sydney were often lively times, populated by some wild characters - good and bad - and what made it into the papers or onto the evening TV screens was never the whole story.

Perhaps you are far to young to have experienced those times - but it is likely that you know people (parents, grandparents, aunts or uncles) who did experience it.  Have a look at the list of people you have been making - what do you know about them?  What do they know, and might they still be waiting for someone to listen to their story, to write it down and offer it to the world?  Think about your own times - you have a role in what is happening now, a point of view worth hearing about, and even if you don't think so now, down the track there will be questions asked that you might already have answered.

Stand back and look at your own life - it will be more interesting than you realised, and will be inter-linked with many other interesting lives, events, and places.  All you need to do is stand back far enough to be able to get a proper look at it and you will discover that your "knowing" is far greater than you realised.  Take out your pen - once the ink starts to flow onto the page, the memories and ideas will follow.

Knowing your world

It is said that many hunter-gatherer peoples offered thanks to the spirits of the animals and plants that they took for food, giving gratitude and respect for the gift of life.  And straight away, I must digress - I used that term "hunter-gatherer" because it is what I learned in school, over 50 years ago, and yet books like Dark Emu, by Dr. Bruce Pascoe, show just how intensively and intentionally those supposed "gatherers" intervened to increase the productivity of their territory.  Back to the story.

At some point in human history, before cities formed and empires grew, deities were named and thanked as being the directors or providers of weather, fertility, and food.  Stories of creation were told, genealogies handed down, and sagas and epics were chanted to remind us of the deeds and misdeeds of our ancestors and their enemies.  People could identify a story within which they lived, and picture their own place in it, as well as locating all the life and landscape around them.

The cities appeared, and kings, and emperors, who took to themselves the title of divine, and exercised control - they claimed - over all the resources the people needed.  As king fought king, and empires rose and fell, many people sheltered in the cities, while beyond the walls, the slaves and peasants continued to fish, farm, and hunt.

Is that when humans began to look less closely at, as well as appreciate less, the plants, animals, and things that we use for nourishment, medicine, comfort, and clothing?  When their gratitude shifted to the kings and emperors?

Those hunter-gatherers were living in, and respecting, the world that gave them being, nurtured them, and took them at their end - sometimes even brought about their end.  Their civilized cousins had walled themselves in, putting the natural world at a greater distance, though the enemy that had inspired the wall was actually other people.

We live in that same world - it is still the source of all, excepting sunlight, that we need for life and comfort.  In the case of sunlight, the atmosphere that filters that light, and protects us from its excesses, exists only because of life.

Yet every year it seems that more and more humans reach adulthood with no real knowledge or understanding of the world we rely on.  How can we have respect for our home if we do not understand it?

Baba Dioum wrote: "In the end, we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught"

The world we live in is complex beyond our ability to fully understand. Our brains, facing a flood of data, have developed mechanisms to filter and sort through all that information.  We seek patterns in the data, and try to develop a sense of cause and effect for every thing we see, hear, feel, taste, and sense. We seek a sense of certainty and safety, and tailor our stories accordingly.

Yet, when we have made for ourselves a story that is comforting in its certainties, we have placed ourselves at risk of real harm. We know our world only partially - it is rare that we can be absolutely certain of our future, even that which is only seconds away.  As for next week, month, or year, certainty is a dangerous illusion.

A story that takes into account such uncertainty, and helps us reach for the skills and resilience we might use when the unexpected arrives, is a better story - and, who knows, the unexpected might be more wonderful than we have imagined?

A comfortable story is a risky story because it can lead us into a sense of false security, so that we do not pay such careful attention to the world around us - its inhabitants and their behaviour.  It is when you stop paying attention that the nasty surprises can sneak up on you, and the serendipitous opportunities slip by unnoticed.  But attentiveness and alertness use energy, and we humans have another useful habit - we like to conserve energy.  Some might call it laziness, some might call it sensible, but our ancestors learned not to burn energy unnecessarily, especially when their next meal might not eventuate as soon as hoped for.  Like all human traits, it has its up sides and its down sides.

