The summer of drop bears

Posted on January 18, 2024 by sagesomethymes

This summer, on our road trip to Portland, Victoria, I discovered that Koalas almost outnumber humans and are so common that they’re ignored by the locals as they walk down the main street. Okay, I’m exaggerating but only a little.

Portland is in the far south west of Victoria, a full two-day drive from Sydney and about 75km from the border with South Australia. It’s a working port, surrounded by hectares of plantation forestry, making logging trucks a common sight on the road, so you’d be forgiven if you thought there wouldn’t be too many Koalas here. But it’s also the starting point for the Great South West Walk (GSWW) a 250km loop that winds its way along coastal cliffs and beaches and through a chain of nature reserves and national parks. One of these is Mount Richmond which we detoured into on our first day on the way to viewing the colony of wild seals at Cape Bridgewater. We stopped at a pretty little picnic area, surrounded by low sprawling eucalypts that the signage told us were Manna gums, apparently the favourite food of koalas. I wasn’t expecting to see any koalas but it was nice to know what they ate. And then, in one of the trees right next to the track leading off from the picnic area, was what at first looked like a sleeping sloth. Its reddish fur contrasted with the grey of the tree branch that its claws grasped and it’s two feet were splayed out horizontally.

It was so cute. I couldn’t believe I was looking at a real life koala in a tree. Not in a photograph and not one of those stuffed toys you see everywhere. Although the resemblance was uncanny. I felt warm and sweet all over, excitement oozing from me like sap from a tree in spring. It felt like falling in love again. We stood in silent awe as it dozed, shifting occasionally, paying us no attention at all. Eventually we tore ourselves away, and that’s when we spotted two more in a nearby tree, mum and bub, this time. Mum looked at us warily then went back to sleep but the little one, tucked in safely in front of her, watched us with such sharp curiosity that I was afraid it would fall out of the tree.

Then the very next day, while walking along the stunning Crater Rim track at Budji Bim National Park we stopped to watch a red-necked wallaby. Behind us branches snapped, and there was a loud crack but we couldn’t see anything. Just as I was about to turn back to look at the wallaby, a koala jumped out of the long grass and onto the trunk of yet another Manna eucalyptus tree. It walked out along one of the branches but then decided this wasn’t the branch it wanted to be on. Rather than reversing back the way it came, it looked longingly at the upper branches, then it crouched down and just as my partner whispered, “It’s going to…” It jumped, springing across the gap between the branch and the trunk, landing not too shabbily and then making its way up to the very top of the tree. This was like having front row seats at Cirque du Soleil. I didn’t want to walk away from this amazing animal display but for the second time in as many days I was afraid that I’d witness a koala falling from a tree.

The Gunditj Mirring people are the traditional owners of Budji Bim National Park which is an extinct volcano and a few kilometres away are the remains of the ancient aquaculture engineering that was practiced here for thousands of years. The park is on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Reluctantly we left this beautiful place to drive back to Portland. We were approaching the hamlet of Narrawong, just 16km out of Portland, when we had our third encounter. My partner had slowed down the car thinking there was a wallaby on the side of the road, but as we approached we discovered yet another koala emerging from the high grass before disappearing into the scrub beside the road. This couldn’t be possible. How could this place have so many koalas and all of them intent on being noticed. One koala sighting was incredible. Two, extraordinary, but three? Was this a joke? Were we on candid camera? But it was the next day when things got truly out of hand and I found myself unintentionally trying to rescue a koala that had other ideas.

I was browsing through the $2 box outside the second hand book store on Portland’s main street when a koala walked past me along the footpath. Yes. Hard to belive but true. It stopped to pose for passers by like a celebrity on the red carpet. Then it took off at quite a pace, past several shops and cafes, heading straight for the street corner. People kept taking photos. I think we all expected a local to step in and do something: pick it up, cordon the area off, call the police? But nothing happened. People kept standing by, cameras kept clicking and the koala kept heading for the road. This was no docile herbivor like the others we’d seen. This was more like the dreaded drop bear of Aussie folk legend designed to put the fear of God into the hearts of unsuspecting tourists. Although this one was failing at fear and winning at legend.

I followed it, edging through the crowd that had now gathered around it, trying to get a better look and suddenly found myself right next to the furry creature. That’s when it decided to step out onto the road. A four-wheel drive towing a caravan was approaching. It wasn’t slowing down. Could it not see what was on the road? So, instead of minding my own business, I too stepped out onto the road, planted myself on the white line in the middle and started madly waving. Rather than stop, the driver waved madly back at me, telling me to get off the road. I could see people still taking pictures and soon they would have one of me and the koala, both flattened on the road.

Luckily, that’s when my partner chose to step out and start waving as well and this convinced the mad man to come to a halt. Meanwhile the koala continued, with kamikaze intent, its odd lope across the road. It had never occurred to me until this moment how closely koalas resemble Tasmanian devils with their uneven awkward gait – one leg shorter than the other three. That’s probably because I’d never seen so many of them before or been close enough to study their walking habits. I was starting to wish I wasn’t so close to one now. At least it wasn’t a Tassie Devil. There’s no way I’d risk my life to help one of those snarling beasts. It would have taken off one of my legs by now. But perhaps that would have been a more effective way of stopping the traffic. Now, a red sedan that had initially stopped on the other side of the road, began to inch slowly forward. The driver, gobsmacked by the sight of a koala crossing the road in the middle of town, had taken his foot off the brake. Luckily, both the koala and I had reached the other side of the road. I breathed a sigh of relief just as a young woman appeared by my side. It took me a moment to work out what she was doing because she wasn’t taking photos with her phone. She was using it in the traditional way and talking to someone. WIRES? A wild life sanctuary?  As she hung up, she turned to me in frustration, “I called the police. Do you know what they just said? ‘Lady, this happens all the time.’ What do we do now? We can’t leave it here.”

