THE EARTHRISE DIARY (AUTUMN 2015)
DON DIESPECKER
© Text, Don
Diespecker (2015); guest writers retain their ©
I’ve been particularly
aware of trees this month. Many of them seem to be stressed: they crack, break
and are falling more frequently (though branches always fall more frequently
than whole trees, there is now a greater occurrence of falling trees). High
branches from old trees along the roadside here have fallen into the road
outside this address and that always seems a responsibility when I discover
them and I do my best to clear the mess with either a machete or an axe. A
heavy branch falling on the road is a real hazard. It takes only a couple of
seconds to smash it’s way through other foliage, ruining nearby trees,
threatening traffic and pedestrians and it takes much longer to reduce the
timber to bits and pieces and then to finally remove all of the debris. There
have been several such falls in the gardens and surrounding forest and two from
the old bloodwood adjacent to the house: a large branch fell and clipped the
edge of the roof and wrecked a bleeding heart tree; another, less big, hit the
roof next to my bedroom and made me jump: fortunately it struck horizontally
and did little damage. In the garden on recent hot windy days and some of them
also cool and wet, there have been branches big and small to pick up and to
remove and an old white cedar (they’re unrelated to Australian red cedars) has
dropped a couple of major limbs. Yesterday (Jan 28) when I was gathering small
sticks and branches after a windy spell I was so intent on seeing the ground,
eyes downcast, that I almost walked into a metre and a half of goanna. The
handsome goanna stood its ground and stared disdainfully at me: I did
immediately and effortlessly my High Back-flip With Partial Somersault and so
avoided becoming an afternoon snack for the hunter. For readers unfamiliar with
these Australian creatures, goannas attack, destroy and eat big (lightning
fast) snakes; as far as I know, goannas don’t consider live humans a delicacy.
DD January 2015
Breakfast time I lean
back easy against the bench top and kitchen sink savouring toast and raspberry
jam, no butter. Light on the river downstream is blinding white. Music on the
radio is beautifully apt, melodic and sounds almost familiar: a perfect few
moments between 7:45 and 7:50. I see I listen I sip black coffee. The announcer
identifies the music: Korngold, the garden scene, Much Ado About Nothing. It’s
February 28 2015. Imagine seeing this downstream view and hearing this particular
music again and into the future.
Imagine it as an annual anniversary: repeating as something fine, special,
history repeating, relishing the thought.
DD February 2015
On Wednesday night March 4 2015 I was dozing in bed when I
heard a tree cracking and then breaking close to the house: it was the old
white cedar behind the belvedere and its great branches had hung over the Big
Lawn for many years: this beautiful big tree was old long before I arrived here
to clear undergrowth and then make lawns and gardens in 1984. The lawn in this
area has never been a safe place to sit and the tree has shed many branches
over the years. I had earlier in the day taken an exercise break from the
computer when it was dry and comfortably warm outside and I’d enjoyed mowing
spirals around the Dogs’ Garden. The big white cedar had broken and fallen
across the tracks where only hours previously, I’d mowed. I always wear
earmuffs when mowing: I’d not have heard the tree breaking and falling had it
broken at that time. On Thursday night, March
5 2015, when also again in bed, I
remember hearing traffic slowing and probably stopping beyond my front gate in
the dark. In the morning I walked up the road to see what could be seen and
found a few metres from my gate that a big old eucalypt had dropped a hefty
branch from a great height: it had indeed stopped the traffic. Though much of
the debris had been moved aside it required additional work to clear the road
and to remove all of the debris.
DD March 2015
CHARIVARI
Although there are February Leftovers I mention first the
epigraphs: they’re perhaps unprecedented and of record-breaking length (I doubt
I’ve previously quoted myself like this in the Diary). If there’s an obvious
identifiable theme in this edition, it’s trees.
Earlier this morning I was dishwashing when there was the unmistakeable sound
of a tree or branch breaking yet again.
There’s never enough time to make a run for it or even to dive for cover unless
perhaps it’s a really big and quite old tree at some distance and being big
such a tree might also be hesitantly gathering itself and wobbling prior to
coming down heavily. Although part of the falling debris hit the corner of the
roof near the circular window in my study/office/library I saw at once that
there was no serious damage. One, the larger of two eucalypt branches, was hung
up in the fork of a Cheese Tree. The other, smaller branch had fallen crown
first on to the corrugated metal roof (all forms of corrugated roofing in Oz
are often “tin roofs” colloquially) above the entrance steps and was also hung
up in an adjacent tree. I’d again been lucky or perhaps fortunately been at a
distance up a step in the kitchen. Having made both an editorial precedent and
a first for the Diary I then pondered a couple of related notions. Maybe I
ought to write an occasional Editorial (with an upper case ‘E’) and were I to
go that far perhaps I might also then compose an op-ed? And why not when there’s no Editorial Board: there’s just
me? So I looked up op-ed, courtesy of
Wikipedia:
“An op-ed (originally
short for "opposite the editorial
page") is a piece typically published by newspapers, magazines, and
the like which expresses the opinions of a named author usually not affiliated
with the publication's editorial board. The op-ed is different from both editorials (opinion
pieces submitted by editorial board members) and letters to the
editor (opinion pieces submitted by readers).”
As for an Editorial,
I’ll sleep on the notion and may return to it later. And before properly
returning to Charivari I mention one of my favourite forms of writing, the feuilleton: “…it may be a part of a
European newspaper (usually the bottom of one or more pages) containing fiction
or criticism; or it may be a particular item printed in the feuilleton”
(according to my Random House College Dictionary). This French word means little leaf and that’s an attractive
notion in itself. I like the form because it enables writing a relatively short
essay or memoir piece of about a thousand words. Perhaps some of my Diary guest
writers will recognise themselves as feuilleton-ists or feuilletonistas?
The following Charivari
items may also be thought of as:
Arboreal Casualty List (late summer, February/March/April 2015)
And once below a
time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with
daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.
(Part of) Fern Hill by Dylan
Thomas
February 2015.
Following storms and showers and high water in the river the old Casuarina (or River Oak) leaning out low on my bank
its roots pretty well in the bank-side water, collapsed into the torrent (having
been poorly, was fading, was dying); connected to its root system and base: a
similarly old Euro privet also pulled down and into the river leaving a tangled
hazard for incautious kayakers). There had long been small orchids and other
epiphytes attached to the branches over the water that thrived in the wet air.
February 2015.
The top, most of the crown of one of the two African Tulip Trees (Spathodea campanulata) broke and fell on
the lawn close to the house.
March 4 2015.
After rotted chunks of the broken half of the old double trunked white cedar (Melia
azedarach) had fallen on the raised garden with its neat stone
surround (behind the belvedere, on the lawn’s periphery) the surviving single
trunk with its high horizontal big branch began discreet cracking in the early
evening (I was dozing in bed and realized the indistinct light sounds were from
a tree about to break but I was unable to see in the darkness which tree it was
although considered it most likely would be this white cedar. Following three
or four small cracks the trunk broke more loudly at 20:35 hours bringing it and
the very long and large right angled branch (richly endowed with stag horns,
elk horns and birds nest ferns, small orchids and sundry epiphytes) crashing
down. The major horizontal big branch and the canopied end branches fell across
the lawn as well violently pruning the Tabebuia
pentaphylla (the Roblé Blanco of the tropical Americas) in the Dogs’
Garden, wrecking plants in the garden and damaging the laboriously made stonewall
surround.
March 2015 (date
and time unknown). The major portion of a damaged and decaying native privet on
my side of the road’s boundary fence fell partly on the road on the (river
side) of my front gate and had been pushed/dragged aside by a person unknown
(probably a motorist). It was more than enough to have wrecked a motor vehicle.