To survive and flourish, we need a story that makes sense of the world we live in, and gives us purpose, hope, and direction. With the aid of our ancestors, we learn and develop a story by which we live.  Each of us has our own unique story - though it may contain many elements in common with the stories of those around us, it also is built from moments of personal experience and thought that no one else can fully share.

Our story is also influenced by the stories we hear and see - and many of the stories we encounter in the media or online are not honest tales.  In many cases they are created, constructed, designed, and polished so as to distort our personal story in ways that benefit the makers of those stories.  Yes, you can think "advertisers" or "politicians" when you read those words, and you would be partly right, but there are others creating and foisting dodgy stories on the world, and doing so for reasons not always explicable or reputable.

Many of the stories that wash over us every day have very narrow interests at their heart, and if we are to create an honest and useful story for our own life we need to be able to discern which of those  stories should be discarded, and which ones kept. To do that, I think we need to spend time with other people that is not filtered or mediated by technology, and when we have had our fill of people, we need time in nature - real nature, not pictures and sounds on the screen or page. 

Real people and real nature enter our story by way of all our senses, not just the visual and auditory - perhaps that is why the poetry and writing that most moves us contains cues for all our senses, too.

Darwin at Weatherboard - the Stories Behind the Story

Charles Darwin, part way through his five year voyage on the HMS Beagle, arrived in Sydney only 48 years after the First Fleet.  Within a few days of his arrival, he was riding westwards to the new inland city of Bathurst, stopping around midday at an inn called Weatherboard.

It was located not far from my home, on the banks of Jamison Creek, and the area is now Wentworth Falls.  Darwin detoured to see the already famous falls, and wrote much in his journal about the remarkable landscape through which he was travelling.

To commemorate the 200th anniversary of his birth, Cambridge University Press published an anniversary edition of Charles Darwin in Australia.  It is a fascinating work, containing many facsimile exerpts of entries in his notebooks and journals, as well as drawings by such famous artists as Conrad Martens - a former shipmate of Darwin who had taken up residence in the colony of New South Wales.

Darwin's visit predates the existence of such technology as cameras, so the illustrations in the book are taken from paintings and drawings by artists such as Martens.  Other artists are drawn upon to provide images of the scenery Darwin saw, as well as the plants and animals.  One who is mentioned in the book is "the famous artist, John Gould" - another acquaintance of Darwin.

Yet, according to SLNSW Curator Margot Riley, Sydney Morning Herald, 2017-12-27, most of the illustrations in Gould's Birds of Australia were done by his wife, Elizabeth.  Riley states that "Gould was not an artist" and that Elizabeth Gould's "exquisite work became almost totally eclipsed by the fame of her husband" - John designed the plates for his book, and carefully supervised their production, but the artwork was hers.

Elizabeth did the 84 plates while raising six children, and when she died, John Gould employed a number of artists and illustrators to fill her role in the production of his books.  It seems somehow sad that brilliant artists like Elizabeth were so often consigned by cultural mores of their times to walk in the shadows.

The Age Old Conflict - Everything Old is News Again

Story and denial, fact and counter-fact, news and fake news - the call and response of society and politics in this world of hi-tech, high-speed communications is loud, complex, and confusing.

While the truth rests on the editor's desk, scrutinized by the fact-checkers and the lawyers, the rumours, spin, and propaganda are already spreading like a blizzard of termite queens seeking new homes as the summer afternoon storms approach.

Only some will find a fertile place to lodge, but those that do will feed and breed in the darkness, spreading out to consume and corrupt the structure that took them in.  Soon, unprotected, adjacent premises are being eaten away from within, and the rot spreads.

