Old growth

Tarkine from lookout near Waratah

clear afternoon -
the smoke of old growth burning
has blown away

Forests are the lungs of the planet. We need them more than ever - the Tarkine is the largest cool temperate rainforest in the southern hemisphere. The Bob Brown Foundation is raising money through Pozible, and we need to raise about $17,000 in the next 2 days, or else all the $ raised so far will be relinquished. 
While I've been in Waratah, there's been a haze from the burning of the old growth, which is bulldozed to make way for the Nitins, a hybrid eucalypt from Victoria and plantation tree. This tree does major damage: it sucks up water 20 times faster than the native trees it replaces, thus lowering the water table. It is equipped with natural insecticides which wash into the soil when it rains.
Donate if you can, to:
pozible.com/project...look for Tarkine in Motion

Should the Tarkine transform to this?  on the road to Rosebery

WEA in February - next course May

Gay's drawing of me

The WEA students soaked up the spaciousness of the Botanic Gardens in the middle of Sydney, on their ginko. We’d had several heatwaves, at last some cool weather!

Gawaine Powell Davies wrote this:

Someone

Splashed paint

On those leaves

We wandered towards the bamboo groves near the pond.

kisses under

the bamboo?

JAC loves MEL

Diana

I liked Gay’s approach, which was to respond to the gardens with drawings. In the spirit of first impressions (impressionism?) I wrote a very minimalist

pink on blue

on green on

sunlighted bamboo

I think this suffers from what some people don’t like about haiku: it is a bit thin. 

 But haiku can be a way of bringing you into the present. Gawaine wrote:

Just now, the birds were singing,

And I was here,

Writing this.

And Jan said, when we’d finished, “Wow! I haven’t felt this peaceful for a long time.”

My senryu:

commentary train

an English accent talks of

Aborigines

Well, this is the modern world! We are from everywhere, and a Botanic gardens contains plants from everywhere.

Final words from Trisha, on the study part of the course. We had read a Santoka haiku. She said, “It’s so beautiful it touches me inside – how can I explain how it makes me feel?”

And about the gardens, she said, “This is a magical place”.

Look at that!

I want to say –

divine lotus flowers

Diana

My next course with the WEA starts on Monday May 1^st. It will again be a 5-week course, 9:30 am to 11:30 am. See the WEA website for details.

the ibis chick

shrieks about starvation

Mum honks back

D

Treehugger arrives in Tas.

2012 - on the edge of the Tarkine

Would you like to support my endeavour? The money raised by the Bob Brown Foundation for the Tarkine in Motion project will feed us, transport us to our destinations, provide facilities. I am going to the Frankland River!

 https://pozible.com/project/tarkine-in-motion-1

I was musing over the contents of my luggage last night. In it were so many gifts: mittens, a jacket, a top, a toiletries bag, my haiku bumbag, one of the wheelie bags - Ruby has lent me her good sleeping mat which I must not puncture. What else? A book, a set of eye exercises printed off specially for me, a woolly hat, a pair of lounge pants... given freely, just like the trees. Undies, my mobile phone, a scarf...

Encounter with a quoll

Tarkine in Motion

Arthur River TAS

Over Easter I'll be a resident haiku poet at the Tarkine in Motion camp, in Northwest Tasmania, which the Bob Brown Foundation is putting together. Ill show you what I know so far, of this vast wild area.

 I drove around it last December, starting at Waratah which is on the edge of the Tarkine. It once boasted the richest tin mine in the world. I drove from there to Corinna, past the iron ore mine at Savage river where a friend of mine once worked.

tailings dam, Savage River mine

 Recently there was a fatality at this mine. A contract worker fell to his death and then Grange Resources halted trading on the stock exchange.

Donaldson River, Western Explorer

Corinna is on the Pieman river, and is the start of the Western Explorer road. In January 2016, in hot and dry conditions, a series of lightning strikes started massive fires which burnt unchecked across the button grass plains.

Western Explorer

The highlight of my drive came in the evening. As I was approaching Arthur River, I saw a little creature on a bridge over a creek. It was a spotted quoll!!! I have never seen one of these creatures. They feature in the best known Gundungurra songline, in which Mirragan the quoll chases Gurangatch the giant eel across country, and this chase forms the Coxs and Wollondilly rivers (roughly speaking). Eastern quolls disappeared from the mainland with the advent of whitefella, but there are still remnants of spotted-tail quoll ( Dasyurus maculatus) in my neck of the woods. They sometimes annoy people by eating their chickens. This fella was engrossed and did not run away when I stopped my car. Then I saw why. A calling card!

Arthur River was a cold and windy place in December. I stayed overnight there.

cold wind
the cabin door slams open
inviting me out

 The next day I drove past 'Parliament House'( a fisherman's hut in blue corro) on my way to the Edge of the World lookout. Then I attempted to walk up the coast. Here's what I wrote in my journal:
"Very very windy. Rugged right up, clutching a little plastic bag of provisions: an egg, 2 peanut corn thins and some fantales. But at the point where moving forward was not achievable without a great deal of effort - I gave up. Also I was being rained on. Great drifts of wood - the river brown and foaming - the storm approacheth then raineth."

