From Sand Mines to Good Times

I love this time of the year when the whole country, more or less, knocks off - the holidays. The holy break - rest - interlude. The Japanese have this concept of the yoyoe - it is a break between things, a space of nothing-in-particular. The idea is to space intense activity with  ‘yoyoe time’. In our connected 24 / 7 culture now, doing nothing is seen as a sign that you’re a hopeless incompetent. But I digress.

We went camping, as we often do, at the beach. We took ourselves up north, to a National Park. We set up our campsite in a beautiful spacious area dotted about with Banksia integrifolia. 

B. integ. - stunted headland version - with visitor

In the evening we toured the beach - rough and wild - the carpark - dotted with kangaroos feeding on the grass - and the amenities block.

the moon rising

in a haze of sea-mist

crickets idly zizz

 As this is a National Parks and Wildlife Service camp, there was a large interpretive sign there. I was gobsmacked to see that this place had been a sand-mine until 1982. We had noticed on our way back from the beach that the sand dune vegetation looked rather compromised. Now we knew why. The object of the extractivist enterprise was to gather rutile, which is the raw material for making titanium. I remembered back to the eighties, when I was a volunteer for Greenpeace. At that time environmental activists  were campaigning against the sand-mining - particularly at Middle Head. Names like John Seed, Ian Cohen spring to mind but I’m sure plenty of other people were involved.

The next day a large goanna came out near the middle of the day, to scrounge around for food. 

goanna

shower passes

the trees rustle

their wet feathers

We met one of our camp neighbours who came over to warn us that he would be using a chainsaw to chop up his firewood : “This is one of the few camps you can have a fire in summer!“. He was from Forster, said that he and his mates would remove the invasive bitou bush whenever they got the chance. (He was a nice bloke though why he felt he had to bring a leaf-blower to camp, goodness knows.)

campground neighbours

zip and unzip their zips

laughter far away

pelican

As the days went by, we noticed that birds abounded:  butcher birds, magpies, black cockatoos, olive-backed oriole, black-faced cuckoo shrike, little wattle birds and a fig bird.   The little miner, an invasive native bird, was kept in check by the variety of other birds there. I saw a large soaring white bird of prey land on a dead branch high above the beach - an osprey. Cormorants, oyster catchers, pelicans,  yellow-finned bream, green ants, crazy jumping ants, a resin bee, paper wasps, native bees, little black cicadas and light greeny-yellow ones. 

distant crash of surf

outside my nylon walls

cricket’s lullaby

 Gradually the camp-ground filled up to make a ‘camp village’, especially after Christmas Day. The tone of the village was friendly, most people greeting you as you made your way to and fro the  rough and wild beach. Kids rode their bikes around, or chucked footy balls.

We swam; read; ate Christmas cake; walked; drew; rode boogie boards in the surf; had visitors.

 

surf  drags us

like human tinsel

lightly thrown away

Saw dolphins and when we went kayaking, stingrays. Other people fished, drove their four-wheel drives up the beach, had barbeques, did whatever they did. And were generally quiet and had slightly mad fires. I felt such gratitude for the campaigners who had made all this R and R possible.

Large Tongue Orchid - Cryptostylis subulata 

the southeasterly

blasts the headland -

floral white-caps

 

Christmas bells

 I was telling  a friend who was an environmentalist back in the day, about all this. He said that the bitou bush, which is now one of the worst pest plants up and down the NSW coast, was used to stabilise the dunes after sand-mining. “ That’s what I heard”. It was brought into NSW in 1903 by a ship which dumped its ballast off at Newcastle. Then from 1946 to 1968 it was planted by the Soil Conservation Service of NSW. Perhaps this arm of government served industry in the same way that Forestry Tasmania fell into line over every plan that Gunns, the now disgraced timber company, had.