Every story we read, whether it be labelled Fiction or Non Fiction, contains varying quantities of objective reality and subjective truths, blended by the author to achieve a certain aim, and interpreted by each reader according to their own experience-based filters.  Many an author (or poet, or movie maker) has been utterly astounded by the meanings that readers have taken from his or her work - many readers are astounded when the author declares that "that is not what I meant by those words"

But, we live by stories - they make a foundation that underpins our lives, and offer us ways to understand the swirling world around us.  Stories offer us hope in the grim times, and hold up the warning hand of bitter experience as a caution against our naive optimisms.

Like the great cables of twisted rope that hold the ocean liner fast to the dock, the vast story of humanity contains within it so many twists of lesser stories, wound about each other in complex spirals that add strength to the whole.

Or like a tapestry stretching the length of human existence, only partly visible to us in the light of the present, and always under construction at the edge that leads into the shadows of the future, the stories add strength, colour, and sometimes even pattern, to the whole.

Flawed stories, stories in which truth is twisted or absent, stories darkened by malice or anger or envy, stories twisted by the teller for personal gain - all these stories can mar the patterns of the great tapestry, or weaken the cable.  Stories of fear and despair make the world a smaller, darker place.  If such stories are being told by people in positions of great power, the damage wrought can be much greater, too.

Tell your story, add some light and colour to the larger story - read or listen to the light-filled stories of others, and join your thread with theirs to brighten the picture of the future.  The human story grows and brightens when such stories are added to the weave.

Your story contains the stories - at least in part - of those who you knew or lived with or worked with or watched or read about, just as the present is built on and from the past, yet also shaped by the stories we tell ourselves about our futures.

It is too easy for the dominant stories of the day to overshadow the many stories being told by fainter voices - yet those stories, less widely known but far greater in number, have made their own unique contributions to the greater picture, and deserve our remembrance.

Consider books such as Radical Sydney  and its associated blog, that try to keep alive stories of Sydney, recent and ancient, that often contradict the "official" line, and might have otherwise faded from view.  Those who seek to impose their paradigm on a culture or society often try to bury the stories that present opposing viewpoints, but dissenting stories can be very hard to stamp out.

Consider the fiction of Robert G Barrett - though many of his later works contained fantastical elements, they also contained traces of those same stories of the other Sydney, while his early books and short stories painted scenes and portraits that would be instantly recognisable to anyone who worked or lived around the eastern suburbs of Sydney in the seventies.  Only the names were changed, and some of by not very much.

As a parting thought, I've heard it said that the Silly Season in Australia begins on Melbourne Cup Day, and ends on Australia Day.  It seemed an odd thing to say, for a moment, but then the memories began to flood back - of holidays and parties and birthdays and bushfires and sunburn and storms - and it suddenly seemed apt, because no matter what the weather or the world situation was trying to throw at us at the time, there was always, somewhere, a bunch of Aussies throwing a party or putting on a barbecue.

Yet the beginning and the end of the Season are marked by days about which so many different and often conflicting stories are told.  For every story of victory at the races there is at least one opposing story of fortunes lost, or horses or jockeys killed or maimed - and as for Australia Day, if you don't know about the conflicting stories gathering around that day then, what can I say.  You must have been partying extra hard not to have noticed that particular barney.

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.

Blink and you'll miss it.

Is it a lonely grave on a flower strewn hillside?  It was, once, but the hillside has changed shape, as the railway line was pushed through, and the local roads were widened and built up.

The golden coreopsis flowers arrived after the trains, their seeds carried far and wide across NSW as the iron road pushed further out.

On the right hand side of this picture can be seen the abutments of an older bridge that carried Blaxland's Road across the tracks.  It is significantly lower than the new bridge, which would have been built at the new, higher level required to allow the electrification of the Blue Mountains line.

Part of the crowd commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the arrival of the first train at Wentworth Falls (or Weatherboard, as it was known) held in July 2017

 The plaque attached to the NW corner of the bridge that carries Blaxland's Road across the Main Western Line, just west of Wentworth Falls Station.