March 5 2015. In
the early evening I had heard a homecoming or incoming vehicle pass and stop
suddenly beyond my gate and later resume but had not heard anything to suggest
a tree breaking. On Friday morning March
6 2015 Pete Thompson and I,
walking up the road to view an overhanging Tipuana
tipu (“Pride of Bolivia”) tree covered in ferns and epiphytes and
prioritising broken trees removal, found the stone-filled storm water (verge)
ditch harbouring several large pieces of broken eucalypt on its surface (a
motorist, unable to drive safely through the wreckage, will have necessarily
stopped and moved the debris in the dark). These broken tree parts were from
the big, old, and very high eucalypt just inside my roadside boundary. The
broken branch pieces had fallen from a great height and would have seriously
damaged any vehicle and likely have killed somebody had the tree shed its
branches when there was a motor vehicle passing.
March 6 2015.
Pete has tidied up tree and branch strikes next to the road and temporarily
repaired the also blitzed top of my gate. Now using the chainsaw he begins the
trimming away of small branches from the fallen white cedar giant that covers much
of Big Lawn and then he stacks in an arc the cut-away branches well away from
the tree. There are holes in the lawn that might turn one’s ankle and he
attends to these also. (For those who have not operated a chainsaw it’s
important that you have a safely cleared area
in which to operate, that you’re wearing appropriate safety gear that includes a visor
plus hard-hat and muffs able to
stop a saw bouncing up and bisecting you). Pete and I are among those who have not sliced or diced our selves with a
chainsaw. Jannelle and I built the house here largely with my riskily using a
chainsaw, then a prime and essential tool).
March 7 2015.
Saturday. The spread and tangled heaps of white cedar branches and twigs on Big
Lawn need lessening. I must reduce these with the heavy cutters and barrow them
away for easier disposal. I quite enjoy this work because in every minute of
cutting and loading I see more long-grassed and summertime-neglected Big Lawn
reappear. I plan to mow the lawn again in sections when the grass is dry enough
to more easily be cut (almost constant wetness from storms and showers in
February and now March being the cause of lawn wildness). Raking helps. Raking
is an old favourite of mine: it’s the almost-passive “equivalent” of scything,
is slow and easy and always effective: I see how much happier Big Lawn looks
when it gets this sort of grooming and of course the rake operator is enabling
a contemplative or meditative experience that relates closely to motor mowing
as well as to imagery, the imagination and creative writings. While I think of
it I mention here the danger of mowing anywhere near the big trees at
Earthrise: motor mowers are noisy (they also pump exhaust fumes directly at the
expiring mower pusher) and wearing earmuffs is a must. Similarly so for
chainsaw operating: you need to protect your hearing. However, when wearing my
old pistol club muffs (just as big and clumsy as most other muffs): I can’t
hear trees breaking or branches falling. (I remember Darcey Browning teaching
me to stand behind him with a handful of fine gravel that I could toss at the
back of his safety helmet to alert him in the event A N Other tree or breaking
branches were now falling earthwards at us whilst he was busy chain-sawing
immediately in front of him. If we’re quick enough we can switch off the
chainsaw with a push of the thumb and run like mad to escape the A N Other
falling tree or branches. If one is solo mowing, muffed, surrounded by big high
trees or solo chain-sawing surrounded by trees, then ear muffs may ensure the
sudden and violent expiry of the muffed mower or cutter: these actions come
with the territory, as it were). At the end of the afternoon I’ve cleared a few
metres of wild lawn, the feeling is mixed: exultation, pleasurable satisfaction,
gratitude.
March 8 2015. Sunday.
I start late in the morning to continue reducing the broken branches prior to
barrowing them away. It’s hot and humid. In mid afternoon I switch to moving
the heap of sawn rounds (intended as firewood) to supply dumps close to the
house. The largely black goanna sways past busily or possibly anxiously. He
seems less interested in attacking me as a stringy form of desert and more
interested to re-find the reduced remains of the cold chicken recently left out
late in the day with the kitchen scraps (thus avoiding daytime’s noisy crows
and most of the noisier night creatures that kindly and magically reduce and
transform my kitchen scarps into compost that makes adjacent tradescantia and
other colonizing weeds groan with delight). I lay one of my favourite rakes
across the barrow handles and thus armed keep an eye on the goanna. When I see
that the goanna is chomping on the chook remains (“chook” is Strine for
non-Aussie readers) and that he also sees me at a distance I relax a little.
One of the “isolated thunderstorms” looms. I stagger up to the house and switch
off the snoozing computer drink much needed water and return to Big Lawn. I
also prise loose and carefully remove broken tree parts and tangled branches
from the Dogs’ Garden and carefully avoid further damaging the stonewall
surround that I enjoyed building a couple of years ago. Plants have been
destroyed the Thompson wood-chipping ground cover in this garden is churned and
the sobering thought of Endless Restoration Gardening arises like a spectre. At
the back of my mind: one of Strauss’ Four Last Songs, the melody of ‘Sunset.’
RS shuffled off at 85 when I was a mere 20. I retire thoughtfully, hobbling
somewhat, but I return with a stubby of ginger beer and sit pleasure-filled at
the belvedere until the midges attack in waves. Later when I reach my bed I see
TV images of the Messerschmitt 162 and Adolf Galland, the WW2 German air ace
and I remember meeting one of Galland’s alleged fliers in Florence years ago.
Why is it I wonder that my memories and images of long ago are sharper than
those of last week?
April 17 2015. Two
high branches, eucalypt, have fallen next to the front steps (hung up). The old
Stinger on the Riverbank Lawn an entire tree and its root system come suddenly
down in still air and both Pete working on the river side of the house and I
hear the crash; later Pete chainsaws the soft and heavy trunk. We take great
care to avoid the large leaves: the sting from the briefest touch is intense
and guaranteed to last for a painful day or two.
April 27 2015.
The remains of the old white cedar, it’s great limbs sawn into firewood rounds
and all of the debris has been removed and the lawn repaired with sawdust and
soil. The stump has been chain-saw-trimmed and now looks like a kind of
splintered monument. I’m surprised to see that a single new growth example has
sprung from the hard and now smooth surface of the stump. I step over the
remains of the surrounding garden the better to see the little green tree growing
from the rotted and scarcely alive stump expecting to find that one of the ripe
cedar seeds has dropped into a gap between the outer bark and the sapwood and
germinated there but there is no gap. I’ve been photographing what looks like
an evergreen bonsai and when I show this to Pete Thompson he explains that the
tiny “tree” is indeed growing from the cambium (not to be confused with
Cambrian): “The cambium is a layer of delicate meristematic tissue between the
inner bark or phloem and the wood or xylem that produces all secondary growth
in plants and is responsible for the annual rings of wood”. Cambium is a word used in Botany; Cambrian (Geology)
pertains to a period of the Palaeozoic era.
OP ED ONE: TREES
DD
“Eucalyptus grandis, commonly known as the flooded gum or rose gum, is a tall tree with smooth bark, rough at the base fibrous or flaky,
grey to grey-brown. At maturity, it reaches 50-metres (160 ft) tall,
though the largest specimens can exceed 80-metres (250-ft) tall. It is found on
coastal areas and sub-coastal ranges from Newcastle
in New South Wales
northwards to west of Daintree
in Queensland, mainly on flat
land and lower slopes, where it is the dominant tree of wet forests and on the
margins of rainforests.” (Wikipedia)
I first saw Australian flooded gums
in the Transvaal at Pilgrim’s Rest in 1937 and Australian Eucalypts may also be
seen in many other countries. They were the first such trees I’d ever seen and
they were growing straight and true in the local mining company’s plantation
eventually to be felled and used as timbering and props in the local goldmines.
