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Category Archives: Moruya

Moruya

Servicing the car

17 Thursday Dec 2015

Posted by morselsandscraps in Moruya, photos

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

architecture, churches, graveyard, sculpture, Sydney Harbour Bridge

Potato Point is halfway between two very different towns. Narooma is on the coast, a hilly town with views far to the north, and an inlet dominated by Gulaga. Moruya is on the banks of the Deua: there you look along the river to the mountains of the Great Divide. I shop in both places, and explore them erratically. In Moruya I'm often at a loose end for a few hours while the car is being serviced, so I head off in a different direction each time.

Last week I decide to visit the cemetery. I walk across a very pleasant golf course which even provides shelters from flying golf balls; through the show ground where my quiche won first prize at the annual show before it went mouldy; past the high school where I was a casual teacher and my eldest daughter broke every rule and protocol, usually with impunity.

Graveyards are like rubbish tips. They are always located in splendid places with views that are wasted on their denizens: this one is no exception. I look beyond the markers of death to rolling hills, surprisingly green for this time of year.

The temperature is rising and I welcome benches under old trees as I ramble amongst well-known local names, and cogitate on the changing fashions in tombstones. Older ones showcase the style of the local funeral mason and sport generic words of propriety and piety. Moruya granite features in a few. There are simple wooden crosses; a few markers that have obviously been added by family later: and some that are very individual, even idiosyncratic – a freshly painted purple fence; a photo surrounded by attribute adjectives; a curved female shape, a tiny house complete with gables.

 

 

Moruya offers more than a graveyard. For the living, there are pleasant buildings, some with wrought iron verandahs, and a communion of churches.

 

 

Thirteen wooden sculptures are scattered around the town. They gleam brown and warm against the traffic and the sky representing many aspects of the town including the annual jazz festival, gold mining, wild life, motherhood, the air base in WW2, the Aboriginal presence and of course football.

 

 

Perhaps Moruya's greatest claim to fame is what came out of the ground along the river road towards the airport. The park at the roundabout at the southern end of town has a monument made of polished granite celebrating the men, miners and masons from thirteen different countries, who cut, dressed and numbered granite blocks ready to send to Sydney to build the pylons of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

 

 

Posted with BlogsyPosted with Blogsy

By the river

31 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by morselsandscraps in Moruya, photos

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Deua River, frogs, gold processing, lotus pads, mangroves

Suddenly I have two hours unbespoke in my shopping town as I wait for the car to be serviced. I slide-walk down a grassy slope, water-dense after recent rain, and pass the old corrugated iron boatshed on the bank of the Deua River. The river is running fast and catching clouds. There are bright sun-spots where the mangrove pneumatophores meet the water. A man in a motorised wheelchair taking his dog for a walk murmurs hello. I stand in the gazebo near the lotus and water lily pond, which is bordered by desiccation. But the pool is loud with frogs, including the woody clack of what I think is a pobblebonk frog.


The river looks tranquil, idyllic and unperturbed, but there is danger afoot. A mining company is seeking approval for a cyanide gold-processing plant in its headwaters. Local residents are concerned about spillages and pollution of the river and the water table: the company doesn’t have an unblemished record, and one small accident would be a disaster. Already one orchardist in Araluen has bulldozed 250,000 peach and nectarine trees: that’s three full time jobs gone and a lot of seasonal work – J used to prune, thin and pick there before he retired. There is a potential threat to the town water supply for parts of the Eurobodalla shire; concern about the future of market gardeners who grow and sell organic at the Tuesday afternoon farmers’ markets in Moruya; implications for the health of Batemans Marine Park, off the coast where the Deua River meets the sea. I have long been mystified and angered by the power mining companies seem to wield. They rape, pillage and pollute and then disappear with the profits, leaving the local community and environment permanently scarred.

Posted with BlogsyPosted with Blogsy

ReVive

13 Thursday Nov 2014

Posted by morselsandscraps in art, Moruya, photos

≈ 20 Comments

Tags

Mechanics Institute, ReVive

Every year in south eastern NSW, regional councils sponsor an art competition where artworks have to be created mainly from materials recovered from the waste stream. The exhibition is currently showing in the Mechanics Institute in Moruya, a graceful brick building which is a pleasure to visit it in its own right, regardless of the exhibition inside.

My choice was Luiza Urbanik's “My body, my house”, a hinged triptych made from broken plates, mirrors, junk shop jewels, toys, plywood off cuts and acrylic paint. I liked its sparkle, humour, intricacy and dimensionality. Luiza, whom I met at Middle Earth, was sitting beneath her creation and she told me that it had been six months in the making, as the stories it tells unfolded.

 

Mechanics Institute, Moruya

 

Mechanics Institute, Moruya: detail

 

Luiza Urbanik and her artwork My body my house

 

Detail from My body, my house

 

Detail from My body, my house

 

Detail from My body, my house

 

Luiza Urbanik: detail from The Dance

 

Luiza Urbanki: detail from The dance

 

The competition winner was Toby Whitelaw. He created a bust called “#selfie” out of corrugated cardboard from discarded boxes and wire: it looks like a statue from an antique land.

 

 

Detail of #selfie

 

Other works were more conventional

 

Bernadette Davis: Lines to die for (marine debris plastic from Eurobodalla beaches)

 

Louise Rossi: A view of comfort (glass door, bras and ribbons)

 

Nat Curnow: The sedge has withered from the lake ... (Oregon posts from an old shed)

 

Mark Ward: Still life with cows (enamel, shell, wire and found metal)

 

Gabrielle Powell: Red white vase (recycled wire stitched)

 

Geri Taylor: Headland dreaming (old paintings Sliced. Woven. Revived

 

Jacqueline White: Winter bushwalk (hand spun wool, rope, yarn from Salvos)

 

Mirabel Fitzgerald: Ghost women of the shore (oyster shells, black periwinkle shells, scrap metal, driftwood, plywood)

 

Nick Hopkins: Max not happy with Monty taking over the kennel (polystyrene packaging, old dog kennel and cabinet doors, recycled metal)

 

 

For those of you who knew Christine, the winner, Toby Whitelaw, is her son.

 

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