It seemed the koala agreed and chose that moment to cross the road once again, back the way it had come. This time the traffic was much more responsive. Perhaps word had got around town that there was a crazy lady on Portland’s main street. It ambled comfortably back across the road and posed in front of the once again snapping crowd outside the cafe, then made its way to one of the street trees, that were not Manna gums, or eucalyptus trees, or even native Australian trees, climbed onto the trunk and disappeared up into the canopy of leaves. The crowd dispersed and I made my way back to the bookstore. Inside the owner greeted me. I asked him if he’d seen the koala. He chuckled and said that he kept the door closed because otherwise it came inside and he had trouble getting it back out. Fortunately that was our final koala sighting of the trip. We saw seals, giant stingrays, emus, more wallabies and roos, Pacific Gulls, Gannets and a whole menagerie of birds but not a single other koala. They had obviously had enough of us too.

Images: Map of South East Australia, C1903, Sir William Johnston (1802 – 1888) Collections: National Library Australia; Volcano Rim Walk at Lake Surprise, Budji Bim National Park, via Wikimedia Commons; Bentinck Street Portland Mattinbgn, via Wikimedia Commons; Koalas and sun set by sagesomethymes.

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The Pleasures and Sorrows of Time Travel

Posted on November 19, 2023 by sagesomethymes

I’m going on a memory walk, retracing the path from Redfern Station to Sydney University that I traipsed daily as a student over thirty years ago. I’m in the mood for a little time travel.

Walking along the narrow footpath on Lawson Street, surrounded by university students, I instantly feel younger. But as I turn left at Abercrombie Street I can see that things have changed. There are a couple of busy coffee shops, a dry cleaner and a hairdresser. People dawdle in smiling groups, sipping coffee from takeaway cups, laughing and slapping each other on the back. All this bonhomie instantly makes me feel older. I think back to the late 1980s when to find a coffee you had to drive to one of the faux-elegant, migrant owned establishments, like George’s Cafe in Newtown or Cosmopolitan’s at Double Bay. This is where you met up with friends and talked late into the night. And ate enormous slices of carrot cake or lemon meringue. Coffee was a special occasion. You didn’t just grab a cup and sip it on the sidewalk while talking to friends on the way to uni. In fact, friends were a special occassion. Now everyone seems to have hundreds of them. But back then Darlington was no place to hang around. Most of the shop fronts on the street were curtained private residences or hidden behind grey roller shutters. There was one dark little takeaway shop but it didn’t sell coffee. And no one ever bought the food. The only reason you’d step inside was to find primary evidence of the deep past for your History assignment.

Past the coffee shops and terraces, I stand at the spot that used to be a pedestrian crossing but is now a speed hump. Then, as now, hundreds of students walked this way each day. Mounted police coordinated the crossing each morning. I remember the first time I came here, waiting obediently to be allowed to cross, awed by the magnificent beast I was standing next to. The horse not the officer. I’d never been so close to either before. Now a set of traffic lights has been installed on the nearby corner of Shepherd and Abercrombie Streets. Although equally efficient, they don’t elicit quite the same excitement as I cross and walk down the gentle slope of Shepherd Street to Gate 2, the university entrance.

Here a curved wooden boardwalk, edged on one side by thin steel blades the colour of weathered iron, evokes the nearby engineering faculty and mirrors the steel and iron struts that are stacked on the tarred driveway below. The driveway leads to a car park lined with paper barks. I don’t remember the boardwalk or the paper barks. We were made to walk along a concrete path, surrounded by a jumble of concrete and brick buildings and corrugated iron sheds. This walk was ugly. One of the many reasons I spent hours in the library escaping into the pages of books about beautiful places like Paris and Rome. It seems that time does work miracles, because now this place has a rustic beauty. At the other end of the boardwalk a pair of sprawling Hills Figs meet overhead and as I walk under their low hanging branches I emerge into an open space. There are wooden sun lounges planted between the slim grey trunks of the lemon scented gums that edge a circular green. This place has changed so much it’s unrecognisable. Is this a mirage? Or am I experiencing the onset of dementia? This time travel thing might be dangerous.

I stare at the reed filled lake, surrounded by a stone retaining wall, that sits at the hollowest point of the green. At its edge is a beautiful old Victorian building with gable facades and a spire. Did the blokes that put together the sun lounges build that too? And why is it here and not on the set of a Harry Potter film where it obviously belongs? The building has church like arches on the windows but I don’t think it’s a church. It looks too substantial, too tethered to the earth for a liminal place. I spot a sign and decide to put my university education to use. It tells me that this is the Old Darlington School House built in the late 1870s. Apparently in the late 19th century, the quiet green space before me was the Darlington town centre with a post office, a town hall, over four hundred houses, almost thirty shops, fifty factories, five pubs, a dance hall and a public school.1  It was one of Sydney’s poorest suburbs which by the late 1940s was labelled a dangerous slum. The university made plans to acquire the suburb but locals, led by activist Freda Brown, protested. They lost the battle and their homes were torn down for what became the Darlington campus which still holds the shadow of the original street patterns within it. The old school is the only building that survived.2

Wow. Now I feel even stranger. Perhaps it was the place I knew as a student that was a mirage. I feel like I’ve never been here before, but the Molecular Bioscience building, the only part of this scene that existed when I was a student here, proves me wrong. I do remember climbing the concrete steps of this Brutalist giant every morning and walking through the Wentworth building and then over the footbridge to the main campus. That same building now creates a border on the southern side of what has been named Cadigal Green. The name harks back to the pre-1788 landscape. Apparently the Indigenous people called it ‘Kanguroo Ground’ before it was unceremoniously taken by Governor Arthur Phillip for the use of churches, schools and grazing animals.3

