Southern Scribe

10/04/2022

My current life is busier than ever, but also simpler, making it easier to create blocks of time for writing. To get an item beyond the 'draft in my head' stage, to a draft in Word and then onto Southern Scribe website has been a long time coming. Here is a link to the first item that turned up, insisting on being written :)

I really am a novice in understanding mental health. The definitions, the treatments and diagnoses are something I straddle the edges of. At times I’ve witnessed less than appropriate treatment, other times I despair for how easily people can fall through the cracks, while mostly the massively ind...

31/05/2020

20/04/2020

Today I received my mugs-in-the-mail from Gallery Sobrane. It was like being reunited with a familiar. I couldn’t wait to get up each morning of my month long artist residency to switch on the coffee machine, then hear and smell it doing it’s thing. Every day for a month in the Broome ‘winter’, in the dim morning light, lit that little bit more by the welcoming glow of the coffee machine’s aliveness, I’d reach for a pink major mitchell cockatoo cup. Each morning of the residency began in the stillness and quiet, before traffic picked up, before Matso’s opened for brekky next door, and well before the gallery staff arrived.

Across the road was Roebuck Bay, an internationally recognised bird habitat with its vast tidal flats and mangrove fringes. In the magical gap between night and day, fruit bats returned to their day roosts and birds headed out to feed. Rarely was there a day too windy or cloudy to be out in the extraordinary colour dance of pinks, blues and golds reflected from tropical sky to smooth sea and back again. Red earth beneath my feet held me fast during the morning performance.

Throughout the day, many more dips into the changing colour-scape were unavoidable. It would call towards the gallery, “look at me now, I dare you to”. A ‘Landscape Writing’ workshop participant described the colours in Broome as their own thing, or entity: ‘a substance’.

As the bay fills and drains, infinite hues of milky blue float by, enveloping bystanders with all the dreams and stories ever imagined. With each passing orbit, the moon and sea reach out to embrace each other, then as they recoil, moon dust delivers those stories to open armed mangrove trees.

Never able to settle on one colour or shade for too long, the continuous spectrum of purples, blues and greens shared between mangroves and sea, were only ever a sideways glance away from the starkly contrasting, yet hugely comforting, red Pindan earth edge.

Coffee, Colour and local Broome radio, with me and the gallery birds in quiet morning stillness, sowing seeds of life yet to come.

06/03/2020

Forests and woodlands may appear simple. A tree, a rock, a koala and some moss. As we start to notice and measure the dynamics, things might seem more complex. In reality its an interdependent web of life existing between bedrock and atmosphere. An interplay of dirt, air, water and sunlight giving each place its own unique array of lifeforms.

The uniqueness of all these attributes in any given area require unique management actions to match. To my knowledge, Indigenous Australians have been managing landscapes in this way since forever.

Small mammals living at ground level play a special role in maintaining the health and resilience of ecosystems, as demonstrated in the diagram below: increasing soil moisture and fertility while decreasing fuel loads. They are essential to our Australian landscape.

Hats off to all those working to reintroduce species into previously inhabited areas, and especially to those protecting remnant populations. The Gilberts Potoroo conservation program is an example, as is the work happening with the Nullaki Conservation Initiative www.nullakiconservation.org

With our first quarterly fungi survey under our State Natural Resource Management Program WA grant coming up in a week's time, this is a timely article talking about the important role played in the environment by mammalian "diggers" searching for a meal of native truffles! These species are now recognised as "ecosystem engineers" for their major role in improving soil health, assisting water pe*******on and reducing fuel loads. The article focuses on the digging done by the Eastern Barred Bandicoot but also mentions the importance of other digging mammals such as Potoroos and how their loss has resulted in a decline in soil and ecosystem health (and an increase in fuel loads which could result in increased fire risk & severity). Yet another reason (if any were needed) to try to save & all the other threatened "diggers". https://theconversation.com/one-little-bandicoot-can-dig-up-an-elephants-worth-of-soil-a-year-and-our-ecosystem-loves-it-132266

15/02/2020

Stories of 'First Contact' intrigue me. With glimpses of friendship and hope amongst devastating outcomes. This sold out performance held the Albany audience mesmerised for the duration.

Bennelong's home was on the site where the Sydney Opera House sits today. Bangarra told his story. I felt I got to know something more of him as the audience was briefly engulfed in his world. Especially from the third row of this exquisite theatre, amongst many familiar faces. We witnessed his activities with kin prior to the First Fleet landing, the colourful life he became part of including his trip to England while back home his people were suffering eg dying of small pox, and on return his demise with alcohol and gaol time implicated.

"Woollarawarre Bennelong was a senior man of the Eora, from the Port Jackson area in Sydney. With extraordinary curiosity and diplomacy, Bennelong led his community to survive a clash of cultures, and left a legacy that reverberates through contemporary life.

Bennelong is Bangarra at its best. In a unique Australian dance language, the company celebrates the continuation of life and culture through the power, artistry and passion of the country’s most outstanding dancers. With its immersive soundscapes and exquisite design, Bennelong will leave you in awe of Australia’s history – and its power to repeat.

“Ravishingly beautiful and deeply unsettling all at once.”
The Australian"

Clapping for a few minutes hardly seemed enough to portray what the audience was feeling at the end of the heARTistic performance (thanks Peter K!). Murmurings in the foyer of what more can we do once the clapping and almost speechless meandering dies down.

Tell us a bit of your drive-home debrief and other performance inspired conversations? Or even your thoughts if driving alone.

20/07/2019

Long dawns and dusks are something I love about living on the southcoast of WA. Lengthened opportunities to go walking in gentle light either side of the sun's glare or the darker blanket of pre-dawn and after-twilight. Time to lie back in bed watching the sky change till choosing my moment, time to accomplish one last gardening job in the fading light before striding out: into an array of colour where golds merge to pinks, and blues beyond description, while gardens and forest slip through stages of subduing greys.

07/07/2019

A Saturday afternoon Writing Workshop - kicking off collecting stories for The Permaculture Association WA 40 year celebrations - with a bunch of participants in sync with rhythms of nature and of their own lives. Contrast sharply to the next morning when I checked in with ‘Insiders’. Talk of percentage points and deeming suddenly made no sense. What was shared the afternoon before was real, tangible and nourishing. It offers true connection between people and place; between the earth and our plate.

20/10/2018