Transitions –December 4
Sitting on the rocks at Gooram Gooram Gong on that last hot Australia Day, doesn’t seem all that long ago, so when I began looking back on the year, I was worried that I mightn’t find much to report on, until with a review in mind I went back to the notes I took away from our meetings or working sessions.
During 2008 The Edge Collective revisited many of the issues that arose out of Palimpsests, while moving on to The Black Range Project’. We have made progress, and yet there have been no clear beginnings and endings, so if anything, it has been a year of transitions.
When we decided to begin work on The Black Range we started to draw up a draft set of principles and soon found that while it was easy to say that landscape was our focus or central concept, and there are some broad parameters around what we do, what makes our work so interesting is that our various processes -- Susan’s use of shibori and dyeing of textiles, Peter’s taking photographs and my responding to images in writing – are fundamentally organic and flexible. We never know exactly what we have until we see the images. Also, there is a complex, inexplicable but essential relationship between what we find in the images that we may or may not have seen at the site itself and what we actually know about it. To interpret or read the images and decide how to present them, we are always working towards understanding what’s hidden within and beneath the surface of a site. It was with this in mind that I went back to reread evolutionary biologists and we’re still investigating the geology of The Range. The wildness and apparent inaccessibility, the rumours and biodiversity that the Range invokes and invites need thorough and careful investigation and quarries are often a rich source of real data about the past.
I’m not keen on labels but the nearest I can come to describing our work is to say that it’s our interpretation of ephemeral land-based art, driven by what we do rather than anyone else’s definition. If readers were to go to the web to see to what extent our work follows similar principles or methods to other ‘land’ or ‘earth’ artists, they would soon realise that we have little in common with them – except for the coincidence that photography is often involved. . . and I think I should leave my foray into art critique at that point]
The light captured by Peter’s camera and my words are ephemeral and even Susan’s textiles which consist of actual substance are ephemeral in the sense that they are not embedded in the land but removed after Peter has taken the photographs.
We also attempt to be ephemeral to the extent that we treat our sites with respect and leave them as we find them, and yet some people might argue that our images – any images for that matter - change the way the land is viewed and that even the light, the memories, the words will become part of how the land is used. Certainly OlegasTruchanas, was one of many artists who intentionally strive to change the way people think of and deal with the land.
More generally, growing concerns about climate change and particularly media exposure have changed many aspects of the way we think about our planet and actually view the surrounding landscape. While many of us would like to see more actual change in the way people treat our environment, I think that we can say with certainty that the language environment has definitely changed. Without directly referencing environmental concerns, we work towards increasing our own understanding and awareness of pressing environmental issues as well as seeking to communicate our concerns to others. Just as importantly, our art is also a celebration of place.
The most significant almost silent and yet constant presence that influences our work, is the long-standing connection of the Taungurong people to Gooram Gooram Gong and The Range. Both sites are situated in the country of which they are the traditional owners.
We will have a break over the next few weeks while we take some time out time to feed the spirit and soul. I will be mulling over some of the questions raised by my websearch into ecopoetics . The assertion that poetry [or one could say art in general] has the potential to operate on the edge of innovative ecological thinking is exciting and daunting. It calls for some rigorous reflection reading and research.
I have yet to report on Peter and friends orchid hunt on Cup Day and Susan’s trips to Sarawak and more recently to Paris to show her film and take part in The International Shibori Symposium. In due course reports will appear on her blog and next year, as she works closer to home The Edge will benefit from her learnings.
[For more info go to Susan’s blog and collected works site for a comment from me on poetry and place www.collectedworks-poetryideas.blogspot.com/
-- meanwhile, I have been working on a text to go with the quarry images and remembering how long it took to do the Palimpsests book.
