© text Don Diespecker 2009
The Earthrise Diary
Don Diespecker
June 27 2009. Last weekend there were further prolonged showers and rain periods; the river got up dangerously high again and there was almost a fourth flood. Fortunately, the flood did not eventuate and the bridge remained passable.
At last I’ve completed a respectable draft (in my opinion) of my much too long piece describing my view(s) while sitting sunnily on my Belvedere. Now I have a fat folder of bits and pieces and am free to move on. The ‘essay’ has been cut from around 10-k words to little more than 7-k words and a print has been sent to a journal with my hopes that it may be carefully read and seriously considered. There were many difficulties in writing “About my View,” not the least of which were the floods that totally demanded attention; other difficulties (entirely of my own making) were those of taking responsibility for some of my ‘views’ on writing and literature. For example choosing to use or to not use an introductory epigraph or quotation by a famous writer (or even by an un-famous one like me) became a headache. I considered lines by Lao Tzu, Ernest Hemingway, William James, Martha Gellhorn and Julian Jaynes, and even some lines by yours truly. Finally I began the piece with a snappy one-liner by Michel de Montaigne, the formulator or ‘inventor’ of the essay (many thanks for the book, Bruno; I now run into M de M here there and everywhere!). The Earthrise view(s) couldn’t quite speak for their selves and I did so for them and was otherwise writing almost entirely about the stream of consciousness as I was experiencing it. Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching (as an English translation!) contains beautifully written lines. I was influenced by Hemingway’s first novel, ‘Fiesta’ The Sun Also Rises and that book has been my inspiration for more than 60 years. William James explained and named the stream of consciousness, thereby encouraging and motivating many fine writers. Julian Jaynes’s explanations of imagery marvellously explain us to ourselves, in particular, our ability to image our past experiences.
If you’ve followed this Diary recently you’ll be aware of the most recent floods here (The Three Floods). Last month’s Diary began with a short verse, since changed (yet again), because everything changes constantly and also because I managed an inspired burst of word herding and completed the memoir/essay that almost began with this:
In the riverside garden
March light’s softer
than summer’s glare
the river runs greenly
autumn thinking starts (and has become, instead, this):
In my riverside gardens
Autumn light’s softer
than summer’s glare
the river runs greenly
seasonal thinking begins
A while ago at lunchtime, half listening to the Science Show, I heard the presenter discussing planets and there also was included part of Holst’s ‘Saturn’ music (Saturn, the planet of growing old/approaching death, was how it was referred to, I think. We’re all doing it, so the notion wasn’t alarming in any way). Today is grey and almost entirely overcast except when there are sunny breaks and I can see patches of blue. It’s not all that cold today, but the air is heavy and damp and where I sit now is made warmer by the hearty breath of an electric blower/heater. The heater seems almost necessary so perhaps heating today may be related to aging. Had it been sunnier (as yesterday was) I’d have tottered outside to sit on the Belvedere reading in the sun, as I was able to do yesterday. I’m at last dipping carefully into Alberto Manguel’s The Library at Night, despite the beckoning attractions of The Literary Review (several issues) and even Quadrant, plus umpteen recent books, untouched. Floods have a bad reputation for upending and disrupting; clean-up chores and plumbing demands make reading of any kind seem a luxury. Yesterday, too and just before I went outside I watched a cormorant come in for a landing, downstream on the high river which was white-capped in waves. Do cormorants do this for fun, I wondered, or is that type of landing only expeditious? If humans can enjoy water sports like board riding and surfing, why not cormorants, also? All this by way of indicating something about the greyness of dull days being nullified by the colours of the river and also by the clean near-white look of river stones and gravel newly spread on the banks opposite. The river is presently showing her greenness: dark bottled greens that remind me of the worn glass pieces I used to pick up on the stone beach near the ocean-end of Cook Street in Victoria, BC in the 1930s and of paler greens that look almost as if diluted with something white (like milk, perhaps, or white sediments like those seen in some New Zealand rivers). The contrast between these beautiful greens and the ugly dark browns of the recent floods is considerable and, psychologically, I know how easy it is to enjoy greenness and how unpleasant are flooding browns. Colouring like those mentioned may set a mood or nudge motivations of one kind or another. And, yes, going outside in search of sufficiently dry flotsam for fire-starting (and there have again been showers) produces only mild enthusiasm; my psyche prefers other pursuits: reading and writing indoors rather than muddied chores on the ruined banks outside. Curling up by the fire with a book is something I did when very young; nowadays it’s a rare pastime.
For those of you who write daily diaries and who necessarily make short entries in small books, the first draft is the considered draft because revisiting the manuscript to make endless changes, corrections and further altered versions seldom seems appropriate. Writing via a keyboard is another matter: we may cheerfully uproot text and place it holus bolus in a different location, alter or improve syntax and grammar and even change tense. Drafting a ‘memoir’ that also has the form of a long essay seems best suited to the computer keyboard and no reader need ever know the number or kinds of changes the writer has made. (Now I’m reminded of a reproduced page I downloaded from the Web: a manuscript page by Grace Paley from the story “Friends” in Enormous Changes at the Last Minute. The page, typed in 2-space, was reproduced in The Paris Review and can be seen on the Internet. The text had been much altered in barely legible scribbles—which, hopefully, the author was later able to read. There’s also a reproduced page proof from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake that includes some hackles-raising corrections and challenging corrections scrawled by the author to be seen in William Wiser’s book, The Twilight Years; Paris in the 1930s). –And there are pristinely attractive manuscript pages by famous British authors that are displayed beneath glass in the British Museum in London.
Monday June 29 2009. I was up early in winter darkness and drove to Bellingen, Coffs and Park Beach. The sun came up as I drove and I’ve not seen cloud all day. The light is magnificent. These last days of June mark the 25th anniversary of Jannelle and I coming to Earthrise in 1984. After a quarter century here (the longest I’ve lived anywhere) I feel almost a Local. To celebrate I sat in the sunlight and read for more than an hour (after typing and printing a page for my neighbour, unpacking my groceries and hastily eating the briefest of lunches). Then I chopped wood, cleaned out the heater and here I am in front of the computer again at a little after 15:00 hours. I hear there was a siege yesterday in Bellingen and that, earlier, in the Valley a certain motor vehicle was attacked and damaged (the two events unconnected). Here the sun still shines. Now it’s time to set a fire. Sunset is less than two hours away and there being no cloud cover the night will be cold.
The stone (ocean) beach (Victoria, BC) reminded me of Canadian summer evenings when our little family sometimes enjoyed a meal on that beach: my mother prepared a large saucepan of plain boiled rice and another of mutton stew, with the saucepan lids tied on tightly so that when they were opened the contents were still hot (we lived only a few minutes away by car: an old Paige sedan {?} I think it was). Those evenings were in the early 1930s when I was four or five and I well remember those suppertime tastes. There was perhaps some memory of those days when, yesterday, shopping in the supermarket, I searched for ox tail (a tasty staple of the Depression) and found instead, lamb neck chops for a stew (a well-remembered substitute).
I’ve leafed through rare copies of the June 1988 Diary that opened with this:
January 30 1988, on time for once…& it’s another superbly sunny day here; there have been quite a few this month. It was 3.5 degrees outside early this a.m. and about 9 inside [12.5 degrees today, June 30 2009]. The coldest morning was 2 degrees. There are many bids around these days: king parrots and magpies in the eucalypts, black plum and myrtle; magpies and smaller birds in the white cedars (which are now almost leafless). Some black cockatoos also, intent on chewing into cheese trees for grubs.
Twenty years ago we were writing on an Osborne portable computer (which soon afterwards began to fail) and there was no Internet. In the same Diary: a 2-m python had emerged through part of the floor (the floor not then completely sealed); wild dogs were howling in the scrub and a near neighbour had reputedly shot two that had killed a calf (our dogs stayed on their leashes at night); Jannelle was making baskets from Lawyer vines and artificial butterflies from stained glass; I was building stone walls and we were also gardening—all these activities followed a morning’s work on the house. We worked hard every day.
The pipelines have been repaired and I now have two operating systems (one as back-up): the large electric Italian pump (fixed in place on the East deck) drives the larger system, as required; a small Honda fire-fighting petrol driven portable (just) pump drives the smaller system. Either can lift water from the river to the much higher storage tank next to the carport.
Thoughts about summer suppers in the 1930s now provoke some other old images. Now I remember our kitchen in the big old timber house at 1129 Oxford Street in the ‘30s. And now I’m visualizing an image of myself sitting at table with the family. A favourite meal was boiled beef and dumplings with vegetables, the dumplings looked like fluffy snowballs. Another favourite was steamed syrup pudding. Now I can see myself watching my mother in the pantry preserving vegetables. She used crockery jars about 120-mm in diameter, filled them with green beans and some salt, topped up the contents with water and sealed each container: fresh green beans for midwinter. Although these remembrances of times past have nothing to do with Earthrise in 2009, the 1930s can never be irrelevant to me simply because I was there. Yesterday I looked for quinces in the supermarket, but there were none (but I did find another old favourite: fresh rhubarb). There’s still an old quince tree growing here in Cedar Grove, but it no longer produces fruit. Sometimes, when I buy these hard-skinned fruits in the supermarket I’m asked at the checkout to identify them. They’re very familiar to me; not always recognised by others, perhaps because the quince may be regarded as ‘old-fashioned’ fruit. Try some. Quarter them carefully with a sharp knife and peel them even more carefully. Place the pieces in a saucepan; add some sugar and no more than 25-mm of water. Stew to taste. Delicious. I’ll assume that stewed rhubarb and custard is still popular).
June 30 2009. Suddenly mid afternoon arrives and the sky is all cloudy again.
This Diary is # 19 in the New Series (previously 1107, 108, 208, 308, 408, 508, 608, 708, 808, 908, 1008, 1108, 1208, 109, 209, 309, 409; this is 609). DDD June 30 2009.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Earthrise Diary 509
© text Don Diespecker 2009
The Earthrise Diary
Don Diespecker
In the riverside garden
March light’s softer
than summer’s glare
the river runs greenly
autumn thinking starts
The little ‘verse’ or epigram (above) that starts this Diary entry is part of a memoir piece that once aspired to be only an essay, but it keeps growing and now consumes far too much of my time as it lumbers on hoping for inspirational fluency. I mention this self-indulgence because the piece (now in excess of 8-k words) has continued playing in my mind even during The Three Floods and that seems sufficient justification for me to keep plugging away at it.
More Flooding Distractions
If, like me, you’re a fan of black and white movies of the 1930s, you may remember one titled ‘Fling Down to Rio.’ And now, if you’ve just experienced ‘seeing’ an image of dancers holding on to halters while standing (holding on one-handed waving, even) atop the wing of a 1930s monoplane against a background of Rio as seen from the air, you’ll perfectly understand my more recent fantasy. Now imagine this: a line of board riders across a single wave that’s pushing constantly and evenly upstream in a river, first in Brazil and similarly, on the Dordogne River in southwest France. Although such board riding may seem a fantasy that activity is indeed factual (there are names for such peculiar wave actions which I presently cannot recall, but that doesn’t matter). And why am I harping on about an old movie and modern board riding? Because, dear reader, there has been a third big flood here, a déjà vu flood, a three-in-a-row repetition of the floods in the Bellinger here (February/the end of March and the start of April/ and now May 21; each flood a bit bigger then its predecessor and each of them inspiring the Minister to declare this zone (and others in the Mid North Coast region) a natural disaster area. Sigh. This time, we were without either, electricity (May 21 until May 25) and landline telephones (from May 22). Zero electricity means nothing electrical/electronic requiring domestic mains supply will function (including the gizmos that charge mobile or cell phones and I have only the landline telephone). Without electricity, now ‘on’ again, and with all the landline phones west of Richardson’s Bridge (the next bridge down from the Plains Crossing Bridge, i.e., here), ominously dead, it’s not possible to send or to receive emails or faxes. I understand, however, now that mobile or cell phones can be used in the area, that it’s possible to ‘use’ email facilities via the phone. To put that differently: I can’t send or receive emails because the landline phone line is kaput and I have no mobile/cell phone.
During this quite big flood which managed to get under the house a wee bit, I did many of those necessary things that locals do when threatened by a rising flood and one of them is to sit quietly, at appropriate times, and to reflect on optimistically remaining as clear-headed as possible. Panicking is never good and a flood is a flood. Thus, I was sitting inside, looking out at the enormous milk-chocolate-looking river raging past a few metres away and seeing almost blandly, how much faster the centre of the river moves—at all times—but spectacularly so during an ascending flood. Although the water at the continually changing ‘sides’ moves fast or much faster than usual, the centre-stream torrent tears past at a surprising velocity while also moving tonnes of logs and debris (this makes debris in general and big logs in particular look like destructive missiles). And of course this has nothing to do with Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movies or surfing upstream, but the mind may be re-minded of certain past events and Flood Time events sometimes affect audiences in peculiar ways. Thus, with the nearest parts of the river passing here at impressive velocities despite the river containing additional volumes of debris, the centre-stream torrent speeds by at even higher velocities; indeed, you have to see it to believe it because nowhere can the eye detect quite where the variable speeds differ. How we perceive depends on a number of factors and seeing a flood often makes me doubt my senses. For example: from this close (inside the house) there’s rain falling steadily and heavily plus a river spray and a river mist that partly obscures clear viewing. And the flood has it’s own peculiar blend of scents and smells so that if you close your eyes you may easily imagine a scented river in flood, one that picks up the sickly sweet smells of decaying trees, logs, sundry vegetation as well as all manner of other subtle smells. And there’s the thunderous noise of a much-much-bigger-than-usual-river charging by—a river that’s perhaps three times wider and in places about 2 to 15 times deeper than normal (where I sit is about 7.5 to 8-m higher than the ‘normal’ river level). The normal flow is only 0.5-1-m deep in front of the bridge and 3- to 4-m deep in the pool. The nearby bridge is now 4-5-m under the water; and Darkwood Road was about 4-m under the torrent in front of the house at the height of the flood; thus, with the river entering Earthrise from the Deer Park’s eroding banks and riverside paddock to the northeast, the river level in front of the house was about 2-m over the lawn and it’s fragile-looking mosses and directly in front of the house windows the flood covered the lawn to a depth of 3-m. The river’s depths here is the most striking of flood phenomena because we don’t normally think of discrete or significant depths except in rising and falling floods. The nearby rapids, for example, are normally markedly visible and noisy because the rapids are essentially blackened bedrock subdued by white water and there’s a balance or ‘equality,’ more or less, between ‘bedrock’ and ‘white water.’ Currently, the flood is falling and the waters are clean, green and distinctive and, presently, a river-wide torrent pours hugely where I know the tail end of the rapids must be yet there are no rapids stones or bedrock visible and the unremitting power visible as a pouring over of the torrent puts one in mind of astonishingly bigger flood torrents: waterfalls. The visual effect of ‘the rapids’ partly assuming some of the characteristics of the waterfall is one that is hugely impressive particularly in the descending flood because the river is now green and clean and what is normally ‘the rapids’ is now a river-wide attraction with no bedrock to be seen. –And not forgetting that the rising floodwaters were brown, heavily laden with sandy silt plus some gravel and stones and burdened with logs and other materials, most of which swept straight through and out of the property to form large whirling Sargasso-like masses near Rum Corner. In the obscured depths of the rising flood ‘the rapids’ are invisible, seemingly ‘buried’ well below the river’s surface.
Such a violent and heavily-charged torrent knocks down almost everything other than the big trees which define ‘garden’: it removes and scatters heavy stones enclosing particular small gardens around trees, tears down fencing and bends steel star pickets. Logs of all shapes and sizes do most of the damage and these logs, once they’ve traveled over the lawn, continue to mow down small trees and shrubs on the riverbank (farewell to decorative small trees like the decade-old bleeding heart). The debris settles where it can; much of it, as Sargasso ‘islands’ settles along the edges of the lawn/top of the riverbank and this not only crushes water lines, but remains an immovable ‘dump’ until the next flood arrives to replace those dumps with new ones (floods lower in height/altitude) surge into the property from an almost opposite direction at Rum Corner and leave debris across the lawn. Hence, the high floods, sweeping right through from across the road, leave the lawn almost debris free except at the riverbank edges). The wonder is that the lawn grasses aren’t either torn away or completely buried by mud and silt (the original lawn was extinguished by mud/silt to a depth of about 0.5-m in the big 2001 flood, i.e., the Big Lawn at Earthrise is now at a higher altitude).
There were young trees across the ruins of Darkwood Road near the approach to the bridge on my side, piles of road metal and silt, a long log and tangled fencing obstructing the approach. Amanda, from the Deer Park used her tractor and with the help of Heinz, from Dreamtime, she was able to clear the road to the bridge. Across the river the approach had again been washed out and despite this bridge being one of the Valley’s ‘best’ structures no traffic other than trail bikes could safely cross the river. One trail bike rider was able to race over the bridge and jump the considerable gap—without harm. On this occasion, too and with my water lines immovably buried beneath debris, my Dreamtime neighbours offered to use their tractor to shunt some of the debris back over the riverbank edges. Neighbours Leif, Heinz and Glenn were further assisted by mutual neighbour Amanda. The second tractor (again driven by Amanda) assisted the first machine. Ultimately that clearance was achieved.
Today is May 30 and I can’t hurry toward any kind of ending to this current edition of the Diary because the phone line remains lifeless [the Telstra support poles were re-set and braced on Thursday, June 11 and the phones resumed their dial tones on Friday, June 12; more below]. There have been brilliantly sunny days here following the clearing of the two storm fronts that produced the most recent flood and the resultant 1-m (!!) of rainfall in this last relevant flood week. May is a favourite month here because of the autumn colours. There are liquidambar trees whose leaves are largely yellow at this time although a few are pale orange and even dark red; and in the same area and along the roadside there are Pride of India (laurels) shrubby trees. On the road to Bellingen there’s a cement/concrete manufacturing plant at the end of a long entrance running from the Waterfall Way and all the way along this entrance are plane trees and, I think, tall conifers, all displaying beautiful colours (which reminds me of New England, over the nearby ranges, where there are always spectacular colours at this time of the year). The last couple of days I’ve taken the opportunity to sit outside at lunchtime and read the essays in Reading in Bed, recently sent me by Bruno. Very pleasant, sitting in the sun with the roaring green river a jump away: not many leeches and fewer mosquitoes. To resume lunchtime reading in the sun while ignoring or even including clean-up debris—untouched—makes reading an even greater pleasure. When I started to walk up afterwards I stopped to look again at the latest Gift of the River, the nether end of a red cedar tree that I’ve already given to a friend. It will make either a fine conversation piece or will provide a cutter with the opportunity to saw off slabs from the already sawn remains; it had obviously been found on an upstream riverbank and been partly harvested. It was once a big tree; it stands on its still strong roots, presenting its base at right angles and towers about 3-m above the ground (it was this large object that picked up and stretched my pipeline to breaking point before wrenching it from the electric pump). I tapped enquiringly at some of thinnest parts where a saw had partly opened a cut and was surprised to hear several different sounds to my tapping: behold, a musical tree! Parts of the roots, not yet sawn, make deep bass notes. I was reminded of the African band, Ossibisa (sp?), whose members played a variety of big African drums. Never mind. A couple of weeks ago I enjoyed my 80th birthday and I’m now at an age where I’m happy to give away beautiful things rather than to store them up. The earlier conversation piece logs, obligingly left by previous floods, have all sailed away from Earthrise, bound for new places downriver. Everything changes.
May 31 2009. The showers have started again and the lawns are sufficiently muddied to display a range of artistic-looking tractor tracks that glisten in the rain. I’ve been able to walk along the road again and yesterday met Chris, Jennifer and the second Chris being walked by their own dogs and two freeloading pooches that regularly join the entourage. The dogs are all small, fortunately. There’s no news of the phone line being operational yet and my number will again be passed on to Telstra. Later, I visited Dreamtime and later learned that the phones ‘should be on again on Monday at the latest’. Hmm.
I offer here some snapshot flood scenes.
As darkness falls at the height of the flood (Friday May 22) and armed with a torch and a machete I negotiate my way along the hillside through wet undergrowth and storm water (unable to safely cross the almost 1-m deep Earthrise Creek between the house and carport) to optimistically switch on the power (the board located where the old bunkhouse used to be). Alas, the power has not returned. I cut down some young trees leaning toward the incoming electricity line and hurry back to the house to remove some joyful leeches.
While chatting with Leif on Thursday (May 29) we see, to our surprise, the arrival of the Council pathfinders who prepare the way for the arrival of a large mechanical shovel and grader. They immediately begin filling in the washed-out bridge approach across the river—7 days after the start of the flood and the BSC having repaired the small but high Die Happy Bridge further down the Valley (where there is now a 5-tonnes load limit). Justin’s Bridge, near Des Willis’s house upriver, has failed and all residents to the west of the bridge are in a predicament, being unable to cross the flooded river and access forest and logging tracks on high ground; they’re isolated. Des Willis was one of the last to get out at 10:00 on Thursday May 21. Kim and Fiona got out then too, but their vehicle stopped on Hobart’s Bridge and was recovered by Darcey who pulled the car off the bridge with a tractor. Further down the Valley, an elderly man died near his vehicle in floodwaters near Raleigh.
