Ripples and subtleties

Tags

haiku, Handkerchief Beach, Nangudga Beach, ocean art, ontheroad, ripples

I would like to make a haiku out of what touches my life, what my eyes see, ears hear, what my heart speaks to myself in a strong voice… I want to sketch things that left an impression in the depth of my soul.

from ”A Letter Written In Daybreak, 1922” – by Sugito Hisajo (1890~1946)

Suzanne quoted this in her “on the road” prompts: it’s presumptuous of me to think this post is in any way achieving what Sugito Hisajo hopes for, but the prompt was in my mind as I walked again along Handkerchief and Nangudga beaches.

On this beach walk, my eye is caught by subtle things. Water ripples and sand ripples and tiny leavings along the tideline: shell grit, seaweed, feathers, leaves. A landscape scribbled in dark and light sand. Things that are miniscule, indefinite, elusive, delicate, indistinct. Minimal things. 

Things that don’t require my mind to journey back 500 million years. 

 

Returning to familiar beaches

Tags

Cemetery Beach, reflections, rockface patterns

Familiar beaches, yes, but never the same beaches.  A lot depends on so many things. This week we’ve had heavy seas, so things that were exposed last week, are covered with sand, and quite deep pools, goudged out by the sea, are swirling around rocks where no deep pools were before. This week low tide is higher than it was last week, so rocks we could walk around then become impassable without wet legs up to the knee. Today the sun is behind cloud and there’s no need to remove layers of clothing as we walk. The light is perfect, a grey wash, slightly luminous, reflecting rocks (mylonite, chert) and clouds in the encroaching water. The chevrons are splendidly etched, and colours in the rocks vibrate, whereas last visit in blazing sun we saw only darkness, coaxed into some detail by post-processing. 

A study in shells and pebbles

Tags

Cemetery Beach, pebbles, shells

At the bottom of the track from the cemetery to the beach, I crunch onto a mound of pebbles. I’m not bounding with energy today and the camera provides a good excuse to dawdle. The day is overcast and the light perfect. I bend down, scrutinising that crunch under my feet. I take portraits of individual shells and group portraits, using the pebbles as background, and I document the assemblages Mother Nature has created out of driftwood, cunjevoi, seaweed, desiccated sponges, leaves, rocks and shells.

 

Then I set off in pursuit of J, who is well out of sight around a couple of headlands in the bounding company of a large white dog with silky fur and an independent spirit. I rejoice in the power that has returned to his adductor muscle, in my easy recognition of chert, BIM and mylonite, even in the wave that catches me up to the calf as I edge my way round a rock. 

By now the sky is lowering, and the tide is coming in so it’s time to head for the car. As we follow the line of the shell midden (featured in my last post) along the hillock of pebbles, the first raindrops begin to fall.

 

Signs of the Ancestors

Tags

Cemetery Beach, Nangudga Beach, shell middens

In the sand dunes behind Nangudga Beach, someone has stretched green netting, now raggedy and tumbling down, obviously intended once upon a time to mark a site of some sort. And there it is: a shell midden, layers of shell remains and bands of black ash. Here the Ancestors lived for many centuries, maybe as long as thousands of years, on rich pickings from the sea, sitting by cooking fires overlooking the ocean, leaving ash traces of their fires and shell traces of their meals. Not longer than 8000 years at this particular spot: it was kilometres inland in the last ice age. Their life here ended when settlers moved them onto reserves and established properties on their territory, at least as late as 1895 on this bit of coastline.

That’s on Saturday. On Sunday we return to Glasshouse Rocks / Cemetery Beach. At the foot of the track down from the cemetery there is a mound of rocks and my camera is drawn to the large shells scattered amongst them. As the hillock thins and the rock pile becomes shallower, I notice big shells congregating at the point where the dunes meet the beach. I raise my eyes, and there again is that line of ash, those shell fragments. This time the line goes a long way, the length of this cove north, around the chevrons sharp in the grey light, and continuing further south. It hides behind grass stems and we speculate that it stretches up the hill under the bush now growing above us. We decide to leave further exploration for another day: we’re not prepared for snakes and ticks. But we now have yet another focus for our attention in the landscape where we live.

