Burrawangs

Tags

“The cycads”, burrawangs, Judith Wright, Macrozamia communis

icelandpenny asked me a while back about the signs of autumn in my part of Australia. I passed the question on to J, who is closer to nature than I am. He began compiling a list. Sawfly larvae and processionary caterpillars (aka hairy grubs) cross the road in a huddle. Birds reappear after moulting: Eastern Yellow, Lewin’s Honeyeater, Grey Fantail, Eastern Spinebill; occasional families of young Lorikeets and Crimson Rosellas – they won’t hang round; and Thornbills, Butcherbirds and Bowerbirds, who never really went away. Lyrebirds in the gulleys become more vocal in the misty mornings. Crops of mushrooms pop out of the dirt road.

And burrawangs fruit, although not many this year. They need fire for seed cones to form and luckily (for us) that wasn’t provided this year.

Just above J’s house, glossy green fronds arch gracefully around seed cones with reddish brown nuts just beginning to peep out from their spiky leaflet-cover. The cones take their colour from the background: vivid green against the fronds; a duller sage against the dry orangey leaf litter.

A few kilometres up Bullocky’s Hut Road, on a track off Big Rock Road, a burrawang has spilt some of its fruit onto the ground, but there are still lozenges in the green cone, leaflets curved over them like helmets with pointed nose covers.

Burrawangs are members of the Cycad family, a group of plants closely related to conifers with a fossil record going back more than 150 million years. Judith Wright, in her 1947 poem The cycads captures something of their antiquity.

For a previous post about burrawangs see here.

Once was a bridge

Tags

destruction, memories, Tyrone Bridge

There you are, a low wooden bridge spanning the Tuross River at Eurobodalla, taking traffic over the mountain to Nerrigundah. You’ve done it for years. You were an old hand when we arrived in your neighbourhood in 1977.

Photo credit: Annette Gray

You provided a basic kind of music, rattling away as trucks and cars slowed down to cross you. You were a primitive and functional work of art, worn wooden planks with gaps between them; bolts and replacement bolts; a thin swathe of sand and a slither of casuarina needles at the edges.

Photo credit for images used in two collages: Annette Gray

Your low parapet looked down onto the river, sluggish sometimes, other times whirling with flood waters. Many times you were completely submerged, but it didn’t seem to bother you. You surfaced in all your sturdiness ready to continue the job you were built for.

You wove your way into our lives. We used you to gauge the height of floodwaters. We walked across you to reach the sandy beach on the other side. The boys rode bikes clunkety clunkety clunk across your uneven boards, chucking wheelies for your whole length and triumphant if the gaps didn’t upend them. One day, I sat, motor revving at the town end of you debating what use I’d make of childless freedom when the kids were with their father: Bodalla pub? Or sitting around languorously in my black lingerie at home?

Once the army was using you and the area around you for training exercises. My son wanted to know what was going on. “They’re trying to take the bridge”, I said. He was mystified. “Take it where?”

Thirty-five years later you have indeed been taken, by the council, not the army. There you are, neatly sliced and laid out in piles in the reserve beside the river.

You’ve been replaced by a sprightly concrete bridge, much higher than you were. It will never have your charm. It will never grunt continuo to accompany our swims or Saturday night wine on the river bank. It won’t wear attractively into wooden scars. It won’t respond to our feet with splinters and clatter. There is no way we’ll be walking along its parapet, looking down on schools of tiny fish or sand ripples under slightly tea coloured water.

Photo credit: J

And you? What’s in your future? You’ll be used for transplants and spare parts, to extend the lives of other old wooden bridges in the shire.

You leave us behind to mourn you.

Never the same place twice: Pooles to 1080

Tags

Bruce Leaver, hornfels, lava, Pooles to 1080, rhyolite

Once upon a time, not so long ago, we walked from Pooles to 1080. “Around three headlands, through two pebbly coves, over one long-grass rock bypass, past five large orange dykes, between untidy masses of black lava long since solidified, and onto parallel ridges … Rockface laminated in wavy lines.” That’s how I described it then, with a few vague technical geological terms, dyke and lava, thrown in.