We owe a great debt to these warriors for the environment. Lest we forget. Isn’t it time that the extractivists were paid off, written down, written out, seen off, given their marching orders, divested from, chewed up and spat out?

grey sky and rough sea

a plucky boat makes

a white line outwards

2016 - relax, write haiku

moi - early summer, near Dalpura ridge

 Recent haiku: - 

water smash-up

rocks are responsible

tawny pool down below

Edenderry Falls, Govett's creek

soft warm red fruit

flies in my face as I pick

MY plums, you birds

In the midst of the Christmas pandemonium - I am running some 'quiet time' courses in 2016. 

RELAXATION & MEDITATION  - U3A Penrith

Fridays 10 - 12 noon Springwood, starting Feb.

 Registration is on Monday 18th January @ Penrith U3A headquarters, and Wednesday 20th January @ Springwood Sports Club. Details not up on their website yet. http://www.u3apenrith.org.au/. Free for U3A members. 

HAIKU GINKO: WRITING ZEN - WEA Sydney

Beginning Thursday April 7 2016, a 5-week course of writing and walking combined. See 

https://www.weasydney.com.au/courses/Arts+and+Humanities/Literature

for a full description, and details of times, cost and venues ( Sydney parks!)

And if it is all getting too much right now, you can always put in your "To Do" list:

walk silently, by myself

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Kanangra - the view from the top

Moi on the plateau

the sky speaking

through a muffler of clouds

something about rain

I’ve just come back from another ‘book’ trip  -

to Kanangra with Dave Noble. Our timing was good - just before the thunderstorms took hold of the Sydney region. 

a photo stop

the flies gather round Dave

for a possible bite

 Here are some of his (extraordinary) and my (ordinary) photographs.

the coal seam cave

 So many things to see! Caves! orchids! flowers! waterfalls! water pooling in rock hollows! native bees! stone! distant valleys and mountains! 

striated rock orchid - Dockrillia striolata

bothered

the falcon shifts his stance

soars away

Peregrine falcon

And to hear - many different birds! lyrebird, bowerbird, whipbird, white-throated treecreeper, currawong, honeyeaters....thunder....waterfalls.....rain.....fire...and flies, always the flies. 

Stypandra glauca

All the flutterbies were out. There was a beautiful green-striped one - green for "Go!". This one, on the pea flowers,  was less fluttery.

Cox's river

who is more frightened

the brown snake

or me

Ten years ago I walked down Cox’s river with ecologist Clive Heywood Barker and I wrote about it for my book “Into the Blue”. Last week I did the walk again as a leader for  the Conservation Society Saturday walkers. It was a hot day and I planned to get to the junction with Little river. The walk touched on the nineteenth-century history of contact between the original Gundungurra inhabitants and the new settlers. We stopped at the O'Reillys’ shack at Cullenbenbong. What is left is the kitchen, which was built separately in case there was a fire. This was a common practise for settlers.

Bernard O’Reilly’s reminiscence of his childhood in “Cullenbenbong”  included memories of the Lynches, indigenous people who had to surf the massive changes brought about by white settlement. Next we drove to the traditional campground on the Cox's river, where their family (Lynches) bought a selection in the 1880’s. Our walk started here. 

After crossing the river, we walked downstream. We came across quite a few other walkers, and a father and son fishing. The Dad was frustrated by the number of European carp swarming the river (Warwick had seen them at the crossing). No trout, he said. 

By contrast there were quite a few snakes. They've come out of torpor and are a bit sluggish, so we were on the lookout for non-sticks that might resent being trodden on. 

We didn't quite make it to Little river junction. It was a hot day, so ambling along, first in the shade of Casuarina cunninghamiana (river oak) trees, and then along the granite banks, was perfectly fine. On the way back Harold and I took a swim in a large pool - deliciously cool, and in places there was sand underfoot for a massage. 

Thanks to Bob and Harold for some of the photos. 

 

Sprinter

Acacia brownei

It is sprinter! That is, a season half-way between winter and spring. Most of the wattle is flowering magnificently, and especially at the margins of roads and tracks. The heart lifts away from …all of that difficult stuff, in the yellow of it all.  Here’s a haiku from my book, which I hope makes sense, out of context. It quotes the Paul Kelly song about Vincent Lingiari, who led the walk-off at Wave Hill station in 1966, to protest working conditions for aboriginal people.