The lonely headstone is in memory of James Fergusson, who was struck and killed by lightning 158 years ago, while settling cattle and horses into the yards near the Weatherboard Inn.  Each year, close to the 21st of December, a group of people gather on the remains of the old road, opposite the site, to commemorate James and John, whose story is set out below by local historian Jon Low.

The following research by John Low has been published on the 'Simply Australia' website:
In the 19th century when you travelled the Western Road over the Blue Mountains you were in the bush. For over fifty years following its construction in 1814-15, the road was the conduit between the coastal settlement and the pasture lands of the west. It wound a precarious route along the top of a high ridge with deep, unexplored valleys on either side and its condition was subject to the vagaries of weather, heavy use and irregular maintenance. Travel by whatever means was fraught with difficulties, discomfort and sometimes danger as the sad little tale that follows illustrates.

While thousands journeyed across the Mountains in these early years, few chose to live here and minimal settlement took place until the railway arrived in 1867. Inns, military depots & convict stockades, tollhouses, camps and mounted police stations all hugged closely the edges of the road,while settlers, gold seekers, bullock and horse team drivers and all the restless human cargo of a growing colony drifted past.

Twenty-two year old James Fergusson, a carrier with a team of heavy horses, was a part of that incessant 19th century movement. In the early afternoon of 21st December 1859 he and another man, John Black, were among several teamsters setting up camp about 30 or 40 yards in front of the Weatherboard Inn. Christmas was only several days away and it's a safe bet they were looking forward to some merriment in the inn that evening. But, before they could enjoy themselves their horses had to be unharnessed, fed and watered and settled down for the night.

The story of what happened at the Weatherboard on that summer afternoon in 1859 was described in detail in The Empire, a popular Sydney newspaper of the time founded by Henry Parkes. Young Fergusson and his mate Black, it's journalist wrote, "had just unharnessed the horses, and were about to feed them, when a violent thunderstorm came on, and a flash of lightning of a most terrific character struck the two men, and the whole of the thirteen horses, killing both men and animals instantly. The lightning then passed through the inn without doing any further material damage. The bodies of the men and animals presented a most ghastly spectacle, the former turning almost black in a very short period."

Two other men were struck by "the electric fluid" but escaped serious injury, while several further members of the encampment and a number of horses were completely untouched. John Black, aged 28 and married with three young children, was interred in St. John's Burial Ground at Parramatta. James Fergusson, having no known relatives, was buried near the spot where he was killed. Perhaps it was his employer, Mr. R. Martin of Bowenfels, or maybe even his mates who paid for his burial and for his headstone and footstone, both clearly the work of a skilled tradesman. [Extract by John Low at http://simplyaustralia.net/article-jl-weatherboard.html, 17/08/2011]

Blaxland's Road is named after Gregory Blaxland, of the trio Blaxland, Lawson, and Wentworth, who set out from the Nepean River in 1813 to find a way for settlers to move cattle across the mountains from the Cumberland Plain to the open lands around Bathurst, and Wentworth Falls was named after, well, I'll leave you to guess.



Reference:  https://www.bluemountainshaveyoursay.com.au/22793/documents/62795

The Wishing Well

Have you ever driven down the Castlereagh Highway, from Mudgee towards Lithgow and wondered, as you sailed by, at the Wishing Well sign that stands near the top of Cherry Tree Hill?  Next time you are heading south up the steep climb to the top of the hill, pull over (there is safe parking) and put your walking shoes on.

 The final version of the well.

The walk from the side of the modern highway is short - only a couple of minutes - and takes you down the embankment onto the old highway.  Not far down, you will come to the well mentioned in the sign.  Said to have been first built in 1848, on the site of a soak beside the road, and improved at various times over the next century, it was finally bypassed when the Castlereagh was enlarged and upgraded.

 The line of the old highway, down which visitors can walk to the well.

 There are so many little pieces of history like this one - once a part of the daily lives of those who came before us, but now relegated to hidden nooks or corners, as the need for speed re-aligns the highways, and even the byways, that take us from point A to point Z in ever shorter times.