When the worst had passed late on Sunday afternoon (May 24) and I was wearily heading for bed with my dynamo radio, I heard the very rare sound of a motorboat coming upstream close to the far bank: one person driving and two more figures in yellow wet weather gear. I wondered why: the river continues to run with logs and other debris, the depths are invisible because of the colour of the river and the light is failing fast.
The power was restored after about four days. Candlelight may be romantic, but not when there’s a big flood and there’s only the slow combustion heater (if one finds dry wood to burn). Boiling water on the gas stove is better than having cold water—but this is a time when we may only dream of hot showers and easy cups of tea. Losing the landline phone is never romantic, particularly when the provider responds daily with misinformation and false promises. Thank Heavens for the journos at ABC Radio who helped us. Yes, it was only a small story perhaps, but it was BIG in this neck of the woods.
Thanks to the tireless work of my neighbour, Leif, he was able to persuade Telstra to supply me with a satellite (wireless technology) phone. To my surprise and admiration a courier arrived here in the dark on Friday, June 5, and set the machine up. I can again communicate with the world (although there is no Internet access and no message facility. Long story/explanation short: I was able to speak on the ABC Midcoast (Local) Radio on Wednesday morning, June 10, and was followed (On Air) by the Telstra local area manager. By some strange and magical coincidence, a Telstra maintenance crew arrived the following day to begin the re-connect and the phone lines were restored on Friday afternoon between 1 and 2:30 pm.
I’m writing this on Tuesday, June 16—Bloomsday! A Happy Bloomsday to everybody. There are more flood stories yet to be told, but I’ll pass for now. Thanks to all who sent good wishes and who visited. I was pleased to welcome my friend Sharon to a somewhat changed Earthrise and she had also sent me an email on June 5 that I was unable to open until June12; it included the moving farewell from one of the world’s finest writers, Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Here the air is like crystal today, the river continues it’s fall, allowing the rapids to be visible and audible once more.
The Earthrise Diary
Don Diespecker
In the riverside garden
March light’s softer
than summer’s glare
the river runs greenly
autumn thinking starts
The little ‘verse’ or epigram (above) that starts this Diary entry is part of a memoir piece that once aspired to be only an essay, but it keeps growing and now consumes far too much of my time as it lumbers on hoping for inspirational fluency. I mention this self-indulgence because the piece (now in excess of 8-k words) has continued playing in my mind even during The Three Floods and that seems sufficient justification for me to keep plugging away at it.
More Flooding Distractions
If, like me, you’re a fan of black and white movies of the 1930s, you may remember one titled ‘Fling Down to Rio.’ And now, if you’ve just experienced ‘seeing’ an image of dancers holding on to halters while standing (holding on one-handed waving, even) atop the wing of a 1930s monoplane against a background of Rio as seen from the air, you’ll perfectly understand my more recent fantasy. Now imagine this: a line of board riders across a single wave that’s pushing constantly and evenly upstream in a river, first in Brazil and similarly, on the Dordogne River in southwest France. Although such board riding may seem a fantasy that activity is indeed factual (there are names for such peculiar wave actions which I presently cannot recall, but that doesn’t matter). And why am I harping on about an old movie and modern board riding? Because, dear reader, there has been a third big flood here, a déjà vu flood, a three-in-a-row repetition of the floods in the Bellinger here (February/the end of March and the start of April/ and now May 21; each flood a bit bigger then its predecessor and each of them inspiring the Minister to declare this zone (and others in the Mid North Coast region) a natural disaster area. Sigh. This time, we were without either, electricity (May 21 until May 25) and landline telephones (from May 22). Zero electricity means nothing electrical/electronic requiring domestic mains supply will function (including the gizmos that charge mobile or cell phones and I have only the landline telephone). Without electricity, now ‘on’ again, and with all the landline phones west of Richardson’s Bridge (the next bridge down from the Plains Crossing Bridge, i.e., here), ominously dead, it’s not possible to send or to receive emails or faxes. I understand, however, now that mobile or cell phones can be used in the area, that it’s possible to ‘use’ email facilities via the phone. To put that differently: I can’t send or receive emails because the landline phone line is kaput and I have no mobile/cell phone.
During this quite big flood which managed to get under the house a wee bit, I did many of those necessary things that locals do when threatened by a rising flood and one of them is to sit quietly, at appropriate times, and to reflect on optimistically remaining as clear-headed as possible. Panicking is never good and a flood is a flood. Thus, I was sitting inside, looking out at the enormous milk-chocolate-looking river raging past a few metres away and seeing almost blandly, how much faster the centre of the river moves—at all times—but spectacularly so during an ascending flood. Although the water at the continually changing ‘sides’ moves fast or much faster than usual, the centre-stream torrent tears past at a surprising velocity while also moving tonnes of logs and debris (this makes debris in general and big logs in particular look like destructive missiles). And of course this has nothing to do with Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movies or surfing upstream, but the mind may be re-minded of certain past events and Flood Time events sometimes affect audiences in peculiar ways. Thus, with the nearest parts of the river passing here at impressive velocities despite the river containing additional volumes of debris, the centre-stream torrent speeds by at even higher velocities; indeed, you have to see it to believe it because nowhere can the eye detect quite where the variable speeds differ. How we perceive depends on a number of factors and seeing a flood often makes me doubt my senses. For example: from this close (inside the house) there’s rain falling steadily and heavily plus a river spray and a river mist that partly obscures clear viewing. And the flood has it’s own peculiar blend of scents and smells so that if you close your eyes you may easily imagine a scented river in flood, one that picks up the sickly sweet smells of decaying trees, logs, sundry vegetation as well as all manner of other subtle smells. And there’s the thunderous noise of a much-much-bigger-than-usual-river charging by—a river that’s perhaps three times wider and in places about 2 to 15 times deeper than normal (where I sit is about 7.5 to 8-m higher than the ‘normal’ river level). The normal flow is only 0.5-1-m deep in front of the bridge and 3- to 4-m deep in the pool. The nearby bridge is now 4-5-m under the water; and Darkwood Road was about 4-m under the torrent in front of the house at the height of the flood; thus, with the river entering Earthrise from the Deer Park’s eroding banks and riverside paddock to the northeast, the river level in front of the house was about 2-m over the lawn and it’s fragile-looking mosses and directly in front of the house windows the flood covered the lawn to a depth of 3-m. The river’s depths here is the most striking of flood phenomena because we don’t normally think of discrete or significant depths except in rising and falling floods. The nearby rapids, for example, are normally markedly visible and noisy because the rapids are essentially blackened bedrock subdued by white water and there’s a balance or ‘equality,’ more or less, between ‘bedrock’ and ‘white water.’ Currently, the flood is falling and the waters are clean, green and distinctive and, presently, a river-wide torrent pours hugely where I know the tail end of the rapids must be yet there are no rapids stones or bedrock visible and the unremitting power visible as a pouring over of the torrent puts one in mind of astonishingly bigger flood torrents: waterfalls. The visual effect of ‘the rapids’ partly assuming some of the characteristics of the waterfall is one that is hugely impressive particularly in the descending flood because the river is now green and clean and what is normally ‘the rapids’ is now a river-wide attraction with no bedrock to be seen. –And not forgetting that the rising floodwaters were brown, heavily laden with sandy silt plus some gravel and stones and burdened with logs and other materials, most of which swept straight through and out of the property to form large whirling Sargasso-like masses near Rum Corner. In the obscured depths of the rising flood ‘the rapids’ are invisible, seemingly ‘buried’ well below the river’s surface.
Such a violent and heavily-charged torrent knocks down almost everything other than the big trees which define ‘garden’: it removes and scatters heavy stones enclosing particular small gardens around trees, tears down fencing and bends steel star pickets. Logs of all shapes and sizes do most of the damage and these logs, once they’ve traveled over the lawn, continue to mow down small trees and shrubs on the riverbank (farewell to decorative small trees like the decade-old bleeding heart). The debris settles where it can; much of it, as Sargasso ‘islands’ settles along the edges of the lawn/top of the riverbank and this not only crushes water lines, but remains an immovable ‘dump’ until the next flood arrives to replace those dumps with new ones (floods lower in height/altitude) surge into the property from an almost opposite direction at Rum Corner and leave debris across the lawn. Hence, the high floods, sweeping right through from across the road, leave the lawn almost debris free except at the riverbank edges). The wonder is that the lawn grasses aren’t either torn away or completely buried by mud and silt (the original lawn was extinguished by mud/silt to a depth of about 0.5-m in the big 2001 flood, i.e., the Big Lawn at Earthrise is now at a higher altitude).
There were young trees across the ruins of Darkwood Road near the approach to the bridge on my side, piles of road metal and silt, a long log and tangled fencing obstructing the approach. Amanda, from the Deer Park used her tractor and with the help of Heinz, from Dreamtime, she was able to clear the road to the bridge. Across the river the approach had again been washed out and despite this bridge being one of the Valley’s ‘best’ structures no traffic other than trail bikes could safely cross the river. One trail bike rider was able to race over the bridge and jump the considerable gap—without harm. On this occasion, too and with my water lines immovably buried beneath debris, my Dreamtime neighbours offered to use their tractor to shunt some of the debris back over the riverbank edges. Neighbours Leif, Heinz and Glenn were further assisted by mutual neighbour Amanda. The second tractor (again driven by Amanda) assisted the first machine. Ultimately that clearance was achieved.
Today is May 30 and I can’t hurry toward any kind of ending to this current edition of the Diary because the phone line remains lifeless [the Telstra support poles were re-set and braced on Thursday, June 11 and the phones resumed their dial tones on Friday, June 12; more below]. There have been brilliantly sunny days here following the clearing of the two storm fronts that produced the most recent flood and the resultant 1-m (!!) of rainfall in this last relevant flood week. May is a favourite month here because of the autumn colours. There are liquidambar trees whose leaves are largely yellow at this time although a few are pale orange and even dark red; and in the same area and along the roadside there are Pride of India (laurels) shrubby trees. On the road to Bellingen there’s a cement/concrete manufacturing plant at the end of a long entrance running from the Waterfall Way and all the way along this entrance are plane trees and, I think, tall conifers, all displaying beautiful colours (which reminds me of New England, over the nearby ranges, where there are always spectacular colours at this time of the year). The last couple of days I’ve taken the opportunity to sit outside at lunchtime and read the essays in Reading in Bed, recently sent me by Bruno. Very pleasant, sitting in the sun with the roaring green river a jump away: not many leeches and fewer mosquitoes. To resume lunchtime reading in the sun while ignoring or even including clean-up debris—untouched—makes reading an even greater pleasure. When I started to walk up afterwards I stopped to look again at the latest Gift of the River, the nether end of a red cedar tree that I’ve already given to a friend. It will make either a fine conversation piece or will provide a cutter with the opportunity to saw off slabs from the already sawn remains; it had obviously been found on an upstream riverbank and been partly harvested. It was once a big tree; it stands on its still strong roots, presenting its base at right angles and towers about 3-m above the ground (it was this large object that picked up and stretched my pipeline to breaking point before wrenching it from the electric pump). I tapped enquiringly at some of thinnest parts where a saw had partly opened a cut and was surprised to hear several different sounds to my tapping: behold, a musical tree! Parts of the roots, not yet sawn, make deep bass notes. I was reminded of the African band, Ossibisa (sp?), whose members played a variety of big African drums. Never mind. A couple of weeks ago I enjoyed my 80th birthday and I’m now at an age where I’m happy to give away beautiful things rather than to store them up. The earlier conversation piece logs, obligingly left by previous floods, have all sailed away from Earthrise, bound for new places downriver. Everything changes.
May 31 2009. The showers have started again and the lawns are sufficiently muddied to display a range of artistic-looking tractor tracks that glisten in the rain. I’ve been able to walk along the road again and yesterday met Chris, Jennifer and the second Chris being walked by their own dogs and two freeloading pooches that regularly join the entourage. The dogs are all small, fortunately. There’s no news of the phone line being operational yet and my number will again be passed on to Telstra. Later, I visited Dreamtime and later learned that the phones ‘should be on again on Monday at the latest’. Hmm.
I offer here some snapshot flood scenes.
As darkness falls at the height of the flood (Friday May 22) and armed with a torch and a machete I negotiate my way along the hillside through wet undergrowth and storm water (unable to safely cross the almost 1-m deep Earthrise Creek between the house and carport) to optimistically switch on the power (the board located where the old bunkhouse used to be). Alas, the power has not returned. I cut down some young trees leaning toward the incoming electricity line and hurry back to the house to remove some joyful leeches.
While chatting with Leif on Thursday (May 29) we see, to our surprise, the arrival of the Council pathfinders who prepare the way for the arrival of a large mechanical shovel and grader. They immediately begin filling in the washed-out bridge approach across the river—7 days after the start of the flood and the BSC having repaired the small but high Die Happy Bridge further down the Valley (where there is now a 5-tonnes load limit). Justin’s Bridge, near Des Willis’s house upriver, has failed and all residents to the west of the bridge are in a predicament, being unable to cross the flooded river and access forest and logging tracks on high ground; they’re isolated. Des Willis was one of the last to get out at 10:00 on Thursday May 21. Kim and Fiona got out then too, but their vehicle stopped on Hobart’s Bridge and was recovered by Darcey who pulled the car off the bridge with a tractor. Further down the Valley, an elderly man died near his vehicle in floodwaters near Raleigh.
When the worst had passed late on Sunday afternoon (May 24) and I was wearily heading for bed with my dynamo radio, I heard the very rare sound of a motorboat coming upstream close to the far bank: one person driving and two more figures in yellow wet weather gear. I wondered why: the river continues to run with logs and other debris, the depths are invisible because of the colour of the river and the light is failing fast.
The power was restored after about four days. Candlelight may be romantic, but not when there’s a big flood and there’s only the slow combustion heater (if one finds dry wood to burn). Boiling water on the gas stove is better than having cold water—but this is a time when we may only dream of hot showers and easy cups of tea. Losing the landline phone is never romantic, particularly when the provider responds daily with misinformation and false promises. Thank Heavens for the journos at ABC Radio who helped us. Yes, it was only a small story perhaps, but it was BIG in this neck of the woods.
Thanks to the tireless work of my neighbour, Leif, he was able to persuade Telstra to supply me with a satellite (wireless technology) phone. To my surprise and admiration a courier arrived here in the dark on Friday, June 5, and set the machine up. I can again communicate with the world (although there is no Internet access and no message facility. Long story/explanation short: I was able to speak on the ABC Midcoast (Local) Radio on Wednesday morning, June 10, and was followed (On Air) by the Telstra local area manager. By some strange and magical coincidence, a Telstra maintenance crew arrived the following day to begin the re-connect and the phone lines were restored on Friday afternoon between 1 and 2:30 pm.
I’m writing this on Tuesday, June 16—Bloomsday! A Happy Bloomsday to everybody. There are more flood stories yet to be told, but I’ll pass for now. Thanks to all who sent good wishes and who visited. I was pleased to welcome my friend Sharon to a somewhat changed Earthrise and she had also sent me an email on June 5 that I was unable to open until June12; it included the moving farewell from one of the world’s finest writers, Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Here the air is like crystal today, the river continues it’s fall, allowing the rapids to be visible and audible once more.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Earthrise Diary 409
© text Don Diespecker 2009
The Earthrise Diary
Don Diespecker
The month hurries by and the weather has been wet so that my morning walks have been interrupted or not made at all. Yesterday and today (April 26) the air at sunrise has been cool and crystal clear. Along Darkwood Road the roadside trees are surprisingly colourful—something that’s best appreciated by walking and seeing the crowns and canopies: driving by isn’t recommended (the road is so damaged it appears to have been mortared in places and that’s hardly surprising given that 50- to 100-m of the road leading to Richardson’s Bridge was in the river (this is negligible damage given the state of the road at and near Justin’s Bridge, further up, and also that part of the road on high ground (‘the mountain’), according to Des Willis who’s been driving his VW bus over some horror stretches. When walking, I see that most of the roadside trees are native privet mixed with occasional white cedars and that the trees are tightly packed because they’ve had to grow up past (European) privet. The seeds of the bigger trees continue their autumn ripening and show a surprising variation in colours that range from a fuzzy neutral grey (in sunlight) through pale watery blue to almost-purple. The white cedar seeds seem to be mostly green but the foliage of these trees is significantly turning yellow or golden. A vehicle driver would see only a meld of pastel shades while driving and would also be unwise to look up; but a walker may see the subtle colour distinctions clearly when close and as a generous blend of green and gold when seeing the trees more distantly. One of these days when I understand the directions for my new digital camera I may be able to include a picture or two of the trees. I’ve realized, too, that vehicle drivers would seldom see the colouring seeds or hear the faint but continuous pattering sound of seeds falling while a range of birds feed in the canopy. Darkwood Road’s autumn colours must seem vague at best to those who only drive.
Also notable this month: masses of river mist rising to become cloud. As I walk ‘down’ I get a kick out of seeing the mist rising and turning to cloud that drifts like smoke over the forested lower slopes below Dorrigo—and on the way back up again, with the sun just a bit higher, I get my back nicely warmed while walking home to breakfast. This part of the Valley is a photographer’s delight at sunrise: the heads of seeding grasses standing in the paddocks glint in the morning sun and spider web strands shine and glisten.
There were five noteworthy days in a row in mid-April when the weather was relatively dry and the sun made it seem like summer again and that was a good time to catch up on raking, axing and log hurling (returning flood debris to the river, in other words). The river continues to change colour when there are showers—perhaps caused by post-flood clearing or landslips upstream. This morning the water’s a slightly darker green, the rapids bright white because the river remains high and falls slowly. About two days ago the river was a paler green, an eau-de-Nil softer-looking colour.
The two floods here recently are still heavily in my mind because of the damage and the extra work required to repair that damage: schedules and agendas have had to be revised. I’d intended to quote ironically Shakespeare’s lines (‘There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood” &c &c) but the commentary line that marks that in Julius Caesar somehow seems more apt:
‘Opportunity to be seized on all occasions of life (IV:3).’
I was brooding about this in the ruined gardens. I was surprised that I could still see the near-concentric circles of the last mowing runs on the food-washed green parts of Big Lawn while lower parts of the lawn are distinguished by a liberal top dressing of muddy silt. Near the Dog’s Garden and my flattened roses and dahlias some early autumn moss, bright green, has begun to oust the tropical chick weed and following the flooding most of that soft bright green moss is still surprisingly in place. It strikes me as amazing that the river could run across the gardens here to depths of 2-m to 3-m pushing logs and destroyed trees of all shapes and sizes without destroying the moss and the lawns, but the moss is a sparkling green and it’s been largely untroubled by the flooding. The pickets and wire fencing around the Dog’s Garden have been flattened and tangled by debris. I’ve been able to salvage, as gifts of the river, clumps of lomandra and some bulrushes too. How strange that some well-rooted trees were broken as if matchwood but more pliant shrubs, perennials and small plants were flattened, part buried in mud, yet stood again when lifted and carefully propped. There were 10 or so bleeding heart seedlings growing from the (onetime flood-deposited) soils on the belvedere: two floods removed all but one of these and much of the soil I’d carefully leveled there. Flooding spared me the task of thinning and the surviving bleeding heart now seems stronger than ever with it’s big juvenile leaves and the faithful old red salvia clone (hauled up from the mud and propped, pruned and washed) looks better than ever (the original salvia in a nearby garden, similarly, is alive and well—having been planted there in 1985 or thereabouts). Everything changes; some things change more than others.
I’m including, below an essay I wrote recently during the floods and which I lightly called ‘The Big Latte’ because of the colour (and sent this to some friends by email). The first flood was in February; this (second) one started at the end of March.
© text Don Diespecker 2009
The Second Flood
Bellinger big floods look wild and dangerous and are the colour either of latte or sometimes the colour of dark chocolate. This one’s the latte version. Bellinger, after all, means clear water.
