Earthrise Diary 309

I recently found a penciled single sheet of ‘The man who wanted adventure,’ one of my proto stories from, I think, 1939. The hero, Buck Fields (possibly myself) is ‘packing the last of his provisions into his fast two-seater ‘plane “Lightning”…’ The paper is flimsy and age-spotted and a corner tear has destroyed several words. I mention this 70-years old icon because I was tickled to re-read the partial narrative again. If you have old documents like this I urge you to preserve them more effectively than I have done: such writings may reveal a great deal about early ambitions. Why, I wonder, was “Lightning” a two-seater?
The word ‘adventure’ has been stabbing at memory and I’m tempted to re-member (ha, ha) some of my youthful adventures but will avoid that for as long as possible. There’s another angle to adventure (for me, I mean) that’s now almost mundane: adventurous aspects of living here at Earthrise. Adventuresome things here are often so taken for granted that although I know they exist I don’t often think specifically about them. I’ll attempt to explain some of these.
I was 10 in 1939 and lived with my parents and my sister in a small mining village, Pilgrims Rest. Pilgrims, as we all called it, had become a Company town, that company being the Transvaal Gold Mining Estates. In my childhood Pilgrims was the oldest continuously mined gold mining area in South Africa and before TGME became its ‘government’ it had been (since about 1873) the destination of many miners and prospectors from all over the world. My grandfather Rudolph Solon Diespecker (1858-1920) (always ‘Louis’ in the family) had been one of the ‘first era’ prospectors on Pilgrims Creek in 1880. And although Rudolph had more adventures than you could shake a stick at (prospector, earthworks contractor, sub-contractor on the notorious Selati Line in the Lowveld, intelligence officer and Commandant during the Anglo Boer War, just for starters), this Diary isn’t really about him at all: it’s about something he wrote, bless him, in a letter to my grandmother: he described the Drakensberg Middleveld (where Pilgrims Rest is) as ‘the jewel of Africa.’ I can never write that brief description without feeling emotional: although I lived there for only five years, from 1937 to 1942, it was the most wonderful and adventurous place of my childhood and I visualize scenes from that childhood place with ease, accuracy and huge nostalgia. Pilgrims and its enfolding mountains is an unforgettably beautiful place and I was there at an unforgettably and beautifully adventurous time of my life (think swimming and fishing in creeks and rivers, climbing, hiking, picnics, caving, learning to play rugby, and much, much more).
Now I’m again in a beautiful place but this time in the Australian bush where I’ve lived more or less in retirement for a quarter of a century, the longest time I’ve lived anywhere in the world. It’s not that the rest of the world is unsuitable or unsatisfactory; it isn’t, but that this place on the Bellinger River is also unquestionably beautiful and therefore good for me (good for my soul, if you like). Rivers have always been important to me (especially the Cowichan in British Columbia and the Blyde at Pilgrims Rest (Cowichan means ‘land warmed by the sun;’ Blyde, from the Dutch blijde means ‘joy’ and Bellinger means ‘clear water’). I’d always wanted to live in a wild place and build my own house; Jannelle and I built a three-level pole house here and that was a grand adventure. And there’s been nothing at all boring or dull about living here, which is why so many aspects of this place, by being habitually experienced in one way or another, may (forgive me) become familiarly almost unnoticed. For example, the river is only a few metres away and the house has been so located as to allow of many river views through the many windows (the room I’m sitting in has six principal ‘sides’ or walls and two minor walls containing more than 80 pieces of glass and including a circular window next to me). I’m always aware of the river and it’s changes and the notion of ‘river’ is thematic in my life; it’s also ‘always there’. Several nights ago I was in bed, half asleep and vaguely aware of television when I was made fully awake by the gunshot crack of a tree or large limb suddenly breaking and beginning to swish down toward—as I thought—part of the house. There’s never enough time to be smart about breaking or falling trees: you either tough it out and don’t move too many muscles or you dive or run for cover. I stayed put, then got dressed and went hunting through the darkness with a torch. I still have not found the tree (or limb). I had to ensure that no fallen tree would stop me from getting the car out (itself under threat from very big trees) because I was booked to have