Nice try! But the locals compensated for the Roaring Forties - roadhouse lady gave me a polystyrene cup and some hot water for my peppermint tea, which I drank as it hailed.

looking upstream, Arthur River

I drove from Arthur river up the coast to Bluff Hill Lighthouse, and on to Stanley, where there is a volcanic remnant called The Nut. Climbed that. And the trip was rounded off with the "satanic mill" (thanks William Blake) at Port Latta, which processes the iron ore dug out at Savage river.

It was a small taste, and my advice would be: do it, but don't drive too fast. You might hit a wallaby and that would be bad.

Ginko in the Garden – Sprummer

Crushing the leaves

I smell the scent

of grandmothers

I wrote this haiku on the second of the ginkos for the WEA crew. I am calling the season ‘sprummer’  - half-way between spring and summer. I’m in tune with Dr. Tim Entwisle, of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne. Sydney’s Botanic Gardens was our inspiration, and the late October weather typically Sydney - steamy.

Here’s a haiku from Dexter Dunphy that plays around with the season:

ignoring strewn winter leaves

a bottle brush presses on

with spring

The group wandered about. This haiku by Graham English is sensual and complete. It arrests the reader at the point of the smell – what can arise for us in the blank beyond the poem? 

Walking through the trees

suddenly

the smell of pepper.

The next two haikus refer to elements of the season, they have found their kigo (seasonal reference word). The second one contains such feeling!

Pockmarked paperbark:

Busy arterial for

A roadtrain of ants.

Shelley Booth

the angophora sheds bark,

reveals fresh smooth trunk

ah, young thighs

Dexter Dunphy

Coffee beans along the branches

sweet wake-up

for a bird.

Jennifer Thurstun

This is sufficient and contained. There’s a nice whimsy to the thought of the birds, that ”I wonder?” quality.

Pretending

in this  Australian park

a castle.

Graham

Yes! - nothing more is needed.

The next series of haikus were workshopped by the group. This is like polishing a stone and bringing out its best facets.

Three steps and peck. Two, peck peck.

Long beak digs dirt –

Ibis snack.

Jennifer Thurstun

This has a wonderful rhythm to it, the onomatopoeia conveying the movements of these long-legged birds.

bunya pine stranded

far from corroborees –

heritage trail

Dexter Dunphy

 Says a great deal in a very few words.

Kookaburra cries –

Turn down ya trumpets & trucks

Ya flamin’ galahs!

Shelley Booth

Winding garden path

Orange witches hats

Give warning

Vicki McDonald

I’ll have the last haiku word.

do the birds reply

to the flautist

warming up?

 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Now for three senryu – satirical takes on human affairs. There are always great opportunities for people-watching in this precinct.

At Circular Quay

a large, short lady

in a bright red hat.

Graham English

Little red train

the American guide tells tourists

what to see

Dexter Dunphy

thongs and boardies

but their accents foreign –

becoming Aussie guys

DL

WEA - first ginko at Botanic Gardens

Farm Cove 

Walking through Chinatown on my way to teach the  WEA class, people are eating breakfasts which smell like dinner. I pass a restaurant called “Eating World”. After the theory part of class, we make our way to Circular Quay.  I try to imagine the beginnings of English settlement here, in this tight curve of bay – I’ve been reading “The Fatal Shore” by Robert Hughes. Over in the next bay where we're going, the settlers attempted to grow their food. Nowadays it’s the gracious foreshore of the Botanic Gardens.

Farm Cove now:

a catamaran

girls shrieking on deck

I gather my students in a grove of bamboo, where we’re a little sheltered from the cold wind. Shelley had remembered from the morning - “Learn about ….a bamboo plant from a bamboo plant”. Basho

party music

the winds swallows

a chunk of it

The poets walk around writing – they walk slowly. I wander over to a man who is harvesting some kind of fruit from a tree. He is African. He tells me that this tree is a relative of the coffee plant, and that its young leaves if chewed are good for …was it arthritis? He tells me the name and I write it down – its common name is khat ( who knows if that is the right spelling). I have a taste, it's almost fruity.

I wish the poets would walk faster. Then I could warm up.

cold again

my arms in this thin jacket

leaden October

But there are so many delights, not the least of which is people-watching. Graham wrote a senryu ( satirical take on human affairs) about a woman we saw at Circular Quay. Here are my senryus:

in pink gumboots

running to the next puddle

Mummmeeeeeee!

a bare shoulders display -

flicked back by the cold wind,

her hair

Is this a senryu, below, or a haiku? I’m not sure.

one minute detour...

given to

the Asian gardens

Only one minute? 
We had two rounds of sharing our work. The best was the sharing in the café, with cake and hot chocolate and tea. So that’s what they were thinking about! This was my best effort:

lotuses arise

from stinking black mud

moorhen is at ease