Tuesday, October 26, 2010

The Earthrise Diary October 2010

© text Don Diespecker 2010

The Earthrise Diary (Oct 2010)

Don Diespecker

October 5 2010. Now it’s between 14:45 and 15:00 hours and although I don’t enjoy saying this, even to myself, the rain has started again; well, showers, perhaps: showers seem not quite so dangerous. At this time yesterday I could still see daylight under the adjacent bridge between the undersides of the stringers (the main horizontal beams between the piers) and the surface of the torrent (such stringers are actually {most of} whole trees trimmed to fit by Council workers using adzes and large-blade axes when the bridge was largely destroyed and rebuilt in 3 weeks by Bellingen Shire Council). Not so now. The water level has indeed fallen a little since 09:00 this morning and the sun even came out briefly before midday, but despite my wonder and amazement staring at the sky and seeing patches of blue, there’s a lot more water up there, a lot more.

I was going to tough it out and leave the car here but it was difficult to relax, yesterday arvo; it was raining or showering, but lightly. Perhaps, I thought, I could get away with it: get away with leaving the car in its carport hoping the rain wouldn’t become heavy. Finally, I was concerned enough to get out of bed, get dressed again, don the bright yellow wet gear, grab my torch, jump into my wellies and drive up to the old house at Dreamtime (I’d checked earlier with Leif). It was dark and I had a wet walk down to the Dangerous Lower Levels where my house is, trying to save on the torch batteries while walking, by turning the torch off and on but not being so concerned with thrift that I would carelessly walk into a Gigantic Snake (I abhor most snakes although I occasionally say hello! and then only when I feel secure enough after having startled the snake with my Annoying Human Vibrations). Snakes move so fast that by their awesome speed they have the power to reduce us to jaw-dropping awesomeness (or perhaps you, dear reader, remain Unperturbed at All Times when snakes are On Deck)? Anyway, there were no visible snakes and I arrived home in one piece, yet could not sleep except when I dozed off annoyingly and precisely when I had not wished to.

It rained through the night and I was not at all surprised to see that the river was well up—almost as though there had been flood rain—and wonderfully noisy. When I eventually tottered out of bed (having listened to lots of hourly ABC news and not wanting to miss anything after a day of being Updated by friends and neighbours as to where the best websites were—the ones with whirling radar pictures that also included storm fronts and rainfall and synoptic data—so that I knew, really knew that there was a very good chance of there being a flood. There was a time when I didn’t mind floods at all but that was when Jannelle and I and the dogs used to sit and watch floods as though they were entertainments (only because we had never experienced a really BIG one). Thinking about that now, in retrospect, the dogs always seemed very impressed by rising floods and had little or no compunction about joining J and me when we adventurously (maybe even recklessly, sometimes) would swim across or through descending floods (by which time the water would be lime green and a frothy white as distinct from dark brown and threatening). We occasionally had to encourage the dogs to pause where we paused, centre-stream where the water seemed still or ‘dead’ long enough for us to rest briefly, take renewed breath and then plunge on to the far shore. Dogs learn fast; ours did, anyway, and J and I seemed not far behind in learning River Stuff except on the occasion when we unwisely, (code for foolishly), decided to ride a descending flood while together in the canoe. The dogs were smart enough to Keep Out of the Canoe Altogether and ran barking along the bank instead. I have a memory of them bounding above and below the line of lomandra along the right bank, barking, barking and probably advising us as mere Human Fools to Have a Care, but we swept on, oblivious in the canoe and so sank with it, miraculously saving it and ourselves at approximately the mouth of the gushing downstream creek. We got ashore, wet and cold (it was a winter flood) and the dogs sat happily panting as if to say, You see, Foolish Fools, the canoe doesn’t work at all well when you attempt to move, even slightly, across strong flows. How right they were.