 The railing above the well shows where the new highway climbs Cherry Tree Hill

Those quicker trips mean, though, that we miss out on points B through Y.  Perhaps it might be worthwhile, on your next trip, to check the map, and leave an hour or two earlier.  Having chosen a route with potential, hop onto the internet and search out the local historical societies or museums - most places have these wonderful, volunteer run organisations that are dedicated to preserving the stories of their area and their forebears.

 Despite the re-alignments and associated drainage on the top side of the highway, clear water still seeps from the well.

Take one of the byways that was built for horse or bullock team, and drive slowly.  The old highway from Buladelah to Coolongolook is one such road, as are the old roads that lead north from various parts of the Hawkesbury river to converge on the old villages of Laguna and Wollombi.  In a land that could become as dry as Australia does, any permanent source of water was highly valued.

On other roads I have come across such soaks that have been improved so as to offer a watering point for the bullocks and horses and humans who plodded their way through the wilderness.  Few of them were as ornate as the well on Cherry Tree Hill - one on the steep hill between Fernances Crossing and Bucketty is merely a horizontal gouge chiseled across the face of the sandstone, catching the water seeping from the cliff above.

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...

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.

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.

A story in a single word

Nicknames can be a story in a single word - sometimes bestowed by friends, family, or colleagues, and sometimes self-applied in an effort to convey a certain image. Think, for example, of an episode of Big Bang Theory called The Friendship Contraction - Wolowitz tries to inveigle the other astronauts into choosing "Rocket Man" but gets stuck with "Fruit Loops"

At a writer's seminar recently a young woman from the Lower Mountains mentioned recent conflict between groups of young people in the town square.  She referred to them using a term the rest of us had not previously encountered.  It sounded like "Eshays" and prompted a round of puzzled requests for repetition and explanation.

When we learned that it was a form of "gang" terminology that some of the youngsters were appropriating from American "gangsta" movies, and that it had some sort of Spanish etymology, an online search (oh, the wonders of modern technology!) soon filled in the gaps in our knowledge.

It derives from the Spanish phoneme "esse" that represents the letter "S" and is related to the term Surenos, in turn derived from Southern Californian crime gangs with a relationship to Mexican "Mafia" groups involved in drug and weapons trade in and out of the USofA.

"Eshays" has also come to be simply a term for a young man, thus a Spanish version of "Man" "Bro" or "Dude"

Yet, for the people who have taken to using it about themselves it is meant to convey to the wider world an image, an impression, a story about who they are, and how they should be treated or regarded.

Nicknames can be a remarkably concise way of describing a person, when the listeners share the cultural heritage of the narrator.  Without such sharing, the possibilities for confusion are immense - consider the practice, in Australia, in years gone by, of calling redheads "blue" or "bluey" and black-haired men "snow" or "snowy"

Some are in-jokes, reminding listeners who are in the know of some particular moment in the history of the recipient and his/her friends.  In years gone by I had a large collection of nicknames that were bestowed upon me by various friends and colleagues.  Someone asked me if I found the plethora of alternative names annoying or confusing - in fact, it helped me work out which face in the crowd was calling for my attention.  Nicknames can add to the reader's grasp of the type and history of a character, if chosen wisely.

What about pet names?  The consensus seems to be that pet names are used by only one person, who is in a relationship - familial or romantic - with the character, so tagging a character with one during dialogue can be a succinct way of indicating the relationship to the reader.  An article in the Scientific American goes into some detail on the subject.

How often should we add nicknames and pet names to the characters in a story?  Changes of name can confuse the reader, so it needs to be done well.  My cultural millieu is middle class Australian, post-World War II, so nicknames and informallity in conversations are a crucial part of social interactions - is it thus in other cultures? How do you go about choosing names for your characters?  Do you choose them before the story begins rolling along?  Do you find yourself wanting to change them later, as their personality develops over the course of the writing?