chelation therapy the next morning (the last time that happened a fallen tree blocked access from my carport to Darkwood Road and it had to be axed so that I might keep my chelation appointment). Fallen trees, otherwise, are commonplace occurrences on a forested property: they often go unnoticed or cannot easily be found because the single tree doesn’t always stand out in a forest. That’s part of the adventure of living in the forest (The Darkwood, as it’s correctly known in the area) and that implies the huge importance of using one’s eyes diligently. (Now I’m thinking of the time I arrived home one afternoon to see that incredible-looking creature, the death adder; it was certainly well seen, being obvious, but it was only obvious because it was on a patch of grass I’d recently mown precisely where I walk to and from my car). I daresay I’ll find that tree sooner or later, but there’s no hurry. That little adventure is related to all the trees close to the house. It was years before I was able to see clearly that most of the big and very tall trees here are generally largely vertical but that those closest to the river all have a few degrees of bias (from the vertical), viz, they lean toward the river. The big bloodwood, about 100 years old, inches (or cm) from this room is nicely vertical (although it has gigantic limbs any one of which may destroy most of the house). From where I now sit almost all the trees I can see look vertical but when I move around or am outside, many are obviously leaning toward the river rather than toward the house. Trees may break and fall at any time (e.g., when there is no wind) although a good time for this is in the period following a big Wet when soils are saturated.
There are trees on the slopes (on the south side of the house) but not very many because (a) of a weathered cliff and much loose scree* and (b) the bigger trees are relatively distant from the house. (*Scree derives from the graphic Icelandic word, skritha, a landslide (!) and is akin to the Old English, scithan, to go or to glide. My very own scree slope is thus a ready-made adventure such that the go-er or glider will have an excellent view of the serpentine river on the way down the hillside).
Akin (another good word) to this is the ominous rock-fall sound of swishing: large pieces of weathered shale occasionally break, fall and roll snowball-like from the rock face behind and above the house, through the scrub, grass and lantana to fetch up against one of my path-side walls. The Big Swishing is a very distinctive sound and is to be avoided (so far, none of these big missiles have hit the house (and only a couple of trees have caused house damage).
Fire of course is another hazard of the Natural World that has sometimes come close to being dangerous to the house here at Earthrise. What else? Wind. Strong gale force winds here are fortunately rare because the house and gardens are quite well protected in this bend of the river (known historically as Rum Corner) and by the lie of the land (the house has its back to the south and to the hillside—or mountainside if I want to be dramatic). However, to go outside on a windy day, unless I’m wearing a hard hat, is very unwise indeed because the air is sometimes crowded with twigs and branches that fly like arrows and spears (such windy days are the so-called Agincourt Days at Earthrise and are best seen from inside the house but also well away from the windows).
And then there are the floods. Flooding of the Bellinger may take place in any month. Late summer/early autumn is a fairly reliable time for flooding. There are flash floods (usually as a consequence of sudden downpours in the Catchment when (in one moment) you may be standing on the bridge admiring the upstream view that includes, strangely, a log or two (when it’s not even raining) and in the next moment you may have to run back to the bridge approach to avoid being cut off by the suddenly rising river level (yes, I’ve had this alarming experience). And there are the more moderately rising floods that sometimes keep coming (disturbingly) even though there may not have been (even in the Catchment) Very Heavy Local Rain that pours off the slopes here and spills from the flooding Deer Park paddocks across the road and into Darkwood Road, rainfall that drains so hugely into the road that the road becomes another river. The so-called Flood Rain is typically a steady ‘thick’ rain like a very heavy uninterrupted drizzle and it continues relentlessly to produce a flood often within a day and a half. Any breaks in Flood Rain imply that the flood may peak within a couple of days; steady rain or rain that develops into Very Heavy Local Falls is a very serious matter (like the rains in March 2001 when evacuation by canoe along the mountainside was necessary).