I was describing this flood, not the old one in the ‘80s (and the downstream creek is again gushing white water after having run a banker a couple of times). During the night and while I was dozing and vaguely aware of seeing only bits and pieces of Q and A on ABC1 I heard a tree coming down, which, partly masked by the roar of the flood sounded like a relatively thin green SWISH (it was the twin member of a very old and very big cheese tree growing in the corner where the boundary line runs up the hillside). Today, when I examined the Great Limb, I noted all of the epiphytes, the little plants that attach themselves to living trees, parasitically (they thriftily manage to live on air, mostly). This mass of trunk and great foliage is sprawled across the boundary line in such a way that I think it could possibly be of benefit because in high floods the mainstream pounds into the hillside (and where floods have made a tight corner in the right bank), then rebounds whirling and becomes a very BIG eddy or, if you prefer, whirlpool of logs and tonnes of debris, then pushes ashore into and all over my much battered riverside “lawn” where it sits, immovable, until either the next bigger flood arrives or a kind neighbour arrives with a tractor to cheerfully push the debris back to where it came from (and send the mass bobbing downstream to invade elsewhere). But now I’m not so sure. There is so much foliage that it would certainly partly trap incoming rafts of debris, but then there may be the risk of the tree also coming ashore accompanied by Much Else and it would take months to reduce and clear it all with only an axe.

I’ll also mention the colours of the river flooding. The rising flood soon becomes, first, a rich brown, and as the flood progresses and also when it later begins falling, the brown changes impressively from chocolate to slightly muddy to a very milky coffee colour and days later with the torrent much lowered will become a pale and beautiful clean green (eau-de-Nil, perhaps) colour. And have I mentioned the river ‘noise’? The noise is tremendous and quite raw, especially where the rolling water gets chopped up in the rapids as the almost-flooding river climbs higher. When, for example, I began to appreciate that I had, after all, managed a couple of hours of Fitful Sleep, I became aware of the Sounds of the Flood. I have to say, that the sound of the flood is exquisitely beautiful. One should probably be Scared Stiff at the Sounding Flood, yet, should you be relatively safe and more or less dry inside a house (as I was) you would no doubt enjoy that sound as one of Nature’s best, a Powerful Singing of Dynamic Water, water in motion: there is nothing quite like it. Flood Roar is quite something; it dominates as an overwhelming storm of sound. Imagine the energy generated by one person diving into or two hands splashing and moving the water in a relatively still river and then marvel at the power of a length of the torrent surging and noising. Think of a high storm wind or the sound of jet engines.

Also, the riverside casuarinas that lean so precariously over the water have, when you peer closely through the (near-flood) river mist, displays (what else can I call them?) of orchids… There, the secret is out. Don’t tell. Please. These are very tiny orchids; they are not those great big things that orchid growers claim to have grown (like proud parents), but the very small and even fragile-looking little air plants that cling to the riverside trees. There are at least three species that flower at this time of the year: the delicate-looking white spider orchids that stand upright on branches in very early spring, the slightly bigger yellowish plants that produce small yellow flowers on tough stalks, and the several-cluster white (almost fluffy-looking) miniature ‘trees’ of orchids that seem delicate and which for some reason hang down from the undersides of branches.

When Nick was here we raised and re-set some of the top-most timbers (cut by a bush sawmill and sold as ‘sleepers’) in the old retaining wall behind the house (in 1984/5 J and I explored possibilities of placing the back of the house some 2-m higher than it now is and so I had a small bulldozer get up on the slope and cut a house-long level foundation ‘platform’ for us to use if we wished. We decided against that design and twice built a long timber retaining wall (our first attempt wasn’t the best) against the steep slope between the house and a false summit that includes very big trees and a weathered stone cliff decorated by an old fig tree that attracts fruit bats in summer). The extra height would have given us greater protection against high floods (because we’d have used longer poles to raise the front of the house accordingly). Subsequent explorations of the slope indicated large amounts of loose scree beneath the lantana and although we knew the slope was then unstable we ought to have avoided making that platform). The retaining wall has served well to protect the back of the house, but after 25 years the timbers have deteriorated and the loading on the wall from the saturated scree has now breached the wall (we used lengths of 200-250-mm dia. hardwood poles, dug in, and then stacked the ‘sleepers’ behind the line of poles allowing appropriate gaps between each horizontal timber to function as weep-holes. The wall has worked well—until now.

October 6 2010. Overnight pressure on the wall has almost pushed one pole down and through about 45% and although the wall is more or less still functional it’s clear that the mass of soil, stone and dense lantana on the slope will eventually cause the retaining wall to fail along the greater length.

The timbers that Nick and I re-set, in the way they have now collapsed, suggests that when the slide occurs, there is a moderate probability that the direction of the slip may be deflected and so carry much of the slide at an angle that will take it down toward the Theatre Garden and the river. I don’t deceive myself about the danger of the house being wrecked: there is a very high probability that the house will be severely damaged if not destroyed if the slide comes down directly and at right angles to the wall. I’m hoping that I won’t be entirely present in the house if that occurs.