I thought about that again when I stopped (during a drive on the Pacific
Highway between home and Newcastle) to see the highest tree in NSW near
Buladelah: it’s a mighty 400-years old flooded gum and was then 76.2-m high
with an 11.5-m circumference at its base. I also remembered that when I was a
young schoolboy in South Africa I vowed to one day build my own house,
preferably in the mountains and close to a river that I could see from my
house. When first I saw the trees on this 10.2-ha property I wanted to live
here: it was trees, high ground and the adjacent river that attracted me more
than thirty years ago. I bought the land, two of us built the house and I’m
still here. The lower reaches of this up and down place have always been
flood-prone: I’ll never quite be used to floods but I’ve been flooded many
times here since 1984: I’m an old guy with lots of first-hand experience of Bellinger
River floods. Earthrise is always so interesting a place for me that I easily
imagine it as settings for stories, for novels, for movies: it’s that kind of
place. I can’t easily imagine this place that I’ve long called “Earthrise”
without either the river or the trees. Imagining that either trees or river might exist here alone one without the other
is a weird thought. The trees and the river are interrelated, interconnected and
interdependent in my view (the three erudite words, just written have been used
by many others as well as by me for quite a few years now). The flooded gums
have always stood out: they were the first trees I photographed when I bought
the property. Initially there was so much colonizing lantana on the lower (riverside)
reaches that it was impossible to see the river without climbing a tree or
climbing the steep forested slopes, the high ground, that help make this place
seem almost primeval.
Much of the lantana has gone now and the pole house that
Jannelle and I built here in 1984/5 has splendid views of the river. Hollywood
and other movie-making centres would love it too, I imagine. There is still far
too much lantana in places and there is a surfeit of sub-tropical grass that
self-seeds dramatically every March. Controlling that grass is hugely
difficult. And there is something else now, something that wasn’t in any way
obvious 30 or so years ago: dead and dying trees that crash to earth often
enough when least expected. The clearing of “weeds,” “lesser scrub,” untimely storms,
floods or fires are all aspects of change, some of that change effected by
people like me, the casual stewards of land, forest, river who are merely
“passing through” as Robert Redford’s character says in the movie, Out of Africa (based on the book of
that name by Karen Blixen). Everything does indeed change whether we’re here as
stewards, foresters, river watchers, retirees: the environment, as we call our
surroundings in a separating way, alters slowly or fast whether we like that or
not: “the environment” is a live system of living systems. And then there’s dry
rot and age, agriculture and horticulture, poisons and fertilisers and perhaps
chance. And I don’t for a moment forget global warming and climate change,
noteworthy phrases that I and my colleagues and students were beginning to
explore in the university in the 1970s and 1980s. And it would be silly to
ignore the brutal fact of there now being more than seven billions of us on the
planet: there was a paltry two billions of us humans, or slightly less when I
was born in 1929. For a fragile planet like ours, that’s heavy pressure.
Stephen Hawking has just suggested that we’ll need to find another planet in
the not too distant future (so far, we haven’t been smart enough, collectively,
to have ensured we can keep doing what we’re continuing to foolishly keep doing
to what we call distantly call “the Environment). Rather, politicians ensure
that they will decide what, if
anything, to do about those annoying problems. In other words, if the
electorate fails to make the decisions that politicians squabble over, our
children and grandchildren will be faced with the gigantic task of saving the
planet.
In recent months some of the biggest and oldest trees, those
seen easily and frequently because they’ve been close to my house rather than
deep in the forest, have either fallen or of necessity, been felled to prevent
damage to buildings and facilities. For very big, old, high trees to be felled
requires expensive expertise. The remains
of forest giants require hours of time-consuming labour to dispose of or to
sensibly use. I would much rather sit and enjoy seeing the forest than I would fear running away (were it possible)
from falling branches or worse. Only one falling tree has hit the house: it
wasn’t quite a giant although it broke some glass. These notions are now
changing and changing faster than ever and at a time when there have never been
more humans: whatever we do we inevitably add pressure to our planet’s living
systems. Trees collapsing and branches falling for no apparent reason seem also
to be indicators of dramatic changes in Earth’s living systems.
April 28 2015.
Sunny again and at lunchtime I get down to Big Lawn as soon as I’m able. The
air is almost like crystal the sky is blue the flooded gums trunks bold white
the lawn and surrounding trees green and at the crowns of the two African Tulip
Trees there are the cup-sized orange flowers, all these visual splendours
lively and compelling. Grass still grows in its colonizing insistence that
summer is still warm and bright and
that means there’s still time to express more of its verticality if the mowers
don’t clear-fell it first. The lawn’s native violets recently mowed (I have a
Memo of Understanding with the violets) are flowering again after late summer
lawn mowing. At least once every day it’s sticks and branches pick-up time: the
old lawn steward collects windfall litter and also spots the bright yellow
seeds of the once magnificent white cedar that now is sawdust and firewood sawn
rounds. Everything changes.
FEUILLETON ONE: REMEMBERING
POLANYI
DD
If I were to take a year or maybe two years off and focus I
might just be able to sort all of my
papers into stacks identifiable by signs or flags. And were I then to take at
least another year to categorise those stacks with all of my remaining focus I
would surely know where to find almost anything that I had ever written or
typed (certainly everything extant and inside my house). Cataloguing and filing have never
appealed and I prefer to scribble notes to myself on stickies or on the backs
of used envelopes that clutter my worktable. I don’t have a tidy mind; parts of
my mind resist organisation and methodology. Now I’m remembering the movie,
“The Mechanic,” in which there is depicted a handgun and on this weapon is
engraved the words Amat Victoria Curam:
and this means, more or less, that victory or success loves care or careful
preparation. Thus the cheery Latin advice implies that only when I take pains
to make an efficient filing system will I succeed in finding the books,
manuscripts, notes and references that I always need to find quickly. I want also
to remember which of Polanyi’s writings contains one of the most memorable
statements I’ve ever seen: We know more
than we can tell. I think it might have been in his book, Personal Knowledge, but I’m uncertain.
No matter. The unforgettable words came up recently and yet again, for me. I
prefer to read, when I can organise the right time, in good light and in the
garden, and I like to watch TV late at night. I recently was watching
Broadchurch on ABC 1 (now, apparently, the only TV free to air channel to not
run advertisements during a show or program). I could hardly make any sense of
Broadchurch: there are too many characters and too many of them whose personal
stories mix darkly with the overall dark story that is the film’s principal
theme. Secrecy was written intentionally in to the story (see this explained
via Wikipedia). There are, at least
there are for me, ideal situations, dialogue, actions that are indeed parts of
the story and its plot, but their somewhat covert parts are, it seems,
available to the viewer and not always available to the rest of the players. On
the other hand watching Downton Abbey on TV is perfectly straightforward
despite the unforgivable advertisement breaks: there are two groups of players,
the aristocrats upstairs and the servants, downstairs: almost all seem
principal protagonists. They all have their personal stories and these
sometimes overlap or are included in the thematic stories of the principals.