This is a river that can flood in as little as a day and a half with steady rain. All the Bellinger’s floods are different: many are minor and Old Hands will pityingly say that ‘That wasn’t a flood; that was just a rise.’ A Big One gets the adrenalin going and makes us Locals leap into action. These floods all begin with Flood Rain: a dense and steady rain that looks innocently like very heavy drizzle, but when you’re up close and in it Flood Rain is a soaking experience: it feels deeply soaking, penetrating and unstopping. These rains begin modestly and deceptively and always become heavier—by which time everything in sight is saturated and running with water determinedly seeking it’s own level. Rivulets and streams are quickly up and running and ponds form and grow as you watch, open-mouthed. A February flood primed us for this one, i.e., soils were already close to saturation and the fat river (as Jannelle used to say) was poised. Characteristically, Flood Rain always gets heavier: then it no longer resembles a soupy thick drizzle; it quickly is tumultuous and it hammers on the iron roof and takes up a dark position in your head. As the rain increases the air becomes so dense as to look quite like smoke. The smells of the flood rising from the riverbank are sweet and sour—not unpleasant, but filled with dangerous promise. That’s a notion reinforced by the sounds of the flooding river lifting in the rain; as the river gets up it roars at the world. One way or the other, you want to be there to see it, study it, record it, but usually there’s too much ordinary work to be done. When the river’s high enough to display its special effects here at Earthrise the torrent enters the gardens. Maybe enters isn’t the right word; perhaps penetrates, at first, and then it surges over everything that can be subdued by the force of uncontrollable wild water. Notice the word, wild (thanks for that suggestion, Sharon). It’s an apt word, largely because there’s nothing that can stop it or in any way reduce what it’s doing. Pouring oil on the waters? No, because the flooding river is a transitory thing: it crushes everything in its way and relentlessly keeps going, just as the blitzkrieg destroys what’s in its path. The river’s way, after all, is the river’s own rived, gouged-out Way. The drama begins when the river invades paddocks and gardens and it’s this muscling in and into that gives us headaches, hard work and sleepless nights. At least a ferocious untamed flooding river is a lot more interesting than a tame one; the Bellinger looks tame only when it’s down and diminished by drought: that’s when it moves slowly without grace or beauty, is beset by algae, and is missing its usual forcefulness.
*
Flood rain starts on Monday, March 30 2009. Its intensity increases into the evening and it rains steadily through the night. I’d been to town in the morning, done some chores and had my anti flu and anti-pneumococcal shots. In the afternoon I talk to Kerry on the phone and he helps me with some of my computer difficulties. By the time we complete our discussions and key tapping we agree it’s raining cats and dogs at both Moonee Beach and here in the Darkwood. Trouble ahead.
It rains all night but there’s still a long way for the river to climb before it floods so I sleep, but uneasily, with one eye open as we say when a flood starts in the Bellinger Valley. The river is well up on Tuesday morning (March 31 2009). I meet Monica on the road and we chat about what we both think will happen. By now the flood is dark brown, rising mightily and is about to engulf the Plains Crossing Bridge. I decide to remove one difficulty: I drive the Honda to high ground. I phone Enrico and then drive up to Dreamtime, parking the Honda in front of the Big House (presently empty). Relieved, I walk back down to Earthrise. The roadside ditches here have been ‘lined’ by a rough concrete on both sides: bulk concrete from a dump truck was spread and broomed over dense cobble-sized quarry stone). The ditches are running fast, roaring; storm water pours toward the road from the forested high ground on the south side; ponding of the upper paddocks of the Deer Park begins and it won’t be long before the paddocks fill and the excess spills into Darkwood Road opposite my gate (an inch of rain on an acre yields more than 100 tons of water). There are now streams all over this property, all of them heading for Darkwood Road, our Big Drain, and all of this storm water adds to the developing flood a few metres from where I sit. The rain will be intense all the way up to the Catchment.
By now it’s clear that nothing short of a miracle will stop the river breaking its banks because as it rises onto and over the bridge, water from the nearby high ground, the Deer Park, the slopes above and behind the house and the West End (the location of old gardens here) is forming streams. A sizeable creek starts flowing between the carport and the house. The entrance track is already under water. The colour of the rising river indicates the torrent is picking up tonnes of soil and redistributing it. Loose soils aren’t a good sign: that implies land clearing and logging, two activities requiring permits (whether ‘legal’ or illegal, any such clearing and logging produces debris: unwanted timbers such as casuarina and discarded branches are ‘sometimes’ left illegally in the riparian zones of the river for the next flood to collect and move downstream). Logs of all ages, shapes and sizes form the dense parts of debris carried by the flood. Some are ancient and decomposing timbers; some, with bark intact, have recently been chain-sawed.
The bridge is now under water and invisible. The air is densely wet and looks smokier than ever. There’s also an electrical storm and using the computer is too risky. I lug the garden furniture up to the west deck (where the front steps are) and stow garden tools under the house (across the beams). Logs start appearing in the river. Big logs race by like fearsome marine animals; it’s astonishing to see how fast the river can move: like a pent-up athlete raring to go. The light fades. By sunset the river is moving very quickly—that’s always surprising to see because the Bellinger is so serpentine and you’d think the bends would slow the river down (Earthrise, the house, is tucked into a bend and also is founded on an ancient riverbank; I can also see both the upriver bend and the downriver one). At night I listen to the rain and to the roar of the flood continuing to rise. I expect the flood to breach the lawns/riverbank edge during the night. Heavy rain continues (the news will later reveal that about 300-mm fell in a six hours period).
I give up trying to sleep and get dressed at 03:00 (Wednesday, April 1 2009), expecting the worst. It’s too dark to see anything beyond the spotlight on the west deck: tree trunks are all running, there’s ponding on that part of Big Lawn close to the house and to the old river bank (the house concrete block foundations are set in this ‘ancient’ bank; the Theatre Garden (now overgrown, but with a beautiful layered slab curved wall extends the old curve of that bank into Rum Corner). There’s water everywhere. The retaining wall behind the house sparkles with glow-worms and luminous fungi on the old trees shine in the Wet. I watch the curtain of silver rain pounding down; it glistens prettily in the spotlight. Then I turn off the deck light, retire inside to drink coffee and wait uneasily for dawn. I don’t use the computer because of the lightning and the power failures. After dozing in a lounge chair I see at first light that the BIG stack of logs (dumped by the February flood) is being teased by the flooding backflow. The backflow is always a result of the flooding river running into the downstream hillside 50-m away; part of that torrent then sweeps back or eddies toward my boundary until the river is high enough for that unusual upstream surging to force its way past the stack of logs and the old stone banks and revetments I built there years ago. Another part of that great swirling mess is the dynamic that drives a large whirlpool: it pulls passing logs from centre-stream, threatens to release the debris in another direction, but always recaptures it. The whirlpool collects an enormous amount of material until it’s a Sargasso that’s able to support birds and water dragons. This great mass will sometimes settle on the riverbank and partly in the Earthrise gardens, but when the flood’s high there are different forces at work. On this occasion the flood is high enough to breach upstream and then run through the lower paddocks of the Deer Park, picking up and dropping some logs and debris as it knocks down the fences, then surges over the road before raging through the gardens here. This action not only wrecks the road 2-4-m beneath the torrent, it meets the incoming backflow flood and being higher than the backflow, pushes the ‘lower’ waters (and its accompanying stacks of debris) back toward the river. The Darkwood Road torrent, now also a river, runs into the flood coming from the Deer Park paddocks: the floodwaters take the obvious course to the mainstream: across Earthrise. Debris dumped here usually floats toward the mainstream too, but only when the floodwaters peak and turn. Most of the debris stacks unable to reach the river settle along the edge of the lawn and the top of the riverbank. In a high flood, most of the debris will be dumped near the corner, i.e., in a dense mass over my waterlines. Thus, the pattern of logs and general debris dumped here is markedly different for moderate and for higher floods.
On Wednesday morning at breakfast time I try to read e & answer emails while the phone rings and the gardens begin disappearing beneath the brown waters. I turn the computer off and start moving Stuff—mostly books, photographs, family history files, and eventually the computer--upstairs. First I get out of my clothes and into my swimmers, then go out and haul the canoe up onto the deck and tether it to the handrail in case I have to bail out (as I did in 2001). I don’t rush, nor do I dawdle. The 2001 flood reached the top step of the house (west deck) and this flood is about to reach the foundations 2.5-m below the deck/house floor level) as Bruno calls from his car. I have calls from family (it was Pam’s birthday on Tuesday, Carl’s on April 1) and from Tracey Furner (Bruce being in Nepal with his daughter and I’m surprised that they could speak and see one another on mobile phones). I start hearing voices: I have visitors. Daniel and Dylan, soaked, have managed to get down from Dreamtime close to the house. They’re offering assistance. I say I’m OK and point to the canoe. I’ll stay as long as I can and thank them both. Later, Robert calls from the Deer Park; he also offers assistance should I need it (he has the tractor and can help move whatever has to be moved). Leif calls in the afternoon to ask if I need anything (he’s attempting to reach Bellingen via the Yo-Yo Road (a logging track on high ground, far above the house). He has a 4 WD vehicle and will carry a chainsaw. Des calls from Cessnock. I’m grateful for the concern and offers of help, but I want to remain here unless it’s essential that I evacuate, so I thank the callers and continue moving Stuff. I’m particularly relieved that the power hasn’t failed and that the phone is still OK. I keep an anxious eye on the flood until I’m sure that it’s slowing (by watching the patterns of incoming torrents from the two directions noted above) and by regularly checking markers that I can see from the lounge (stones in the two paths up to the house and the varying distance between bleeding heart tree seedlings in one of the paths). Sure enough and to my vast relief, the flood peaks and soon begins slowly to fall; it drops nearly a metre in the next few hours. The citrus trees near the road begin clearing and I can see how blocked the fence-line is: debris is jammed tight there. Parts of the Dogs Garden reappear, the fences are down as are most of the dahlias and roses then the adjoining lawn starts to clear. I leave the house and get to the front gate after wading the creek and the entrance track. The road looks disastrous. There’s a big gap between the concrete swale at the gate and the road. I meet Robert and we chat while standing in cold water; his fences are all down. I offer to help recover the flattened gate and posts, but Robert will do it later, he says. He moves off through the floodwaters. I begin tearing away at the logs, branches and living grass clumps and complete privet plants and returning them all to the flood (most of the road is still flooded). I manage to clear most of my fence-line by returning the debris to the flood but I’m soaked and exhausted. I change and rest, dozing off, uncertain of the time when Sharon calls in the early evening.
Thursday, April 2 2009. What a mess. Most of the lawns are clear and muddy. I’d given them a recent close mow and although it’s still overcast I can see clearly the greenness, the new growth and also the river’s gift of silt and mud. This is like a top dressing and most welcome; it also helps to level the ‘rise’ in Earthrise. The (south) back of Big Lawn is still a big pond (or small lake) and I realize that it’s being sustained by springs in and above the Old Riverbank (where our original campsite was in 1984). This water drains toward the exit path around the walls of the Belvedere. The Belvedere looks good because so much of the flooding has not only dumped soils, but has spread the soil: the Belvedere surface has never looked more level (Tai Chi chaps will be pleased to know). The nice new grass on the Belvedere is still there (mostly) and covered by fine flotsam; the ONE remaining bleeding heart tree seedling was treated gently by a 2-m overburden of crazy river and may survive; the faithful old red salvia is mashed into the mud, but I know she’ll be OK once I pick her up and prop her; the new grevillea nearby has taken another pounding and I carefully pick her up and prop her too. Unfortunately, the receding flood has enabled big logs to knock down the largest bleeding heart tree: poor fruit pigeons, poor tree. I’ll do what I can to free her and lift and prop her, but she’s down and battered. We’ll see. I’m the Belvedere’s gardener, after all. The February log pile has disappeared. In its place is a new stack, nearby and it’s crunched my pipelines again. I measure the biggest piece of old log: it’s a hollow and quite old chunk of river-oak (casuarina) and is 900-mm in diameter; now it’s the new conversation piece (the February conversation piece on Big Lawn has, of course, disappeared without trace). Sigh. Maybe I can recover some firewood from this Big Log one sunny day?
Friday, April 3 2009. I check some of my markers, and although it’s muddy everywhere I bring my tape and measure as best I can: the ‘top’ side of Big Lawn was about 2-m under and the low side, closest to the house, was submerged to 3-m plus another 2-m up to the house foundations. Living ‘on the river’ takes on a different meaning. Locals begin appearing, but this is a very slow to recede flood. I was on the bridge at first light and had to struggle across the deck. The far approach is washed out (again). I chat with neighbours. Meg and Joyce arrive and photograph me on the bridge. Joyce tells me ‘This is such a beautiful place.’ It is, too. I’ve lived here longer than I’ve lived anywhere, for almost 25 years. They say that Daniel and others have made it possible, using the Dreamtime tractor to open the road further upstream that explains how Meg is able to drive this far. By nightfall the bridge deck is clear, almost; the river has fallen less than a metre since daybreak. Saturation. Late in the afternoon there are sunny breaks and so I totter up the hill to recover the Honda and bring her home (I have to put flood debris down to fill some of the gap between the wrecked road and the concrete swale).
Saturday, April 4 2009. More rain—about 100-mm—is forecast and storms are predicted. Enough already! But here’s it’s presently a clear morning and the river still high except that now the river’s colour is a chalky green (think a few drops of crème de menthe added to too many drops of water). I Take A Walk, the first in about 6 days, and with hat and my bush stick, I swing down to the lawn, careful not to slide as if on a luge, and tiptoe in my old river tennis shoes across the muddied but enlivened grass to the road and the bridge where I spy out the best means to cross from bridge to stony shore because there’s still a big hole where the approach should be. I wade carefully through the casuarinas and on a raised bed of river stones pristinely scrubbed, sands and gravels, all newly deposited, and get through the shallows, to creep squelchingly through the mud and continue along the unusually deserted road. With the exception of patches of yellow flower petals along the way the road looks almost as though mortared or mined; parts of it are missing, for the rain has been as tumultuous here as on the river. Nigel comes up behind me on a pushbike and we chat as we go before he cycles on alone and then returns; he says the next bridge is passable, just. The hillside at Richardson’s near the west-side approach looks like a Swiss cheese. I return thoughtfully. Not long after that the rain arrives. Had I imagined the earlier sunshine?
I watch some locals crossing from both sides of the bridge. A couple of vehicles arrive on each side; thus, I know that the road and bridges are surely open now. I see a Council ute appear and the driver photographing the scene (who then is joined by a near neighbour offering Comments I cannot hear).
Daniel and Maree appear in the garden, booted and coated, ready to tractor some fines up from the ditches to Dreamtime, which is OK by me and we chat across dripping spaces. They don’t need my permission because the gravels and stones aren’t mine (they once were Road but now fill the ditches) and the Dreamtimers have a hole to fill. They are also generous and kind neighbours and they ask if they can assist me in any way (the Big House at Dreamtime is empty and they can fix it up for me if necessary, and…); and some neighbours are like that. If it ever dries out here I know they’ll be pleased to help me to discourage those logs and stacks of debris from settling here permanently because they’ve several times offered to. Which is why I sometimes feel fortunate indeed, if not blessed. And I feel so grateful for the messages and prayers, too; thank you, all.
The rain stops but more people visit (like those from Upstream last evening who photographed the house from the bridge, having perhaps realized for the first time that somebody is living here: the lights were on, it was misty, I was upstairs looking at my domain at the end of the day). Now it’s afternoon. Tractor sounds. Children laughing. The first ute arrives packed with rafting and kayak Stuff. The river’s a playground, after all. When I look down from upstairs I can see exactly what has to be done: steel rake and plastic (grass) rake plus the big shovel will enable me to pick up the gravel and stones dropped in long river-ed lines across Big Lawn—but only when the lawn dries; the wheelbarrow will be used too; the axe and log-flinging will allow me to clear an access, touch wood, around the Belvedere; some pipeline lifting to dispel airlocks (where possible near the house) may enable me to pump water to storage again, provided the line isn’t entirely wrecked (although I succeeded in this in after the February flood); all the stone-walled gardens will have to be repaired or rebuilt (a job I’ve already planned to start in winter). And now the river’s an unlovely grey-green and the invigorated pond on Big Lawn is an unattractive brown. Oh well. One day when there are no floods during summer or autumn I may be able to mow, slash, somehow cut down the large-bladed Queensland grass (which grows 2-3m high every season and has clumped root systems best removed by a tractor or bulldozer—and this grass seeds early every March, like clockwork) and I resolve, every year, that I’ll get it done next year for sure: it’s just another job. And one day I may get as far as the West End again and recommence destroying lantana up there. It’s just as well that the jobs will never run out; how uninteresting that would be. Now, for some strange reason I remember Frost’s lines from Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening:
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Earthrise, April 4 2009.
It’s still April 27 as I continue scribbling. I recently came across a file of Series I Earthrise Diaries. Here are some Archived Words from April 1986:
April 1986. Vernon Kretzmann has been staying with us since Sunday and he left today to begin the great journey home to Cape Town. The Indian summer continued when he arrived here last Sunday from Vancouver and -5 temperatures in Ann Arbor. Yesterday we had a real thunderstorm and the creek started to flow; today, showers—all this at a time when we’ve had bone dry weather for about six weeks. John Morris was visiting and staying at Jasmine. There were clouds of dust everywhere…
The house is coming along nicely: we have some more roof and ridge beams to put up and then it’s the rafters… Jannelle has done most of the month’s work: all of the bedroom floor joists, all of the scarfing [of the poles], most of the roof and ridge beams, with a little help from me.
[I’d returned from a training workshop in California early in March and had then fallen from the top floor while working on the house and was fortunate to have broken only my wrist].
We’ve had this marvelous autumn golden light here too and have spent our late afternoons and sometimes hot extended lunchtimes watching the light in the forest and the reflections on the river. Most of the tourists have been and gone and it’s more peaceful now. I love this autumn weather and I’ve been writing it into my draft novel; it’s fun to write fiction here because the novel’s setting is right here at Earthrise.
April 27 2009. The light is still golden.
This Diary is # 17 in the New Series (previously 1107, 108, 208, 308, 408, 508, 608, 708, 808, 908, 1008, 1108, 1208, 109, 209, 309; this is 409). DDD April 27 2009.
The Earthrise Diary
Don Diespecker
The month hurries by and the weather has been wet so that my morning walks have been interrupted or not made at all. Yesterday and today (April 26) the air at sunrise has been cool and crystal clear. Along Darkwood Road the roadside trees are surprisingly colourful—something that’s best appreciated by walking and seeing the crowns and canopies: driving by isn’t recommended (the road is so damaged it appears to have been mortared in places and that’s hardly surprising given that 50- to 100-m of the road leading to Richardson’s Bridge was in the river (this is negligible damage given the state of the road at and near Justin’s Bridge, further up, and also that part of the road on high ground (‘the mountain’), according to Des Willis who’s been driving his VW bus over some horror stretches. When walking, I see that most of the roadside trees are native privet mixed with occasional white cedars and that the trees are tightly packed because they’ve had to grow up past (European) privet. The seeds of the bigger trees continue their autumn ripening and show a surprising variation in colours that range from a fuzzy neutral grey (in sunlight) through pale watery blue to almost-purple. The white cedar seeds seem to be mostly green but the foliage of these trees is significantly turning yellow or golden. A vehicle driver would see only a meld of pastel shades while driving and would also be unwise to look up; but a walker may see the subtle colour distinctions clearly when close and as a generous blend of green and gold when seeing the trees more distantly. One of these days when I understand the directions for my new digital camera I may be able to include a picture or two of the trees. I’ve realized, too, that vehicle drivers would seldom see the colouring seeds or hear the faint but continuous pattering sound of seeds falling while a range of birds feed in the canopy. Darkwood Road’s autumn colours must seem vague at best to those who only drive.
Also notable this month: masses of river mist rising to become cloud. As I walk ‘down’ I get a kick out of seeing the mist rising and turning to cloud that drifts like smoke over the forested lower slopes below Dorrigo—and on the way back up again, with the sun just a bit higher, I get my back nicely warmed while walking home to breakfast. This part of the Valley is a photographer’s delight at sunrise: the heads of seeding grasses standing in the paddocks glint in the morning sun and spider web strands shine and glisten.
There were five noteworthy days in a row in mid-April when the weather was relatively dry and the sun made it seem like summer again and that was a good time to catch up on raking, axing and log hurling (returning flood debris to the river, in other words). The river continues to change colour when there are showers—perhaps caused by post-flood clearing or landslips upstream. This morning the water’s a slightly darker green, the rapids bright white because the river remains high and falls slowly. About two days ago the river was a paler green, an eau-de-Nil softer-looking colour.
The two floods here recently are still heavily in my mind because of the damage and the extra work required to repair that damage: schedules and agendas have had to be revised. I’d intended to quote ironically Shakespeare’s lines (‘There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood” &c &c) but the commentary line that marks that in Julius Caesar somehow seems more apt:
‘Opportunity to be seized on all occasions of life (IV:3).’