Acacia terminalis

“From little things

big things grow”

bright wattle flowers

Acacia ulicifolia, Prickly Moses, is already browning. But the Hardenbergia violacea, Happy wanderer, is the opposite of wattle. It is close to the ground, rambling over everything, and if you didn’t stop and look, you might not fully appreciate its beauty. Is that like the little niggling voice in the heart that urges you to do the right thing?

holding spring

in violet fists,

Hardenbergia

Happy wanderer

I was so glad I listened to it yesterday. And that I wandered happily on Saturday, and saw the vine rambling at the old Cox’s road, near Hartley.

Convict stonework on Cox's road

Winter magic

It snowed yesterday in the mountains. It was super cold, and the highway was closed, so I decided to go by train to see my dentist. It was packed - families, tourists, lots of little kids. The highway had been closed at Lawson but by the time the train rolled through in the early afternoon, there was no more snow. The next station is Bullaburra and then Wentworth Falls, and then...

"Aaaah!"

everyone on the train

the first sight of snow

I got off the train at Leura, where the railway cutting had saved the snow from melting. People were milling about, cameras running hot.

clouds stacked

like massive fridges

in the western sky

After seeing my dentist I walked to Katoomba, down through the industrial area where the snow, slush and ice lingered.

This paddock was covered in snow years ago when I first came to see the Blue Mountains in my old bomb VW. This is where my car stopped and would not start again. It's taken me a long time to remember where this took place, because quite a number of businesses now dot the landscape. Back then, I was alone in a valley of scintillating white coldness. I don't know how I rescued myself from this scenario - somehow.

It’s a steep hike up to town, I heated up in all my layers of clothing.

an Indian

photographs the snow -

throws a snowball

I went to the Co-op, and it was the most fun I’ve ever had buying groceries – truly winter magic!

The Shack - a sketch for "Into the Blue: walks in Gundungurra country"

Kowmung river

In the middle of winter 2011 Tara and I visited The Shack, a property on Scotts Main Range in the southern Blue Mountains, owned by the Catholic Bushwalkers. Maureen and Bob Anderson were my hosts. This is a rough sketch of that trip for my forthcoming book.

The property has an interesting history. In 1875 aboriginal man John Jingery bought it on conditional purchase - this term is the same as ‘selection’, the conditions of purchase being that he had to show that he was living on it and had made 'improvements'. There was a time limit of three years to show fences, house, clearing. 

It was a bit wild when Maureen and Bob took us for a walk. All of this country  is bisected by what used to be the Cox's river, but is now Lake Burragorang ( Sydney's main dam and water supply). 

the lake full

like a satisfied diner - 

black ruffle of wind

On the ridge where you can see the lake in the distance, ( covering what used to be the Burragorang valley) there are axe-grinding grooves in the loose stones.

Lake Burragorang -photo DW Noble

traces on the road

of an ancient river - 

round smooth stones

At a junction there are a very few remains of what used to be Robert O'Reilly's selection. Much later on, he leased his land out to Bert Reiner.  

Bert's ancient fence

wire slackened and curling out

cannot hold the wind

We walked on. John Jingery lost hold of his stony ridgetop in 1877. 

Maureen and Bob took us to Kowmung lookout, where the river, undammed and untamed, is far below. 

And then they took us to a cave where people may have sheltered in times long past. 

It was quite a long walk out to the Mt. Cookem lookout. On the way, we saw glossy black cockatoos  - as they took flight, they looked like stained glass windows with their red streaks of feather. At the end of the road, you can look out to the northeast, and see Black Dog ridge. 

It was the best route out of the Burragorang valley to the Megalong valley.

from Cookem - Black Dog ridge 2nd from left or 3rd from right

We had walked quite a long way, and turned back towards home and warmth and shelter. My daughter strode out in front. Winter - it is lyrebird breeding season, when the male sings his heart out. 

if I could

I would be your lover

lyrebird on the left