What makes Downton easy is to understand is that boundaries are always clear
and some of the posh folk upstairs and some of those below stairs are often
playing associated parts as most important
protagonists. I tend to think that Downton is easy to grasp; Broadchurch never
is easy and invariably is dense. And now, I’m happy to report, there is the
Danish language story, Legacy (it has explanatory text in English though the
viewer must read speedily). As with all the recent Danish movies or TV
series, particularly thrillers, I easily can understand the plot, the themes
and the brilliantly filmed acting and not
knowing any Danish except for a few words and phrases. Why is this so? I feel
strongly that I am easily able to understand these Danish shows (“The Eagle” is
another) because the writers, producers, the actors and camera persons
understand that there are particular ways
to present their film to viewers such that the viewer will know how to follow and understand having already learned intuitive ways of understanding. The way that enables comprehension and
understanding is the consequence of thinking imaginatively, I’ve decided, not
wracking my brain to deduce but imagining possible solutions in images. Actors always
have ways to demonstrate to convey what they want us to know: sometimes an
actor can do that with a half smile or a suggested raising of the eyebrows or
pursed lips: all without words. The viewer who sees that and also thinks of several possible solutions very quickly
will pick the one that often is only implied. The viewer listening to dialogue,
to torrents of words, will lead him- or herself astray by attempting to analyse
an actor’s torrent of words; the viewer who figures it out what the actor intends
will go beyond words to his or her own department of possibilities by seeing
images and selecting the likely one. Images might serve intuition better than
mere words; thus, we each will know more
than we can tell because the telling of that will likely take us far more
time than we can afford, particularly when watching a movie. We are somehow
subtly able to each make our own almost parallel action movies that interpret
the one we see on television or in the cinema. When we see for example a look
of uncertainty being conveyed by an eye movement a glance or the tiniest of
frowns we’ll know more know better
than the words spoken or displayed visually as text what the actors intend. And
sometimes we won’t have a nicely organised word to “explain” what we’ve seen
yet we will know what is being acted
because we know that words are not what we see: they are only popular IDs that
we use for convenience and not for the real thing. The real thing is what we
see or its authentic reproduction within our minds.
CREATIVE WRITING
45,000-YEARS OLD SWAMP KAORI.
SHARON SNIR
I believe
it was around 45 thousand years ago when the Kaori* Tree that has become our
dining room table began to sprout through the earth oblivious of a journey too
long for me to clearly fathom. After growing for many hundreds of years it
attained a width that required at least three minutes for a fully-grown adult
man to walk the entire circumference. There was a moment in this massive
tree’s existence when it must have known that its time had come. I can only imagine the groan that turned into an
agonizing roar as it began its terrifying collapse towards the earth from which
it began. The shredding of ancient bark, the tearing of wooden sinews, the
cracking of broken branches who had once stretched up and out towards an ever
expanding universe, the cracking of shattered limb had come to a screaming end. Silence. Stillness. Shhhhh.
Over the
years rain fell and drenched it and drowned it and dragged the tree into a
stinking swamp, sinking deep into thick blackened waters where it stayed for
over forty thousand years.
I believe
it was around fourteen years ago when my husband went camping in the North Island
of New Zealand and came upon a town called Te Anu.
There he
visited a gallery where artists had used giant cranes to lift these ancient
trees from their wet swampy graveyards. Armed with electric saws, chisels,
hammers and whatever else they needed, these artists re-birthed these trees
into sacred shapes, tables, chairs and beautiful sculptures that would then
last many, many more lifetimes. My husband saw a table. It was hiding in the
corner of the workshop, dusty, ignored and priceless, meaning it had no price
on it.
He sent an
email with photo attached of a huge swamp Kaori table with the question. Shall
I buy it? Not withstanding I did not know if it would even fit in our home (I
doubted it) and after much deliberation I decided to take a chance. He
loved it and I thought why not? He told the salesman he would pay on delivery,
left a small deposit and had a few doubts it would get through customs. It did.
Six huge,
grunting, heavily sweating, unashamedly swearing men carried this 500-kg table
up our twelve steps three months later and placed it in the nook we called a dining
room. We squeezed around it every week: my parents, our five children,
occasionally my sister and her children and eventually our children’s
partners. It has supported the food of Sabbaths, festivals, birthdays,
anniversaries and simple evening meals. It has heard the wonderful stories of
my deeply missed dad and gently held the arguments of siblings and spouses over
the years. It remembers the first time we sat around it as everyone
peered into the still can't identify. We shared grades at school, crushes
with boys, secrets that were told in some strange language the children used to
exclude us oldies. The conversations around the table overlapped each
other: sound levels rose and fell
then rose again to unearthly decibels. Our table has seen eyes roll at
jokes repeated for the umpteenth time and eyes glued to the faces of the family
story-tellers, stories about life that captured the hearts of everyone and
brought the cacophony of voices into silence. We have prayed and cried
and laughed and spilled our souls out over the table and we have said our
goodbyes again and again to each one of us whose time it was to leave. It has
heard the heartbeat of a newly born baby at her first Shabbat and it has held
bottles and bottles of wine and beer and cups overflowing with tears at first
moments and last times shared. It has welcomed new recipes, glamorous table
settings and been lovingly polished with sweet smelling oil.
Two years
ago we sold our family home and I felt it might be time to sell the table
because it had grown too small for our ever-expanding family. My husband
quietly informed me there was no way he would let the table go. No bloody
way.
As it happens
it has found a new home: a holiday home in the Blue Mountains. My husband tells
everyone we bought the house for the
table. The truth is I fell in love with this little hundred-year-old cottage
the same moment as my husband and I wasn’t thinking of the table. Perhaps the
table, in all its age-magical-old wisdom helped us find the house.
Once again
six heavily sweating men lugged this piece of antiquity and gently placed it
down on 100-years old floorboards. I stand back and try to imagine what life
was like when our table was just a seedling. I imagine a world where war was
unknown, where nature thrived, where peace was the only state of being.
And I know
our table carries all this into our home and will continue to bless our family
and friends for a long time to come.
•Agathis
australis,
commonly known by its Māori name kauri, is a coniferous tree
of Araucariaceae in
the genus Agathis,
found north of 38°S in the northern districts of New Zealand's North Island.
Various species of kauri give diverse resins such as kauri
copal, Manilla copal and Dammar gum.
The timber is generally
straight-grained and of fine quality with an exceptional strength-to-weight
ratio and rot resistance, making it ideal for yacht hull construction. The wood
is commonly used in the manufacture of guitars due to its lightweight
and relatively low price of production. It is also used for some Go boards (goban). The uses of the
New Zealand species (A. australis) include shipbuilding, house
construction, wood paneling, furniture making, mine-braces and railway-sleepers. (Wikipedia).
Sharon Snir is a teacher, author and psychotherapist
sharonthru12@gmail.com
TREES
BRU AND TRACEY FURNER
Our next-door neighbor
hates our trees. When we arrived here there were four trees in our yard: a
large Camphor Laurel by the front gate and a venerable Fig in the front
yard with two companions, one a tall Cabbage Tree Palm, the other an
ancient Mulberry which although rather stunted in appearance provides us with
an extraordinary amount of fruit each year.
Our old (approximately
100-years) blind Sulfur-crested Cockatoo lived beside the Camphor Laurel. Locked
up in his cage at night to protect him from marauding cats, he had the run of
the yard in the day. He apparently hated the Camphor Laurel too, as unbeknown
to us and disguised by low foliage at its base he set about ring-barking it. We
only became aware of this when the massive tree turned up its toes, or roots as
the case may be.
By this time however we
had introduced more trees to the yard, one of them a Lemon-scented Gum at first
very cute and small near the back door and now towering forty feet or so and with
the alarming habit of dropping large branches onto the yard and occasionally
onto parked cars (this has been expensive!). Yet such a beautiful tree which
when in flower is beloved by the fruit bats that like to drop incredibly sticky
poo onto parked cars. This too has been expensive, in this case of the time and
energy that is then devoted to the removal of said droppings. Although we have
now discovered that methylated spirits is a pretty good solvent that may be
good information for anyone else similarly plagued by fruit bats.
Outside the gate we
planted an innocent looking small tree that we had been given by a well meaning
but ignorant friend who said it was just a shrub. It has grown in to a
substantial Kaffir Plum that delights both us as well as the bats with its
astringent mouth-puckering fruit and has annoyed our neighbour with its low-hanging
branches that until they were trimmed brushed the roof of his large caravan as
it negotiated the street. Local kids love the Kaffir Plum for its invitingly
climbable limbs. We have frequently heard the sound of young voices coming from
among the leaves and peering up, have found half a dozen kids holding a meeting
(one even going to the extent of installing a chair on some thick accommodating
branches).