I feel embarrassed that I didn’t know any of this history at university. I was studying the history of far off places but completely ignorant of the local history of the place I walked in every day. I knew about the rise and fall of Communism across the globe and the 1951 referendum to ban the Australian Communist Party but had no idea that Lawson Street and the suburb of Darlington were once the haunt of some of those very communist activists that had helped to defeat that referendum. I was reading about the civil rights movement in the USA and the freedom rides and 1967 referendum in Australia without connecting any of those events to the Aboriginal people in Redfern, the suburb that I travelled to everyday. And even though I was a fierce feminist, I’d never heard of Freda Brown who throughout her life campaigned for social justice in places like South Africa, then under Apartheid; Afghanistan where she helped women to learn to read; Vietnam during the Vietnam war; and Cuba and Moscow during the Cold War; but also, close to home where she lobbied for equal pay for women and proposed the United Nations International Women’s Year, which was held in 1975 and became the precursor of International Women’s Day.4

Feeling a little lightheaded, I sit down on the edge of one of the sun lounges. Then I lift my feet off the ground and swivel into a lying position, looking at the deep blue sky through the filter of eucalyptus leaves. It’s as if I’ve stepped into a time machine and been whizzed back across the centuries. A place that I thought I knew intimately has been revealed to be a complete stranger. Who knew that time travel could induce travel sickness. Like the naïve everywhere, I’d assumed that what I walked through each day had always been the way I was seeing it. And I also assumed that it would never change. I close my eyes for a few minutes and let the sun warm my face. All those years ago, as I trudged through that old concrete jungle, I could never have imagined that one day I’d be lying here sunbaking. The nausea has receded, replaced by a glimmer of hope. Or is it hunger? It’s time to make my way back to the board walk. It occurs to me that a walk through our memories can re-enchant our world and reinvigorate the digestive system. I feel the distant past merge with all the pasts since, including mine, endlessly recreating the story of this place; rendering the enormity of history down to a human scale.

Back on Abecrombie Street, I realise I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my morning of time travelling. This walk has inspired me to journey back to other places from my past. But first, I step into one of the cafes and order an enormous slice of cake and a coffee.

Footnotes: 1sydney.edu.au/documents/about/heritage/gcp_chapter2.pdf; 2 University of Sydney Grounds Conservation Management Plan, Clive Lucas. majorprojects.planningportal.nsw.gov.au; 3sydney.edu.au/documents/about/heritage/gcp_chapter2.pdf; 4nla.gov.au/nla.party-713097.

Images: Abercrombie Street, Darlington, courtesy of City of Sydney Archives; Old Darlington School and Cadigal Green, writer’s own; Darlington Post Office, courtesy of City of Sydney Archives; ‘West view of Sydney taken from Grose’s farm, New South Wales’ 1819 by Joseph Lycett, courtesy of National Library of Australia; Freda Brown, German Federal Archive via Wikimedia Commons; Coffee and Cake via Wikimedia Commons.

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The Adventures of an Aeronaut – Stories from Prince Alfred Park, Sydney

Posted on September 28, 2023 by sagesomethymes

It was an overcast September afternoon in 1870 as Thomas Gale waited for his balloon to fill so that he could make good his promise to take to the skies. Gale could feel the excitement of the huge crowd around him. They were at the Intercolonial Exhibition in Prince Alfred Park, Sydney to see the famous British aeronaut, who had made over seventy balloon flights in his career.

Gale’s was not a hot air balloon, but powered by highly explosive gas, likely hydrogen. Lighter than air, but more expensive, gas got balloons off the ground more easily than air and once away, they stayed up longer.  But despite his experience and outer calm, Gale was tense. His most recent attempt, only days earlier, had failed because of the weather. Now, as he watched, a shower of rain soaked the fabric of his balloon making the oiled over cotton bandages that it was constructed from a lot heavier. There was not enough gas to fill a heavier balloon and Gale knew that an enthusiastic Exhibition crowd could quickly turn into a disappointed, riotous mob.

So, he made his decision. He removed the basket from the balloon, told his no doubt disappointed passenger that he would be left behind, and for good measure, took off his wool jacket; lightening the load to ensure his balloon would fly. Accompanied by jubilant cheers, Gale jumped onto the hoop, the cables were freed, and the balloon left the ground. Lifting up into the air it caught the breeze and began its drift to the south with the balloonist clinging to the ropes as the delighted crowd watched.

His aim was to make it to Botany Bay. But suddenly, about a kilometre from the park, where the suburbs of Waterloo and Alexandria meet, the wind dropped and his airship was becalmed. When finally a southerly breeze propelled him back towards Redfern the crowds in the park saw the balloon returning and rushed to meet him where it came down. They hijacked a horse driven furniture van to transport Gale and his balloon back to Prince Alfred Park. Although disappointed, Gale was determined to continue his aeronautical experiments.

Thomas Gale’s father was also a balloon aeronaut. He crossed the Channel from England to France in 1850. That same year he attempted another daring flight. Rather than attaching a basket to his balloon, he attached himself, on the back of a horse. I have trouble imagining how this was possible. But he managed not only to take to the air but also to land successfully. However, as he touched down, his assistants released the horse and accidently let go of the balloon, with the aeronaut still attached to it. It lifted off again with Gale Senior clinging to the ropes. Although he was able to let gas out of the balloon and direct it to land, he couldn’t control the outcome. His body was found the next day near the half-inflated balloon. His newly widowed wife was left to look after their eight children.  Twenty years later, his son, Thomas Gale, ascended into the skies above Prince Alfred Park. I can’t help but wonder what possessed him to also take to flying balloons knowing how his father’s adventures had ended.

In June of 1871, just short of a year after his flight from Prince Alfred Park, Thomas Gale met the woman that he would marry while preparing to take to the skies over Adelaide. To keep the gathered crowd entertained while they waited for the balloon to fully fill with gas, Gale welcomed a small group of onlookers to join him in the basket. The tether rope was loosened as far as it would go while still restraining the balloon. To the delight of the crowd and the lucky thirty or so in the basket, the balloon rose into the air. One of the passengers was Lavinia Balford. She became the first South Australian woman to ride in a balloon, albeit only sixty metres above the ground, and a little while later she married the aeronaut. They lived in Adelaide for the rest of their lives. Thomas continued his aerial adventures, taking passengers on many of his flights and inspiring other aeronauts to daring feats in the skies. He made some money, but also a lot of debt, which landed him in the Adelaide Insolvency Courts in 1879 where he was declared a bankrupt. I suppose his fate could have been worse.