I was brooding about this in the ruined gardens. I was surprised that I could still see the near-concentric circles of the last mowing runs on the food-washed green parts of Big Lawn while lower parts of the lawn are distinguished by a liberal top dressing of muddy silt. Near the Dog’s Garden and my flattened roses and dahlias some early autumn moss, bright green, has begun to oust the tropical chick weed and following the flooding most of that soft bright green moss is still surprisingly in place. It strikes me as amazing that the river could run across the gardens here to depths of 2-m to 3-m pushing logs and destroyed trees of all shapes and sizes without destroying the moss and the lawns, but the moss is a sparkling green and it’s been largely untroubled by the flooding. The pickets and wire fencing around the Dog’s Garden have been flattened and tangled by debris. I’ve been able to salvage, as gifts of the river, clumps of lomandra and some bulrushes too. How strange that some well-rooted trees were broken as if matchwood but more pliant shrubs, perennials and small plants were flattened, part buried in mud, yet stood again when lifted and carefully propped. There were 10 or so bleeding heart seedlings growing from the (onetime flood-deposited) soils on the belvedere: two floods removed all but one of these and much of the soil I’d carefully leveled there. Flooding spared me the task of thinning and the surviving bleeding heart now seems stronger than ever with it’s big juvenile leaves and the faithful old red salvia clone (hauled up from the mud and propped, pruned and washed) looks better than ever (the original salvia in a nearby garden, similarly, is alive and well—having been planted there in 1985 or thereabouts). Everything changes; some things change more than others.
I’m including, below an essay I wrote recently during the floods and which I lightly called ‘The Big Latte’ because of the colour (and sent this to some friends by email). The first flood was in February; this (second) one started at the end of March.
© text Don Diespecker 2009
The Second Flood
Bellinger big floods look wild and dangerous and are the colour either of latte or sometimes the colour of dark chocolate. This one’s the latte version. Bellinger, after all, means clear water.
This is a river that can flood in as little as a day and a half with steady rain. All the Bellinger’s floods are different: many are minor and Old Hands will pityingly say that ‘That wasn’t a flood; that was just a rise.’ A Big One gets the adrenalin going and makes us Locals leap into action. These floods all begin with Flood Rain: a dense and steady rain that looks innocently like very heavy drizzle, but when you’re up close and in it Flood Rain is a soaking experience: it feels deeply soaking, penetrating and unstopping. These rains begin modestly and deceptively and always become heavier—by which time everything in sight is saturated and running with water determinedly seeking it’s own level. Rivulets and streams are quickly up and running and ponds form and grow as you watch, open-mouthed. A February flood primed us for this one, i.e., soils were already close to saturation and the fat river (as Jannelle used to say) was poised. Characteristically, Flood Rain always gets heavier: then it no longer resembles a soupy thick drizzle; it quickly is tumultuous and it hammers on the iron roof and takes up a dark position in your head. As the rain increases the air becomes so dense as to look quite like smoke. The smells of the flood rising from the riverbank are sweet and sour—not unpleasant, but filled with dangerous promise. That’s a notion reinforced by the sounds of the flooding river lifting in the rain; as the river gets up it roars at the world. One way or the other, you want to be there to see it, study it, record it, but usually there’s too much ordinary work to be done. When the river’s high enough to display its special effects here at Earthrise the torrent enters the gardens. Maybe enters isn’t the right word; perhaps penetrates, at first, and then it surges over everything that can be subdued by the force of uncontrollable wild water. Notice the word, wild (thanks for that suggestion, Sharon). It’s an apt word, largely because there’s nothing that can stop it or in any way reduce what it’s doing. Pouring oil on the waters? No, because the flooding river is a transitory thing: it crushes everything in its way and relentlessly keeps going, just as the blitzkrieg destroys what’s in its path. The river’s way, after all, is the river’s own rived, gouged-out Way. The drama begins when the river invades paddocks and gardens and it’s this muscling in and into that gives us headaches, hard work and sleepless nights. At least a ferocious untamed flooding river is a lot more interesting than a tame one; the Bellinger looks tame only when it’s down and diminished by drought: that’s when it moves slowly without grace or beauty, is beset by algae, and is missing its usual forcefulness.
*
Flood rain starts on Monday, March 30 2009. Its intensity increases into the evening and it rains steadily through the night. I’d been to town in the morning, done some chores and had my anti flu and anti-pneumococcal shots. In the afternoon I talk to Kerry on the phone and he helps me with some of my computer difficulties. By the time we complete our discussions and key tapping we agree it’s raining cats and dogs at both Moonee Beach and here in the Darkwood. Trouble ahead.
It rains all night but there’s still a long way for the river to climb before it floods so I sleep, but uneasily, with one eye open as we say when a flood starts in the Bellinger Valley. The river is well up on Tuesday morning (March 31 2009). I meet Monica on the road and we chat about what we both think will happen. By now the flood is dark brown, rising mightily and is about to engulf the Plains Crossing Bridge. I decide to remove one difficulty: I drive the Honda to high ground. I phone Enrico and then drive up to Dreamtime, parking the Honda in front of the Big House (presently empty). Relieved, I walk back down to Earthrise. The roadside ditches here have been ‘lined’ by a rough concrete on both sides: bulk concrete from a dump truck was spread and broomed over dense cobble-sized quarry stone). The ditches are running fast, roaring; storm water pours toward the road from the forested high ground on the south side; ponding of the upper paddocks of the Deer Park begins and it won’t be long before the paddocks fill and the excess spills into Darkwood Road opposite my gate (an inch of rain on an acre yields more than 100 tons of water). There are now streams all over this property, all of them heading for Darkwood Road, our Big Drain, and all of this storm water adds to the developing flood a few metres from where I sit. The rain will be intense all the way up to the Catchment.
By now it’s clear that nothing short of a miracle will stop the river breaking its banks because as it rises onto and over the bridge, water from the nearby high ground, the Deer Park, the slopes above and behind the house and the West End (the location of old gardens here) is forming streams. A sizeable creek starts flowing between the carport and the house. The entrance track is already under water. The colour of the rising river indicates the torrent is picking up tonnes of soil and redistributing it. Loose soils aren’t a good sign: that implies land clearing and logging, two activities requiring permits (whether ‘legal’ or illegal, any such clearing and logging produces debris: unwanted timbers such as casuarina and discarded branches are ‘sometimes’ left illegally in the riparian zones of the river for the next flood to collect and move downstream). Logs of all ages, shapes and sizes form the dense parts of debris carried by the flood. Some are ancient and decomposing timbers; some, with bark intact, have recently been chain-sawed.
The bridge is now under water and invisible. The air is densely wet and looks smokier than ever. There’s also an electrical storm and using the computer is too risky. I lug the garden furniture up to the west deck (where the front steps are) and stow garden tools under the house (across the beams). Logs start appearing in the river. Big logs race by like fearsome marine animals; it’s astonishing to see how fast the river can move: like a pent-up athlete raring to go. The light fades. By sunset the river is moving very quickly—that’s always surprising to see because the Bellinger is so serpentine and you’d think the bends would slow the river down (Earthrise, the house, is tucked into a bend and also is founded on an ancient riverbank; I can also see both the upriver bend and the downriver one). At night I listen to the rain and to the roar of the flood continuing to rise. I expect the flood to breach the lawns/riverbank edge during the night. Heavy rain continues (the news will later reveal that about 300-mm fell in a six hours period).
I give up trying to sleep and get dressed at 03:00 (Wednesday, April 1 2009), expecting the worst. It’s too dark to see anything beyond the spotlight on the west deck: tree trunks are all running, there’s ponding on that part of Big Lawn close to the house and to the old river bank (the house concrete block foundations are set in this ‘ancient’ bank; the Theatre Garden (now overgrown, but with a beautiful layered slab curved wall extends the old curve of that bank into Rum Corner). There’s water everywhere. The retaining wall behind the house sparkles with glow-worms and luminous fungi on the old trees shine in the Wet. I watch the curtain of silver rain pounding down; it glistens prettily in the spotlight. Then I turn off the deck light, retire inside to drink coffee and wait uneasily for dawn. I don’t use the computer because of the lightning and the power failures. After dozing in a lounge chair I see at first light that the BIG stack of logs (dumped by the February flood) is being teased by the flooding backflow. The backflow is always a result of the flooding river running into the downstream hillside 50-m away; part of that torrent then sweeps back or eddies toward my boundary until the river is high enough for that unusual upstream surging to force its way past the stack of logs and the old stone banks and revetments I built there years ago. Another part of that great swirling mess is the dynamic that drives a large whirlpool: it pulls passing logs from centre-stream, threatens to release the debris in another direction, but always recaptures it. The whirlpool collects an enormous amount of material until it’s a Sargasso that’s able to support birds and water dragons. This great mass will sometimes settle on the riverbank and partly in the Earthrise gardens, but when the flood’s high there are different forces at work. On this occasion the flood is high enough to breach upstream and then run through the lower paddocks of the Deer Park, picking up and dropping some logs and debris as it knocks down the fences, then surges over the road before raging through the gardens here. This action not only wrecks the road 2-4-m beneath the torrent, it meets the incoming backflow flood and being higher than the backflow, pushes the ‘lower’ waters (and its accompanying stacks of debris) back toward the river. The Darkwood Road torrent, now also a river, runs into the flood coming from the Deer Park paddocks: the floodwaters take the obvious course to the mainstream: across Earthrise. Debris dumped here usually floats toward the mainstream too, but only when the floodwaters peak and turn. Most of the debris stacks unable to reach the river settle along the edge of the lawn and the top of the riverbank. In a high flood, most of the debris will be dumped near the corner, i.e., in a dense mass over my waterlines. Thus, the pattern of logs and general debris dumped here is markedly different for moderate and for higher floods.
On Wednesday morning at breakfast time I try to read e & answer emails while the phone rings and the gardens begin disappearing beneath the brown waters. I turn the computer off and start moving Stuff—mostly books, photographs, family history files, and eventually the computer--upstairs. First I get out of my clothes and into my swimmers, then go out and haul the canoe up onto the deck and tether it to the handrail in case I have to bail out (as I did in 2001). I don’t rush, nor do I dawdle. The 2001 flood reached the top step of the house (west deck) and this flood is about to reach the foundations 2.5-m below the deck/house floor level) as Bruno calls from his car. I have calls from family (it was Pam’s birthday on Tuesday, Carl’s on April 1) and from Tracey Furner (Bruce being in Nepal with his daughter and I’m surprised that they could speak and see one another on mobile phones). I start hearing voices: I have visitors. Daniel and Dylan, soaked, have managed to get down from Dreamtime close to the house. They’re offering assistance. I say I’m OK and point to the canoe. I’ll stay as long as I can and thank them both. Later, Robert calls from the Deer Park; he also offers assistance should I need it (he has the tractor and can help move whatever has to be moved). Leif calls in the afternoon to ask if I need anything (he’s attempting to reach Bellingen via the Yo-Yo Road (a logging track on high ground, far above the house). He has a 4 WD vehicle and will carry a chainsaw. Des calls from Cessnock. I’m grateful for the concern and offers of help, but I want to remain here unless it’s essential that I evacuate, so I thank the callers and continue moving Stuff. I’m particularly relieved that the power hasn’t failed and that the phone is still OK. I keep an anxious eye on the flood until I’m sure that it’s slowing (by watching the patterns of incoming torrents from the two directions noted above) and by regularly checking markers that I can see from the lounge (stones in the two paths up to the house and the varying distance between bleeding heart tree seedlings in one of the paths). Sure enough and to my vast relief, the flood peaks and soon begins slowly to fall; it drops nearly a metre in the next few hours. The citrus trees near the road begin clearing and I can see how blocked the fence-line is: debris is jammed tight there. Parts of the Dogs Garden reappear, the fences are down as are most of the dahlias and roses then the adjoining lawn starts to clear. I leave the house and get to the front gate after wading the creek and the entrance track. The road looks disastrous. There’s a big gap between the concrete swale at the gate and the road. I meet Robert and we chat while standing in cold water; his fences are all down. I offer to help recover the flattened gate and posts, but Robert will do it later, he says. He moves off through the floodwaters. I begin tearing away at the logs, branches and living grass clumps and complete privet plants and returning them all to the flood (most of the road is still flooded). I manage to clear most of my fence-line by returning the debris to the flood but I’m soaked and exhausted. I change and rest, dozing off, uncertain of the time when Sharon calls in the early evening.
Thursday, April 2 2009. What a mess. Most of the lawns are clear and muddy. I’d given them a recent close mow and although it’s still overcast I can see clearly the greenness, the new growth and also the river’s gift of silt and mud. This is like a top dressing and most welcome; it also helps to level the ‘rise’ in Earthrise. The (south) back of Big Lawn is still a big pond (or small lake) and I realize that it’s being sustained by springs in and above the Old Riverbank (where our original campsite was in 1984). This water drains toward the exit path around the walls of the Belvedere. The Belvedere looks good because so much of the flooding has not only dumped soils, but has spread the soil: the Belvedere surface has never looked more level (Tai Chi chaps will be pleased to know). The nice new grass on the Belvedere is still there (mostly) and covered by fine flotsam; the ONE remaining bleeding heart tree seedling was treated gently by a 2-m overburden of crazy river and may survive; the faithful old red salvia is mashed into the mud, but I know she’ll be OK once I pick her up and prop her; the new grevillea nearby has taken another pounding and I carefully pick her up and prop her too. Unfortunately, the receding flood has enabled big logs to knock down the largest bleeding heart tree: poor fruit pigeons, poor tree. I’ll do what I can to free her and lift and prop her, but she’s down and battered. We’ll see. I’m the Belvedere’s gardener, after all. The February log pile has disappeared. In its place is a new stack, nearby and it’s crunched my pipelines again. I measure the biggest piece of old log: it’s a hollow and quite old chunk of river-oak (casuarina) and is 900-mm in diameter; now it’s the new conversation piece (the February conversation piece on Big Lawn has, of course, disappeared without trace). Sigh. Maybe I can recover some firewood from this Big Log one sunny day?
Friday, April 3 2009. I check some of my markers, and although it’s muddy everywhere I bring my tape and measure as best I can: the ‘top’ side of Big Lawn was about 2-m under and the low side, closest to the house, was submerged to 3-m plus another 2-m up to the house foundations. Living ‘on the river’ takes on a different meaning. Locals begin appearing, but this is a very slow to recede flood. I was on the bridge at first light and had to struggle across the deck. The far approach is washed out (again). I chat with neighbours. Meg and Joyce arrive and photograph me on the bridge. Joyce tells me ‘This is such a beautiful place.’ It is, too. I’ve lived here longer than I’ve lived anywhere, for almost 25 years. They say that Daniel and others have made it possible, using the Dreamtime tractor to open the road further upstream that explains how Meg is able to drive this far. By nightfall the bridge deck is clear, almost; the river has fallen less than a metre since daybreak. Saturation. Late in the afternoon there are sunny breaks and so I totter up the hill to recover the Honda and bring her home (I have to put flood debris down to fill some of the gap between the wrecked road and the concrete swale).
Saturday, April 4 2009. More rain—about 100-mm—is forecast and storms are predicted. Enough already! But here’s it’s presently a clear morning and the river still high except that now the river’s colour is a chalky green (think a few drops of crème de menthe added to too many drops of water). I Take A Walk, the first in about 6 days, and with hat and my bush stick, I swing down to the lawn, careful not to slide as if on a luge, and tiptoe in my old river tennis shoes across the muddied but enlivened grass to the road and the bridge where I spy out the best means to cross from bridge to stony shore because there’s still a big hole where the approach should be. I wade carefully through the casuarinas and on a raised bed of river stones pristinely scrubbed, sands and gravels, all newly deposited, and get through the shallows, to creep squelchingly through the mud and continue along the unusually deserted road. With the exception of patches of yellow flower petals along the way the road looks almost as though mortared or mined; parts of it are missing, for the rain has been as tumultuous here as on the river. Nigel comes up behind me on a pushbike and we chat as we go before he cycles on alone and then returns; he says the next bridge is passable, just. The hillside at Richardson’s near the west-side approach looks like a Swiss cheese. I return thoughtfully. Not long after that the rain arrives. Had I imagined the earlier sunshine?
I watch some locals crossing from both sides of the bridge. A couple of vehicles arrive on each side; thus, I know that the road and bridges are surely open now. I see a Council ute appear and the driver photographing the scene (who then is joined by a near neighbour offering Comments I cannot hear).
Daniel and Maree appear in the garden, booted and coated, ready to tractor some fines up from the ditches to Dreamtime, which is OK by me and we chat across dripping spaces. They don’t need my permission because the gravels and stones aren’t mine (they once were Road but now fill the ditches) and the Dreamtimers have a hole to fill. They are also generous and kind neighbours and they ask if they can assist me in any way (the Big House at Dreamtime is empty and they can fix it up for me if necessary, and…); and some neighbours are like that. If it ever dries out here I know they’ll be pleased to help me to discourage those logs and stacks of debris from settling here permanently because they’ve several times offered to. Which is why I sometimes feel fortunate indeed, if not blessed. And I feel so grateful for the messages and prayers, too; thank you, all.
The rain stops but more people visit (like those from Upstream last evening who photographed the house from the bridge, having perhaps realized for the first time that somebody is living here: the lights were on, it was misty, I was upstairs looking at my domain at the end of the day). Now it’s afternoon. Tractor sounds. Children laughing. The first ute arrives packed with rafting and kayak Stuff. The river’s a playground, after all. When I look down from upstairs I can see exactly what has to be done: steel rake and plastic (grass) rake plus the big shovel will enable me to pick up the gravel and stones dropped in long river-ed lines across Big Lawn—but only when the lawn dries; the wheelbarrow will be used too; the axe and log-flinging will allow me to clear an access, touch wood, around the Belvedere; some pipeline lifting to dispel airlocks (where possible near the house) may enable me to pump water to storage again, provided the line isn’t entirely wrecked (although I succeeded in this in after the February flood); all the stone-walled gardens will have to be repaired or rebuilt (a job I’ve already planned to start in winter). And now the river’s an unlovely grey-green and the invigorated pond on Big Lawn is an unattractive brown. Oh well. One day when there are no floods during summer or autumn I may be able to mow, slash, somehow cut down the large-bladed Queensland grass (which grows 2-3m high every season and has clumped root systems best removed by a tractor or bulldozer—and this grass seeds early every March, like clockwork) and I resolve, every year, that I’ll get it done next year for sure: it’s just another job. And one day I may get as far as the West End again and recommence destroying lantana up there. It’s just as well that the jobs will never run out; how uninteresting that would be. Now, for some strange reason I remember Frost’s lines from Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening:
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Earthrise, April 4 2009.
It’s still April 27 as I continue scribbling. I recently came across a file of Series I Earthrise Diaries. Here are some Archived Words from April 1986:
April 1986. Vernon Kretzmann has been staying with us since Sunday and he left today to begin the great journey home to Cape Town. The Indian summer continued when he arrived here last Sunday from Vancouver and -5 temperatures in Ann Arbor. Yesterday we had a real thunderstorm and the creek started to flow; today, showers—all this at a time when we’ve had bone dry weather for about six weeks. John Morris was visiting and staying at Jasmine. There were clouds of dust everywhere…
The house is coming along nicely: we have some more roof and ridge beams to put up and then it’s the rafters… Jannelle has done most of the month’s work: all of the bedroom floor joists, all of the scarfing [of the poles], most of the roof and ridge beams, with a little help from me.
[I’d returned from a training workshop in California early in March and had then fallen from the top floor while working on the house and was fortunate to have broken only my wrist].
We’ve had this marvelous autumn golden light here too and have spent our late afternoons and sometimes hot extended lunchtimes watching the light in the forest and the reflections on the river. Most of the tourists have been and gone and it’s more peaceful now. I love this autumn weather and I’ve been writing it into my draft novel; it’s fun to write fiction here because the novel’s setting is right here at Earthrise.
April 27 2009. The light is still golden.
This Diary is # 17 in the New Series (previously 1107, 108, 208, 308, 408, 508, 608, 708, 808, 908, 1008, 1108, 1208, 109, 209, 309; this is 409). DDD April 27 2009.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Earthrise Diary 309
I recently found a penciled single sheet of ‘The man who wanted adventure,’ one of my proto stories from, I think, 1939. The hero, Buck Fields (possibly myself) is ‘packing the last of his provisions into his fast two-seater ‘plane “Lightning”…’ The paper is flimsy and age-spotted and a corner tear has destroyed several words. I mention this 70-years old icon because I was tickled to re-read the partial narrative again. If you have old documents like this I urge you to preserve them more effectively than I have done: such writings may reveal a great deal about early ambitions. Why, I wonder, was “Lightning” a two-seater?
The word ‘adventure’ has been stabbing at memory and I’m tempted to re-member (ha, ha) some of my youthful adventures but will avoid that for as long as possible. There’s another angle to adventure (for me, I mean) that’s now almost mundane: adventurous aspects of living here at Earthrise. Adventuresome things here are often so taken for granted that although I know they exist I don’t often think specifically about them. I’ll attempt to explain some of these.