The main objects of the
neighbour's ire however, are the trees in our front yard. I became aware of his
antipathy when I was cutting down the deceased Camphor Laurel with a chainsaw.
He observed that it was a shame I didn't cut down the trees in the front
of the house because they killed his view of the lake that lies at the foot of
the yard. The now numerous trees in the backyard were of no concern to him as
they only obscured his view of the house on the other side of ours. These
trees having magically appeared since our arrival and now number three large Eucalypts,
a Jacaranda, two Apples, a Nashi pear, a Mandarin, a Black Sapote, a Plum, a
Lime, two Lemon trees, an Avocado, a Cumquat, two Moreton Bay Figs in pots and
I suppose the four Coffee bushes don't really count.
It's around the front
of the house that the real tree problem arises for the neighbour. What was once
a relatively bare yard now houses a total of 23 trees of varying sizes and
types. Flower-bearing natives, towering gums of various types and even an
obscure Tasmanian Blackwood, transplanted from a pot in a house in Sydney when
a friend wanted it to go to a better home: it's never done any good and probably
doesn't like the climate on the central coast of NSW. It’s scrawny.
The South East
Queensland Tamarind and the common or garden Loquat are of interest bordering
the neighbour's fence as they do. The Tamarind is of particular note as it is
apparently rather rare or at least it's very rare in this part of the world.
Originating in Queensland it suddenly appeared in our yard perhaps dropped by a
bird migrating from warmer climes. Along with the Loquat it produces abundant
fruit that attracts a great variety of birds as do the rest of the trees in the
yard. Sitting next to the veranda is a substantial paper-bark upon the boughs
of which a tawny frogmouth loves to perch and eye us sleepily as we sit on the
verandah.
Down at the bottom of
the sloping front yard lives an Almond tree that produces a nice crop each year
preceded by the most beautiful white flowers that are illuminated in a magical
fashion when we sit by the fire in the fire pit just beyond it.
Just a bit further on
is a small gum with most beautiful red flowers: the gift from a friend to
commemorate the life of my father who lived with us until his death a few
months short of his 100th birthday.
Two of the eucalypts
have grown to large trees after being wrenched out of the ground as small
saplings that were growing in a brother's yard. There are several
Grevilleas that attract numerous birds and I have almost forgotten to include
in the count a Cherry, a Papaya and a Banana (strictly a herb) but bigger than
a lot of trees.
In a concession to our
neighbour we have radically pruned the Loquat and the Tamarind, thus greatly
improving his view of the western end of the bay and earning his
appreciation.
To be perfectly fair,
our neighbour says he doesn't hate trees he just doesn't like them blocking his
view of the lake.
We love the view of the
trees.
Bru and Tracey
(Dendrophiles)
The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only
a green thing which stands in their way. (William Blake).
brutrac@yahoo.com.au
permathumb@yahoo.com
Editor’s
Note:
While speaking with Bru and Tracey on the phone, Tracey mentioned a word I’m
not familiar with: coppicing. The word
describes what I’ve previously thought of as “secondary growth” or “re-growth.”
A Wikipedia article defines
coppicing as being “an English term for a
traditional method of woodland
management that takes advantage of the fact that many trees make new
growth from the stump
or roots if cut down. In a coppiced
wood young tree stems are repeatedly cut down to near ground level. In subsequent
growth years many new shoots
will emerge and after a number of years the coppiced tree, or stool, is ready to be
harvested and the cycle begins again. Coppicing
maintains trees at a juvenile stage and a regularly coppiced tree will never
die of old age.
“Typically,
coppiced woodland
is harvested in sections or coups on a rotational basis. In this way a
crop is available each year somewhere in the woodland. Coppicing has the effect
of providing a rich variety of habitats, as the woodland always has a range of
different-aged coppice growing in it, which is beneficial for biodiversity. The cycle
length depends upon the species cut, the local custom, and the use to which the
product is put. Birch
can be coppiced for faggots (bundles of brushwood) on a three- or four-years
cycle, whereas oak
can be coppiced over a fifty-years cycle for poles or firewood.
“Coppice
and pollard growth is a response of the tree to damage and such damage can
occur naturally as well as from deliberate woodland management. Trees may be browsed or broken by large
herbivorous animals such as cattle or elephants, felled by beavers or blown over by the wind.
Some trees such as linden
may produce a line of coppice shoots from a fallen trunk and sometimes these
develop into a line of mature trees.” (See also Pete Thompson’s writings
below. Ed).
THE TREES IN MY LIFE
JILL ALEXANDER
I don’t know when the swing appeared. I just remember it was
always there, visible through the window in our dining room. My father had made
it for my brother and me, suspending it between two fir trees in our yard. I
spent many happy hours dreaming, singing, and shouting in pure delight as I
pumped my swing higher and higher toward the heavens.
As I grew a little older and bigger, I followed my brother
up the rocky hill that bordered our back yard. We called this area that we
loved climbing “the Rocks.” Once we reached the top we followed a path known
only to ourselves until we reached “the Woods.” Here in our woods was a
paradise of huge Garry Oak trees and we fervently believed we had discovered
them. Before long I was able to
follow my brother’s example of climbing these trees and eventually perching at
the very top. From each of our vantage points, we talked to each other,
sometimes dreaming that we were birds flying in the sky and other times that we
were up in heaven as we looked down through the leaves and branches. The ground seemed very far away. Our
parents never knew about our climbing ventures. I know they would have worried
about us falling and stopped us, especially if they knew how high we had
climbed.
My father built a fishing cabin in the early 1930’s on the
bank of the Cowichan River. This was his paradise where he spent many hours
fly-fishing for trout. On a few occasions he and his four brothers made this
trip together. These were very happy times. After my father returned from WW2
we started making trips there as a family. The cabin was built high on the bank and my father had made
a path down to the river that had handrails made from tree branches. At the
bottom there was a swampy area that needed to be crossed in order to get to the
river. A huge cedar log had fallen part way across and my father used this log
as part of the bridge he built to the other side. I can remember crossing the
log with great trepidation for fear of falling into the swamp. After a while my
brother and I became quite brave and began running across the log that soon
became a welcoming friend to us.
The years rushed by and Jamaica beckoned. I lived there for
ten years and gave birth to two sons during that time. Many trees in those
Jamaican lives of ours were full of meaning for us. A grapefruit tree grew in
our front yard and each year it was loaded with fruit. We never tired of the
sweet taste of the fruit we picked straight from our tree. Mangoes grew there
as well and I remember fondly the soft thud they made as they dropped to the
ground. The first time I held one in my hand, I asked a Jamaican friend about
the best way to eat my mango. “In
the bathtub,” was the reply! Water coconuts were also plentiful and I remember the
swish of the machete as it sliced off the top to make a hole the perfect size
for drinking. This beautiful
island was full of trees for my sons to climb. I watched
them as they climbed joyfully onto limbs that jutted over the azure blue
Caribbean water and looked for the fishing boats returning home with their
catch. And they too had their dreams as they sat in their tree as my brother
and I had sat atop our Garry oak tree those many years ago.
Jill Alexander is enjoying her life of writing, reading and spending as
much time as possible with her large network of friends that includes boarding
school and nursing classmates and especially her ever-growing family of eight
grandchildren and two great grandchildren.
jillionalexander@gmail.com
FAMILY TREES
PETE THOMPSON
It was winter 1998 when we first set eyes on her. I'm not
exactly sure of her age back then but somewhere around 70- to 100-years would
be our best estimation. The children were six and seven years old when they
first eagerly climbed, explored and swung under her magnificent limbs. All the
neighbourhood kids and a few big kids as well enjoyed cool summer shade. She
was the biggest, oldest and most majestic tree we'd ever had in any of our
gardens. Providing shelter for the chickens, summer shade for the pigs, her
huge limbs were used to hoist our winter harvest of beef or lamb, chilling
overnight in readiness for the freezer.