About a week ago, coincidentally 153 years to the day that Thomas Gale ascended into the skies from Prince Alfred Park, I took part, along with thousands of other like minded people, in the ‘Walk For Yes’ rally. It’s route took us right past the very spot where Gale waited for his balloon to fill on that September day in 1870. When I mentioned this coincidence to my walking companion, I was reminded that there is a children’s playground in the park in which there is an elephant and a balloon. Neither of them are real. On close inspection though, you can see that the trunk of the little grey elephant is a slippery dip and the balloon is a steel climbing structure. Next to the balloon and the elephant, on its own small beach of sand, is a pretty, grey and green row boat, with the name Galatea stencilled on its stern. This was the name of Prince Alfred’s ship, and the baby elephant, named Tom, was gifted to Prince Alfred, Queen Victoria’s son, the Duke of Edinburgh, on his stopover in India. He was on his way to Sydney to attend the Great Exhibition which was held in this park. Both Prince Alfred and Tom the elephant were in the park on the same afternoon that Thomas Gale set off on his adventure across Redfern. I have wondered at the courage of the Prince, returning to Sydney so soon after an assassination attempt curtailed his first visit, but that’s another story. I have also wondered why the designers of the playground juxtaposed these stories together forever. Perhaps they represent courage in the face of adversity (The Prince). Persistence despite the odds (Thomas Gale). And hope – that our journey into the future (the boat) will be better than our unforgettable past (the elephant). Perhaps this analogy draws the bow a bit too far. But let me attempt to draw it even further.

On Saturday 14 October 2023, Australians will be asked to vote for a ‘Voice to Parliament’ for Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. For those of us who hope that the majority of Australians will vote Yes, this is a time to emulate the courage of Prince Alfred and the persistence of Thomas Gale. A time to hone our patience and hand out leaflets. A time to talk to friends, family, colleagues and strangers about the issues. A time to allay fears and remind ourselves of the many courageous acts that this country has witnessed. And when the results are revealed, I truly hope we will have landed in a more equal society. A place where Indigenous Australians no longer die ten years earlier than anyone else. A place where Aboriginal children have as much chance as the rest of us to finish high school. A place that has listened to the culture that has continuously been here for 65 000 years and in that listening can change the lives of the truly disadvantaged. Let’s vote for a future we can be proud of where every voice is heard. Let’s add a giant YES to the children’s playground next to the elephant, the boat and the balloon.

Image Credit: https://www.yes23.com.au/

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Hope is the thing with feathers*

Posted on February 26, 2023 by sagesomethymes

Recently, while sitting under a tree in the Domain, trying to eat an egg sandwich, I was attacked by a Noisy Miner. Claws in the head. Several times. With one arm helicoptering desperately above me to ward it off, I used the other arm, having dumped the egg sandwhich in my lap, to gather nearby twigs and stick them into my hairclip. This made a crown of thorns, of sorts, but didn’t stop the attacks. It did keep the claws out of my head though. Unfortunately the thorns didn’t come with silicone comfort tips. My only consolation was that I wasn’t this native Australian honeyeater’s only victim. As I walked away, I watched several of its other victims clutching their skulls in agony.

Luckily, not all my encounters with birds are of the schlock horror variety. The other night, I watched four Bull Bulls scampering around on the branches of the dragon palm outside my window. I think they were settling in for the evening. It involved a lot of loud  chhhheeeeping!!!!!! chhhheeeeping!!!!!! chhhheeeeping!!!!!! and screeeeeching!!!!! and pushing!!!!! each other off branches. Not too different, I guess, to what goes on in most suburban homes at bedtime. They eventually quietened down and by then it was dark and I could no longer see anything through the window except my own reflection. Hopefully that didn’t keep the birds awake for too long. When I fell asleep, I dreamt about them. My disembodied self, zoomed in on their tiny claws which were clasping the branch just in case a gale sprang up. (N.B. Birds don’t actually hang onto a branch like we would. Their talons automatically lock into position as the ankle and knee joints bend. This isn’t released until they straighten their legs again.) In my dream, I watched them sleep: their feathers fluffed up for warmth, their heads tucked right down into their shoulders, and their eyes ready to flick open at the slightest sound, just in case a cat sprang up.

And only a little while ago, while standing at the rail on the top deck of the Manly ferry, I was joined by a flock of seagulls (not the band, the birds). I wasn’t on the Freshwater but one of the smaller Emerald class catamarans. I love the big old ferries. They make the seven-mile journey across the harbour to Manly feel like an early twentieth century voyage across an ocean. However, I’ve come to appreciate the unique excitement of travelling past the Heads on a smaller boat, waiting to be catapulted into the swell. On this night the moon was full, lighting a bright path across the harbour. So, if I had suddenly been thrown off, I would’ve been clearly visible in the water, arms wildly helicoptering above my head, thanks to the earlier opportunity to practice warding off danger.

But that didn’t happen. Instead I watched the seagulls, just a silver tipped wingspan away from me, as they glided exuberantly in the slipstream of the ferry. They were so close, I could clearly see their white feathered underbellies, and their webbed orange feet, tucked in for flight. Occasionally a seagull would accidently swerve onto deck space as the boat navigated the waves. One by one, they flipped back on the wind, spiraling downwards like miniature kamikaze planes. Each time, just before touching the water, they pulled themselves miraculously out of the dive and back into formation. It was an amazing performance. Were they hunting? Or just using the vessel’s momentum to save energy? Why not just sit on the roof and relax? But then why miss the joy ride? They travelled with us all the way to the Quay where we parted ways as they flew under the Harbour Bridge and onwards to some night roost in the inner harbour.