Almost in spite of myself, I realise that what I have done is to write a kind of Christmas letter so here’s not a Christmas but a summer solstice message :
Be kind to one another
Tread lightly on the earth
Know your flowers
It comes from American poet . Gary Snyder
Sari
Friday, December 12, 2008
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Looking for poetry and finding science
When evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould wrote on page 309 of Wonderful Life, The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History (published by Penguin in 1989), “The universe is not so tightly connected that the fall of a petal disrupts a distant star, whatever our poets sing.” it sounds as if he is criticising poets for treating as an exact science. When he then continues,“ But most quirky changes of topography or environment, most appearances and disappearances of groups (if not single species), can irrevocably alter the pathways of life in substantial ways…The playground of contingency is immeasurable.” He is also introducing an agenda of his own.
I have always been interested in paleontology so when I began to see fossil-like patterns on Susan’s silks, I set off on one of my research expeditions. I need very little excuse to read anything Gould has written, because his writing makes the complex topics he writes about so accessible and exciting. Also, research – an essential part of the writing process – is one of my favourite games, even when, probably because it often takes me on a long detour away from my project.
Before long, Gould led me away from his detailed descriptions of the weird experimental creatures that are part of the Burgess Shale, into those broader fields of knowledge and questions about the nature of history and the history of life where quirky changes of topography and environment might have an impact. As a student of the often notoriously changeable humanities, I was closer to home. I was ready to be led on to Gould’s ‘playground of contingency’ to imagine a narrative in which the silken textiles creatures we -The Edge Collective- had created at the Yarck Cutting Quarry could represent and re-enact some part in the melodramatic history of life on the planet.
My next move was to begin a web search on the relationship between poetry and science. Apart from the implicit science and technology already involved in producing the images (the processing of the textiles and the photography) I wanted more inspiration and information from both scientists and poets to create my text for the drama. While it is dangerous to rely on web searches, when I came across references to Unweaving the Rainbow Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder by Richard Dawkins (published by Allen Lane the Penguin Press in 1998), another evolutionist, I had found just what I needed – a writer exploring the poetry in science, defending the way scientific understanding enhances rather than diminishes beauty in the natural world.
Sometimes it is easier to continue the research and put off the challenging task of bringing all one’s ideas together in a cogent piece of writing. But soon my detour almost stranded me somewhere in the middle of a contradiction between my two sources. According to Dawkins, including Gould can write well and deliver bad poetic science in their writing. It happens when they force connections.
In chapter 8 of the book Dawkins spells out his reasons for accusing Gould and others of producing bad poetic science and implicitly he encourages all poets, whether they are scientists or not, to carefully consider the function and nature of metaphor.
A blog is not the place to do justice to the relationship between poetry and science, and I had thought about moving on to a discussion of metaphor, but at least now I have decided to settle for some statements that I can use as stepping stones. I need to get back my search for poetry in paleontology, and anyone interested in the links between poetry and science will want to make their own journey on the web.
And, as Carole Jenkins, a poet with a background in science writes in the last lines of her poem: Fishing in the Devonian
. . . There is a lot to think about in fishing in the Devonian. So pack thoughtfully.
(Carol Jenkins, Fishing in the Devonian Puncher & Wattman 2008)
I have always been interested in paleontology so when I began to see fossil-like patterns on Susan’s silks, I set off on one of my research expeditions. I need very little excuse to read anything Gould has written, because his writing makes the complex topics he writes about so accessible and exciting. Also, research – an essential part of the writing process – is one of my favourite games, even when, probably because it often takes me on a long detour away from my project.
Before long, Gould led me away from his detailed descriptions of the weird experimental creatures that are part of the Burgess Shale, into those broader fields of knowledge and questions about the nature of history and the history of life where quirky changes of topography and environment might have an impact. As a student of the often notoriously changeable humanities, I was closer to home. I was ready to be led on to Gould’s ‘playground of contingency’ to imagine a narrative in which the silken textiles creatures we -The Edge Collective- had created at the Yarck Cutting Quarry could represent and re-enact some part in the melodramatic history of life on the planet.