In the autumn of 2001 our beautiful red cedar was almost
taken by a huge One in One Hundred Years flood that devastated our region the
Bellinger River Valley. It was only after the floodwaters had subsided that we
became aware that more than half of her massive root system was left exposed
and that our beautiful Australian cedar was in imminent danger of falling into
the newly exposed riverbed a drop of seven metres. Urgent measures were
undertaken to save her. First we lopped two large limbs the combined weight of
which relieved the pressure on the unexposed roots. The second measure was to
create a raft of logs and large rocks beneath the exposed roots and finally
finishing off with several tonnes of topsoil.
The Australian Red Cedar is part of a family of Cedar trees
whose range extends from Afghanistan to Australia. Ours was named as a separate
species prized for its beautiful red colour and most suitable for furniture
making. The Australian red cedar industry was relatively short-lived and by its
nature was self-destructive. Once all the old growth trees were harvested, that
was it! Toona Australis was not
suitable as a plantation species due to a moth that destroys new growth.
After the 2001 floods our beautiful cedar continued to
thrive until 2007 when a huge storm left its mark ripping two major limbs from
the south side of the tree. Then in 2012 for unknown reasons our beautiful
Australian red cedar started to die. Now in 2015 sadly our magnificent tree is
permanently bare standing like a ghostly reminder of those happy days.
The Australian red cedar Toona
Australis is one of a very small number of deciduous native trees in
Australia. Our other deciduous cedar (unrelated) is the Australian white cedar,
Melia azderach, a member of the
mahogany family, Meliacea that is native
to Indo-Malaya and Australasia. This tree also graces our garden providing
seasonal berries that attract the magnificent and vibrantly coloured Wompoo
pigeon and other bird species. Evidently these birds gorge themselves on the
berries into an almost drunken state. The adult tree commonly measures 20-ft to
40-ft tall, however in exceptional circumstances the tree can attain a height
up to 150-ft.
THE LITTLE BLACK FELLAS
PETE THOMPSON
It is just after sunrise on a beautiful March morning. I've
started my day in the usual way with my life partner Dee: our morning
meditations on the edge of the rainforest overlooking the platypus pool, our
most favourite place in the world. We have welcomed the new day, completed our
Tai Chi, taken a brisk plunge into the crystal clear waters and now returned to
the house where the phone is ringing. It’s Don: he has urgent news: his largest
and oldest white cedar is down and now lies across Big Lawn shattered and
broken. There’s a sense of urgency in Don's voice; the downed tree is in fact a
minor disaster. I ask if the tree has crushed any infrastructure or is blocking
access, but No.
When I arrive the next day I’m armed with an arsenal of
forestry equipment. I'm astonished to find that Don's fallen tree is in fact
one of the exceptionally tall examples and is covering a huge section of his
large lawn area. My estimation is that the white cedar is about 75- or 80-feet
overall or about 20-25-m excluding the canopy branches to be sawn first into
large rounds that could later be broken into fire-sized pieces. My prior
experience tells me that there will be many hours of chainsaw work ahead.
It is now two weeks later, work has been delayed by wet
weather that restricts access to the site. Don is out for the morning and I
have a good chance to complete the cleanup. The large rounds to be loaded into
a trailer are more than 30-in in diameter and are very hard on the equipment. I
stop for sharpening of the chain and another refuelling of the chainsaw. The
next cut is much easier and the saw goes through the wood as if through butter.
Suddenly without any warning I'm covered in little black insects. They’re in my
eyes and ears as I gently and calmly move away.
At first I think I've cut into a feral hive of European bees
hidden from view in a hollow section of the fallen tree, but I soon realise
that I'm not being stung! That’s s good! Could these little black fellas be
native stingless bees? I wait a few minutes until they calm down and as I move
closer to the last cut section the tiny fly-like bees are more clearly seen. My
next cut is above the previous one and reveals more bees and a sticky liquid
that flows onto the lawn. I taste it and it’s wonderfully sweet! Could this be
native honey or sugar-bag as indigenous Australians call it?
I decide to move these large log sections and any remaining
bees into the trailer and take them to a sunny position back at my place in the
hope that we might be able to 'save the colony' by transferring it into
suitable material that I have on hand from previous bee colonies. Later I find
out that this is a risky operation that more often than not fails, due to a
major disruption in the colony. As the bees have been in a fallen position for
a good while now and their food (sugar-bag) is lost in the lawn, the chances of
survival are very slim indeed. Perhaps in time if they survive this coming
winter they will settle and start collecting nectar again. Perhaps in a year we
might get some honey. Recent Internet checks indicate that this honey is very
rare and a mature colony may produce just one kilo (2.2-lb) each year. In
Australia, native bee honey when available, sells for more than $100/ kg and is
considered liquid gold by those in the know!
It's certainly worth a try!
Pete Thompson is a keen observer of Nature in the Bellinger River Valley.
FAMILY HISTORY
Some
detailed information describing the Diespecker and related families has been
included in recent Diaries and I’m pleased to note that several correspondents
have since written to me about this. Welcome to the Diary Trelss McGregor and
her husband Dr Wayne Vos who live near Grahamstown in South Africa; and welcome
to Professor David McGregor Luke who lives in Fredericton, NB, Canada. I invite
both David and Trelss to each please consider writing a biographical piece that
you might like to see in the Diary (although I’ve received several other family-related
emails I’m waiting on additional information before further identifying family
members).
From the Archive: In this edition I include a letter from my late
cousin, Joan Evard-Ray (1916-1995). The letter was written at the Kloof Rest
Home (South Africa) on April 6 1993. Items in square brackets are information I
have added.
Dear
Donald,
I was
pleased to hear from you with news of the present generation of the family. I’m
sorry to have taken so long to reply but I was away part of March on holiday in
Cape Town so decided to think about things and reply on my return. You have no
idea how thrilled I was to have heard from Nick [Diespecker] some years ago and
from Louise [Diespecker Lee] and now you; none of the cousins here are in the
least bit interested in the family so I have no one to talk to about it. All
you write is very interesting and I will be pleased to read what you have written
so far, also I will use Christian names, easier than saying your grandmother
and my grandmother &c; and another set of initials is EMAB (Elizabeth Mary
Atherden Bradley born Carly: EDBs wife [EDB=Edmund Durbyn Bradley].
To go back
to 1889 my grandfather Alexander McGregor was an engineer, he didn’t have a
degree I shouldn’t imagine, building roads and bridges in the Eastern Cape; a
couple he built were the Modder and Storms Bridges destroyed during the Boer
War: there was an old photo of them under construction. When he was courting
Harriett [Bradley] he was at Keiskama Hoek and found it inconvenient to travel
down to Grahamstown so after their marriage the whole family moved up to King
Williams Town. EMAB had died the previous year 1882. Later, Alexander was one
of the contractors on the Delagoa Bay to Transvaal border railway; he worked
with a George Pauling (I have read his book) and a Sir Thomas Tancred, whoever
he was, they were the big contractors. Alexander moved up to Delagoa Bay later
named Lourenço Marques and now named Maputo. He found the labourers were dying
like flies from malaria, dysentery &c inland. He went up to see what was
happening and contracted dysentery himself and was sent to Durban by the first
available ship and put in to Addington Hospital where he died a few days later.
In the meantime Harriett and my mother, Buntie [also christened ‘Harriett’]
aged six months came up to Durban and managed to see him before he died.