I was 10 in 1939 and lived with my parents and my sister in a small mining village, Pilgrims Rest. Pilgrims, as we all called it, had become a Company town, that company being the Transvaal Gold Mining Estates. In my childhood Pilgrims was the oldest continuously mined gold mining area in South Africa and before TGME became its ‘government’ it had been (since about 1873) the destination of many miners and prospectors from all over the world. My grandfather Rudolph Solon Diespecker (1858-1920) (always ‘Louis’ in the family) had been one of the ‘first era’ prospectors on Pilgrims Creek in 1880. And although Rudolph had more adventures than you could shake a stick at (prospector, earthworks contractor, sub-contractor on the notorious Selati Line in the Lowveld, intelligence officer and Commandant during the Anglo Boer War, just for starters), this Diary isn’t really about him at all: it’s about something he wrote, bless him, in a letter to my grandmother: he described the Drakensberg Middleveld (where Pilgrims Rest is) as ‘the jewel of Africa.’ I can never write that brief description without feeling emotional: although I lived there for only five years, from 1937 to 1942, it was the most wonderful and adventurous place of my childhood and I visualize scenes from that childhood place with ease, accuracy and huge nostalgia. Pilgrims and its enfolding mountains is an unforgettably beautiful place and I was there at an unforgettably and beautifully adventurous time of my life (think swimming and fishing in creeks and rivers, climbing, hiking, picnics, caving, learning to play rugby, and much, much more).
Now I’m again in a beautiful place but this time in the Australian bush where I’ve lived more or less in retirement for a quarter of a century, the longest time I’ve lived anywhere in the world. It’s not that the rest of the world is unsuitable or unsatisfactory; it isn’t, but that this place on the Bellinger River is also unquestionably beautiful and therefore good for me (good for my soul, if you like). Rivers have always been important to me (especially the Cowichan in British Columbia and the Blyde at Pilgrims Rest (Cowichan means ‘land warmed by the sun;’ Blyde, from the Dutch blijde means ‘joy’ and Bellinger means ‘clear water’). I’d always wanted to live in a wild place and build my own house; Jannelle and I built a three-level pole house here and that was a grand adventure. And there’s been nothing at all boring or dull about living here, which is why so many aspects of this place, by being habitually experienced in one way or another, may (forgive me) become familiarly almost unnoticed. For example, the river is only a few metres away and the house has been so located as to allow of many river views through the many windows (the room I’m sitting in has six principal ‘sides’ or walls and two minor walls containing more than 80 pieces of glass and including a circular window next to me). I’m always aware of the river and it’s changes and the notion of ‘river’ is thematic in my life; it’s also ‘always there’. Several nights ago I was in bed, half asleep and vaguely aware of television when I was made fully awake by the gunshot crack of a tree or large limb suddenly breaking and beginning to swish down toward—as I thought—part of the house. There’s never enough time to be smart about breaking or falling trees: you either tough it out and don’t move too many muscles or you dive or run for cover. I stayed put, then got dressed and went hunting through the darkness with a torch. I still have not found the tree (or limb). I had to ensure that no fallen tree would stop me from getting the car out (itself under threat from very big trees) because I was booked to have chelation therapy the next morning (the last time that happened a fallen tree blocked access from my carport to Darkwood Road and it had to be axed so that I might keep my chelation appointment). Fallen trees, otherwise, are commonplace occurrences on a forested property: they often go unnoticed or cannot easily be found because the single tree doesn’t always stand out in a forest. That’s part of the adventure of living in the forest (The Darkwood, as it’s correctly known in the area) and that implies the huge importance of using one’s eyes diligently. (Now I’m thinking of the time I arrived home one afternoon to see that incredible-looking creature, the death adder; it was certainly well seen, being obvious, but it was only obvious because it was on a patch of grass I’d recently mown precisely where I walk to and from my car). I daresay I’ll find that tree sooner or later, but there’s no hurry. That little adventure is related to all the trees close to the house. It was years before I was able to see clearly that most of the big and very tall trees here are generally largely vertical but that those closest to the river all have a few degrees of bias (from the vertical), viz, they lean toward the river. The big bloodwood, about 100 years old, inches (or cm) from this room is nicely vertical (although it has gigantic limbs any one of which may destroy most of the house). From where I now sit almost all the trees I can see look vertical but when I move around or am outside, many are obviously leaning toward the river rather than toward the house. Trees may break and fall at any time (e.g., when there is no wind) although a good time for this is in the period following a big Wet when soils are saturated.
There are trees on the slopes (on the south side of the house) but not very many because (a) of a weathered cliff and much loose scree* and (b) the bigger trees are relatively distant from the house. (*Scree derives from the graphic Icelandic word, skritha, a landslide (!) and is akin to the Old English, scithan, to go or to glide. My very own scree slope is thus a ready-made adventure such that the go-er or glider will have an excellent view of the serpentine river on the way down the hillside).
Akin (another good word) to this is the ominous rock-fall sound of swishing: large pieces of weathered shale occasionally break, fall and roll snowball-like from the rock face behind and above the house, through the scrub, grass and lantana to fetch up against one of my path-side walls. The Big Swishing is a very distinctive sound and is to be avoided (so far, none of these big missiles have hit the house (and only a couple of trees have caused house damage).
Fire of course is another hazard of the Natural World that has sometimes come close to being dangerous to the house here at Earthrise. What else? Wind. Strong gale force winds here are fortunately rare because the house and gardens are quite well protected in this bend of the river (known historically as Rum Corner) and by the lie of the land (the house has its back to the south and to the hillside—or mountainside if I want to be dramatic). However, to go outside on a windy day, unless I’m wearing a hard hat, is very unwise indeed because the air is sometimes crowded with twigs and branches that fly like arrows and spears (such windy days are the so-called Agincourt Days at Earthrise and are best seen from inside the house but also well away from the windows).
And then there are the floods. Flooding of the Bellinger may take place in any month. Late summer/early autumn is a fairly reliable time for flooding. There are flash floods (usually as a consequence of sudden downpours in the Catchment when (in one moment) you may be standing on the bridge admiring the upstream view that includes, strangely, a log or two (when it’s not even raining) and in the next moment you may have to run back to the bridge approach to avoid being cut off by the suddenly rising river level (yes, I’ve had this alarming experience). And there are the more moderately rising floods that sometimes keep coming (disturbingly) even though there may not have been (even in the Catchment) Very Heavy Local Rain that pours off the slopes here and spills from the flooding Deer Park paddocks across the road and into Darkwood Road, rainfall that drains so hugely into the road that the road becomes another river. The so-called Flood Rain is typically a steady ‘thick’ rain like a very heavy uninterrupted drizzle and it continues relentlessly to produce a flood often within a day and a half. Any breaks in Flood Rain imply that the flood may peak within a couple of days; steady rain or rain that develops into Very Heavy Local Falls is a very serious matter (like the rains in March 2001 when evacuation by canoe along the mountainside was necessary).
These are the major adventurous hazards; there are many minor ones, too. One of these is gardening of all kinds. Because I dislike wearing gloves I often am bitten, stung or cut by insects including very small spiders and very large jumping ants (and not forgetting goannas and pythons that bite, tear and rip, and all of the venomous snakes that that inject poison through their fangs). There are jumping ant nests near the Belvedere: one of the nests used to be the residence of inch-long red attack ants, but they moved out because they didn’t appreciate the mower passing over their tunnels and smaller black jumping ants moved in. The Big Red Guys are several metres further west now and when the mower approaches they’re brave enough to rush out and attack it (what chance have I, a mere un-armored human, got against these soldiers?). Eyes wide open to avoid the Red Jumpers! Ticks seem to be in a class of their own here because the wily ones use low branches of, e.g., tree ferns, to fall triumphantly on my head (unnoticed at the time). Similarly, the very clever leeches can be found waiting on plants (just as the ticks do) at various heights. Leeches, by the way, can be avoided at night or early in the morning possibly because they need their sleep and are not very active. When it’s wet here the leeches will always get their victim and working outside requires a de-leeching exercise at the end of Being Outside. Leeches here are attracted to warm wellingtons and they stay put sometimes for days. Gardening associated with stonewall building is sometimes a dangerous adventure because the gaps and spaces in gravity walls are an irresistible attraction for homeless creatures: skinks and lizards (no danger) take up residence in these Magic Caves, but so too do spiders and small snakes (given that the made ground or fill behind walls often comprises loose stones where snakes can stay dry and comfy deep inside my structures) (e.g., in the Belvedere). Being pricked by my beautiful roses is par for the course as is being stung by my hostile nettles and stinging trees (I could perhaps write a book, ‘A Dictionary of Earthrise Adventures’ along the lines of other similar books such as Alberto Manguel’s Dictionary of Imaginary Places, but how would I discover a publisher adventurous enough to publish it?).
There were two beautiful mellow days during this last week of March: softer light and warm days suitable for sitting outside and reading, but, alas, I knew a Change was coming up the coast so I felt obliged to rake and mow. No reading for the old gardener. That implies my method of clearing to make green islands in lawny areas by removing flood debris, including ax-able logs. Psychologically, winning clear areas in the chaos of flood debris is a heartening experience. These successful operations were a great success but were followed on Friday, March 27 by storms with plenty of wind and rain. Now (March 28 and 29): the close-cut grass is showing as a green blur; who would have thought it would still keep growing at such a rate this late in March. Seen from my bedroom: Big Lawn is a picture (so long as I don’t look too closely toward the flood debris between the lawn and the top of the riverbank). The partly weeded Belvedere got the mower low-cut treatment too and is today showing a blush of soft green, if ‘blush’ is the right word…and insistent weeds.
Another month almost ended, a bigger than ever pile of unread reading materials, and more unfinished writings (fiction and non-fiction) to struggle adventurously with. Who could ask for anything more?
During the month I’ve also had unsatisfying adventures of the political kind in relation to the flood debris here. Briefly: the ‘river authorities’ concerned to make rules and regulations about illegal land clearing/logging seem reluctant to either police or detect rule breakers (more later on that dark matter).
I was also surprised to meet on an early morning walk down the road a Buddhist monk who was visiting local friends. We stopped and enjoyed a short chat. We were quite close to the very weathered hillside near Richardson’s Bridge (which sooner or later will produce a landslide, in my opinion). There are adventures to be had almost everywhere.
And along the road the colours are changing, grass seeds and native privet berries ripen for the birds and much mist rises into the low clouds.
This Diary is # 16 in the New Series (previously 1107, 108, 208, 308, 408, 508, 608, 708, 808, 908, 1008, 1108, 1208, 109, 209; this is 309). DDD March 29 2009.
The word ‘adventure’ has been stabbing at memory and I’m tempted to re-member (ha, ha) some of my youthful adventures but will avoid that for as long as possible. There’s another angle to adventure (for me, I mean) that’s now almost mundane: adventurous aspects of living here at Earthrise. Adventuresome things here are often so taken for granted that although I know they exist I don’t often think specifically about them. I’ll attempt to explain some of these.
I was 10 in 1939 and lived with my parents and my sister in a small mining village, Pilgrims Rest. Pilgrims, as we all called it, had become a Company town, that company being the Transvaal Gold Mining Estates. In my childhood Pilgrims was the oldest continuously mined gold mining area in South Africa and before TGME became its ‘government’ it had been (since about 1873) the destination of many miners and prospectors from all over the world. My grandfather Rudolph Solon Diespecker (1858-1920) (always ‘Louis’ in the family) had been one of the ‘first era’ prospectors on Pilgrims Creek in 1880. And although Rudolph had more adventures than you could shake a stick at (prospector, earthworks contractor, sub-contractor on the notorious Selati Line in the Lowveld, intelligence officer and Commandant during the Anglo Boer War, just for starters), this Diary isn’t really about him at all: it’s about something he wrote, bless him, in a letter to my grandmother: he described the Drakensberg Middleveld (where Pilgrims Rest is) as ‘the jewel of Africa.’ I can never write that brief description without feeling emotional: although I lived there for only five years, from 1937 to 1942, it was the most wonderful and adventurous place of my childhood and I visualize scenes from that childhood place with ease, accuracy and huge nostalgia. Pilgrims and its enfolding mountains is an unforgettably beautiful place and I was there at an unforgettably and beautifully adventurous time of my life (think swimming and fishing in creeks and rivers, climbing, hiking, picnics, caving, learning to play rugby, and much, much more).
Now I’m again in a beautiful place but this time in the Australian bush where I’ve lived more or less in retirement for a quarter of a century, the longest time I’ve lived anywhere in the world. It’s not that the rest of the world is unsuitable or unsatisfactory; it isn’t, but that this place on the Bellinger River is also unquestionably beautiful and therefore good for me (good for my soul, if you like). Rivers have always been important to me (especially the Cowichan in British Columbia and the Blyde at Pilgrims Rest (Cowichan means ‘land warmed by the sun;’ Blyde, from the Dutch blijde means ‘joy’ and Bellinger means ‘clear water’). I’d always wanted to live in a wild place and build my own house; Jannelle and I built a three-level pole house here and that was a grand adventure. And there’s been nothing at all boring or dull about living here, which is why so many aspects of this place, by being habitually experienced in one way or another, may (forgive me) become familiarly almost unnoticed. For example, the river is only a few metres away and the house has been so located as to allow of many river views through the many windows (the room I’m sitting in has six principal ‘sides’ or walls and two minor walls containing more than 80 pieces of glass and including a circular window next to me). I’m always aware of the river and it’s changes and the notion of ‘river’ is thematic in my life; it’s also ‘always there’. Several nights ago I was in bed, half asleep and vaguely aware of television when I was made fully awake by the gunshot crack of a tree or large limb suddenly breaking and beginning to swish down toward—as I thought—part of the house. There’s never enough time to be smart about breaking or falling trees: you either tough it out and don’t move too many muscles or you dive or run for cover. I stayed put, then got dressed and went hunting through the darkness with a torch. I still have not found the tree (or limb). I had to ensure that no fallen tree would stop me from getting the car out (itself under threat from very big trees) because I was booked to have chelation therapy the next morning (the last time that happened a fallen tree blocked access from my carport to Darkwood Road and it had to be axed so that I might keep my chelation appointment). Fallen trees, otherwise, are commonplace occurrences on a forested property: they often go unnoticed or cannot easily be found because the single tree doesn’t always stand out in a forest. That’s part of the adventure of living in the forest (The Darkwood, as it’s correctly known in the area) and that implies the huge importance of using one’s eyes diligently. (Now I’m thinking of the time I arrived home one afternoon to see that incredible-looking creature, the death adder; it was certainly well seen, being obvious, but it was only obvious because it was on a patch of grass I’d recently mown precisely where I walk to and from my car). I daresay I’ll find that tree sooner or later, but there’s no hurry. That little adventure is related to all the trees close to the house. It was years before I was able to see clearly that most of the big and very tall trees here are generally largely vertical but that those closest to the river all have a few degrees of bias (from the vertical), viz, they lean toward the river. The big bloodwood, about 100 years old, inches (or cm) from this room is nicely vertical (although it has gigantic limbs any one of which may destroy most of the house). From where I now sit almost all the trees I can see look vertical but when I move around or am outside, many are obviously leaning toward the river rather than toward the house. Trees may break and fall at any time (e.g., when there is no wind) although a good time for this is in the period following a big Wet when soils are saturated.
There are trees on the slopes (on the south side of the house) but not very many because (a) of a weathered cliff and much loose scree* and (b) the bigger trees are relatively distant from the house. (*Scree derives from the graphic Icelandic word, skritha, a landslide (!) and is akin to the Old English, scithan, to go or to glide. My very own scree slope is thus a ready-made adventure such that the go-er or glider will have an excellent view of the serpentine river on the way down the hillside).
Akin (another good word) to this is the ominous rock-fall sound of swishing: large pieces of weathered shale occasionally break, fall and roll snowball-like from the rock face behind and above the house, through the scrub, grass and lantana to fetch up against one of my path-side walls. The Big Swishing is a very distinctive sound and is to be avoided (so far, none of these big missiles have hit the house (and only a couple of trees have caused house damage).
Fire of course is another hazard of the Natural World that has sometimes come close to being dangerous to the house here at Earthrise. What else? Wind. Strong gale force winds here are fortunately rare because the house and gardens are quite well protected in this bend of the river (known historically as Rum Corner) and by the lie of the land (the house has its back to the south and to the hillside—or mountainside if I want to be dramatic). However, to go outside on a windy day, unless I’m wearing a hard hat, is very unwise indeed because the air is sometimes crowded with twigs and branches that fly like arrows and spears (such windy days are the so-called Agincourt Days at Earthrise and are best seen from inside the house but also well away from the windows).
And then there are the floods. Flooding of the Bellinger may take place in any month. Late summer/early autumn is a fairly reliable time for flooding. There are flash floods (usually as a consequence of sudden downpours in the Catchment when (in one moment) you may be standing on the bridge admiring the upstream view that includes, strangely, a log or two (when it’s not even raining) and in the next moment you may have to run back to the bridge approach to avoid being cut off by the suddenly rising river level (yes, I’ve had this alarming experience). And there are the more moderately rising floods that sometimes keep coming (disturbingly) even though there may not have been (even in the Catchment) Very Heavy Local Rain that pours off the slopes here and spills from the flooding Deer Park paddocks across the road and into Darkwood Road, rainfall that drains so hugely into the road that the road becomes another river. The so-called Flood Rain is typically a steady ‘thick’ rain like a very heavy uninterrupted drizzle and it continues relentlessly to produce a flood often within a day and a half. Any breaks in Flood Rain imply that the flood may peak within a couple of days; steady rain or rain that develops into Very Heavy Local Falls is a very serious matter (like the rains in March 2001 when evacuation by canoe along the mountainside was necessary).
These are the major adventurous hazards; there are many minor ones, too. One of these is gardening of all kinds. Because I dislike wearing gloves I often am bitten, stung or cut by insects including very small spiders and very large jumping ants (and not forgetting goannas and pythons that bite, tear and rip, and all of the venomous snakes that that inject poison through their fangs). There are jumping ant nests near the Belvedere: one of the nests used to be the residence of inch-long red attack ants, but they moved out because they didn’t appreciate the mower passing over their tunnels and smaller black jumping ants moved in. The Big Red Guys are several metres further west now and when the mower approaches they’re brave enough to rush out and attack it (what chance have I, a mere un-armored human, got against these soldiers?). Eyes wide open to avoid the Red Jumpers! Ticks seem to be in a class of their own here because the wily ones use low branches of, e.g., tree ferns, to fall triumphantly on my head (unnoticed at the time). Similarly, the very clever leeches can be found waiting on plants (just as the ticks do) at various heights. Leeches, by the way, can be avoided at night or early in the morning possibly because they need their sleep and are not very active. When it’s wet here the leeches will always get their victim and working outside requires a de-leeching exercise at the end of Being Outside. Leeches here are attracted to warm wellingtons and they stay put sometimes for days. Gardening associated with stonewall building is sometimes a dangerous adventure because the gaps and spaces in gravity walls are an irresistible attraction for homeless creatures: skinks and lizards (no danger) take up residence in these Magic Caves, but so too do spiders and small snakes (given that the made ground or fill behind walls often comprises loose stones where snakes can stay dry and comfy deep inside my structures) (e.g., in the Belvedere). Being pricked by my beautiful roses is par for the course as is being stung by my hostile nettles and stinging trees (I could perhaps write a book, ‘A Dictionary of Earthrise Adventures’ along the lines of other similar books such as Alberto Manguel’s Dictionary of Imaginary Places, but how would I discover a publisher adventurous enough to publish it?).
There were two beautiful mellow days during this last week of March: softer light and warm days suitable for sitting outside and reading, but, alas, I knew a Change was coming up the coast so I felt obliged to rake and mow. No reading for the old gardener. That implies my method of clearing to make green islands in lawny areas by removing flood debris, including ax-able logs. Psychologically, winning clear areas in the chaos of flood debris is a heartening experience. These successful operations were a great success but were followed on Friday, March 27 by storms with plenty of wind and rain. Now (March 28 and 29): the close-cut grass is showing as a green blur; who would have thought it would still keep growing at such a rate this late in March. Seen from my bedroom: Big Lawn is a picture (so long as I don’t look too closely toward the flood debris between the lawn and the top of the riverbank). The partly weeded Belvedere got the mower low-cut treatment too and is today showing a blush of soft green, if ‘blush’ is the right word…and insistent weeds.
Another month almost ended, a bigger than ever pile of unread reading materials, and more unfinished writings (fiction and non-fiction) to struggle adventurously with. Who could ask for anything more?
During the month I’ve also had unsatisfying adventures of the political kind in relation to the flood debris here. Briefly: the ‘river authorities’ concerned to make rules and regulations about illegal land clearing/logging seem reluctant to either police or detect rule breakers (more later on that dark matter).
I was also surprised to meet on an early morning walk down the road a Buddhist monk who was visiting local friends. We stopped and enjoyed a short chat. We were quite close to the very weathered hillside near Richardson’s Bridge (which sooner or later will produce a landslide, in my opinion). There are adventures to be had almost everywhere.