My next move was to begin a web search on the relationship between poetry and science. Apart from the implicit science and technology already involved in producing the images (the processing of the textiles and the photography) I wanted more inspiration and information from both scientists and poets to create my text for the drama. While it is dangerous to rely on web searches, when I came across references to Unweaving the Rainbow Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder by Richard Dawkins (published by Allen Lane the Penguin Press in 1998), another evolutionist, I had found just what I needed – a writer exploring the poetry in science, defending the way scientific understanding enhances rather than diminishes beauty in the natural world.
Sometimes it is easier to continue the research and put off the challenging task of bringing all one’s ideas together in a cogent piece of writing. But soon my detour almost stranded me somewhere in the middle of a contradiction between my two sources. According to Dawkins, including Gould can write well and deliver bad poetic science in their writing. It happens when they force connections.
In chapter 8 of the book Dawkins spells out his reasons for accusing Gould and others of producing bad poetic science and implicitly he encourages all poets, whether they are scientists or not, to carefully consider the function and nature of metaphor.
A blog is not the place to do justice to the relationship between poetry and science, and I had thought about moving on to a discussion of metaphor, but at least now I have decided to settle for some statements that I can use as stepping stones. I need to get back my search for poetry in paleontology, and anyone interested in the links between poetry and science will want to make their own journey on the web.
And, as Carole Jenkins, a poet with a background in science writes in the last lines of her poem: Fishing in the Devonian
. . . There is a lot to think about in fishing in the Devonian. So pack thoughtfully.
(Carol Jenkins, Fishing in the Devonian Puncher & Wattman 2008)
Thursday, October 2, 2008
When less is more: anniversary week
When less is more: anniversary week
On Thursday September 25 we celebrated our 24th anniversary of arriving on the Range for the first time. We went down to the gully where the old shack stood, poured our wine into picnic glasses, cooked ourselves sausages on an old plough disk barbecue made by my father, and gave treats to the dogs. We tried to remember how different the place must have looked then. The trees must have grown even though they look the same, and we have worked so slowly over the years, gradually turning our hidden valley into a place to live, that I have to look back at old photographs and diaries to remember how much has changed around us, and we have changed the place – and ourselves - in that time. In a later blog I’ll search out some of my old (pre-digital) photos.
It was nearly dark and we were just packing up to go back to the house when an eagle sailed overhead. It was so close I either felt or imagined I felt the pulse and movement of the air beneath its wings.
When I came here it was not only to escape the city, or find an eagle. I didn’t know exactly what it was I was looking for, but I knew I needed to spend time in a place where I might see an eagle and some other wild creature, a place where the weather and topography made a real difference to the way I spent my days and nights.
The next day there was a poetry reading at Collected Works sponsored by The Association for the Study of Literature & the Environment [see http://www.asle-anz.asn.au/ for lots more info about this organisation]. The poets reading were Anne Elvey, Peter Hay, Susan Hawthorne, John Jenkins, Miriel Lenore and Mark Tredinnick.
Hay and Tredinnick are writers who often investigate their relationship with the environment in their work. (I have deliberately avoided using the terms ‘nature writing’ or ‘eco- poetry’ to label their work although I do like the cross-disciplinary approach these terms imply, and applaud writing that blends the humanities and the natural sciences, but - to my way of thinking, the terms have still not quite settled comfortably into their identities. Good literature speaks for itself.
I was reassured by how accessible and direct the poets were in their engagement with their surroundings. There were moments of grieving for the decline of the natural world but more poems about moments of joy and detailed, enlightened observations.
In spite of my misgivings about labels, these poets shared with each other and their audience their compelling need to speak their minds and make known their concerns. Their poems did not retreat into any impossible Eden or suggest where we might find answers to the problems that beset us in our dealings with our planet. By revealing their vulnerability and by speaking of their personal responses, they encouraged us to look more closely at our surroundings and become more mindful of the implications of our relationship with the earth and the environment.
Back at home again I went through my old copies of Island magazine and found Peter Hay’s poem, Old Man’s Beard. The poem does a lot more than capture the experience of a moment on a mountain. It goes to the heart of his - and our – being:
Lichen is the forest’s ancient enlightenment,
and the planet’s –
and it reaches through the very fields of space
to infuse the cosmic winds,
a swirl of principle
to spark a universe.