If you’re thinking that these sleek silver-feathered things I’m describing don’t sound like any seagull you’ve ever met, then I totally agree with you. I put this anomaly down to the enchantment of the high seas, where wind and water often return us to wildness. Closer to home, I’ve had plenty of not so magical encounters with this orange footed scavenger. It’s availed itself of my beach-side breakfast many a time. And who hasn’t witnessed the swarm of seagulls over a chip? But one of my favourite memories is from a few years ago when their squawking aggressive nature was on full display. On that day, I was walking along the waterfront at Rose Bay when I found myself rescuing a seagull from a nasty tangle of fishing line; and in return it rescued me.

I wrote about that adventure here.

 

Attributions: *‘Hope is the thing with feathers’ by Emily Dickinson https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42889/hope-is-the-thing-with-feathers-314

Images in order of use: Bilby, CC BY 3.0  via Wikimedia Commons; Aditya Pal, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons; Authors own; Glen Fergus, CC BY-SA 2.5  via Wikimedia Commons; OSX, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

 

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The Tiny Chapel

Posted on November 18, 2022 by sagesomethymes

This enchanting little travellers’ chapel is in the Megalong Valley, a few kilometres from Little Hartley.

It was created by Sherry Weller, inspired by the many tiny roadside churches she saw along highways in the USA. Places for weary travellers to stop and rest, perhaps even a haven to retreat to after an episode of road rage. We could do with a few in Sydney.

They can also be found in Europe along with many ancient roadside shrines. Perhaps they are a gentle reminder that travel can be both dangerous and joyous. Inside, this small ecumenical space is lit by the sun through leadlight windows depicting native flora.

On my visit, I sat on the lovely old wooden bench, looking through the central window which folded open, onto bright green paddocks. The drought had only recently broken and I was grateful for the rain. This was still in the time before the pandemic and the devastating floods of the last two years. But bushfires had ravaged the Blue Mountains to the north of where I sat and so the fact that the Megalong Valley, and this tiny church, had narrowly escaped seemed like a small miracle.

As I sat, in quiet contemplation, a mob of grazing kangaroos moved into view. It was like being in a wildlife watching hide, secretly observing these furry lives amongst the serene hills of this beautiful valley.

While I can’t wait to visit again, I often fly there in my imagination, particularly when I’m having trouble getting to sleep. I imagine this little place in mist and snow, under the summer sun, or bathed by moonlight, letting it lull me into that curious other place that we retreat to each night. And I often think of the two donkeys whose paddock abuts this tiny church and who reward those who stop here by allowing them a pat. Next time I’ll be sure to carry a sweet treat with me.

 http://thetinychapel.com.au/

This post is part of the Spirit of Place series:

The Spirit of Place
Spirit of Place: The Lost City
Spirit of Place: Redfern Park
Walking The Goods Line
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The Sky Beyond The Bell Fry

Posted on April 1, 2022 by sagesomethymes

I would like to admit a passion for old country churches.

They are a splendid excuse to pause when on a road trip. Although most of them are closed, I often wander the deserted church yard trying to peer through the stained-glass windows. When the inside remains a mystery, because the windows are usually too high for me to look through, I content myself with imagining the pews and the altars; the exposed wooden beams of high ceilings; the weddings and christenings, and moments of solace, that hopefully still happen there. Then I stand and watch the light of the day play on the outside sandstone facade or wonder at the colour of the sky beyond the bell fry. I long ago gave up trying to photograph these hallowed places, unable to capture their material dimensions, let alone their liminal magic.

Recently I’ve also become a devotee of suburban churches. Where I live, the landscape is thick with them. Within a one-kilometre radius of home I’ve counted sixteen Christian churches, including three cathedrals and a Quaker meeting place. In this same circumference there is also a mosque and a Taoist temple. Each of these places intrigues me with their sacred individuality.

There are many beautiful churches that I’ve had the luck to visit over the years, but in this one I experienced a moment of ecstasy, perhaps a glimpse beyond the temporal; an inkling of the world’s deep complexity.

St Bonaventura, Catholic Church, Leura

St Bonaventura, Catholic Church, Leura

Although I’m not a practicing Catholic, this was the religion I was brought up in and so it still forms part of the tapestry of who I am. About twenty years ago, during Sunday mass at this beautiful church on the edge of Leura village, I had a mysterious encounter. It’s very hard to describe but to put it as simply as possible, it was as if a sudden flash of pure white energy, like an electric arrow, flew out from the crucifix behind the altar, and struck me in the heart. I began to weep and couldn’t stop. To not disturb the service I had to leave. Standing outside in the weak May sunshine I cried myself out until I felt emptied of all the fear and sadness that I’d been holding onto. I can’t explain what happened but my father had recently passed away, perhaps because of this I was more open to a metaphysical experience.

From my years as a child attending Saturday morning Italian school, I know that bonaventura means good fortune or good adventure. My first thought after this event was that perhaps my father was communicating with me that he was well in his new world. But seeing as he identified as an atheist this place seemed an odd choice. When later I looked up the saint who the church is named after, I found that he was a medieval Italian philosopher and theologian of the order of Saint Francis, born at Bagnoregio, in the Lazio region of central Italy. Interestingly Lazio is the region of Italy where my father was also born. I thought this was a strange coincidence but I’m not sure I believe in the intercession of saints.

Twenty years on, I still feel awe at the immensity of what we can’t explain but grateful for this moment of deeply felt religious experience. I don’t understand what happened. But it happened. Perhaps I’m simply not yet tall enough to see through these high windows.

                                        Bagnoregio, Lazio, Italy

(Images: Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons; New2022, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons)

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An Armada of Blue Bottles

Posted on February 11, 2022 by sagesomethymes

Recently I was reading an article about Bluebottles. This summer has seen masses of these small stinging vessels washed up all along the east coast of Australia causing lots of angst for beach-goers. Apparently, they don’t want to sting us; it’s how they fish. And they don’t even want to land on our beaches; as the biologist interviewed in the article gracefully explained, the armada of bluebottles is ‘at the mercy of the wind’.