And along the road the colours are changing, grass seeds and native privet berries ripen for the birds and much mist rises into the low clouds.
This Diary is # 16 in the New Series (previously 1107, 108, 208, 308, 408, 508, 608, 708, 808, 908, 1008, 1108, 1208, 109, 209; this is 309). DDD March 29 2009.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Earthrise Diary 209
The Earthrise Diary
Don Diespecker
Jumble to mix in a confused mass; put or throw together without order. –Syn. Muddle, hodgepodge; mess; chaos.
The Random House College Dictionary
February is usually my favourite month. Generally, the weather continues to be hot and humid; but I like the four weeks because of the changed light: it’s softer and has an end-of-summer glow that’s distinctively different from the harsher glare of midsummer. And February is quieter, too, because the school holidays are over and gardening is more enjoyable and sitting in the shade catching up with the summer reading or watching the brown fruit pigeons in the bleeding heart trees is relaxing for me. Most of February 2009 has, as usual, been hot and humid and without rain: careful hand watering of particular plants was necessary. On Friday Feb 13, however, the rains eventually came: a monsoonal depression dumped huge amounts of rain here and primed the river for flooding. The forerunners of the flood arrived on Monday, February 16 and on the 17th the area was well and truly flooded, the Plains Crossing Bridge invisible beneath metres of the river.
Sometimes, late in the summer, I realize that the spangled drongos have been absent because they suddenly return and for a few days their raucous calls can be heard and then there’s silence. The birds will not then return until next September. This February, however, the drongos became silent in January and have not been heard since. Also, water dragon activity has been infrequent and I’ve seen very little of them through the summer (although they were friendly enough in the spring). –But, following the flood, the dragons have reappeared on the debris that I’ve thrown down from the Belvedere (down there, they’re literally on the river). Perhaps the birds and dragons were examples of signs or portents because the hot and humid summer changed dramatically and wet weather has predominated. The cooler wet weather continues and it seems possible that another flood may eventuate. In Bellingen I heard accounts of homes being flooded and parts of the town being isolated by flooding. Later, there was an announcement that Bellingen had been declared a natural disaster area (one implication being that (Government) emergency funding will be made available. Damage here has been minimal with one exception: large stacks of logs and other debris have created chaos along my river frontage and I’m unable to move much of it.
The Belvedere is almost back to basics having had the river over it (the river then burying it with logs and other debris that floated into Earthrise and was then prevented from floating out again, although some debris did float out as the flood descended). Flooding of this splendid serpentine river is not unusual and I’ve lost count of the floods that have visited here. Some rare floods scarcely break the river’s banks; others are monstrously big and frightening. Later, and when this flood had peaked and fallen, I looked at the damage; however, at the time of the flood’s rising and with the peak a great unknown, the flooding experience was very unpleasant indeed because it’s never possible to predict how high the torrent will be.
The flood had risen during the night. At first light the big river looks unusual as it roars through the morning mist: the water is chocolate-brown and loaded with suspended solids. The smell of the floods here is unmistakable: as the river rises onto the banks there’s a strange sweet-and-sour smell (not unpleasant). Waves run fast along the centre-stream and logs of all shapes and sizes bob and swirl. The midstream is like a horizontal waterfall and it rushes past at an unusual speed. At night, and with the rain coming down hard on the corrugated iron roof there’s no visible sign of the torrent only a few metres away, there’s often an eerie silence when the flood is high: the river is too full to make significant sounds when surging high above the usually noisy rapids; the flood may already have peaked or there may be a lot more to come. To say that this is a worrying time conveys nothing at all: hours before and with the road threatening to also become a flooding river the car was driven safely to high ground. In a rising flood there’s a swelling creek between the house and the carport; the driveway to the gate is under water and torrents pour down from gullies behind and above the house; more torrents flood into the road from the West End garden; tonnes of water pour from the flooding Deer Park paddocks and spill into Darkwood Road directly opposite my gate; there’s an increasingly dangerous gap between the concrete swale and the road proper: it pays to get the car out early. With storm waters and newly inspired creeks pouring into Darkwood Road and the rising river flooding into and up the road, the road itself becomes a 1-m deep torrent; the car must be got out early. These waters meet turbulently in front of my house and frequently destroy the road and add to the flooding of the gardens and not being able to see any of this in the dark is sometimes as much a blessing as it is a curse. On this occasion, the road was saved from destruction (as always, the approach on the far side of the bridge was washed out and later repaired by neighbours from Dreamtime who used a tractor to fill the gap). And at night it’s possible to see glow-worms in the timber retaining wall behind the house and to see, also, luminous fungi glowing on trees close by. Once the flood has peaked and the rain has stopped the river begins to change colour again: from brown to cloudy pale green. Over the next few days the stream is wonderfully clean and it becomes a slightly more distinctive green.
(When I was 9 or 10 I was given, as a Christmas present, a game based on a collection of skewer-like sticks popularly known as ‘Fiddlesticks.’ One clasped the bundled sticks then opened the hand allowing the sticks to fall in a heap. The game’s winner was the one who could pick up the most sticks without disturbing the rest of the muddle. I was reminded of that old game while clearing flood debris from the Belvedere).
I’ve been writing an essay about the Belvedere (notice that the place is important enough to me for it to have an upper case ‘B’). I’d not intended to write quite so much (nearly 7-k words so far and still growing), but fascinating themes arise and beg to be discussed. The writing, however, has been rudely interrupted by the need to clean and recover the area. There are several big logs that are too heavy to move; they have to be axed into manageable chunks (fortunately for me, these logs can be dismembered because they’re decaying). The logs sit atop a tangle of branches and other debris (these have buoyed the settling logs against crushing all the plants in the area). I salvage poles from the flood and use them as ramps and get the log pieces over the wall and down toward the water without too much damage to the wall). I use the garden fork to lift debris and toss it riverward and both the steel rake and the (plastic) bamboo-style grass rake to lift almost all the fine material and dispose of it. There had been about 10 bleeding heart tree seedlings in the loam that I used to level the area (and into which I also planted a particular kind of grass, cloned from older plants in Big Lawn; these grasses had arrived in the 2001 flood as gifts of the river). Although there’s a healthy young red cedar growing in the centre of the Belvedere I wanted to keep the one or two seedlings that seemed the strongest (these trees live on the fringes of the rainforest and will grow 2 to 3-m in a good season; the fruit pigeons and several other species thrive on the little green seeds). After carefully clearing and even more carefully forking and raking the grass I was able to find and protect two of these seedlings. (A wild tomato plant that had started flowering in the new loam was crushed and has since died, but a red salvia plant (wild) that was flattened has allowed itself to be raised again and propped, as has a new grevillea hookeriana. The Belvedere supporting wall is undamaged except for some minor displacements and the whole wall looks as good as new. Clearing on and around, by hand, took about 20 hours. Although I know that snakes may be found in crevices and probably also inside the Belvedere’s walls, no snakes appeared. There were two other creatures, however, that I avoided. I met three funnel web spiders (one a magnificently big female and highly dangerous) and warrior bull ants (many of whom can leap tall buildings in a single bound in their quests to subdue humans). There are several species of these big ants (all almost an inch long); the two I’m most familiar with are either red-brown or black and their bites are instantly painful. I seldom wear gloves so my fingers are regularly attacked and the pain lasts for about 24 hours. A tip for flood workers: bull ants survive comfortably beneath the barks of logs (perhaps in bubbles of air while rafting or logging their ways through a watery world). Bubbles of air protect underground ants too, or so I understand, when floodwaters inundate ant country.
Clearing the Belvedere wasn’t too difficult; it was time consuming. A few metres downstream it’s a different story: a very big stack of logs and debris has been dumped on top of the bank and covers a densely packed area to a height of nearly 2-m and extends another 4-m or so to the water). This jumble contains logs (some of them 500-600-mm dia.) that I have no hope of moving (more about this in following Diaries).
To explain the flooding of my gardens and Big Lawn: Earthrise is always flooded indirectly when the flooded river hits the hillside 50-m downstream, ‘rebounds’ and, with parts whirl-pooling midstream and other parts flowing back upstream to ‘my’ corner of the river, the in-coming backflow, carrying tonnes of logs and debris, bursts into the gardens when the flood level reaches the same level in the gardens. When the flood peaks and the rain stops, the floating tangles of logs/debris move back toward the river (a much-reduced proportion returns to the river); most of what is dumped here will have failed to move as fast as the floodwaters draining back to the Bellinger, hence the big stacks of logs and debris. A higher than usual proportion of logs, I noted, had recently been chain-sawed (‘old’ or decaying logs can often be broken up with an axe and returned to the river; more recently cut timber, being green, is hard and resilient and removing such material from a stack is virtually impossible without mechanical equipment such as a bulldozer, tractor, Bobcat or a front end loader).
Apologies for the hastily written and haphazard editing of this Diary (floods have this effect on diarists). –And I’d intended writing more, but this is a short month and I’ve chosen to suspend my usual work programs in order to do as much of the cleanup as possible. I’d hoped to mow down the dreaded broad blade grass because it will now seed prolifically, as it always does every March. Maybe I’ll get the grass next year.
I’m including here a short piece that was published in the Australian Gestalt Journal (2000) 4(2), pp 28-29 (parts of it may be relevant to the current Flood Season).
© text Don Diespecker 200/2009
Looknsee
O that wondrous thing seeing not looking necessarily just simply seeing because it’s a given maybe a godgiven right anyway I remember seeing a film on TV or was I watching & sort of trying to study the flowing action all those little bits at 24 frames a sec jerkily made into a flow by my quirky perceiving anyway in this film an artist was explaining some beautiful things shed made one of them was the stage of a tiny theatre open to us & complete with proscenium arch & wings & a set so you could look down into it & although yes I could see all of it or so I thought I really could not see anything like all of it it just isnt possible unless I get really close into such a thing & suddenly achieve a flys compound eye view because if I could do that then Id see it all every nook & cranny & if you think on what Ive written here that your reading now dear reader please notice that while you can see the whole page you cant read the whole page at a glance & neither can you see let alone read the other side of the whole page if you see what I mean & now if you will please imagine sitting where you are possibly inside a room youll agree Im sure that you simply cant see the entire room in which you are at any time just you try & see the ceiling while looking down at the page something a fly could do without thinking & seeing vague parts of the floor merging with whatever cant be done can it or pretend youre me sitting scribbling with a wild river running by in the middle distance I can see it I can see it steady on old chap its only the moving surface bang in the centre of the picture theres no depth to it from up here just eternal movement so much so that the river I was writing about just a few lines ago has already gone forever because the riving flow I see is all moving parts & its sort of like an illusion that the river is at all stable permanent right there its about as startlingly ephemeral as the morning suns rays flashing on its surface in a wondrous show of scintillation all these glistening glimmers winking knowingly as if to say what you see is what you get what you see is momentary & playfully changeful change being the only constant in the universe if you see what I mean until of course the universe melts down & disappears without trace & besides Ive just remembered where I was a few lines ago namely you can never see the whole nor I without necessarily having to imagine it imagining an entire sphere or all the sides of a cube could make your head swim so Ill say that again you cannot see the whole of anything without also having to imagine the whole of the whole that is not without our stupendous gift of imagination I wonder about that I really do & here I am now able to imagine a three dimensional river out of its contextual ground & see it like a great serpent in the air the complete & transparent river from beginning to end or can I because I need also to see it from every imaginable angle as whole & here I am not even able to see the back of my head & yet can imagine that I am indeed also somewhere within me that which has a part called the back of my head that reminds me that a beginning exercise for the apprentice magician consists in sitting & imagining seeing yourself sitting & imagining as if seen from somewhere else opposite or above or from the other river bank its something I sometimes indulge in while walking & I put a part of me atop a tree while Im about to walk beneath it or into the visual perceptual field of the kingfisher shortcutting riverwards across the paddock or how do I seem to the bobbing butterfly & something else Ive just discovered is how tricky it is to see that full serpentine river in all of its dimensions while also seeing myself seeing it through my minds eye or should that read minds I & something else really awesome Im in a system called forest & river yet cannot see the interconnected interrelated interdependent systemic root systems of the trees as parts of our web of life yet in my imagination I somehow can see that & so I wonder if you too can see that that I imagine I can see & yourself know we too are the web of life.
If you’re interested in a daily guide to Arts and Letters, see www.aldaily.com/
If you’re interested in seeing rugby photos by Carl Diespecker (he does social events too) see www.newcastlerugbyphotos.com.au or Google his name.
This Diary is No.15 in the New Series (previously 1107, 108, 208, 308, 408, 508, 608, 708, 808, 908, 1008, 1108, 1208, 109; this is 209). DDD February 26 2009.
Don Diespecker
Jumble to mix in a confused mass; put or throw together without order. –Syn. Muddle, hodgepodge; mess; chaos.
The Random House College Dictionary
February is usually my favourite month. Generally, the weather continues to be hot and humid; but I like the four weeks because of the changed light: it’s softer and has an end-of-summer glow that’s distinctively different from the harsher glare of midsummer. And February is quieter, too, because the school holidays are over and gardening is more enjoyable and sitting in the shade catching up with the summer reading or watching the brown fruit pigeons in the bleeding heart trees is relaxing for me. Most of February 2009 has, as usual, been hot and humid and without rain: careful hand watering of particular plants was necessary. On Friday Feb 13, however, the rains eventually came: a monsoonal depression dumped huge amounts of rain here and primed the river for flooding. The forerunners of the flood arrived on Monday, February 16 and on the 17th the area was well and truly flooded, the Plains Crossing Bridge invisible beneath metres of the river.
Sometimes, late in the summer, I realize that the spangled drongos have been absent because they suddenly return and for a few days their raucous calls can be heard and then there’s silence. The birds will not then return until next September. This February, however, the drongos became silent in January and have not been heard since. Also, water dragon activity has been infrequent and I’ve seen very little of them through the summer (although they were friendly enough in the spring). –But, following the flood, the dragons have reappeared on the debris that I’ve thrown down from the Belvedere (down there, they’re literally on the river). Perhaps the birds and dragons were examples of signs or portents because the hot and humid summer changed dramatically and wet weather has predominated. The cooler wet weather continues and it seems possible that another flood may eventuate. In Bellingen I heard accounts of homes being flooded and parts of the town being isolated by flooding. Later, there was an announcement that Bellingen had been declared a natural disaster area (one implication being that (Government) emergency funding will be made available. Damage here has been minimal with one exception: large stacks of logs and other debris have created chaos along my river frontage and I’m unable to move much of it.
The Belvedere is almost back to basics having had the river over it (the river then burying it with logs and other debris that floated into Earthrise and was then prevented from floating out again, although some debris did float out as the flood descended). Flooding of this splendid serpentine river is not unusual and I’ve lost count of the floods that have visited here. Some rare floods scarcely break the river’s banks; others are monstrously big and frightening. Later, and when this flood had peaked and fallen, I looked at the damage; however, at the time of the flood’s rising and with the peak a great unknown, the flooding experience was very unpleasant indeed because it’s never possible to predict how high the torrent will be.
The flood had risen during the night. At first light the big river looks unusual as it roars through the morning mist: the water is chocolate-brown and loaded with suspended solids. The smell of the floods here is unmistakable: as the river rises onto the banks there’s a strange sweet-and-sour smell (not unpleasant). Waves run fast along the centre-stream and logs of all shapes and sizes bob and swirl. The midstream is like a horizontal waterfall and it rushes past at an unusual speed. At night, and with the rain coming down hard on the corrugated iron roof there’s no visible sign of the torrent only a few metres away, there’s often an eerie silence when the flood is high: the river is too full to make significant sounds when surging high above the usually noisy rapids; the flood may already have peaked or there may be a lot more to come. To say that this is a worrying time conveys nothing at all: hours before and with the road threatening to also become a flooding river the car was driven safely to high ground. In a rising flood there’s a swelling creek between the house and the carport; the driveway to the gate is under water and torrents pour down from gullies behind and above the house; more torrents flood into the road from the West End garden; tonnes of water pour from the flooding Deer Park paddocks and spill into Darkwood Road directly opposite my gate; there’s an increasingly dangerous gap between the concrete swale and the road proper: it pays to get the car out early. With storm waters and newly inspired creeks pouring into Darkwood Road and the rising river flooding into and up the road, the road itself becomes a 1-m deep torrent; the car must be got out early. These waters meet turbulently in front of my house and frequently destroy the road and add to the flooding of the gardens and not being able to see any of this in the dark is sometimes as much a blessing as it is a curse. On this occasion, the road was saved from destruction (as always, the approach on the far side of the bridge was washed out and later repaired by neighbours from Dreamtime who used a tractor to fill the gap). And at night it’s possible to see glow-worms in the timber retaining wall behind the house and to see, also, luminous fungi glowing on trees close by. Once the flood has peaked and the rain has stopped the river begins to change colour again: from brown to cloudy pale green. Over the next few days the stream is wonderfully clean and it becomes a slightly more distinctive green.
(When I was 9 or 10 I was given, as a Christmas present, a game based on a collection of skewer-like sticks popularly known as ‘Fiddlesticks.’ One clasped the bundled sticks then opened the hand allowing the sticks to fall in a heap. The game’s winner was the one who could pick up the most sticks without disturbing the rest of the muddle. I was reminded of that old game while clearing flood debris from the Belvedere).
I’ve been writing an essay about the Belvedere (notice that the place is important enough to me for it to have an upper case ‘B’). I’d not intended to write quite so much (nearly 7-k words so far and still growing), but fascinating themes arise and beg to be discussed. The writing, however, has been rudely interrupted by the need to clean and recover the area. There are several big logs that are too heavy to move; they have to be axed into manageable chunks (fortunately for me, these logs can be dismembered because they’re decaying). The logs sit atop a tangle of branches and other debris (these have buoyed the settling logs against crushing all the plants in the area). I salvage poles from the flood and use them as ramps and get the log pieces over the wall and down toward the water without too much damage to the wall). I use the garden fork to lift debris and toss it riverward and both the steel rake and the (plastic) bamboo-style grass rake to lift almost all the fine material and dispose of it. There had been about 10 bleeding heart tree seedlings in the loam that I used to level the area (and into which I also planted a particular kind of grass, cloned from older plants in Big Lawn; these grasses had arrived in the 2001 flood as gifts of the river). Although there’s a healthy young red cedar growing in the centre of the Belvedere I wanted to keep the one or two seedlings that seemed the strongest (these trees live on the fringes of the rainforest and will grow 2 to 3-m in a good season; the fruit pigeons and several other species thrive on the little green seeds). After carefully clearing and even more carefully forking and raking the grass I was able to find and protect two of these seedlings. (A wild tomato plant that had started flowering in the new loam was crushed and has since died, but a red salvia plant (wild) that was flattened has allowed itself to be raised again and propped, as has a new grevillea hookeriana. The Belvedere supporting wall is undamaged except for some minor displacements and the whole wall looks as good as new. Clearing on and around, by hand, took about 20 hours. Although I know that snakes may be found in crevices and probably also inside the Belvedere’s walls, no snakes appeared. There were two other creatures, however, that I avoided. I met three funnel web spiders (one a magnificently big female and highly dangerous) and warrior bull ants (many of whom can leap tall buildings in a single bound in their quests to subdue humans). There are several species of these big ants (all almost an inch long); the two I’m most familiar with are either red-brown or black and their bites are instantly painful. I seldom wear gloves so my fingers are regularly attacked and the pain lasts for about 24 hours. A tip for flood workers: bull ants survive comfortably beneath the barks of logs (perhaps in bubbles of air while rafting or logging their ways through a watery world). Bubbles of air protect underground ants too, or so I understand, when floodwaters inundate ant country.
Clearing the Belvedere wasn’t too difficult; it was time consuming. A few metres downstream it’s a different story: a very big stack of logs and debris has been dumped on top of the bank and covers a densely packed area to a height of nearly 2-m and extends another 4-m or so to the water). This jumble contains logs (some of them 500-600-mm dia.) that I have no hope of moving (more about this in following Diaries).
To explain the flooding of my gardens and Big Lawn: Earthrise is always flooded indirectly when the flooded river hits the hillside 50-m downstream, ‘rebounds’ and, with parts whirl-pooling midstream and other parts flowing back upstream to ‘my’ corner of the river, the in-coming backflow, carrying tonnes of logs and debris, bursts into the gardens when the flood level reaches the same level in the gardens. When the flood peaks and the rain stops, the floating tangles of logs/debris move back toward the river (a much-reduced proportion returns to the river); most of what is dumped here will have failed to move as fast as the floodwaters draining back to the Bellinger, hence the big stacks of logs and debris. A higher than usual proportion of logs, I noted, had recently been chain-sawed (‘old’ or decaying logs can often be broken up with an axe and returned to the river; more recently cut timber, being green, is hard and resilient and removing such material from a stack is virtually impossible without mechanical equipment such as a bulldozer, tractor, Bobcat or a front end loader).