Since then, we’ve been tutored, under the auspices of U3A Bermagui, by Bruce Leaver, a passionate geologist. He gave us an early morning insight into deep time, explaining the origins of all the landmarks we could see. Not only that, but he had rocks on the table which he named and explained. J scrutinised them intently; read and reread Leaver’s lucid notes; and collected and classified pebbles from nearby Hayward’s Beach. Then we were ready to revisit the track from 1080 to Pooles, armed with a bit of knowledge, a geological hammer and a collecting bag.

What were we looking for? The wavy lines that indicate hornfels; the solidified lava; the dykes of intruded rhyolite.

Hornfels first. It’s the result of a meeting between a clay-rich rock and a hot igneous body: a connection that, like all relationships, alters the original rock. ID is still slightly tentative: none of the Google images I found looked anything like this.

Then lava, easily recognised – deep black, sometimes pitted, sometimes with flow marks still visible, sometimes smooth like black marble. It derives from the Cretaceous period, somewhere between 135 and 65 million years ago, and there it is still, squatting or flowing solidly, unmistakably black and unmistakably lava.

Finally, and more doubtfully, rhyolite (is it?) forming dykes, in one place “a vertically oriented sheet of light-coloured igneous material sitting starkly in the old shale rocks” as described by Leaver. Dykes are intruders, pushing their way through other rock and marching in a straightish line across the rockscape.

That’s some sort of progress towards geological understanding. At least we’re on the way to mastering the naming of parts. J has a bag of samples to split, and an urge to master the measuring of specific gravity, which, done precisely, gives a precise rock ID.

But for me there’s more to the beaches than geological understanding . There’s the moody sky with faint wave-splash and reflections in the passage of tide.

There’s jetsam, sometimes easily recognisable, sometimes a mystery, at least to this landlubber.

There are rock patterns (possibly hornfels, definitely aesthetically pleasing); the residue of retreating waves; rock-clingers; and a cuttlefish with a touch of pink dawn.

Behind all this Mother Gulaga lounges – Mother Gulaga, or, speaking geologically, a 98 million year old intrusion into the side of a massive strato volcano, a volcano so immense it was visible from as far away as Wollongong and spread over Cobargo, Tanja and Narooma.

For Aboriginal oral histories of connection to this part of country, see here.

Smoking trout

Tags

smoking, trout

Ingredients

A fisherman son

A long drive

An overnight camp

A five hour return walk

Two fat trout

A smoker

Hickory sawdust

Method

Put the sawdust on the smoker tray

Lay the trout side by side on the rack, adjusting levels to accommodate their fat juiciness

Fit the lid of the smoker tightly

Light the metho burner underneath

Leave for 10 minutes and test: add another 5 minutes smoking time

Serve

Lift the trout carefully onto a plate.

Provide a knife and fork for the expert dismemberer

Watch him peel away the skin; lift the flesh from the bones; raise the bones neatly and put aside.

Wordless walk: 1080 to Tilba headland

Tags

flotsam, lava, Tilba Lake

RegularRandom: 5 minutes with a whatever-it-is

Tags

black and white, flowers, RegularRandom

My maraudings into my neighbours’ gardens are becoming more daring. I’m no longer content to, at most, lean over the fence. I now move within touching distance of the house, made easier in this case because there is no fence and there is no occupant. The white flowers draw me: their solid inner shape and then their dangling … appurtenances, for want of a better word. They must be some kind of lily, possessing as they do those stamens that drip with brown stain.

The next five photos are all edited, using Snapseed.

Today DJ features a supremely delicate air plant. This is the most delicacy I can manage for a companion.

“Northern lights”

Tags

“Northern Lights”, Moruya Anglican Church, stained glass windows, Three Piece Suite

On the day Tathra burned I drove 30 kilometres through high wind, flying branches and swirling leaves. I didn’t know that just to the south people’s lives were being overturned, and their mementoes turned to ash. There was thickness in the air, but people were saying “Sea mist” when in fact it was smoke. I was doing what we do all the time. Going about my pleasures oblivious to the agony of others.