Her use of the collective noun for these creatures got me to wondering about our penchant for such creative group labels when it comes to our animal friends. They range from the very common ones everyone knows:
a school of fish;
a swarm of bees;
a mob of kangaroos;
a string of race horses;
a murder of crows;
a barrel of monkeys;

To the unfamiliar:
a shrewdness of apes;
a raft of otters;
a wake of vultures;
a scurry of squirrels;
a battery of barracudas;
an ambush of tigers;
a skulk of foxes;
a memory of elephants;
a hover of trout;
a manner of meerkats;

And the extraordinary:
a shiver of sharks;
a ubiquity of sparrows;
a gever of stingrays;
a bind of eels;
a boil of hawks;
a smack of jellyfish;
a congress of baboons;
a parliament of owls, thought to be from Chaucer’s poem, ‘a parliament of fowls’;
and an exaltation of larks,
from the 15th century Book of Saint Albans, about hawking, hunting, and heraldry.

I’m reminded by this list that animals are the sometimes intimate, mostly mysterious, others that share this planet with us. Our awe for these creatures is surely reflected in these splendid labels devised with the same creative zest that accompanies some of humanity’s greatest literary endeavours. Some are surprisingly appropriate; others sound like they were made up by a novelist and yet others mirror the political and social behaviours of humans. I wonder if in the animal world there is a collective noun for us.

I can imagine a menagerie of exotic beasts whiling away their time in captivity making up appropriate names for human behaviour to date:
a procrastination of people,
when it comes to action on climate change;
a filibuster of humans,
when it comes to saving animal species and habitats;
a shilly shally of citizens,
when it comes to taking civic action to protect the oceans;
and a commonwealth of fools when it’s come to voting for the planet.

Although I know it was just a whim of the wind that has sent us an armada of bluebottles this summer, I can’t help but think that their rather idiosyncratic name, Portuguese man o’ war, named after their resemblance to an 18th-century Portuguese sailing warship, holds a message about the future. Bear with me while I continue on this flight of fancy. I think it’s pretty clear what the message is. In the last two years in Australia, and across the world, we’ve had wild summer bush fires, an ongoing pandemic, severe flooding, and evermore extreme weather. Our global temperatures are rising and I can’t help but think that the planet is rebelling at our treatment of it. We need to reduce greenhouse gasses fast. And although you can think about this and feel despair, I choose to feel hope, because in Australia, 2022 is a federal election year and we have a real chance to make a choice that makes a difference.

In a democracy, one of the collective nouns we use for human beings is an electorate of voters, but unlike the blue bottles, we get to choose which way we go.

 

 

Images: Blue Bottle – Andreas Schwind, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons; Monkeys – Rajeev3065, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons; Meerkats – Ashleigh Thompson, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons; Owls: Travelwayoflife, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons; Ship of fools – Pieter van der Heyden, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Articles: Bluebottle Jellyfish Numbers Explode by Georgie Burgess and A Drudge of Lexicographers Presents Collective Nouns by Merriam-Webster. Links:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-19/bluebottle-jellyfish-numbers-explode/100760786
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/a-drudge-of-lexicographers-presents-collective-nouns

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#shedtheshame

Posted on September 8, 2021 by sagesomethymes

Recently I read about the #30wears movement in the newspaper and was delighted to see that finally my doom scrolling has paid off.

Started by a climate activist, it’s become a bit of a hit on Instagram. A nice change from reading about models who make money out of product placement, and self-educated well being activists who know more about how to survive a pandemic than all of the doctors and nurses in our health system put together.

This particular Instagrammer’s aim is much simpler: to wear each item of clothing in her wardrobe at least thirty times. It’s an idea that’s gained traction amongst some influential people who are not afraid to be seen in public in the same clothes over and over again. For example, the article suggested that Angela Merkel has seven brightly coloured blazers that she wears on weekly rotation over black trousers. And Jill Biden was spotted in the same dress twice, or was that the same spotted dress? And of course, although I wasn’t mentioned in the article, I too have been known to wear an outfit more than once.

In the past I’ve been concerned that this might impact on my career. But now, I can let go of any lingering doubts that consistently appearing in my PJs for online work meetings is not appropriate. And it’s a relief to know that this is not the cause of the regular emails from HR about retirement planning. Perhaps they missed the memo that I won’t be eligible for any government pension until 2037. That’s another 17 years of wearing PJs to online meetings. Because if you think we’re returning to the office anytime soon you should probably be put out to pasture.

And I can now stop worrying that the important people in my life, like the security guard at Woollies who stops me to make sure I’ve checked in, will notice that I’m wearing the same trackies and jumper that I wore yesterday, and the day before, and the week before that.

#75daysinlockdown

But best of all, I can shed my shame about appearing two years running in the same dress at the family Christmas lunch; not that the way things are going there will be a family Christmas lunch, to worry about what to wear to, this year.

In fact, I got so excited about this celebration of wearing the same clothes over and over again that I decided to spend some of my valuable

#stayathome

time, to

#shopmyownwardrobe

I like to use the word wardrobe because it connotes a large, beautifully organised, walk in space; quite unlike the broom stick, held up by two giant black plastic clamps, that my, and my partner’s, clothes actually hang on.

#DIYchiffonier

I decided to peruse my open air closet and calculate how many times I’ve worn each item. I recommend this activity if you’ve run out of things to do this lock down. It’s wonderfully time consuming and requires only a hyper calculator and a lot of time. I discovered that some of my clothes are so old they are not so much clothes, as a second skin. I’ve worn them so often that people would have trouble recognising me without them. And as I calculated the years they’ve kept me company I had a lot of fun designing little hash tags for them.

#whocanevenrememberhowoldthsithingis?

#definitelylastmillenium

#firstpaypacket

#didn’tweusethattocleanthebathroomtheotherday?

#whatpossessedmetobuythis?