Apologies for the hastily written and haphazard editing of this Diary (floods have this effect on diarists). –And I’d intended writing more, but this is a short month and I’ve chosen to suspend my usual work programs in order to do as much of the cleanup as possible. I’d hoped to mow down the dreaded broad blade grass because it will now seed prolifically, as it always does every March. Maybe I’ll get the grass next year.
I’m including here a short piece that was published in the Australian Gestalt Journal (2000) 4(2), pp 28-29 (parts of it may be relevant to the current Flood Season).
© text Don Diespecker 200/2009
Looknsee
O that wondrous thing seeing not looking necessarily just simply seeing because it’s a given maybe a godgiven right anyway I remember seeing a film on TV or was I watching & sort of trying to study the flowing action all those little bits at 24 frames a sec jerkily made into a flow by my quirky perceiving anyway in this film an artist was explaining some beautiful things shed made one of them was the stage of a tiny theatre open to us & complete with proscenium arch & wings & a set so you could look down into it & although yes I could see all of it or so I thought I really could not see anything like all of it it just isnt possible unless I get really close into such a thing & suddenly achieve a flys compound eye view because if I could do that then Id see it all every nook & cranny & if you think on what Ive written here that your reading now dear reader please notice that while you can see the whole page you cant read the whole page at a glance & neither can you see let alone read the other side of the whole page if you see what I mean & now if you will please imagine sitting where you are possibly inside a room youll agree Im sure that you simply cant see the entire room in which you are at any time just you try & see the ceiling while looking down at the page something a fly could do without thinking & seeing vague parts of the floor merging with whatever cant be done can it or pretend youre me sitting scribbling with a wild river running by in the middle distance I can see it I can see it steady on old chap its only the moving surface bang in the centre of the picture theres no depth to it from up here just eternal movement so much so that the river I was writing about just a few lines ago has already gone forever because the riving flow I see is all moving parts & its sort of like an illusion that the river is at all stable permanent right there its about as startlingly ephemeral as the morning suns rays flashing on its surface in a wondrous show of scintillation all these glistening glimmers winking knowingly as if to say what you see is what you get what you see is momentary & playfully changeful change being the only constant in the universe if you see what I mean until of course the universe melts down & disappears without trace & besides Ive just remembered where I was a few lines ago namely you can never see the whole nor I without necessarily having to imagine it imagining an entire sphere or all the sides of a cube could make your head swim so Ill say that again you cannot see the whole of anything without also having to imagine the whole of the whole that is not without our stupendous gift of imagination I wonder about that I really do & here I am now able to imagine a three dimensional river out of its contextual ground & see it like a great serpent in the air the complete & transparent river from beginning to end or can I because I need also to see it from every imaginable angle as whole & here I am not even able to see the back of my head & yet can imagine that I am indeed also somewhere within me that which has a part called the back of my head that reminds me that a beginning exercise for the apprentice magician consists in sitting & imagining seeing yourself sitting & imagining as if seen from somewhere else opposite or above or from the other river bank its something I sometimes indulge in while walking & I put a part of me atop a tree while Im about to walk beneath it or into the visual perceptual field of the kingfisher shortcutting riverwards across the paddock or how do I seem to the bobbing butterfly & something else Ive just discovered is how tricky it is to see that full serpentine river in all of its dimensions while also seeing myself seeing it through my minds eye or should that read minds I & something else really awesome Im in a system called forest & river yet cannot see the interconnected interrelated interdependent systemic root systems of the trees as parts of our web of life yet in my imagination I somehow can see that & so I wonder if you too can see that that I imagine I can see & yourself know we too are the web of life.
If you’re interested in a daily guide to Arts and Letters, see www.aldaily.com/
If you’re interested in seeing rugby photos by Carl Diespecker (he does social events too) see www.newcastlerugbyphotos.com.au or Google his name.
This Diary is No.15 in the New Series (previously 1107, 108, 208, 308, 408, 508, 608, 708, 808, 908, 1008, 1108, 1208, 109; this is 209). DDD February 26 2009.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Earthrise Diary 109
Earthrise Diary 109
The Earthrise Diary
Don Diespecker
‘What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not been discovered.’
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882). Fortune of the Republic.
Although I’ve not (yet) read Emerson, I’m curious to know why biographical dictionaries describe him (alphabetically) as ‘essayist, philosopher and poet’ because he formulated the philosophy of transcendentalism and in my humble opinion, philosophy would seem to deserve the first mention. However, an opinion may be no more than a sentiment. Never mind: it’s the silly season and I’ve not only been observing certain weeds, but I’ve been very much among them. The gardens here have been sadly overgrown for years and for several reasons, one of which has to do with feral deer grazing my favourite plants while ignoring my splendid collections of weeds. Another and more impressive reason is that the mighty March 2001 flood destroyed and buried my gardens and lawns and I must use gardening archeology to find them again. The original Big Lawn was never entirely flat or at all level except in disparate places; most of it remains an historical rumour because it remains buried beneath about 750-mm of flood loam. Everything changes.
The 2001 flood, having destroyed the lawns also deposited gifts of the river for my consideration and these included a hair-raising assortment of weeds like the dreaded mistflower (seemingly a close relative of the dreaded Crofton weed), and a jolly selection of grass seeds. Some of the grasses are now doing their best to colonize areas that for years have been dominated by powerful ground covers like Tradescantia pallida (previously described). I’ve recently been doing all of the necessary mowing, having recently lost the assistance of my regular mowing person. I’ve set my new motor mower to cut lower and deeper because I want to remove most of the Tradescantia to give the various grasses good opportunities to thrive. I’ve discovered an attractive soft, yet tenacious grass that’s been struggling heroically, apparently since 2001, to make a New Big Lawn and wherever I’ve mowed recently I find evidence of this ‘new’ grass. (I hope I may not be encouraging anything monstrous like the Queensland broad-leafed grass that leaps up more than 2-m in a good growth season and which seeds hugely and as regularly as clockwork every March: the mature root system of this fiendish thing has to be dug out with a mattock and burned, if possible, and anyone who allows it to flourish anywhere near their gardens will rue the day).
Gardens have always been intensely interesting for me: the first garden in my life was at 1129 Oxford Street in Victoria, BC. When I re-visited that city in 1980, a house similar to the one I remember from the 1930s made the address look familiar but the owner assured me it was a replacement house which had been trucked onto the 1129 site after ‘my’ old home was destroyed for some unknown reason. The remembered gardens of my childhood had vanished. There once were loganberries and raspberries growing against the single car garage and on the lawn side of the garage an old apple tree that produced big green apples (each large enough to provide four large quarters for an after-dinner dessert; Dad grew prize-winning dahlias closer to the neighbour’s fence and sometimes sweet-peas on a trellis and he grew vegetables in season between a peat area and the lawn; there were Michaelmas and Shasta daisies at the back gate and the gate opened on to a lane used for access to other garages and wild blackberries grew all the way along the lane. In spring and summer there were gladioli and at the front of the house, forget-me-nots, primroses, foxgloves, pansies and big hydrangea bushes.
The ‘other’ garden of this era was the very public and hugely popular Butchart Gardens (the gardens were made in what had once been a quarry). The climate was atypically mild for Canada and much of Vancouver Island, for me as a child, was like a remarkable and variegated great garden: parks and public gardens were generally colourful for most months except when it was wintry and snowy—spring wildflowers in the woods grew almost to the ocean’s edge at some beaches; local gardeners grew everything that could be grown in the open in that cool temperate climate. (And not forgetting the great ‘gardens’ of the BC forests: pines and firs and gigantic cedars).
In 1937 I saw sub tropical gardens in Panama on the way to Africa and colourful species in Natal and Mozambique and the Transvaal. Wherever we lived—at Pilgrims Rest in the Drakensberg up in the so-called Middleveld of the Transvaal or in Durban on the subtropical Natal coast, Dad always managed to make gardens. I used to be one of his learner-assistants and so earned the right to make small gardens of my own where I could grow flowers and vegetables. And when Pam and I lived in London in the ‘50s (Hampstead), I’ve just remembered, I used to work one or two half days a week, as a gardener, for 3/6 an hour. My employer was the composer/conductor, Edric Cundell (1893-1961) who, in 1956, lived with his family on the ‘hillside’ above central Hampstead. I like the notion of having gardened in Canada, South Africa, the UK and Australia.
I detour into a floral/herbal past because I’ve put much time and energy into gardening this spring and summer and while it’s hot, sweaty and often exhausting, ‘ordinary work’ is also very satisfying—and a garden, for me, is always a pleasure ground. When I was recently asked why I was working so hard outside, my simple answer was that, regardless of the extent to which I was pleasing myself, I was working to assist the garden in becoming itself. The question was repeated: but why? My answer: ‘because the garden deserves to be what it is, itself.’ Perhaps this looks clumsy, but that’s how I feel about the gardens here. When I think about it: I generally sigh with pleasure when I return home; a garden and the great trees have a greatly calming effect on me, particularly when I’ve been driving. And, when relaxed and contemplative, the garden—it’s varied outlooks and prospects, the changing beauty of light, shade and colour—has the power to transform any mood into joy. Aspects of such ‘power’ surely reside, too, in the gardener: to transform land into gardens having both obvious and subtle dimensions of beauty makes for a lively, if not a joyful garden, the garden simply being itself in all of its simplicities and complexities.
So much of this summer seems centered in the weeks from Xmas through most of January and it’s been a hot and humid and often uncomfortable time. I’ve been either inside wrestling with fiction (and using the heat as an excuse to guiltily monitor some (ordinary) Australian cricket and (very good) international tennis on TV) or outside gardening: mowing, raking, axing, digging, cloning and transplanting, planting new grevilleas, pruning, moving barrow-loads of loam, weeding the belvedere—and much more. Most of this ‘gardening’ work has been uncovering, recovering and sometimes discovering what has been hidden or buried. The several-coloured impatiens (once known as balsam) has returned following the disappeared feral deer; after hard raking and mowing and destruction of sundry groundcovers, seedlings of the bleeding heart tree (Omalanthus populifolias) have almost leaped out of their confinement in flood loam and are growing lustily (they thrive in sun or shade and their fruits attract acrobatic brown fruit pigeons).
Now at the end of January, my world is hot, humid with emphatic shades of green varying from eau de Nil to the near-black greens of the bush and the deeply shaded parts of gardens where big trees cut most of the bright light. The days have flown by (as they probably do for all of us conscious of our increasingly Senior Years!).
The overgrown edges of Big Lawn are densely covered in ground covers, weeds, flood debris (including partially buried logs) and, worst of all, the common form of jasmine, (pre the 2001 flood and for years, unmanageable). Jasmine runners have the ability to spread so strongly that they throttle many plants on the ground and also climb big trees and densely envelope not only the crowns but the entire tree; all of the tree’s growth is suffocated; other vines combine and the area is rapidly subdued: big trees begin dying and shedding limbs or they break and come crashing down. The jasmine then invades lawns and mower blades have to be set low. The mix of grass clippings and jasmine has to be re-mowed and kept separate on bare ground from other clippings, mulches and compost. It takes weeks for these materials to become inert; following some interference—digging and scattering—from inquisitive brush turkeys, they eventually leave the piles alone.
One of my objectives is to eliminate groundcovers and jasmine by repeated mowing followed by repeated raking because (theory) much of the litter surrounding grass, i.e., on the ground below the grass tops, is mowed or pulverized leaf litter and bark from the flooded gums (E. grandis) and blood woods and that litter seems to me to sour the soil and the discourage grass growth (whereas the groundcovers love that stuff, it seems). There may be something in this because the grasses I want to encourage are again growing well in mowed/raked areas. Does this look obsessive, dear reader? It sometimes seems so to me, but the alternative is to fuss and fume and curse the groundcovers and litter. Removing that stuff is endless hot hard work, but the lawn deserves to be what it is. A thriving lawn is a happy lawn…
Jan 25 ’09. Yesterday in Sunday Sydney temperatures eased past 40˚C and here, although it was only about 30˚ humidity on my skin felt like an oppressive blanket; movement of any kind produced constant sweat; it’s remarkably easy to dehydrate dangerously in this weather.
Late in the afternoon while swimmers were still cooling off in the pool in front of the house I was (unwisely?) mowing and re-raking next to the old Funnel Web Slopes (which are really the ‘ancient’ hard dry banks marking an earlier course of the river (Darkwood Road cuts through the same material and the house here is built on the old banks). The shrilling of cicadas rises and falls from time to time and mercifully isn’t continuous; twilight and dusk are popular times to remind me of their chorusing. I’ve regularly met a certain (red-belied) black snake on the steep path between lawn and front steps and have learned to bang my boots resonantly; perhaps s-he lives in the stone wall next to the path; and once I met the same snake on the newly cleared ground between the citrus trees and the riverbank (where my piles of clippings are hopefully cooking) and greeted him/her respectfully from a distance. Fortunately for me, this serpent is little more than a metre or so long but it looks spectacularly shiny and healthy. Perhaps we’ll become used to one another and as I diminish with age the snake will grow bigger and more robust… And there are two garden-roaming goannas this summer, one of them almost black (which lurches up a nearby tree whenever I arrive to deposit kitchen scraps nearby); the other, as blond a creature (quite yellow) as the first reptile is a darkly brunette one. There’s been much rain, most of it as storm showers and frogs rattle and croak along the road when I walk by. There was a violent electric storm here on Jan 29, the detonations so great that my pole house literally trembled or vibrated. –That reminds me of having stood thoughtfully one morning on the Richardson’s Bridge walkway (a part of the bridge deck separated from the deck roadway by a hefty baluster rail) watching (and feeling) a concrete truck driving across in my direction. When it passed (I was close to and standing above the first pier on the west side of the bridge) the vibrations were enormous and I was bounced almost off my feet. These big trucks have a rotating drum and weigh tonnes. I half expected to be catapulted off the bridge and across the river and was reminded of my first and last day in Los Angeles in 1976 when there were appreciable earth tremors. The interesting thing about earth tremors is that one’s view becomes blurred because everything seems to be vibrating…
I guess there’s another month of hot humid weather to come. Today, Jan 29, the news from Victoria and South Aus is worrying: they’re experiencing days of extreme weather (45.6˚ yesterday in Adelaide) with maximum temperatures consistently in the mid forties. Not good. The tennis players at the Aus Open are having a tough time; but so is everybody else; and there are fires. Here, there’s plenty of shade. The weeping choral tree is showing its second seasonal flush of red orchid-like flowers, there are birds in the birdbath, and the gardens are well watered from the frequent showers.
I’m including here a piece I published in 2002; it has some relevance to the 2009 gardens.
© text Don Diespecker 2001, 2009
Streaming
The water runs in so smoothly, the thin poly-pipe pouring it forth once more. Silent in the hot afternoon inside the house he sits watching at first still sweating from outside, and when he’s more settled seeing what might need fine-tuning. More work. The old birdbath basin sitting up again supported by those lay-about opportune concrete slabs and two big river stones alongside. Knew they’d come in useful one day. Tastefully arranged. Cascades. Overflow dribbling. --Meddlesome dragon the birdbath paddling.
Earlier, on his knees before a still-buried stonewalled garden romantically turning the start of a modest project from work to archeological dig. Remembering there even earlier moments when sitting inside and seeing out there was the envisioning glimpsed image of the revivified birdbath with fountain driven by a little of the piped creek. Pure pleasure. Exclusively his. Almost. Not forgetting birds and taking account of territorial dragons. Through the mind’s eye, then, fantasizing his idling self there in the shade in the not too distant future. That imagined image followed by another of The Dig, a long shot seen in three quarter view from his relaxing inside chair when reflecting down and out to the two garden riverside chairs. In that second image he unearths the cock and valves the sidelined-held flow out to the garden edge and up a little then down into the bath, all the water falling way down from the trembling creek in the rainforest, then through the bath on the high bank to pour over dribbling, then soaking and meandering to the river below. A detour. Picaresque. No harm done. Seen by passing locals he’d be the harmless rogue digging to bury his treasure, or possibly an enemy.
Later than earlier, in person, in real time, the mock archeologist pulls away the profusion of weeds where stands the stone wall while glancing aside to yet another reclaimed wall where his mattock rests beside tonnes of agglomerating flood debris. There has been no soaking rain for months. There is not even earth to be dug but only loose fine sand and shifting silt as palpable as powder in places dusting up and floating away, a sad orange-red in the heat, drifting into the trees. Lightly using the shovel one-handed he digs. Like scooping flour. No need for big tools. Quickly finding the cast-iron twirled tap cock top by the metallic clink of the spade he simultaneously is found by an incoming sortie of stinger scouts: the first fighters fly from out of the sun from behind, low and out of sight, fully armed and sharp to harass and torment and artfully skilled in softening the target for the following squadron to dismember. Taking over the world, or at least his pleasure place, his Cockaigne, he thinks before remembering briefly times of divining springs there, absorbing rhadomancy exercises with twin fencing wire wands fleeting years ago. Running with sweat he brushes off the rusting knurled wheel to charge the flood-buried sideline and sees the clear water pouring distantly, sweating now into his eyes and dripping, then starting up cursing, escaping the fat flies, leaving them to the voracious dragons while the reptiles torn between cooling plunges in their own dragon bath and plump luscious stingers the courtesy of the human stalking horse, pause in perplexity. His salty exudations nevertheless appreciated. A dip before dinner or eat first? Reptilian quandaries.
Later yet as much in the now as ever having gone up to the house to rest and then seen what he previously seemed unable to see clearly, he intently had rushed down muttering with his pruning saw to remove two expired flood-stricken tree-heath saplings thereby liberating the view he was craving, that of the clear crystal fountain pouring into the birdbath shimmering above the flood loam covering the destroyed lawns and gardens, all parts of the view of delight, the riverbank the river the trees the world the waiting two chairs. Best to go back up and view the vista. He did so then arriving hotly once more in the tumultuous present was enabled to see again past things present in his mind.
Now, while scuffling once more through cloudlets of disturbed dry silt to those wavering riverbank chairs and seeing the clear flowing from the pipe, he slows to allow old pictures and the oft-repeated flashing facets of bygone rerun images their jostling for space-time in the present. Old pictures. Mind pictures. Showtime. Stopping uncertainly. He is merely another unsettled dragon.
Now, thinking on the rainforest creek pressed into the mainline articulation pouring its libation through the rose-head bathroom shower where the un-curtained window is an eye to the riverscape, a means to see more than can be seen, he recalls immersions hot and cold clothed in the creek’s cleansing holy water while being in the picture show of his mind, sub rosa, pulling past images and enticing future ones into the flickering present, moments reflective prospective introspective contemplative and possibly interspective were he sufficiently and magically brained, and now remembering Europe long ago, that statue-fountain the small boy pissing, while here on the riverbank in the open there is again a steady stream from the pipe of plenitude the flowing from the pipe as robust as pure as that dream image in the film, Madeline’s Dream, herself dreaming of water of a fountain, when she told Fritz Perls (the facilitator), ‘I don’t know much about myself. (Pause, begins to cry) I come. I don’t know how I come but I know I’m good, that’s all I know. I would like you to drink me because I know I’m good. I don’t know where I come from. I’m in that big vase. It’s a black vase,’ trying to exactly recall her words while seeing her face clearly. Her flowing-ness. Her youth. Now remembering fountains like the Trevi where the trotting Alpini go clattering by on the cobblestones of long ago and Tivoli the water gardens at Villa d’Este watering and running and pouring and spouting and fountaining, now remembering piercingly with pleasure Kermanshah in Bakhtaran in a time before the revolution and the young women in the sunlit hotel corridor early in the day the women wearing the chador doe-eyed and beautiful though well covered with everyone giggling at the tile-surrounded single faucet, brushing teeth. Try that veiled. The spigot. Clear water issuing. No bathrooms. And there again is the public bathhouse in Khorramabad in Lorestan on a winter’s night water flowing, hot inside, frosty out, and Eric’s damp hair icing. Friends laughing. There again is the dangerous evening scene in the apartment up at Shemrun with kerosene dripping openly and traditionally from the throttled spigot to the inclined metal runnel descending to the hot heater that puffs and woofs exploding flames, and seeing again views from unpressurized DC3s of the Dasht-e Lut pocked with minute mole-hills of spoil marking the qanats the deep-down handmade conduits moving mountain water and blind white fish beneath the desert to then run fiercely through villages and towns, the creek-like jub in place of gutters, crystal clear at the top of the town and fouled beyond it. Water.