Island Magazine 105, Winter 2006
Living in retreat, my engagement with my natural surroundings and the question of my responsibility for my actions confront me daily and I know I can’t always find the words to describe my feelings. I had almost given up worrying about how many readings I miss but keeping in touch with what’s around, reading well and occasionally listening to readings supports my endeavours and adds many dimensions to my experience.
…
I came out of the bookshop into the noisy bustle of the Friday night city crowd thinking about how isolated I have become from the literary and the urban scenes. Then, remembering the eagle I began to wonder -- are people held within their academic frameworks or their cities isolated, or am I?
Twenty four years ago, driving up the escarpment road, then along a bush track, then dragging aside the cocky’s gate of bush poles and crumpled chicken wire we had effectively arrived in the middle of nowhere. In the gully below stood an old hut with rusted out wood stove and a leaking rusting water tank. we knew immediately that it was the idyll and the wilderness we were looking for – and could afford
In those early years we were challenged just keeping sheltered, fed and watered here. We went for long walks along overgrown loggers tracks or sat over warm fires through foggy winters, and we made plans about what we would do when we were no longer so busy working full time, raising children and keeping in touch with the world. Over the years and bit by bit we’ve built a house and that has been a saga in itself. Eventually we came to live here five years ago.
Most days it’s easy to listen to the birds, watch the sun go down and drift into complacency because peace prevails for so much of the time. But there are always questions - the quiet, persistent music of complacency, the satisfying rhythms of shifting seasons and yes, the questions
Some of those questions are contained in making choices about the very fact of living here and the responsibilities that it brings
we have had to make many choices and compromises and the implications of some of these choices are far from ideal.
The longer I’m here, and the more I write, the more I have to question how I live and how I deal with problems both large and small for which there are no easy answers. Perversely, the more we know, the less certainty there seems to be about the best way to act, and the more we’re challenged and forced to ask why we subject ourselves to the rigours of remoteness and independence – the more I think I know why I do it, the more committed I become. At any moment another eagle will appear in the skies or the sunset will be spectacular. The water tastes good. Even when disaster hovers at the edge of my vision or smoke rather than haze fills the valley, the kookaburras laugh in the mornings and the rosellas fly in to find water.
Heat: Art and Climate Change
I read Robert Nelson’s review of the show Heat: Art and Climate Change (see www.rmit.edu.au/rmitgallery for more information) in The Age September 24 with great interest. In the words of its the curator, Linda Williams, Heat is a show more about shifts in awareness than climate change itself, and what the changes in our world represent for us. It concentrates on the feelings of the artists.
Nelson writes of the need to move beyond being helpless in the face of global warming, but like the rest of us he remains at the edge. He does not - nor should we expect him to - provide us with answers: “Confronting the new world of ecological sin” Nelson writes, “ means deconstructing nature, seeing wilderness as a garden that we now have no choice but to manage scientifically. Ironically the heat is turned back on artists, who now need science as well as moral philosophy.”
I’d like to add that poets like visual artists will need science, and that all of us will need as well as the scientists, poets and artists.
By way of illustration of an example of why we all need scientists, and the way living in close connection with the natural environment-, here’s a story about my recent encounter with Mole, Badger and some swamp wallabies
Wallabies are a prevalent and visible part of the wooded landscapes of the Black Range. They are solitary, territorial animals which move about during the day and so various individuals become familiar – often a little too familiar. Now our garden is established, I don’t mind them visiting because we are the interlopers, and the territory is really theirs. One hot night we were woken by the splashing noise of one that had fallen into the swimming pool. Luckily for the wallaby and us, we were able to lift it out with a rake before much harm had been done to the wallaby or the pool.
Staying in Canberra on a family visit recently, I read a copy of the Bulletin of the Australian Network for Plant Conservation (Vol.15 No.4 March – May 2007) reporting on a conference with the theme, What lies Beneath?