Chilling? Yes.

The river and its potential flooding got as far as popping through the gaps of the concrete deck (Plains Crossing Bridge) then the river must have peaked because the level began falling (not much, but enough). By Wednesday morning (Oct 6) and after an almost no-rain night, the river level was still falling and I was able to change my chelation appointment to suit this window of opportunity and drove to Bellingen (both Richardson’s Bridge and Hobart’s Bridge had had a near flood over their decks), completed chelation and then went on to Coffs Harbour and Park Beach Plaza and completed the most urgent chores and then returned home (brilliantly sunny and humid in Coffs; intermittent showers on the way home, and the river level continuing to fall). Tired, I started to write this, then went early to bed, dozed and otherwise slept with one eye open…

October 7 2010. Today there was the sound of the descending near-flood, prior to a misty sunrise. The Pre-Sunrise Morning Inspection revealed a beautiful high river, white-capped through the rapids, birds flying along the stream, the river pale green, the torrent rolling and splashing loudly. Storms have been predicted—and obligatory showers, of course, but not yet. I’m now moodily sipping a medicinal glass of Shiraz because rain of any quantity will further load the saturated hillside, further reducing my chances of living long enough to win the Nobel Prize for Literature—but that’s life. Suddenly I’m reminded of something I managed to see on TV last night and actually remember: David Stratton and Margaret Pomeranz discussing Francoise Sagan and the film of the book, Bonjour Tristesse. As did the critics, I remembered the book well, but was startled to see the actor portraying the writer not as the young woman (teenager) she was when she wrote her famous story, but as a middle-aged woman! What that reminded me of was a story I wrote recently, one, suggested or even perhaps adapted from, I think (one becomes hazy when self-medicating), the ill-fated and unpublished “Earthrise”, this story called, “One morning in May” (ah, Meliza Korjus, I shall take to my grave that 1938 I think it was, image of MK (The Berlin Nightingale), that exciting singer singing ‘One day when we were young’ in the film The Great Waltz. I saw it, I think, in about 1939 when I was living with my family in Pilgrims Rest (the family had returned to South Africa in 1937, my Cabin Boy Year). Yes, 1938. Anyway, forgive me, I was reminded of All That because in my long story in which Col Harvey Rigaud—I loved writing that story—the character of an ADF guy who deployed (if that’s the word) a remarkable young woman, the character, Lt Col Sarah Hart, for Special Ops during that unfortunate time in the future when Australia was invaded by “Militias” from neighbouring countries…and Harvey Rigaud was, alas, sitting in his Brussels office (sorry, that’s a long story) attempting to learn French by reading Bonjour Tristesse in French. Francoise Sagan, born in Lot, was only 18 in 1954 when she published her novel. As I recall, I was only 25 then.

When I went down to the belvedere at 13:00 there were five blue and white irises open and there were many of the five-petal pink clovers flowering too and not forgetting the myriad native violets—all flowering in or possibly on the lawn. Consider how surprising it is to see violets chopped off by mowing in one week, then up and blooming again, the next with a near-flood in between. I’m fortunate to have such a lawn, a self-organizing lawn: one that is a gift of the floods (not this near-flood, though). Further, the tradescantia is flowering (white, like tiny orchids), there are (also white) small jasmine flowers, a few surviving impatiens (balsam, when I was younger) and although I saw no dahlia tubers sprouting during the Morning Inspection I counted four popping up under the chicken wire in the Dog’s Garden at 13:00 hours. They were not, of course, flowering. And, how could I almost forget: the European privet has begun flowering, too. Jannelle used to suffer awful hay fever in October because of the European privet flowering. Once, I remember, I saw a carpet snake (python) hanging out, literally, on a flowering Euro privet. My point is that the mingled scent of these little flowers is heady and, well, strange. While being chelated yesterday I surreptitiously leaned forward to sniff at a vase of flowers: the sweet pea had very little fragrance (I well remember how overpowering, almost, sweet pea seemed when I was a child; similarly so with the dark red Joyce carnation—ah, those lost scents). Missing, here and now, is the sweet and sour smell of a rising flood cleaning decomposing debris from the banks; instead, the strangely mingled scents of privet and jasmine.