My pleasure on this occasion was music, the Three Piece Suite (Rachel Westwood, violin; Valmai Coggins, viola; and Deborah Coogan, cello), joined on this occasion by tenor David Hamilton. The venue was Moruya Anglican Church, a much humbler building than All Saints, Bodalla. It too has a meditation maze, this one shaped by the mowing of grass.

I was, as I always am, early, and this time, as it usually does, early paid dividends. It gave me time to scrutinise the stained glass windows. To my left were the usual saints, but to my right a memorial window that represented our landscape: at the top the coastline – mountains, sea and dunes and a couple of rosellas in flight; in the middle, a lagoon – swans flying above, bulrushes, white flowers on reedy stalks, waterlilies, and the iridescent blue of a pair of moorhens; on the sandy edge with subtle shadows, wood-ducks; and beneath them brown birds with white throats and white chests and a band of running postman. The caption is Consider the birds and the lilies of the field. That was delight enough, but the next window across, above the caption The sower went forth to sow, featured a man on a tractor. I liked this church.

However, the post is supposed to be about music, not contemporary stained glass windows with local themes.

It was ironic that a program of music from the lands of the Northern Lights should be played in 37.5° heat. The program notes detailed different stories accounting for the Lights display. In Finland a fox is running so fast that his tail causes sparks that rise into the sky. In Scotland they are called Merry Dancers or Nimble Men.

Yes, I am avoiding the musical bit, because what can words say about music? And even more what can an unmusical person say about music?

The first half was lively: a Polka medley, a Swedish medley (the title of one piece was translated as “aspirational bogan”), a couple of pieces by Elgar, and a piece from an unpublished string trio by Erkki Malartin. At this point a light tenor voice began singing at the back of the church, and moved down the aisle: David Hamilton, dressed in kilt, sporran, shoes with straps winding up his calf over knee-high cream socks, singing Scottish folksongs of love and loyalty, including Loch Lomond and Charlie is my darling. The second half was more difficult because it was completely unfamiliar: String trio in C minor by Herman Berens. The concert ended with another bracket of songs, this time by Robbie Burns, with the help of a Bodhrán (supplied by Opera Australia orchestra) and a tin whistle. I first encountered a bodhrán many years ago, played by an Irishman at music days I used to go to in the bush way out beyond Nerrigundah.

It occurred to me as I was driving home that I like my music virtuoso and perhaps a bit overdone. This performance was subtle, understated, rather than dramatic. It also occurred to me that the acoustics at All Saints Bodalla might have had a lot to do with the sense of energy I felt was missing from this one..

By now the wind had dropped, but not before fire had destroyed sixty-nine houses in Tathra.

Hotchpotch 16

Tags

beach, chiffonier, dead flowers, light, Sculpture Bermagui, signs, twins, water and sky

On top of the chiffonier

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about objects that represent experiences and the people I love. The red cedar chiffonier in my living room belonged to my Auntie Min. She had it restored towards the end of her life, and it was part of my tangible inheritance from her. The wedgewood candlestick used to sit on my mother’s dressing table. The feathers have been collected and gifted over a number of years, and maybe presage a photographic feather-frenzy. The Prague crystal container was a gift from my more-sister-than-sister-in-law; the amber pendant a gift from my daughter’s parents-in-law; nestled invisibly amongst its silver chain are the topaz earrings my new husband gave me on my birthday two days after we were married; the bird was an unexpected gift from a Siberian friend of my daughter. Underneath it all lies a placemat crocheted by my mother – and overlying it, a patina of dust that is my unique contribution. So much history and biography, conveyed in just a few items.

Water and sky

Blind drawing

This image, Penguin flight, was created by Gillian Wilde using the continuous line technique, without looking at the paper. (Photographed at Gallery Bodalla, with permission)

Dead things and light

My muse for both of these is Sue at WordsVisual. She has taught me the absolute and rather mystifying charm of flowers beyond their prime, to the point where the giver of these zinnias asked plaintively whether I’d actually enjoyed them fresh. I did, when they were plump with youth, but I also like their graceful drooping lines and curls as they fade.

There is only one creature more a seeker of light than Sue, and that is Cruz. If you want to know the best place to capture sunshine, cherchez le chien.