What lies beneath or, put more technically, The role of soil biota in the health and rehabilitation of native vegetation was the theme of a recent ANPC conference, at which scientists considered interactions between animals both vertebrate and invertebrate and native vegetation.
Andrew Claridge gave a presentation in which argued for linking what happens above the ground in revegetation programs to what happens in the soil below, to restore processes as well as species in our revegetation efforts.
Recent research suggests that many mammals are mycophagous (fungus eating) and play an important role in dispersing fungal spores and as they forage for their fungus, they aerate the soil and make entry points for nutrients and water, thus leading scientists to the conclusion that when restoring native vegetation, we should work from the soil up, not the trees down.
Briefly, here are the main points from the conference:
• Ectomycorrhizal fungi (these include truffles, and we do have some native varieties) are vital components of Australia’s biodiversity.
• Diverse mammal communities are important for maintaining plant-fungal associations and ecosystem health. The swamp wallaby, for instance is one mycophagous (fungus eating) mammal, and thirty-seven others have been identified in recent research.
• Soil and litter invertebrates play an important role in plant growth in revegetated systems.
And here’s the conversation between Mole and Badger in Wind in the Willows and quoted at the beginning Claridge’s article:
‘Presently they all sat down to luncheon together. The mole found himself placed next to Mr Badger, and, as the other two were deep in river gossip from which nothing could divert them, he took the opportunity to tell Badger how comfortable and homelike it all felt to him. “Once well underground,’ he said, “you know exactly where you are, nothing can happen to you, and nothing can get at you. You’re entirely your own master, and you don’t have to consult anybody or mind what they say. Things go on all the same overhead, and you let ‘em, and don’t bother about ‘em. When you want to, up you go, and there the things are, waiting for you.” The Badger simply beamed at him. ‘that’s exactly what I say” he replied. ‘There’s no security, or peace or tranquillity, except underground.’
I have since reread the wonderful Wind in the Willows, and next time a wallaby comes into the garden for a green pick during a long hot summer, I’ll treat it and the ground we share with much more respect.
On Thursday September 25 we celebrated our 24th anniversary of arriving on the Range for the first time. We went down to the gully where the old shack stood, poured our wine into picnic glasses, cooked ourselves sausages on an old plough disk barbecue made by my father, and gave treats to the dogs. We tried to remember how different the place must have looked then. The trees must have grown even though they look the same, and we have worked so slowly over the years, gradually turning our hidden valley into a place to live, that I have to look back at old photographs and diaries to remember how much has changed around us, and we have changed the place – and ourselves - in that time. In a later blog I’ll search out some of my old (pre-digital) photos.
It was nearly dark and we were just packing up to go back to the house when an eagle sailed overhead. It was so close I either felt or imagined I felt the pulse and movement of the air beneath its wings.
When I came here it was not only to escape the city, or find an eagle. I didn’t know exactly what it was I was looking for, but I knew I needed to spend time in a place where I might see an eagle and some other wild creature, a place where the weather and topography made a real difference to the way I spent my days and nights.
The next day there was a poetry reading at Collected Works sponsored by The Association for the Study of Literature & the Environment [see http://www.asle-anz.asn.au/ for lots more info about this organisation]. The poets reading were Anne Elvey, Peter Hay, Susan Hawthorne, John Jenkins, Miriel Lenore and Mark Tredinnick.
Hay and Tredinnick are writers who often investigate their relationship with the environment in their work. (I have deliberately avoided using the terms ‘nature writing’ or ‘eco- poetry’ to label their work although I do like the cross-disciplinary approach these terms imply, and applaud writing that blends the humanities and the natural sciences, but - to my way of thinking, the terms have still not quite settled comfortably into their identities. Good literature speaks for itself.
I was reassured by how accessible and direct the poets were in their engagement with their surroundings. There were moments of grieving for the decline of the natural world but more poems about moments of joy and detailed, enlightened observations.
In spite of my misgivings about labels, these poets shared with each other and their audience their compelling need to speak their minds and make known their concerns. Their poems did not retreat into any impossible Eden or suggest where we might find answers to the problems that beset us in our dealings with our planet. By revealing their vulnerability and by speaking of their personal responses, they encouraged us to look more closely at our surroundings and become more mindful of the implications of our relationship with the earth and the environment.