RegularRandom: 5 minutes with sand balls

Tags

crabs, Hervey Bay, RegularRandom

After driving 530 kilometres, I feel strangely energised and amble along the beach at Hervey Bay in the late afternoon light. I’m entranced by the patterns made by tiny balls of sand.  I even catch a brief glimpse of movement before the artist goes coy. I’ve seen this kind of art once before, at Finch’s Beach near Cooktown.

This post was inspired by DesleyJane’s weekly RegularRandom challenge. This week she has focused her photographic – and gastronomic – attention on pumpkin soup. Check out her post to make your mouth water, especially if the weather’s cold and bleak.

Hotchpotch 8

Cobargo streetscape

Weekend fungi

Arthur Boyd mural

http://www.southcoastregister.com.au/story/3704637/david-bowie-artist-paints-boyd/

Postcards from the past: Qala-at ibn Ma’an, Palmyra

Tags

Palmyra, Qala-at ibn Maan, Syria

It’s been a while since I’ve posted a postcard. Life in the present has taken over. But I’m settled back at home now, and ready to reminisce again. I’ve outlined the background to my backpacking trip through Syria and Jordan in 2000-2001 here.

31 December, 2001

Despite logistical qualms, the journey from Damascus to Palmyra is easy. When I look uncertain at the bus station, a crowd swells around me and I’m ushered to the ticket office. The bus outside says “Palmira” in English, not the elegant and mysterious snuggles of Arabic that I am expecting. I choose a seat, on the wrong side for views as it happens. The combination of sun, dust and breath-steam makes the view pretty well invisible, although I do see one village with two camels, and a blue-green mosque. Ezekiel gives me a lift to my accommodation, the Al Afqa, in an incredibly decrepit bright red mini bus.

I eat a late breakfast of olives, boiled egg, and apricot conserve full of whole apricots, accompanied by English pop music, chirruping caged birds, sunshine, and fellow travellers who make comments about my age. I am enticed by a ruined castle on a hill, which proves to be a sultan’s fortress, Qala-at ibn Maan. I arrive at the entrance, and hesitate. If I want to go in I’ve got to walk over a drawbridge, high above the moat, and I don’t like heights. Mahomet, no older than 10, bails me up to sell me postcards. He says “How come I’m young and I can speak English, and you’re old and you can’t speak Arabic?” Not the first, or last, time I’m shamed by only having one language. I brave the drawbridge and I’m waylaid again, this time by the guard who sits me down to a small glass of very sweet tea. 

Eventually I’m free to roam around the ruins, hugging the wall to climb as high as I can. I sit amongst turrets with views out to the ineffable barrenness of the hills and down over villages. I’m enjoying the ease of solitude after the tenseness of being with people whose language I don’t speak. Then I’m interrupted by Gehad and his mates, who take my photo and write what I assume to be an address in my notebook. A man with a broom comes to sweep cigarette butts into the moat, and tells me “Kasheesh” with mime and laughter. I think he’s saying “broom” and later realise he’s probably asking for a tip. The next day I see him in the museum and he greets me like an old friend.

I sit quietly and contemplatively, moving with the sun, until the sunset crowds begin to arrive. On Mahomet’s advice I don’t return the way I came but down a narrow track he swears is “flat”. I find it quite steep, and scree as well. However I make it down, slowly and on my backside, feeling proud when I reach the bitumen – until suddenly I trip and I’m flat on my face. Is this what he meant by flat?

Back at the hotel, there’s an almighty hammering: it sounds as if 2001 will be ushered in anything but quietly.

 

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That was then. This is now, an update thanks to Wikipedia. I hesitate to be the tourist in the middle of current devastation in Syria.

“The historic site in 2013 was placed on the list of World Heritage Sites in Danger due to the ongoing Syrian Civil War. The castle was captured by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant during the Palmyra offensive in May 2015. It was recaptured by Syrian government forces in another offensive in March 2016. Retreating ISIS fighters blew up parts of the castle, including the stairway leading to the entrance, causing extensive damage. The basic structure is still intact, and Syrian director of antiquities Maamoun Abdelkarim stated that the damage is reparable and the castle is to be restored.  The castle was captured by ISIL once again in December 2016.” In March 2017 it was in the hands of the Russians.