The inevitable beach!

A summary of the many pleasures of the beach: those knobbled shells nuzzling into all sorts of crannies; patches of tapestry-lichen; tumbleweed, the same ecru-oatmeal as the sand; a discarded seagull feather, just one; sandripples, seaweed and buff jelly; rockpools peopled by light, seaweed, an albino crab, worm tracks and pink sea lichen.

Bermagui

I said there would probably be more sculptures, and I was right!

A pair of rusty Easter-Island-like monuments,

a bit of musical rust,

a ray and a magpie

and contrasting shapes

Signs

The 5 year olds

Miss Maja, and cake: they’ve always been congenial companions: Janek’s allergies prevent him from enjoying the same pleasures.

Exploring as Mum watches from a height.

Christmas photos

Cabinets of curiosities

Tags

cabinet of curiosities, Macquarie chest of curiosities, shells

I’ve always been intrigued by cabinets of curiosities, those precursors of grand museums, and the repositories of passion for the natural world. They’ve been called microcosms of the world and a memory theatre, both fertile metaphors. For princes they were yet another measure of power and control, for scholars they represented knowledge and an attempt to categorise the world as a way of understanding it. The cabinet itself was often a thing of consummate craft and beauty. At this point I think of the story of Governor Lachlan Macquarie’s collector’s chest.

Once upon a time, 1818 it was, Captain James Wallis, in charge of Newcastle settlement for reoffending convicts, had an idea. Macquarie was finishing his term and returning to England. Wallis decided to make him a cabinet, the design based initially on military campaign chests lugged around by serving officers to hold their possessions. But this chest would be special. He found four convict craftsmen to work the red cedar and rosewood, and employed forger and artist Joseph Lycett to paint panels. Then he filled it with Antipodean wonders and presented it to his boss.

Macquarie’s return to England was not a happy one. His vision for the colony didn’t sit well with the English government: too much grandeur and too much spending. He ended his days embittered in Scotland and the chest disappeared.

Until it reappeared in rumours in the 1980s: stories of a chest in a junk room at Strathallan Castle. A man visited the castle on the off-chance of finding something, making his way there in the village taxi which doubled as a hearse. He left with photos, and in 2004 it was bought by the NSW State Library for more than $1million, after a message that said “Come in 30 minutes if you want the first option to buy.”

The curator, Elizabeth Ellis, was alone when she opened it after the purchase. She describes it as very plain, with recessed brass handles. Until you begin opening the lids and taking out the drawers. Then it is all brightness: the colours of the paint, the bright parrots and other birds, some of them now rare; butterflies and moths arranged around the centrepiece of a huntsman spider; and trays of shells.

In our shell collecting days, J made such a cabinet, a basic one out of plywood, painted a not so subtle purple (the paint looked a fetching shade of grey at point of purchase) to house the hundred species of shells we found on local beaches and in shelly coves. In making this he was following a tradition as old as the late 15th century, the preserve of nobles (which we aren’t) or enthusiasts (which we definitely are). Now I reduce the notion of a cabinet of curiosities even further, and offer shells arranged in virtual compartments.

Coda

Overspending was not Macquarie’s worst crime by any means. He sent Wallis off on one of the first massacres of Aboriginal people, and in one of those twists of history and human nature, Wallis later became good friend and hunting and fishing companion to Burrugun Jack, whom he deeply respected.

The source of the information about Macquarie’s chest was a radio interview with Elizabeth Ellis. There is a longer interview here, and you can see the chest on YouTube.

RegularRandom: 5 minutes with an early morning sky

Tags

RegularRandom, sky

Out and about early, I was drawn to look upwards. The morning was warm, and the clouds, as is the nature of clouds, mutable but in no way capricious. There is nothing dramatic about them: they are calming in their changeability. They are part of my meditation as I sit on the bench overlooking the beach and the ocean, an oddly fixed point in my otherwise fluid day.

I can honestly say that, for once, I did not interfere with or rearrange my subject in any way.

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This week DJ’s RegularRandom also features something subtle and evanescent – melting skittles.