Alexander was apparently loaded with money, coins and notes, so a lawyer in
Durban took charge of it: the estate was then in Durban. Harriett moved up here
for convenience and EDB and Elizabeth and the youngest son, Frank, moved here
[Durban]. The family all kept together, come what may! They lived with Harriett
in “Rose Cottage” in Musgrave Road, just above where we lived [Joan, her
brother Alphonse Alexander and their mother, “Buntie”] in Mowbray place.
Alexander’s implements: picks, shovels &c were just left on the wharf at
Delagoa Bay and as Rudolph [Diespecker] was apparently coming down to Durban he
was asked to look Harriett up and find out what she wanted to do about them. He
came to the house, met Elizabeth and that was that! As you know, they were
married from Harriett’s house at the Musgrave Road Wesleyan Church; Buntie was
christened there, too. That is a very long introduction to R and E’s meeting:
excuse an old lady’s verbosity! As far as I can remember Elizabeth taught at
the Durban Ladies College, now the Durban Girls College when it was in St
Andrews and Russell Streets in town but I don’t remember what she taught, music
perhaps? [Elizabeth was an assistant in the music department]. I don’t know why
Rudolph was in Delagoa Bay, was he also a contractor for the railway or already
prospecting in E Transvaal? [Yes, RSD was a railways contractor or sub
contractor]. Harriett at one stage was looking after Jules’ son, Jimmy [James
Edward Lance Diespecker]. I think Jules was up in East Africa and Jimmy with
him. Jimmy also had either dysentery or malaria and he was sent to Harriett to
be looked after. Jimmy, by the way, nearly caused the death of my Uncle Alec,
but that’s another story.
When I was
last in Grahamstown in 1973 I went to see the house in Cross Street: old,
straight up and down double storey houses; they were all being restored by
Anton Rupere, the big industrialist
in SA. The foreman saw me peering in and when I said my great grandparents and
their family had lived there he invited me in to look around (an upright
ladder-like staircase leading to the upper floor: no wonder EMAB died of
heart!). We are a terrible family for dying of heart: Harriett, Elizabeth, my
two uncles and yours, Jean and Dick and now my brother Alec is very bad: look
after your heart! EDB died in Durban in 1897 (still [living] with Harriett [at
Rose Cottage]) and is buried in the West Street cemetery together with
Alexander, Harriett, Uncle Edmund and Buntie and a man who was brought down
from D/Bay dying (no one knew who he was so they put him in with Alexander as
he had come from D/Bay too! I suppose his poor family always wondered what had
happened to him!
An earlier
address in Grahamstown was Oak Terrace. I have an old greetings card sent by
EDB to his young son Edmund Dane [Bradley], born on the steamship DANE on their
way to SA. He died very suddenly when he was ten years old. Yes, I knew EDB was
a bookkeeper: on his marriage certificate he is [identified] as a straw bonnet
manufacturer; his father, William, was a straw plait manufacturer so I imagine
they must have worked together. William later rose very much in the world and
was a banker owning his own bank, I have heard the name but can’t remember it
now: it’s no longer in existence, anyway. The story goes that as he owned a
bank he was not allowed to speculate on the Stock Exchange so his two sons, EDB
and a younger one, Henry [Bradley], did it for him and unfortunately lost a
great deal of money and he had to pay up. They were both given 1,000 pounds
[stg] and told to go to the Colonies, EDB to here [SA] and Henry went to New
Zealand (he died young leaving two small children: the boy was Meredith Bradley
and the last time Harriett heard from his sister, Emmie, he was producing a
string of daughters and no sons! In his will which I saw at Somerset House old
William left shares in the Suez Canal Company worth 1,000 pounds [stg] to his
youngest son, Frederick [Bradley]. William left 4,000 pounds [stg] that was
quite a good sum in those days. His memorial card says that he was a JP and
also the Mayor of St Albans, Hertfordshire in, I think1868 (I went there to
find out the year).
The
Bradleys were weavers in Spitalfields and Bethnal Green. I’m sure that’s where
Durbyn (Durban) comes in though I have not been able to find out. Perhaps EDBs
grandmother was a Miss Durbyn: they were definitely Huguenots. I always think
it is a good thing they went to England and didn’t come out here otherwise we
would most likely be Afrikaans speaking. There are Durbans in the Huguenot
lists in the Guildhall Library in London (in the Apprenticeship lists and also
at the Guildhall). Several Bradley boys were apprenticed to Huguenot weavers
including two Williams. I don’t know if you will be interested in this or if
you want to concentrate on the Diespecker side, which of course is not my side
of the family apart from Rudolph marrying Elizabeth and their children. I
should think that Jules and Rudolph could have spoken German as children if
their father was naturalized in 1854 (that could have been about the time of
their births and their home language may still have been German).
Also are
you interested in the Carlys, Atherdens &c: there is a lot to tell about
them, too.
I also have
Harriett and Alexander’s marriage certificate and some older ones, the original
William’s marriage certificate (the furthest I can trace the Bradleys back). He
was married at St Bartholomew the Great, West Spitalfields, London, in 1819. He
married Ann Thompson born in Bristol. EDBs baptismal certificate 1829 and his
marriage certificate 1850 to EMA Carly. Prior to compulsory registrations about
1857 (I think) one had to know the church concerned (one I was never able to
get to was St Dunstan in the East or by the Tower). I feel there would have
been further information about the Bradleys there (one of the Bradley boys
apprenticed to a weaver was of that Parish).
I think
this enough for you to wade through now: if it is of any use and you want more,
let me know.
I was
pleased to know that you are now retired: I am all in favour of retirement and
I have been on a pension for seventeen years; the pension fund will be getting
fed up with me soon!
Affectionately
Joan.
I’ve just
remembered that we used to correspond when you were a schoolboy in Pilgrims
[Pilgrim’s Rest] that’s how your father found out you had fallen from your bike
and injured your nose! [I collided with a rogue beast that broke away from the
herd when I was cycling downhill and was thrown over the top of this particular
animal… that continued uphill with the rest of the herd with never a backward
glance].
That was
Dick that Elizabeth was carrying in that old photo [a much faded paper print
showing Elizabeth, apparently carrying a babe in arms, in the gardens at
Adstock, a bed of flowers in the background, c 1907].
MY EBOOKS
One of my novels, The Selati Line, is a railway story, a
mobile even picaresque story, or even a road story. Several of my novels start as if in the minds of fictive characters
in airplanes (usually a Tiger Moth): somewhere up in the clouds above the
Bellinger River. The imagined
flyer (usually a quite elderly person who once was a teenage young woman in the
Air Transport Auxiliary) imagines the
story unfolding in a place beneath. Happiness,
for example, begins on the
nearby Trunk Road between Bellingen and Thora and soon makes a second start on
Darkwood Road (right outside the house where I’m now writing this). The Overview (a novella) starts in the
air (right above my house). The (draft) sequel to Happiness, “ Success” starts in the air, too. That very fine
writer, the American James Salter (who once was a Korean War flier) uses the
device of ‘the unnamed narrator’) to tell some of his stories: I like that
notion and also employ a variation of it.
(1) Finding Drina is a light-hearted sequel
to my two print novels (not available as eBooks) published in one volume as The Agreement and it’s sequel, Lourenço Marques. Finding Drina is written in three parts and in three different
styles that also are intended homage pieces (to GG Marquez, Ernest Hemingway
and Lawrence Durrell); thus this little book is also meta-fiction (novella,
about 30-k words).
(2) The Earthrise Visits is an Australian
long story set at Earthrise (about 20-k words): an old psychologist meets a
young literary ghost from the 1920s (his girlfriend meets her, too) before a
second old literary ghost, unaware of his spectral state, arrives unexpectedly.
(3) Farewelling Luis Silva is an Australian
dystopian long story partly set in Australia, Portugal and France (about 23-k
words). A sniper meets an Australian Prime Minister, an old lover and a
celebrity journalist; three of them meet a terrorist in Lisbon where there is a
bloody assassination.