Two more remembered events and then I’ll stop. The first was seeing, on Monday, Oct 4, I think, a line of 13 big brown cormorants, bedraggled somewhat, standing in the rain on the opposite riverbank, just upstream of the bridge. They looked unhappy, annoyed and a little tense (not unlike myself these past few days). As I stepped on to the bridge deck the cormorants decided to leave and took off upstream in the mist and rain, climbing at first, as they generally do, before dropping lower quite quickly so as to fly along the line of the river but scarcely a metre or so above the water. I guess they go hungry when the river becomes a near flood.

The other sight was also a surprise: yesterday (Thursday, Oct 7) afternoon there was part of a rainbow to be seen about 50 or 60-m downstream. It spanned both sides of the river. I wondered if anyone else saw it, or had I been the only human to be privileged? Oct 8 2010.

October 26 2010. Some sun this morning and some bigger patches of blue. There have been intermittent showers (and rain periods) for days; consequently the river has come up the best part of 1-m—which is considerable.

By chance I recently saw James May’s interesting TV program on, of all things, his plasticine garden exhibit (Royal Horticultural Society: Chelsea Flower Show). The exhibit was certainly unusual and indicated just how hard one has sometimes to think when planning such unique tasks: details, details, and the exhibit was a great success if only because the Public liked it so much.

I’ve been editing—never my favourite occupation except when the writing is old enough to be interesting (‘did I write that?’) or when part of the subject or topic being re-thinged is also the subject of a television program (this one about Greece). I strained to see every detail because this particular program was brilliantly filmed from a helicopter. I’ve been re-editing a story about Rhodes and Mykonos and was so intrigued that I realised I was moving and peering at odd angles (‘I well remember that street!’ ‘That was where the cafĂ© was, the one where they danced!’). I was seeing, for the first time, familiar places filmed from above and almost simultaneously visualizing some of those long ago times—a compelling and nostalgic experience. When I thought afterwards of my enthusiasm I knew that it had a lot to do with the unusual way of presenting the material: I need a helicopter if I’m ever going to see Earthrise properly.

–Then I sat down and had a good look at the canopy over the riverside lawns here.

The canopy, when looked at, seems omnipresent and unless I make a point of straining to see up and into it, I’ll miss most of the action. I’ve been thinking about this a great deal: most of what I look for and look at is habitually low-level, on or near the ground, or at or close to eye-level; I seldom walk about here while looking up. It simply is not safe to walk looking up: there are snakes, e.g., that never welcome being disturbed; multiple objects to trip over, nettles itching to sting me, branches and shrubs supporting thirsty leeches ready to leap on me (yesterday I went outside to plant some seedlings, the rain having miraculously stopped, yet I was unable to avoid a leech in the ear (this is much less fun than you might think). When I stopped and looked up I saw high above me a complex network of branches alive and dead, great amounts of greenery, the canopy a moving, gleaming show of lights and colours, birds moving and feeding, orchids and other epiphytes. Significantly, I saw the extent to which some trees like several of the old and high white cedars have spread their enormous limbs such that together, they cover or overlook very large areas. So what, do I hear you murmur? So this: imagine that you’re pushing a noisy motor mower and wearing earmuffs. See? You would be, as I often am, greatly at risk of being driven into the earth by a falling limb or an entire tree that noisily breaks (though we hear it not), hurtles destructively down by smashing everything that impedes it and arrives with all the carelessness of gravity to destroy gardeners. If I’m sitting quietly, reading or writing in the garden I have a small chance (on hearing a limb or whole tree breaking overhead) of Making A Dash For It, but it’s scarcely half a chance: you would probably bet on gravity bringing branch and victim to a dramatic and deadly finish on the lawn or ground rather than the gardener (however young, sprightly or otherwise inspired) struggling out of the chair, books and papers and medicinal glass of wine flying in ultra slow motion as if glimpsed magically in the mind, viz, seeing oneself fleeing during the action immediately before being crushed like a cockroach, terminally). It’s almost enough to make a chap give up mowing. Gardeners must necessarily live and move &c &c down on the ground contained within The Understorey. (Unless, of course, we have the means to establish Aerial Gardens along the big boughs. One possibility might be to construct walkways enabling access to these Elevated Places: stoutly made and supported, they would rise gracefully in easily walked spirals and inclines and be so well camouflaged that hardly anyone would notice them unless they looked UP). As I look out the window I realise I’m seeing a forest of trees here and that despite their great heights, most of those trees—the major portions and parts of them—are Up There Out of Sight, Almost. I feel so grounded down here (where so little light penetrates) that I must use my imagination to see those timber inclines, neatly hand-railed, built by Aerial Specialists, paths above ground that will allow me (and my friends) to stroll for hours INSIDE the canopies so wonderfully joined that they’re as profound as the ceilings and insides of domes of cathedrals. Only those ants that enjoy living high up in the stumps of eucalypt branches can enjoy what the birds enjoy: elevated views. Perhaps I could become a Photography Instructor: students to bring their own ladders and then practice picture-taking from on high.