Back at home again I went through my old copies of Island magazine and found Peter Hay’s poem, Old Man’s Beard. The poem does a lot more than capture the experience of a moment on a mountain. It goes to the heart of his - and our – being:
Lichen is the forest’s ancient enlightenment,
and the planet’s –
and it reaches through the very fields of space
to infuse the cosmic winds,
a swirl of principle
to spark a universe.
Island Magazine 105, Winter 2006
Living in retreat, my engagement with my natural surroundings and the question of my responsibility for my actions confront me daily and I know I can’t always find the words to describe my feelings. I had almost given up worrying about how many readings I miss but keeping in touch with what’s around, reading well and occasionally listening to readings supports my endeavours and adds many dimensions to my experience.
…
I came out of the bookshop into the noisy bustle of the Friday night city crowd thinking about how isolated I have become from the literary and the urban scenes. Then, remembering the eagle I began to wonder -- are people held within their academic frameworks or their cities isolated, or am I?
Twenty four years ago, driving up the escarpment road, then along a bush track, then dragging aside the cocky’s gate of bush poles and crumpled chicken wire we had effectively arrived in the middle of nowhere. In the gully below stood an old hut with rusted out wood stove and a leaking rusting water tank. we knew immediately that it was the idyll and the wilderness we were looking for – and could afford
In those early years we were challenged just keeping sheltered, fed and watered here. We went for long walks along overgrown loggers tracks or sat over warm fires through foggy winters, and we made plans about what we would do when we were no longer so busy working full time, raising children and keeping in touch with the world. Over the years and bit by bit we’ve built a house and that has been a saga in itself. Eventually we came to live here five years ago.
Most days it’s easy to listen to the birds, watch the sun go down and drift into complacency because peace prevails for so much of the time. But there are always questions - the quiet, persistent music of complacency, the satisfying rhythms of shifting seasons and yes, the questions
Some of those questions are contained in making choices about the very fact of living here and the responsibilities that it brings
we have had to make many choices and compromises and the implications of some of these choices are far from ideal.
The longer I’m here, and the more I write, the more I have to question how I live and how I deal with problems both large and small for which there are no easy answers. Perversely, the more we know, the less certainty there seems to be about the best way to act, and the more we’re challenged and forced to ask why we subject ourselves to the rigours of remoteness and independence – the more I think I know why I do it, the more committed I become. At any moment another eagle will appear in the skies or the sunset will be spectacular. The water tastes good. Even when disaster hovers at the edge of my vision or smoke rather than haze fills the valley, the kookaburras laugh in the mornings and the rosellas fly in to find water.
Heat: Art and Climate Change
I read Robert Nelson’s review of the show Heat: Art and Climate Change (see www.rmit.edu.au/rmitgallery for more information) in The Age September 24 with great interest. In the words of its the curator, Linda Williams, Heat is a show more about shifts in awareness than climate change itself, and what the changes in our world represent for us. It concentrates on the feelings of the artists.
Nelson writes of the need to move beyond being helpless in the face of global warming, but like the rest of us he remains at the edge. He does not - nor should we expect him to - provide us with answers: “Confronting the new world of ecological sin” Nelson writes, “ means deconstructing nature, seeing wilderness as a garden that we now have no choice but to manage scientifically. Ironically the heat is turned back on artists, who now need science as well as moral philosophy.”
I’d like to add that poets like visual artists will need science, and that all of us will need as well as the scientists, poets and artists.
By way of illustration of an example of why we all need scientists, and the way living in close connection with the natural environment-, here’s a story about my recent encounter with Mole, Badger and some swamp wallabies
Wallabies are a prevalent and visible part of the wooded landscapes of the Black Range. They are solitary, territorial animals which move about during the day and so various individuals become familiar – often a little too familiar. Now our garden is established, I don’t mind them visiting because we are the interlopers, and the territory is really theirs. One hot night we were woken by the splashing noise of one that had fallen into the swimming pool. Luckily for the wallaby and us, we were able to lift it out with a rake before much harm had been done to the wallaby or the pool.