These are the major adventurous hazards; there are many minor ones, too. One of these is gardening of all kinds. Because I dislike wearing gloves I often am bitten, stung or cut by insects including very small spiders and very large jumping ants (and not forgetting goannas and pythons that bite, tear and rip, and all of the venomous snakes that that inject poison through their fangs). There are jumping ant nests near the Belvedere: one of the nests used to be the residence of inch-long red attack ants, but they moved out because they didn’t appreciate the mower passing over their tunnels and smaller black jumping ants moved in. The Big Red Guys are several metres further west now and when the mower approaches they’re brave enough to rush out and attack it (what chance have I, a mere un-armored human, got against these soldiers?). Eyes wide open to avoid the Red Jumpers! Ticks seem to be in a class of their own here because the wily ones use low branches of, e.g., tree ferns, to fall triumphantly on my head (unnoticed at the time). Similarly, the very clever leeches can be found waiting on plants (just as the ticks do) at various heights. Leeches, by the way, can be avoided at night or early in the morning possibly because they need their sleep and are not very active. When it’s wet here the leeches will always get their victim and working outside requires a de-leeching exercise at the end of Being Outside. Leeches here are attracted to warm wellingtons and they stay put sometimes for days. Gardening associated with stonewall building is sometimes a dangerous adventure because the gaps and spaces in gravity walls are an irresistible attraction for homeless creatures: skinks and lizards (no danger) take up residence in these Magic Caves, but so too do spiders and small snakes (given that the made ground or fill behind walls often comprises loose stones where snakes can stay dry and comfy deep inside my structures) (e.g., in the Belvedere). Being pricked by my beautiful roses is par for the course as is being stung by my hostile nettles and stinging trees (I could perhaps write a book, ‘A Dictionary of Earthrise Adventures’ along the lines of other similar books such as Alberto Manguel’s Dictionary of Imaginary Places, but how would I discover a publisher adventurous enough to publish it?).

There were two beautiful mellow days during this last week of March: softer light and warm days suitable for sitting outside and reading, but, alas, I knew a Change was coming up the coast so I felt obliged to rake and mow. No reading for the old gardener. That implies my method of clearing to make green islands in lawny areas by removing flood debris, including ax-able logs. Psychologically, winning clear areas in the chaos of flood debris is a heartening experience. These successful operations were a great success but were followed on Friday, March 27 by storms with plenty of wind and rain. Now (March 28 and 29): the close-cut grass is showing as a green blur; who would have thought it would still keep growing at such a rate this late in March. Seen from my bedroom: Big Lawn is a picture (so long as I don’t look too closely toward the flood debris between the lawn and the top of the riverbank). The partly weeded Belvedere got the mower low-cut treatment too and is today showing a blush of soft green, if ‘blush’ is the right word…and insistent weeds.
Another month almost ended, a bigger than ever pile of unread reading materials, and more unfinished writings (fiction and non-fiction) to struggle adventurously with. Who could ask for anything more?
During the month I’ve also had unsatisfying adventures of the political kind in relation to the flood debris here. Briefly: the ‘river authorities’ concerned to make rules and regulations about illegal land clearing/logging seem reluctant to either police or detect rule breakers (more later on that dark matter).
I was also surprised to meet on an early morning walk down the road a Buddhist monk who was visiting local friends. We stopped and enjoyed a short chat. We were quite close to the very weathered hillside near Richardson’s Bridge (which sooner or later will produce a landslide, in my opinion). There are adventures to be had almost everywhere.
And along the road the colours are changing, grass seeds and native privet berries ripen for the birds and much mist rises into the low clouds.

This Diary is # 16 in the New Series (previously 1107, 108, 208, 308, 408, 508, 608, 708, 808, 908, 1008, 1108, 1208, 109, 209; this is 309). DDD March 29 2009.