Speaking of which: on my occasional walks recently, I’ve been (very carefully) walking and also looking up and into the roadside trees, most of which grow on that side of the road adjacent to the high ground. Down by Richardson’s Bridge there are very high riverside casuarinas (river oaks perhaps) that are so well dressed with stag and elk horn ferns, birds-nest ferns and sundry other ‘parasitic’ air plants that they look as decorative as some of the supporting pillars and other structures in Gaudi’s great cathedral in Barcelona. And along the way there is a splendid old tree (a species I’m not familiar with) that not only contains a BIG ecosystem of its own (all kinds of plants) but it allows crossover vines from the other side of the road to use it and that made me look out for crossovers along the road (there are a few). And that made me wonder why certain plants and trees grow mostly on one side of the road and not much on the opposite side. Vegetation on the high ground side is as thick as jungle (too crowded for a dog to bark in) and so much of it so densely packed that a number of once big and high trees are now as dead as dinosaurs having been strangled by vines and creepers; they appear as inelegant skeletal remains that poke their decaying trunks above the profuse growth below; nothing grows on them and they’re as bare as driftwood on a beach.

Which reminds me that the jacarandas have begun flowering (they started much earlier this month in Bellingen’s streets and along the trunk road and now trees in flower can be seen along Darkwood Road: the spring blooming hasn’t quite reached the Earthrise jacarandas, but it’s almost here.

The strong green stalks of Christmas orchids are now well up; some of the grasses, having grown themselves rapturously during all these wet days (and probably all of the nights, too) are now seeding. These oddities are green, with wheat-like seeds straw-coloured. Indeed, everything that can grow is doing so. The new dahlia tubers are leaping out of the wet earth; most are now safe (I hope) within the Dog’s Garden which now is dramatically surrounded by chicken wire (enough wire to cause the toughest of infantrymen to think twice before going over it and to my pleasure, discouraging all manner of Creatures from entering (like bandicoots). There are new roses, transplanted impatiens that the feral deer haven’t yet found, some nursery seedlings like petunia and marigold and red salvia to make some colour there).

Which reminds me: the lawns are looking suspiciously fecund, not only from the rains and showers, but I suspect, from the high floods in the last couple of years, for there is a number of relatively new-looking grasses not previously seen here. One of these mystery growths appears among the usual grasses as emerald green and looking oddly like young kikuyu prior to its pushing out long stalks that have as many as 12 flower-like ‘petals’ at the ends of which are small buds or blossoms (if cut by the mower, and I haven’t been able to mow for weeks, they instantly respond by regenerating the cut stems. Can they be alien growths, I wonder, from Out There?

The sub tropical chickweed of winter has ’disappeared’ and been ‘replaced’ by native violets (you’d never suppose there had ever been chickweed in the lawn, at all), so much so that if you’re a looker-downer like me (when respectfully walking on grasses) that you have to be so aware of each flower as to step carefully over or around hundreds of them. Big Lawn looks so floral now (the pink flowers of clovers are blooming, too) that I feel guilty at the prospect of mowing should the days become hot and dry enough. And there are also new-looking ferns appearing in those areas of Big Lawn where in winter there are impressive great forests of mosses. Perhaps I could advertise Lawn Tours and become the principal Guide?

Along Darkwood Road I’ve seen King Parrots feeding on the roadside dock; the dock is luxuriant now, some of the plants about 2-m high, bent over, heavy with many leaves and the tiny seeds. October has also been busy with butterflies bobbing through the gardens; most of them white, and often flying in two’s or three’s. Also, along Darkwood Road and the Trunk Road, the pecan orchards, now brightly leafed, and even more beautiful when seen through Polaroids.

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare?

WH Davies (1871-1940).