Staying in Canberra on a family visit recently, I read a copy of the Bulletin of the Australian Network for Plant Conservation (Vol.15 No.4 March – May 2007) reporting on a conference with the theme, What lies Beneath?
What lies beneath or, put more technically, The role of soil biota in the health and rehabilitation of native vegetation was the theme of a recent ANPC conference, at which scientists considered interactions between animals both vertebrate and invertebrate and native vegetation.
Andrew Claridge gave a presentation in which argued for linking what happens above the ground in revegetation programs to what happens in the soil below, to restore processes as well as species in our revegetation efforts.
Recent research suggests that many mammals are mycophagous (fungus eating) and play an important role in dispersing fungal spores and as they forage for their fungus, they aerate the soil and make entry points for nutrients and water, thus leading scientists to the conclusion that when restoring native vegetation, we should work from the soil up, not the trees down.
Briefly, here are the main points from the conference:
• Ectomycorrhizal fungi (these include truffles, and we do have some native varieties) are vital components of Australia’s biodiversity.
• Diverse mammal communities are important for maintaining plant-fungal associations and ecosystem health. The swamp wallaby, for instance is one mycophagous (fungus eating) mammal, and thirty-seven others have been identified in recent research.
• Soil and litter invertebrates play an important role in plant growth in revegetated systems.
And here’s the conversation between Mole and Badger in Wind in the Willows and quoted at the beginning Claridge’s article:
‘Presently they all sat down to luncheon together. The mole found himself placed next to Mr Badger, and, as the other two were deep in river gossip from which nothing could divert them, he took the opportunity to tell Badger how comfortable and homelike it all felt to him. “Once well underground,’ he said, “you know exactly where you are, nothing can happen to you, and nothing can get at you. You’re entirely your own master, and you don’t have to consult anybody or mind what they say. Things go on all the same overhead, and you let ‘em, and don’t bother about ‘em. When you want to, up you go, and there the things are, waiting for you.” The Badger simply beamed at him. ‘that’s exactly what I say” he replied. ‘There’s no security, or peace or tranquillity, except underground.’
I have since reread the wonderful Wind in the Willows, and next time a wallaby comes into the garden for a green pick during a long hot summer, I’ll treat it and the ground we share with much more respect.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
On the Black Range: ‘. . . quiet persistent music’
The Edge Collective, Euroa, Australia
For some months now The Edge Collective has been turning its attention in the direction of a project based on the Black Range.
According to Report to the Land Conservation Council of Victoria, 1983, ‘ an elevated rim at about 600 metres near Terip Terip, together with the fault scarp to the west of Godfrey Creek, forms the Black Range. To the south it is dissected by the valley of the Goulburn River, before proceeding on to Alexandra. Its steep slopes are well wooded with old growth trees and diverse regenerated vegetation and it sustains a diverse population of animal and bird life. It is also home to several human inhabitants committed to fostering its ecology and its independence.
My husband Bernie and I live at Terip Terip, near where the Range joins the Strathbogies and for nearly twenty five years, it has been our haven. In the beginning we came here whenever we could escape the city, and for the last five years we have lived here all the time, and I am extremely lucky that as a place where the voices of the natural world hold sway over their human occupants, it is also a perfect site for the work of The Edge Collective
The working title of our project . . . quiet but persistent music comes from Jonathan Bate’s The Song of the Earth [see blog no 10]. Our Palimpsests of Gooram Gooram Gong have not been abandoned; the move to another site is a transition and an expansion of our investigation into the essence of ‘place’. As with Palimpsests . . . , quiet persistent music will be a celebration of all unsung places where the voices of the natural world hold sway over their human occupants.
Since coming here in September 1984, I have got to know many things about the Range and finding that there is more and more to discover. The more detail I understand, the more I marvel at its never ending mystery.
There have already been several discussions and at least one celebration.