Now, his mind runs on netting old images, his mind a conduit through time, so that fluids and flowing approach unbidden and then recede, like water on an aircraft window forming briefly in torn-apart clouds, like the unbidden horror of the burning oil well at Qum, like ugly flooding in rivers and glimpsing memories of everything fluid that flows, like molten gold being cast in the assay office at Pilgrim’s, and seeing again in a back room of memory the Shangaan slip and fall from the ore train the gouts of blood, his torn leg pumping, and waiting for the bus at Qiryat Shemona while nearby foot-hung chickens are killed methodically and ritually, their blood funneling and pouring down and away in the abattoir for chickens, an upside down Tivoli, a reversed water garden, a blood garden, or when he was a kid at the abattoir on Pilgrim’s Creek long ago seeing the animals there, all blood, blood everywhere and running away darkly in the creek to join the cyanide-brown tailings in the Blyde, the Happy River that once was and seeing suddenly his mother weeping wracked and engulfed in frightening sorrow, remembering other rivers in time and brooks and rivulets and deep dark pools and short stretches gurging in sunlight all fluvial and making love on forested banks and riparian meadows on hot afternoons sweat showering to earth thrillingly in moments of falling passionate gentleness and sometimes in long seconds of tender riving in the changing light and shade patterning deep inside the forest, secretly, and later plunging in the rolling water the river achingly cold and fiercely enlivening and remembering very long ago bright days hiking along even colder mountain streams in the Drakensberg and waterfalls and torrents and glinting rapids and plunging in and out and even longer ago than that the splashing toddler in the shallows of the Cowichan with the family and once again seeing the green algae on slippery stones on sunny afternoons in the 30s then going ahead in time again to the clear upper Blyde far from the reduction works and the pounding stamp batteries again his loved river of golden childhood in Africa and the trout holding station in the shallows an arms length below the ledge and always wishing for rivers big and small quiet and crowded seeing suddenly again the Seine in late winter and barges surging by in the cold air and a comfortable family on board looking up at the bridges and his being half a couple gazing down fondly and the barge flags streaming--
Reference
Perls, Fritz (1976). The Gestalt Approach and Eye Witness to Therapy. New York: Bantam Books, Inc, p 193.
Acknowledgment: ‘Streaming’ was originally published in The Australian Gestalt Journal (2002), 6(1), 8-10.
This Diary is No. 14 in the New Series (previously 1107, 108, 208, 308, 408, 508, 608, 708, 808, 908, 1008, 1108, 1208; this is109). DDD January 29 2009.
The Earthrise Diary
Don Diespecker
‘What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not been discovered.’
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882). Fortune of the Republic.
Although I’ve not (yet) read Emerson, I’m curious to know why biographical dictionaries describe him (alphabetically) as ‘essayist, philosopher and poet’ because he formulated the philosophy of transcendentalism and in my humble opinion, philosophy would seem to deserve the first mention. However, an opinion may be no more than a sentiment. Never mind: it’s the silly season and I’ve not only been observing certain weeds, but I’ve been very much among them. The gardens here have been sadly overgrown for years and for several reasons, one of which has to do with feral deer grazing my favourite plants while ignoring my splendid collections of weeds. Another and more impressive reason is that the mighty March 2001 flood destroyed and buried my gardens and lawns and I must use gardening archeology to find them again. The original Big Lawn was never entirely flat or at all level except in disparate places; most of it remains an historical rumour because it remains buried beneath about 750-mm of flood loam. Everything changes.
The 2001 flood, having destroyed the lawns also deposited gifts of the river for my consideration and these included a hair-raising assortment of weeds like the dreaded mistflower (seemingly a close relative of the dreaded Crofton weed), and a jolly selection of grass seeds. Some of the grasses are now doing their best to colonize areas that for years have been dominated by powerful ground covers like Tradescantia pallida (previously described). I’ve recently been doing all of the necessary mowing, having recently lost the assistance of my regular mowing person. I’ve set my new motor mower to cut lower and deeper because I want to remove most of the Tradescantia to give the various grasses good opportunities to thrive. I’ve discovered an attractive soft, yet tenacious grass that’s been struggling heroically, apparently since 2001, to make a New Big Lawn and wherever I’ve mowed recently I find evidence of this ‘new’ grass. (I hope I may not be encouraging anything monstrous like the Queensland broad-leafed grass that leaps up more than 2-m in a good growth season and which seeds hugely and as regularly as clockwork every March: the mature root system of this fiendish thing has to be dug out with a mattock and burned, if possible, and anyone who allows it to flourish anywhere near their gardens will rue the day).
Gardens have always been intensely interesting for me: the first garden in my life was at 1129 Oxford Street in Victoria, BC. When I re-visited that city in 1980, a house similar to the one I remember from the 1930s made the address look familiar but the owner assured me it was a replacement house which had been trucked onto the 1129 site after ‘my’ old home was destroyed for some unknown reason. The remembered gardens of my childhood had vanished. There once were loganberries and raspberries growing against the single car garage and on the lawn side of the garage an old apple tree that produced big green apples (each large enough to provide four large quarters for an after-dinner dessert; Dad grew prize-winning dahlias closer to the neighbour’s fence and sometimes sweet-peas on a trellis and he grew vegetables in season between a peat area and the lawn; there were Michaelmas and Shasta daisies at the back gate and the gate opened on to a lane used for access to other garages and wild blackberries grew all the way along the lane. In spring and summer there were gladioli and at the front of the house, forget-me-nots, primroses, foxgloves, pansies and big hydrangea bushes.
The ‘other’ garden of this era was the very public and hugely popular Butchart Gardens (the gardens were made in what had once been a quarry). The climate was atypically mild for Canada and much of Vancouver Island, for me as a child, was like a remarkable and variegated great garden: parks and public gardens were generally colourful for most months except when it was wintry and snowy—spring wildflowers in the woods grew almost to the ocean’s edge at some beaches; local gardeners grew everything that could be grown in the open in that cool temperate climate. (And not forgetting the great ‘gardens’ of the BC forests: pines and firs and gigantic cedars).
In 1937 I saw sub tropical gardens in Panama on the way to Africa and colourful species in Natal and Mozambique and the Transvaal. Wherever we lived—at Pilgrims Rest in the Drakensberg up in the so-called Middleveld of the Transvaal or in Durban on the subtropical Natal coast, Dad always managed to make gardens. I used to be one of his learner-assistants and so earned the right to make small gardens of my own where I could grow flowers and vegetables. And when Pam and I lived in London in the ‘50s (Hampstead), I’ve just remembered, I used to work one or two half days a week, as a gardener, for 3/6 an hour. My employer was the composer/conductor, Edric Cundell (1893-1961) who, in 1956, lived with his family on the ‘hillside’ above central Hampstead. I like the notion of having gardened in Canada, South Africa, the UK and Australia.
I detour into a floral/herbal past because I’ve put much time and energy into gardening this spring and summer and while it’s hot, sweaty and often exhausting, ‘ordinary work’ is also very satisfying—and a garden, for me, is always a pleasure ground. When I was recently asked why I was working so hard outside, my simple answer was that, regardless of the extent to which I was pleasing myself, I was working to assist the garden in becoming itself. The question was repeated: but why? My answer: ‘because the garden deserves to be what it is, itself.’ Perhaps this looks clumsy, but that’s how I feel about the gardens here. When I think about it: I generally sigh with pleasure when I return home; a garden and the great trees have a greatly calming effect on me, particularly when I’ve been driving. And, when relaxed and contemplative, the garden—it’s varied outlooks and prospects, the changing beauty of light, shade and colour—has the power to transform any mood into joy. Aspects of such ‘power’ surely reside, too, in the gardener: to transform land into gardens having both obvious and subtle dimensions of beauty makes for a lively, if not a joyful garden, the garden simply being itself in all of its simplicities and complexities.
So much of this summer seems centered in the weeks from Xmas through most of January and it’s been a hot and humid and often uncomfortable time. I’ve been either inside wrestling with fiction (and using the heat as an excuse to guiltily monitor some (ordinary) Australian cricket and (very good) international tennis on TV) or outside gardening: mowing, raking, axing, digging, cloning and transplanting, planting new grevilleas, pruning, moving barrow-loads of loam, weeding the belvedere—and much more. Most of this ‘gardening’ work has been uncovering, recovering and sometimes discovering what has been hidden or buried. The several-coloured impatiens (once known as balsam) has returned following the disappeared feral deer; after hard raking and mowing and destruction of sundry groundcovers, seedlings of the bleeding heart tree (Omalanthus populifolias) have almost leaped out of their confinement in flood loam and are growing lustily (they thrive in sun or shade and their fruits attract acrobatic brown fruit pigeons).
Now at the end of January, my world is hot, humid with emphatic shades of green varying from eau de Nil to the near-black greens of the bush and the deeply shaded parts of gardens where big trees cut most of the bright light. The days have flown by (as they probably do for all of us conscious of our increasingly Senior Years!).
The overgrown edges of Big Lawn are densely covered in ground covers, weeds, flood debris (including partially buried logs) and, worst of all, the common form of jasmine, (pre the 2001 flood and for years, unmanageable). Jasmine runners have the ability to spread so strongly that they throttle many plants on the ground and also climb big trees and densely envelope not only the crowns but the entire tree; all of the tree’s growth is suffocated; other vines combine and the area is rapidly subdued: big trees begin dying and shedding limbs or they break and come crashing down. The jasmine then invades lawns and mower blades have to be set low. The mix of grass clippings and jasmine has to be re-mowed and kept separate on bare ground from other clippings, mulches and compost. It takes weeks for these materials to become inert; following some interference—digging and scattering—from inquisitive brush turkeys, they eventually leave the piles alone.
One of my objectives is to eliminate groundcovers and jasmine by repeated mowing followed by repeated raking because (theory) much of the litter surrounding grass, i.e., on the ground below the grass tops, is mowed or pulverized leaf litter and bark from the flooded gums (E. grandis) and blood woods and that litter seems to me to sour the soil and the discourage grass growth (whereas the groundcovers love that stuff, it seems). There may be something in this because the grasses I want to encourage are again growing well in mowed/raked areas. Does this look obsessive, dear reader? It sometimes seems so to me, but the alternative is to fuss and fume and curse the groundcovers and litter. Removing that stuff is endless hot hard work, but the lawn deserves to be what it is. A thriving lawn is a happy lawn…
Jan 25 ’09. Yesterday in Sunday Sydney temperatures eased past 40˚C and here, although it was only about 30˚ humidity on my skin felt like an oppressive blanket; movement of any kind produced constant sweat; it’s remarkably easy to dehydrate dangerously in this weather.
Late in the afternoon while swimmers were still cooling off in the pool in front of the house I was (unwisely?) mowing and re-raking next to the old Funnel Web Slopes (which are really the ‘ancient’ hard dry banks marking an earlier course of the river (Darkwood Road cuts through the same material and the house here is built on the old banks). The shrilling of cicadas rises and falls from time to time and mercifully isn’t continuous; twilight and dusk are popular times to remind me of their chorusing. I’ve regularly met a certain (red-belied) black snake on the steep path between lawn and front steps and have learned to bang my boots resonantly; perhaps s-he lives in the stone wall next to the path; and once I met the same snake on the newly cleared ground between the citrus trees and the riverbank (where my piles of clippings are hopefully cooking) and greeted him/her respectfully from a distance. Fortunately for me, this serpent is little more than a metre or so long but it looks spectacularly shiny and healthy. Perhaps we’ll become used to one another and as I diminish with age the snake will grow bigger and more robust… And there are two garden-roaming goannas this summer, one of them almost black (which lurches up a nearby tree whenever I arrive to deposit kitchen scraps nearby); the other, as blond a creature (quite yellow) as the first reptile is a darkly brunette one. There’s been much rain, most of it as storm showers and frogs rattle and croak along the road when I walk by. There was a violent electric storm here on Jan 29, the detonations so great that my pole house literally trembled or vibrated. –That reminds me of having stood thoughtfully one morning on the Richardson’s Bridge walkway (a part of the bridge deck separated from the deck roadway by a hefty baluster rail) watching (and feeling) a concrete truck driving across in my direction. When it passed (I was close to and standing above the first pier on the west side of the bridge) the vibrations were enormous and I was bounced almost off my feet. These big trucks have a rotating drum and weigh tonnes. I half expected to be catapulted off the bridge and across the river and was reminded of my first and last day in Los Angeles in 1976 when there were appreciable earth tremors. The interesting thing about earth tremors is that one’s view becomes blurred because everything seems to be vibrating…
I guess there’s another month of hot humid weather to come. Today, Jan 29, the news from Victoria and South Aus is worrying: they’re experiencing days of extreme weather (45.6˚ yesterday in Adelaide) with maximum temperatures consistently in the mid forties. Not good. The tennis players at the Aus Open are having a tough time; but so is everybody else; and there are fires. Here, there’s plenty of shade. The weeping choral tree is showing its second seasonal flush of red orchid-like flowers, there are birds in the birdbath, and the gardens are well watered from the frequent showers.
I’m including here a piece I published in 2002; it has some relevance to the 2009 gardens.
© text Don Diespecker 2001, 2009
Streaming
The water runs in so smoothly, the thin poly-pipe pouring it forth once more. Silent in the hot afternoon inside the house he sits watching at first still sweating from outside, and when he’s more settled seeing what might need fine-tuning. More work. The old birdbath basin sitting up again supported by those lay-about opportune concrete slabs and two big river stones alongside. Knew they’d come in useful one day. Tastefully arranged. Cascades. Overflow dribbling. --Meddlesome dragon the birdbath paddling.
Earlier, on his knees before a still-buried stonewalled garden romantically turning the start of a modest project from work to archeological dig. Remembering there even earlier moments when sitting inside and seeing out there was the envisioning glimpsed image of the revivified birdbath with fountain driven by a little of the piped creek. Pure pleasure. Exclusively his. Almost. Not forgetting birds and taking account of territorial dragons. Through the mind’s eye, then, fantasizing his idling self there in the shade in the not too distant future. That imagined image followed by another of The Dig, a long shot seen in three quarter view from his relaxing inside chair when reflecting down and out to the two garden riverside chairs. In that second image he unearths the cock and valves the sidelined-held flow out to the garden edge and up a little then down into the bath, all the water falling way down from the trembling creek in the rainforest, then through the bath on the high bank to pour over dribbling, then soaking and meandering to the river below. A detour. Picaresque. No harm done. Seen by passing locals he’d be the harmless rogue digging to bury his treasure, or possibly an enemy.
Later than earlier, in person, in real time, the mock archeologist pulls away the profusion of weeds where stands the stone wall while glancing aside to yet another reclaimed wall where his mattock rests beside tonnes of agglomerating flood debris. There has been no soaking rain for months. There is not even earth to be dug but only loose fine sand and shifting silt as palpable as powder in places dusting up and floating away, a sad orange-red in the heat, drifting into the trees. Lightly using the shovel one-handed he digs. Like scooping flour. No need for big tools. Quickly finding the cast-iron twirled tap cock top by the metallic clink of the spade he simultaneously is found by an incoming sortie of stinger scouts: the first fighters fly from out of the sun from behind, low and out of sight, fully armed and sharp to harass and torment and artfully skilled in softening the target for the following squadron to dismember. Taking over the world, or at least his pleasure place, his Cockaigne, he thinks before remembering briefly times of divining springs there, absorbing rhadomancy exercises with twin fencing wire wands fleeting years ago. Running with sweat he brushes off the rusting knurled wheel to charge the flood-buried sideline and sees the clear water pouring distantly, sweating now into his eyes and dripping, then starting up cursing, escaping the fat flies, leaving them to the voracious dragons while the reptiles torn between cooling plunges in their own dragon bath and plump luscious stingers the courtesy of the human stalking horse, pause in perplexity. His salty exudations nevertheless appreciated. A dip before dinner or eat first? Reptilian quandaries.
Later yet as much in the now as ever having gone up to the house to rest and then seen what he previously seemed unable to see clearly, he intently had rushed down muttering with his pruning saw to remove two expired flood-stricken tree-heath saplings thereby liberating the view he was craving, that of the clear crystal fountain pouring into the birdbath shimmering above the flood loam covering the destroyed lawns and gardens, all parts of the view of delight, the riverbank the river the trees the world the waiting two chairs. Best to go back up and view the vista. He did so then arriving hotly once more in the tumultuous present was enabled to see again past things present in his mind.
Now, while scuffling once more through cloudlets of disturbed dry silt to those wavering riverbank chairs and seeing the clear flowing from the pipe, he slows to allow old pictures and the oft-repeated flashing facets of bygone rerun images their jostling for space-time in the present. Old pictures. Mind pictures. Showtime. Stopping uncertainly. He is merely another unsettled dragon.
Now, thinking on the rainforest creek pressed into the mainline articulation pouring its libation through the rose-head bathroom shower where the un-curtained window is an eye to the riverscape, a means to see more than can be seen, he recalls immersions hot and cold clothed in the creek’s cleansing holy water while being in the picture show of his mind, sub rosa, pulling past images and enticing future ones into the flickering present, moments reflective prospective introspective contemplative and possibly interspective were he sufficiently and magically brained, and now remembering Europe long ago, that statue-fountain the small boy pissing, while here on the riverbank in the open there is again a steady stream from the pipe of plenitude the flowing from the pipe as robust as pure as that dream image in the film, Madeline’s Dream, herself dreaming of water of a fountain, when she told Fritz Perls (the facilitator), ‘I don’t know much about myself. (Pause, begins to cry) I come. I don’t know how I come but I know I’m good, that’s all I know. I would like you to drink me because I know I’m good. I don’t know where I come from. I’m in that big vase. It’s a black vase,’ trying to exactly recall her words while seeing her face clearly. Her flowing-ness. Her youth. Now remembering fountains like the Trevi where the trotting Alpini go clattering by on the cobblestones of long ago and Tivoli the water gardens at Villa d’Este watering and running and pouring and spouting and fountaining, now remembering piercingly with pleasure Kermanshah in Bakhtaran in a time before the revolution and the young women in the sunlit hotel corridor early in the day the women wearing the chador doe-eyed and beautiful though well covered with everyone giggling at the tile-surrounded single faucet, brushing teeth. Try that veiled. The spigot. Clear water issuing. No bathrooms. And there again is the public bathhouse in Khorramabad in Lorestan on a winter’s night water flowing, hot inside, frosty out, and Eric’s damp hair icing. Friends laughing. There again is the dangerous evening scene in the apartment up at Shemrun with kerosene dripping openly and traditionally from the throttled spigot to the inclined metal runnel descending to the hot heater that puffs and woofs exploding flames, and seeing again views from unpressurized DC3s of the Dasht-e Lut pocked with minute mole-hills of spoil marking the qanats the deep-down handmade conduits moving mountain water and blind white fish beneath the desert to then run fiercely through villages and towns, the creek-like jub in place of gutters, crystal clear at the top of the town and fouled beyond it. Water.
Now, his mind runs on netting old images, his mind a conduit through time, so that fluids and flowing approach unbidden and then recede, like water on an aircraft window forming briefly in torn-apart clouds, like the unbidden horror of the burning oil well at Qum, like ugly flooding in rivers and glimpsing memories of everything fluid that flows, like molten gold being cast in the assay office at Pilgrim’s, and seeing again in a back room of memory the Shangaan slip and fall from the ore train the gouts of blood, his torn leg pumping, and waiting for the bus at Qiryat Shemona while nearby foot-hung chickens are killed methodically and ritually, their blood funneling and pouring down and away in the abattoir for chickens, an upside down Tivoli, a reversed water garden, a blood garden, or when he was a kid at the abattoir on Pilgrim’s Creek long ago seeing the animals there, all blood, blood everywhere and running away darkly in the creek to join the cyanide-brown tailings in the Blyde, the Happy River that once was and seeing suddenly his mother weeping wracked and engulfed in frightening sorrow, remembering other rivers in time and brooks and rivulets and deep dark pools and short stretches gurging in sunlight all fluvial and making love on forested banks and riparian meadows on hot afternoons sweat showering to earth thrillingly in moments of falling passionate gentleness and sometimes in long seconds of tender riving in the changing light and shade patterning deep inside the forest, secretly, and later plunging in the rolling water the river achingly cold and fiercely enlivening and remembering very long ago bright days hiking along even colder mountain streams in the Drakensberg and waterfalls and torrents and glinting rapids and plunging in and out and even longer ago than that the splashing toddler in the shallows of the Cowichan with the family and once again seeing the green algae on slippery stones on sunny afternoons in the 30s then going ahead in time again to the clear upper Blyde far from the reduction works and the pounding stamp batteries again his loved river of golden childhood in Africa and the trout holding station in the shallows an arms length below the ledge and always wishing for rivers big and small quiet and crowded seeing suddenly again the Seine in late winter and barges surging by in the cold air and a comfortable family on board looking up at the bridges and his being half a couple gazing down fondly and the barge flags streaming--
Reference
Perls, Fritz (1976). The Gestalt Approach and Eye Witness to Therapy. New York: Bantam Books, Inc, p 193.
Acknowledgment: ‘Streaming’ was originally published in The Australian Gestalt Journal (2002), 6(1), 8-10.
This Diary is No. 14 in the New Series (previously 1107, 108, 208, 308, 408, 508, 608, 708, 808, 908, 1008, 1108, 1208; this is109). DDD January 29 2009.
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