I have read of authors who have gone to enormous trouble to attach the "right" name to primary characters, hoping to infuse extra layers of meaning into the story.  I have encountered novels where that effort has paid off.  For my part, I have tended to randomly reach into the well of memory and pluck out a few names, holding each up against the character as so far planned, and discarding each until I find the one that seems to fit.  It is a haphazard approach and has sometimes  led to my having to carefully go through a draft, swapping out the initial moniker for something that fits better with the persona that has grown during the work.

Does it really matter?  In real life we are named by hopeful (or confused) parents long before any inkling of our character could possibly be detected by them. Would it be more realistic if authors adopted the same policy?

Communal Writing.

Communal Writing.

Long ago, and far away from my misty, soggy, mountain home, I lived and worked in a community that was sprawled sparsely across ridges and valleys that were generally dryer and hotter than here. 

The Valley was regarded by its local council as a large, costly, but insignificant appendage – both economically and socially.  Its inhabitants were a mixed bunch – from the scions of the families that began settling the valley in the 1830's through to a late wave of "tree-changers" who arrived in the 1970's and 80's.

At first, newcomers and old timers regarded each other's lifestyles with suspicion and contempt, but the social lubrication provided by bush dances, the local tavern, the wine-bar in the next village, and the happy interactions of the children of both groups at the local schools, eased the merger.  It wasn't long before the newcomers closed ranks with the old timers against "the outside".

One mother from an older family said one day that she was happy that we had moved to The Valley, as it offered her children a range of potential spouses who were not first or second cousins. 

Subsequent weddings showed that she was right.

50 kilometres away from the shire capital, we were also thoroughly ignored by the "local" newspaper.  Exasperated locals, with spare time, and creative impulse overflowing, formed a small committee, and, soon after, The OON was born.  A child of the 80's, it was hand drawn, mechanically typed, and physically "cut and pasted" to make masters, before being turned out on a photocopier that lived, for a long time, at the local Wine Bar (General Store, Service Station, Stock Feed Supplier, and purveyor of news, views, and rumours)

"Se Non e Vero, e Molto Ben Trovato" was the banner motto of Our Own News, and most of the stories within were both true and very good, even during the years when I took my turn as editor.  One of the great joys of this little newspaper was the range of talents it drew from the community.  There were several artists and cartoonists featured regularly, and a range of contributors producing regular and one-off articles, stories, and poems.  At one time, we could even claim to have international circulation, with a copy being mailed each fortnight to a subscriber in Hong Kong – he was an airlines pilot who lived over there but owned a "hobby farm" in The Valley.

The first editor and driving force behind its establishment, "June from the OON" provided all sorts of interesting stuff from her own pen, and was responsible for harassing and cajoling many unexpected authors into becoming regular contributors of quality work.  June, along with her friends, had also formed a local writing group called "The Pencil Orchids" and they sent work in, as well as publishing books of their own poetry.

That little, hand-made paper became an integral part of a community that had almost faded to nothing, and stood a real risk of becoming, at different times, either the floor of a water supply lake for the Upper Hunter Valley, or the severely battered target area of an extended Army firing range. 

That community grew and fought off its would-be destroyers, its schools began to refill with students, and it developed a thriving artistic and literary core that would draw acclaim from far and wide.  

The OON was there for all that.  The Valley community still thrives, its creative people still flourish, and The OON, after changing to online only during the first decade of the new century, has reverted to a print edition, and is going as well as ever.  If you are interested in reading it, the emailed version is free via oon_news@hotmail.com.

Three decades of continuous publishing is not a bad run for something that began with a few would-be, totally inexperienced journalists, sitting around a kitchen table – it was fun to write for, and fun to read and it was always worth the effort so many people put into it.  None of us could, or would, have done it on our own, and though the internet provides so many opportunities to individuals who wish to publish their work, there is still something to be said for getting together with other folk of similar bent, to tell your stories, and see what might happen.