(4) The Selati Line is an early 20th
century Transvaal train story, road story, flying story, a caper story and also
a love story sequel to The Agreement
and Lourenço Marques, lightly
written and containing some magical realism. A scene-stealing child prodigy keeps the characters in order
(novel, about 150-k words).
(5) The Summer River is a dystopian novel
(about 70-k words) set at Earthrise. A General, the déjà vu sniper, the
Australian Prime Minister and the celebrity journalist witness the murder of a
guerrilla who had also been an Australian university student; they discuss how
best to write an appropriate book about ‘foreign invasions’ (novel, about 70-k
words).
(6) The Annotated “Elizabeth.” I examine
and offer likely explanations as to why my uncle published a mixed prose and
verse novel in which his mother is portrayed as the principal protagonist and I
suggest why the book Elizabeth (published
by Dick Diespecker in 1950) is a novel and not a biography, memoir or history
(non-fiction, about 24-k words).
(7) The Overview is a short Australian
novel set at Earthrise (about 32.5-k words) and is also a sequel to The Summer River.
(8) Scribbles from Earthrise, is an
anthology of selected essays and caprice written at Earthrise (about 32-k
words). Topics are: family and friends, history of the Earthrise house, the
river, the forest, stream of consciousness writing and the Earthrise dogs.
(9) Here and There is a selection of Home
and Away essays (about 39-k words). (‘Away’ includes Cowichan (Vancouver
Island), 1937 (my cabin-boy year), The Embassy Ball (Iran), At Brindavan
(meeting Sai Baba in India). ‘Home’ essays are set at Earthrise and include as
topics: the Bellinger River and floods, plus some light-hearted caprices.
(10) The Agreement is a novel set in
Mozambique and Natal during December 1899 and the Second Anglo-Boer War: an
espionage yarn written around the historical Secret Anglo Portuguese Agreement
(1899). Louis Dorman and his brother, Jules, feature together with Drina de
Camoens who helps draft the Agreement for the Portuguese Government. British
Intelligence Officers, Boer spies and the Portuguese Secret Police socialize at
the Estrela Café (about 62-k words).
(11) Lourenço Marques is the sequel to The Agreement. Mozambique in September
1910. The Estrela café-bar is much frequented and now provides music: Elvira
Tomes returns to LM from Portugal and is troubled by an old ghost; Drina and
her companion return with an unexpected new member of the family; Louis faints.
Joshua becomes a marimba player. Ruth Lerner, an American journalist plans to
film a fiesta and hundreds of tourists visit from the Transvaal. Drina plays
piano for music lovers and plans the removal of an old business associate
(novel: about 75-k words).
(12) The Midge Toccata, a caprice about
talking insects (inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice stories). This book has a
splendid new cover designed by my cousin, Katie Diespecker (fiction, caprice,
about 26-k words).
(13) Happiness is a short novel set at
Earthrise. The ‘narrator’ is again the very elderly ex-ATA flier who
unexpectedly meets and rescues a bridge engineer requiring urgent
hospitalisation: she gets him safely to hospital in his own plane. She also
‘imagines’ an extension to her own story, one about a small family living
partly in the forest and on the riverbank: the theme is happiness. Principal
protagonist is a 13-years old schoolgirl, apparently a prodigy: she befriends a
wounded Army officer and encourages his plans. Her parents are a university
teacher and a retired concert pianist. The family pets can’t resist being
scene-stealers in this happy family (novel, about 65-k words).
(14) The Special Intelligence Officer is
part family history as well as a military history and describes the roles of my
late grandfather in the Guerrilla War (1901-1902) in Cape Colony. The Guerrilla
War was the last phase of the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). The title of
the book is taken from Cape newspapers of the time: Capt Rudolph Diespecker was
a District Commandant; his responsibilities included intelligence gathering
that led to the capture, trial and execution of a Boer Commandant who was
wrongly framed as a ‘Cape rebel,’ when he was legally a POW (Gideon Scheepers
was never a Cape rebel, having been born in the Transvaal (the South African
Republic,) one of the two Boer Republics (non-fiction, about 33-k words).
(15) The Letters From Earthrise, an
anthology of my columns and other essays and articles written for the Australian Gestalt Journal between 1997
and 2005 (fiction and some non-fiction, about 70-k words).
(16) The Darkwood
is a dystopian novel set at Earthrise in the not too distant future (about 80-k
words). Earthrise is again central to other themes.
(17) Bellinger; Along
The River is an anthology of personal essays relative to my home and the
property, Earthrise, and the river at my doorstep (aspects and descriptions of
the river, including flooding) (nonfiction, about 28-k words)
(18) Reflecting:
an anthology of personal essays about the gardens, butterflies, a caprice, and
other motivating factors at my home, Earthrise: mostly non-fiction (20,300
words)
(19) Idling: is a
collection of personal essays about seeing; a military history essay; a
speculation about lawns; a working visit to Griffith University; periods of
enforced idleness as “Don’s Days Out” in Coffs Harbour (mostly non-fiction;
about 35,600 words).
(20) Bear Fat A
Memoir by Durbyn C Diespecker (1896-1977) with
Notes and a Biography Edited by Don Diespecker. (This partial memoir that I’d invited in 1950
was written by my father between 1950 and 1969 and describes aspects of his
life in South Africa, the UK and British Columbia, Canada; non-fiction; about
47,900 words).
(21) Love. Selected Stories: an anthology of
short stories old and new. Of these narratives three are set or partly set in
Bellingen, Dorrigo, and the Bellinger River Valley; others are set in Africa,
Greece, France, Iran and Spain. “The Bellinger Protocol;” is a (magic reality)
caprice. ‘Dragonfly’ is an interior monologue set in an imagined Vietnam;
‘Season of Love’ is largely interior monologue set in the mountains surrounding
Pilgrim’s Rest (then in the Transvaal). ‘A Circuit of Fields’ is excerpted from
a non-fiction essay and set in pre-Revolutionary Iran. Several stories are
fictionalized nonfiction and most of the narratives derive from real people and
real locales (about 36,000 words).
Thank you to my
guest writers, Sharon Snir, Bru and Tracey Furner, Pete Thompson and Jill
Alexander.
May 3 2015. The
East Coast Low has passed through the Darkwood with heavy rain and minor
flooding here (regrettably lives have been lost further down the coast). The
huge quantity of fast flowing water passing forcefully by is dramatically
impressive: that any of the Valley
bridges survive such forces is always impressive: only the little River Lawn
here was flooded. Thus, I was saved the drudgery of the usual big cleanup of
the often tonne or two of logs and dense dumps of debris on lawns and gardens.
During a break in compiling this Diary yesterday I stepped away from the
computer and up to the kitchen where I paused to gaze upstream through the
lounge windows. I was startled when the distant high (apparently deadwood tree)
seen momentarily on the Deer Park banks more than 200-m upstream began its fall
directly in to the river with a loud break and huge splashing that I could hear
clearly from here… Paul and his dog Wombat stopped by minutes later to ask if
all was well here and he asked had I heard the large noise and I was able to
describe what I’d just seen. Needless to say, there is no sign of the tree or
log now in the falling river and no sign, so far, either of the old Casuarina
recently on my riverbank that had fallen halfway across the river weeks ago
although the adjacent Euro privet is still in place in the torrent where it
will be encouraging gouging by the force of the high river. One of “my” oldest
and highest flooded gums higher above at garden level has developed an obvious
leaning toward the water (and has been doing so for years and its angle from
the vertical now seems more acute). I pray that all of the Valley’s bridges
will be intact when this minor flood
is down…otherwise many of us will continue to be more or less isolated for a
while longer...
Best wishes to all Diary Readers from Don.
Don Diespecker (don883@bigpond.com)