Flyway and prints

Tags

banded godwit, East-Asian Australasian Flyway, Narooma library, prints, shorebirds

You never know what will turn up at the local library. This time it’s migratory birds and migratory prints.

The presenter is the shorebird recovery expert from National Parks, Narooma. She keeps an eye on migratory bird numbers and safety in the estuaries and on the beaches from Bateman Bay to Eden. She begins by introducing us to E7, a totally inadequate name for a bar-tailed godwit who has been tracked flying non-stop over the ocean from Alaska to New Zealand, an incredible 11500 km in 8 days. And here she is.

We learn more about the The East-Asian Australasian Flyway which extends from Arctic Russia and North America to New Zealand and includes Mongolia, China, North Korea, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Indonesia, Timor, Papua New Guinea, and Australia, so many places for habitat to go awry. Each year 50 million migratory waterbirds use the flyway. We meet other birds that arrive on our local shores and estuaries. We see the beach box which is used to educate people about shorebirds and their sometimes non-too-canny nesting habits.

Then we move into the world of art. Kate Gorringe-Smith starts from a premise: Knowledge bestows ownership; uniqueness bestows value. She invites twenty print makers along the flyway to create prints featuring birds and their migration in some way.  They do so, using a wide variety of techniques, sometimes with the signature of their culture, sometimes not.

(If you want to see these images individually, with artist name and print technique look here.)

But that’s not the end of the story. Each original print is folded and addressed to an artist or scientist in one of the countries along the flyway and sent off by normal mail, and then sent back.  The exhibition includes these letters, marked by their travels with postmarks, and stamps, mimicking the passage and collateral damage that happens to birds, although none of the letters go missing.

And so to this exhibition in the three libraries  of the Eurobodalla Shire, its first airing in NSW.

If you’re as intrigued by this project as I am you might like to explore it further, and also take a look at the overwintering project and its rationale.

Wordless walk: Glasshouse Rocks, Cemetery Beach

Tags

Cemetery Beach, Glasshouse Rocks

 

 

A beach and little things

Tags

flotsam, grass, Handkerchief Beach, Nangudga Beach, seaweed

Sunday morning is freezing. I cower in the living room as J thumps around the roof with the leaf blower. This weekend he spends a lot of time on the roof: on Friday I arrive just as he discovers the chimney has caught fire. At least in the chill (snow in the mountains), the fire is going safely again. Then we discover, after all this time, that our view of the progression of low tides is reality halved, and that coveted low tide doesn’t happen till 1pm. 

We set off at 9 anyway, and suddenly the world is warmer. We drive south and turn off the highway along a dirt road between a caravan park and a creek, and leave the car where the creek is in conflict with the outgoing tide in a swirl of rushing current.

The sea is blue and agitated, and the sun surpringly warm, although I still sport the innovative fashion of sunhat pulled down over beanie.

Today J takes the level high road in support of his leg and I walk the tideline. My pleasures are small ones and of the present. Geology takes a back seat in the face of expanses of sand, where seaweed settles, surprising colours and textures from the sea are showcased, and black and cream patterns emerge.

Along the dunes, sand collapses after high seas have made smooth shelves; trees tilt with a lifetime of wind; thick grass runs long distance, anchoring itself with runners and delicate shadows; and dead branches make a subtle pattern against vertical rock face. A lagoon glimmers dark with green reflections and then blue behind a barrier of trees, the same expanse of water you can see from the highway just past the high school.

I look at rocks and pebbles without geological speculation; explore the occasional track off behind the dunes; and try to see inside the greenish bubble-worlds the receding tide leaves behind.

Occasionally however geology does intrude. This is, I am assured, “unmistakable BIM.” Including chert.

J’s damaged leg has carried him the furthest he’s walked since the damage happened, and he discovers the comfort of barefoot walking on sand. We scrape off the sand, return to the car, buy a pair of custard tarts, and eat them looking out over Wagonga Inlet towards Gulaga. We end the weekend raking up leaves ready for a calm-day burn. It’s a long time since I’ve experienced the satisfaction of combing the surface covering of the earth into piles.