Finally, I’m done. Chuffed to be doing my bit for the planet I can upload these images onto my new Instagram page

#shedtheshame

and sit back proudly.

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Edgelands

Posted on November 18, 2020 by sagesomethymes

I’m on my way to visit my mother but I’m early. I don’t want to interrupt her while she’s watching her favourite soapie, the one I’ve dubbed Italian Doctors in Love, so I decide to take a detour. I get off the bus and walk into a place that when I lived in this area I wasn’t allowed to enter. Back then it was private property; an example of remnant farm land on the very edge of our sprawling city.

Back in the late 1980’s when I was at university, I would get off the train at Fairfield Station after what was in those days an hour’s journey from Redfern and Sydney Uni. It’s now forty-five minutes despite the distance remaining the same; a modern miracle. I would then board the bus for my twenty-five-minute ride home. No miraculous change there unfortunately. We would travel through layers of suburb, moving further and further away from the railway line until we reached what I used to think of as the edge of civilisation. The Cowpasture Road. On winter nights particularly, the darkness of this old road edged by pasture land following on so quickly from the treeless streets lined with suburban McMansions that we’d just travelled through, made me feel like I’d come to the end of the world. It was usually just myself and the bus driver left by this stage, as the rest of the journey was on the return loop to the station. There’s no way that back then I would have got off the bus here voluntarily. Then again there weren’t Italian soap operas waiting to greet me at the end of the journey either. Well not on television anyway. Now as I step off the bus, I’m in an area that is much more welcoming despite the extremely busy four lane road I have to cross to reach this entrance to the Western Sydney Parklands.

This is an old place. Much older than my memory. Much older than the road or the farm that was here before an Act of Parliament created this much needed recreation area in south western Sydney. It belonged to the Darug peoples who would have managed the land here for food, and hunted wallabies and possums, to be eaten around fires built also for talk and trade with others of the Cumberland Plain. Their descendants are still the Traditional Custodians of this land.1

Back at university I didn’t know the local history of the area. All I knew was that this back road in the sticks wasn’t the exciting metropolitan city that I wanted to live in. In fact, when asked to research the local history of where I lived for one of my history courses, I chose Newtown. Much more interesting, I thought. Perhaps this was because I hadn’t yet discovered the cool study of psychogeography, the effect of geographical location on our psychological experiences. And uber cool words like edgelands and rural urban fringe hadn’t been invented to describe the ugly, semi industrial border between the new housing developments of the outer suburbs and the left-over agricultural land of colonial times.

Now Western Sydney Parklands meanders for 27 kilometres through Blacktown, Fairfield and Liverpool Councils. There are concrete paths for bikes and walkers through the old paddocks but I decide to follow one of the swathes mown through the meadow that begins next to an old dam that is now a deep green pond surrounded by Zebra grass and a new grove of Paperbark and Crown Ash.

It’s mid-October and a warm morning so I’m delighted when this cross country track finally meets the Pimelea Loop, a lovely name for the concrete path that I spurned earlier. I have no idea where it leads but I’m excited by the names on the sign, Moonrise, Sugar Loaf Ridge, Ginger Meggs Memorial, so I turn south and hope I don’t regret this impromptu hike.

The sound of birds and buzz of dragon flies camouflages the distant hum of the traffic on Cowpasture Road. Just off the path I spot abandoned wooden gates that would have been used to isolate sheep before dipping, but are now the centre pieces of a quaint picnic area. Lantana and wild artichoke vie with Patterson’s curse amongst the long grasses next to the path. But these distractions are not enough to mask the strain on my ham strings; I am now definitely climbing a hill. Perhaps there will be an amazing lookout as a reward for the sweat which is rolling down my face. I reach the crest of the hill but there is only the other side, the path now edged with shea oak and young gums.

Finally, the land levels out and I’m surrounded by head high wild wheat grass. As the path emerges into the open again, I see a tall dead paddock gum and hear frogs in a nearby dam. So, this is what was out there in the dark beyond, all those years that I sat in the warmth of the night bus imagining myself elsewhere.

Two hills later I spot The Dairy, a modern picnic area with tables, toilets and bubblers. A few hundred yards away are the gates I entered through an hour ago. There are a huge number of paths that I could continue to follow in this amazing stretch of nature within our city but Italian Doctors in Love will well and truly be over and so I head back to the bus stop to complete my original journey, hopefully in time for a well-earned lunch, courtesy of my mother.

Images: On the Cowpasture Road, Chrisr: Bunbury’s, from Views of Sydney and Surrounding District by Edward Mason, ca. 1821-1823; 1892. Courtesy of State Library of NSW PXC 459; Map courtesy of Western Sydney Parklands, westernsydneyparklands.com.au; other images author’s own.

1https://www.westernsydneyparklands.com.au/about-us/our-story/aboriginal-heritage/

Posted in Habitat, My Mother and Me, Spirit of Place, walking | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Dante and I and the ride from Hell

Posted on November 12, 2020 by sagesomethymes

I don’t think of myself as an envious person. And I wouldn’t say I was too proud, although I admit that I am sometimes greedy, but recent events have made me not so sure of this.  

My local library had just reopened for browsing and I was very excited. This was something I used to do a lot before COVID-19 wrought havoc on our lives and closed all the libraries. It was time to go to the library again and it was time to ride my bike to get there. That was not something that I used to do a lot but if we’ve learnt anything from this pandemic, it’s that we need to grab opportunities when we can.

So, I got on my bike and began to peddle. I took the bike path that leads away from the ridge where I live and down into what used to be swamp and is now Green Square. As I pedalled, I felt the wind through my hair and a level of freedom that I hadn’t experienced in months. I should do this every day, I thought to myself, as I smelt spring in the air, heard the birds tweeting in the trees, and rode past cute puppies frolicking in the park.