In late May Susan and Bernadette Franklin came out to talk over some ideas . Bernadette is a Taungurong elder well versed in local history, who has taught us a lot about the Strathbogies. When she is not busy with other projects joins our conversations.
Susan brought her dye pot because we planned to do some dyeing with natural dyes, and to walk through the Range. Using Dyemaking with Australian Flora as my guide,
I had been collecting leaves during the week for our experiment, and by the time they arrived had filled the house with the bracing aroma of eucalyptus. Bernadette, having once been an expert at untangling her father’s fishing line sorted out my tangles of cotton. I didn’t use any mordants so the colours I got are not as they were described in the book but I now have a collection of embroidery cottons in a range of subtle shades of tan, silver, orange brown, greeny brown. I am going to use the cottons to embroider another map, and next time I do some dyeing, I will follow Susan’s practice of keeping notes so I can keep track of the results. So far I have used Wild Cherry, Sarsparilla, Toadstools, wattle blossom, young eucalypt leaves and yellow box.
That day Susan took some photographs of trees which she has turned into some wonderful collages with dizzying perspectives that remind me of William Robinson's work.
On June 21 we set up chairs, tables and lights out in the paddock and lit a bonfire to celebrate the winter solstice. It was bitterly cold, and wherever we went the smoke followed us – all part of getting to experience the Range, which is high enough to always be a few degrees colder than the surrounding plains.
Then an invitation came to exhibit in Wangaratta Gallery’s Dwell exhibition, which will travel around the North East in late September and October, so on Thursday, August 28, which turned out to be a perfect sunny day for photography we met at the quarry on the Yarck Cutting Road for our first ‘working session’ - to photograph Susan’s textiles and to ‘inspect’ the site. I was pleased to have my friend artist Judy Morecroft with us, because on previous visits she has already done several paintings inspired by the quarry.
To the west of the escarpment road, the exposed rock-face of the quarry,(left behind after stone was taken from the site to build the road that winds up the escarpment from Yarck) looms above us, almost blocking out the sky. The eastern side of the road to gives way to a slope that is so steep it feels as if one could step right off the road and tumble into the valley below. Once the valley would have been a sea floor, on this day it was filled with a deep blue watery haze. It is tempting for a moment to dream one’s way right off the Range and fly away, as I have seen an eagle do.
Turning back to the quarry, the deep cross section through the rock left behind after the rock was removed on the one hand represents a destructive intrusion on the landscape and on the other reveals the underpinnings of the Range and an opportunity for Peter to give us an account of its geological biography.
He picked up a small iron-grey rock with a series of fine curving grooves etched onto its surface:
‘Metamorphic – you can tell’ he said ‘ . . . see these crystalline structures evenly dispersed? That happened as it was cooling.’
One small rock, small enough to fit into the palm of one’s hand held a piece of the earth’s deep history, an instance of detail informing our appreciation of the whole place
We picked up other rocks for the sheer beauty of their colours – everything from deep steely blue through to pale ochres and rich terra cottas, reminding ourselves of childhood trip to places where we used to collect rocks for their colours and shapes.
Peter declared that he no longer needed to collect rocks to understand them, but Susan, Judy and myself came away with a collection of small abstract designs.
Then we started the work of returning Susan’s textiles to the landscape, displaying them in what seems to be their ideal habitat - an instant outdoor gallery. Laid over rocks, pieces of shibori with wrinkled reptilian skins almost began to crawl over the rocks or catch in the bushes as they took to the air.
…
Yarck or Mount Rushmore?
Like others, I have often found figures in clouds, and on misty nights I have also seen wraithlike figures moving amongst the trees. Looking up just before leaving the quarry, I saw or found a solemn stone Indian chief looking out over the valley, and then looking around again I realised that there was a bear’s head above his left shoulder. There was also a crying figure, a shaman possibly and the Chief was surrounded by others of his tribe. Today when I went back to check they were all still there, and no doubt they will have more to say to me next time I go to the quarry.
Sari Wawn
Terip Terip
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