At the library, I flashed the big green tick from my QR code check in at the friendly staff and breathed a huge sigh of satisfaction as, after almost eight months, I was in a library again. I was extra excited because usually at this branch of the library you can’t actually browse, and only occasionally is this due to a global pandemic endangering our lives. The library is configured so that people sitting at tables, or in comfy arm chairs with their lap tops, are also sitting in front of the books. It’s obviously a new design aesthetic where the books are just wall paper for the real business of a library, which happens online. But on this visit, there was no one there. Only browsers of books. That is, only people who want to read books. That is, only me. In ecstasy I browsed for my full thirty-minute allocation of time. That’s three minutes per book, I calculated as I borrowed my ten books. The maximum allowed.

I was very pleased with the variety of books I’d chosen, from intellectually taxing to light reading. One of these, Dante’s Divine Comedy, I had never had the courage to attempt. But if living through a pandemic teaches you anything it’s to face your fears, or at least admit them. This long narrative poem describes Dante’s travels through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise as his soul battles with divine justice. I was sure that it would make riveting reading through the long nights of the Pando that still lay ahead.  

With a big smile for the staff and a big bag for the books, I exited the library and made my way back to my … bike. Ah yes. That’s when I remembered that I’d ridden a bike, not a lorry, to the library. Luckily my bike has a basket at the front and a cute little luggage carrier at the back. The luggage carrier comes complete with an oci strap. In the 70s and 80s octopus straps were very popular with fathers for loading car rooves. Today they are most often used by library nerds on bikes. After securing my books, some of which went into my back pack, which was secured onto my back which was secured onto the bike, I was off.

I rode smoothly around the pedestrians exiting from Green Square station. A few months ago, this would have been more difficult and involved dodging around about 500 people. Today it was easy to avoid the one person that straggled out of the station. As I said to myself earlier, when I could actually see the books in the library for a change, the pandemic takes and the pandemic gives. I then negotiated the traffic on O’Riordan Street, the hyper busy main arterial road south from the CBD to the airport. This was tricky. The pandemic has given us nothing here. I had to wait for someone to come along and push the traffic light pedestrian crossing button so that my lights would turn green. I wasn’t going to touch that button. After all we don’t have a vaccine yet. I utilised my time however, imagining cute accessories that I could strap onto my bike which could be used to push buttons at traffic lights.

 

Finally, someone came along and after waiting for a while, then giving me what could have been an exasperated look, pushed the button. I noted approvingly that they used their elbow. The light turned green and we were off. I was keen to get back onto the bike path and experience the wind through my hair and hear the birds again as I whizzed by, and glimpse cute puppies. The first kilometre was a breeze and I had just begun to ease into the experience and imagine myself riding to new and amazing places across Sydney, never walking again, when unexpectedly my bike began to slow down. I had to push twice as hard on the peddles to keep up the momentum, then three times as hard, then… Was my tire flat? Had I accidently upshifted the gears to high? I tried to check while maintaining forward momentum. No. All was as it should be. But looking up again, all I could see ahead of me now was a long steep slope and in the far distance, barely visible, a distant peak. My destination. How had the terrain changed so dramatically in the half hour I’d been in the library?  

I noticed that the temperature had also changed. What had been a mild spring day was now a hot and sticky afternoon. What had been my forehead was now a waterfall of sweat and what had been a pretty dress was now a wet rag. With no other choice but to push on, each circle of the pedals roughly equivalent to one of Dante’s nine rings of hell, except my circles were infinite in number, I grunted and puffed my way up the hill. It dawned on me that perhaps this was my personal inferno, my punishment for vile sins committed. The sin of pride in myself and my bike as I’d swooped down the hill earlier. The sin of greed as I’d hogged the library aisles to myself, glad that the pandemic had disrupted its use for others. The sin of gluttony as I loaded book after book into the borrowing machine, and cake after cake into my stomach earlier on in the pandemic. And the sin of sloth that had kept me off my bike ever since I’d bought it.

Then suddenly these concentric circles of torment tightened again. I looked down upon hearing a snarl and feeling the vibration of slobbering jaws close to my ankle. One of the puppies that had been so cute on the way down the hill, now resembling a fully grown German Shepherd, was snapping at my heels with all the inbred hatred of anything on wheels that is built into the DNA of all dogs. Simultaneously several of the birds that had entertained me earlier with their sweet songs now took the opportunity to swoop past, beaks snapping, only centimetres from my right ear. It seemed as if all my extremities were under attack. But at least they weren’t the swarms of wasps and hornets that had apparently attacked Dante in the vestibule of hell. I considered offloading some of the books to lighten my load but that would not endear me to the divine powers that were obviously watching this all too human comedy. And besides, stopping would only advantage the beasts that were hell bent on chasing me. So, I pushed on, determined not to concede, and slowly climbed the mountain that I had earlier foolishly written off as merely a hill. Behind me, as if from the tomb of Lucifer himself I continued to hear the wild howls of the slavering hoards.

Finally, I arrived home. I remember little of the rest of the journey. Only relief.  After unloading my two-wheel vehicle, incapable of coherent thought or movement, I simply lay on my bed. I was close to catatonic but also happy that I hadn’t stopped, or collapsed or worst still, fainted. Still riding on the wings of that victory, or perhaps unable to relax because of the adrenalin still pumping through my body, I decided to pursue my next challenge. I opened Dante’s Divine Comedy and began to read. I was so tired that rather than start at the beginning I opened a page randomly. After all, it was a poem, what difference could it make. It turns out a lot. Not because it didn’t make any sense but because I had randomly chosen a section that proved to me that I’d just bested a famous Italian poet. No, not in the literary stakes but where it counts, in the real world.

When Dante and his companion, Virgil, reach the River Acheron which they must cross by ferry to reach Hell proper, he doesn’t describe the ferry ride. That’s because by that stage he’d fainted. He may have written the Divine Comedy, the pre-eminent work in Italian literature and one of the greatest works of world literature but he couldn’t finish the ride. Feeling enormous pride in myself, I fell asleep, the Divine Comedy gently slipping from my fingers.

Images: All but the first, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Posted in The Sages, What Are You Reading? | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment