October

So nice to see you, inlet.

I feel like I've been driving for months and suddenly it's the equinox again. It took my Mum to remind me last week, and now there's the quickening between day and night that always throws me this time of year. A woman walks down to the seashore at dusk, glass of wine, sunnies and beanie, just like in the month of May - low sun and cool dusk. The sun slips and the darkening is faster but the kids are still yelling from the chilly waters. Orchids are rising their sex from the earth. My dog goes for a wander and returns with the desiccated leg of a kangaroo, crouches on the concrete and growls at any blow flies that get too close. They are new to this season too.

In the winter, right before I left for the big smoke, my car blew its head and this is an expensive exercise for a diesel. Queen Ben (car) is limping through now, avoiding any other medical procedures until the previous bill is paid up. Billowing smoke on a cold morning? C'mon, lovely lady, you can do it, just get out of bed for me one more time. Ignore those cold weather glow plug pains, baby.

Yesterday I taught in the city and then today I drove a long way to do our pre season fire training for the other job I have. I tied up Selkie in the courtyard at work. She'd been in the car for hours but she's long been my Girl Selkie and waited patiently on her makeshift bed, beside her silver bowl of water, accepting pats and copious stroking from all those fire fighters who are away from home and miss their own.

Then home to the inlet. Fisherfolk, returning from setting their nets this evening, their outboards blurp blurped as they headed to shore. The crunch of hull on coarse sand.

So yes, it's nice to see you, inlet. It's good to be home.

 

Channel 40 on the school run

 

In 400 metres, take the 2^nd exit onto Stirling Highway

What was my Mum like when she was a baby, Nanna Sarah?

She had amazing eyes, Gracie, bright blue with dark rings around the outside. 

She’s got green eyes now.

Yes. 

What else? Was she funny? 

Yeah. She talked all the time, in another language, garble garble garble. I wish I’d taped her talking. 

My brother doesn’t talk yet. He just lies and sleeps and then he wakes up for milk. 

I always wanted a brother. A big brother though. Someone to stick up for me. Having a brother is really cool, I think. 

Was Mum naughty?

Yes, all the time.

Why? 

Take the 2^nd exit onto Stirling Highway.

Hang on, just let me get into this traffic, it’s busy.

Trafficky.

Hey! You just made up a word. Trafficky. I love it. Traffic is trafficky. Excellent.

CHCHCH … right lane on Roe’s out.

CHCHCH … what the fuck is it now.

CHCHCH … some dickhead in a Sierra’s parked up with ‘is fucken hazard lights on.

CHCHCH … ahh ok mate, cheers … what a fuckwit. 

They’re swearing Nana Sarah, who’s swearing? 

It’s the truckies talking to each other on their radios. Sorry. But I like leaving the radios on, so I can hear what’s happening. It’s a bit different but sort of like music radio.

Stay in the left lane.

It’s like being on the telephone except everyone with a radio can hear what you’re talking about.

Can I make a call? On that radio thing?

Mmmm.

For the next 5 kilometres, stay in the left two lanes. 

Okay. But here’s the rules. Did you hear them talking about which lanes are safe to drive?

Yeah. 

So you can’t jam up the radio waves and carry on when they’re talking about stuff like that. You say what channel you’re on, like TV channels. These guys are talking on channel 40. So let’s practise first. Say your name and channel, Gracie. 

Grace reporting on channel 40 …

That’s brilliant! Okay, what are you gonna say next? 

Say hello if you can hear me?

Yep okay. That’s good. How do you sign off? 

What does that mean? 

It means how you finish the call. Say Grace over and out. That means you’ve finished speaking but you that want them to answer back.

Hi everyone, this is Grace reporting on channel 40 … I’m on my way home from school, if you hear this please say hello to me, Matilda on channel 40, Grace over and out. 

Pretty cool, Grace.

CHCHCH … 

No one is talking to me.

That's okay mate.

Take the next exit onto highway 3 to Victoria Park, Sealane Avenue.

I’m not sposed to know where I live, Nanna Sarah. Is this machine going to tell me where I live?

It’s okay. I’ll stop the directions before we get there so you don’t hear it.

CHCHCH … 

Why didn’t they answer my call Nanna Sarah?

They’re probably busy. Hang on, I’ve just gotta do this thing. mutters fuck this city thing stresses me out.

Take the exit.

 

***

Grace reporting on channel 40. Hope you had a good weekend. Today at school we did our maths test. Please say hello. Grace out.

CHCHCH … Heeeelllooo Grace!

Someone said hello!

Yes someone did!

CHCHCH Hello Grace!

CHCHCH That fucken dickhead doin’ 50 northbound I can’t fucken believe it what a dickwad.

CHCHCH I’m having chips for dinner, mate. Jacks n chips.

CHCHCH Mate I hear you.

CHCHCH Hello Grace! 

Nanna Sarah, what was my Mum like at school? Was she good at sport?

Your mum was hopeless at sport. 

I’m good at sport. What colour was her hair?

Brown.

What colour was her eyes?

You know that. They were blue and now they’re green.

My brother’s eyes are blue.

Yeah. All babies are born with blue eyes. Did you know that?

His eyes might turn brown.

Yes they might do.

His Dad’s eyes are brown.

Yes. Yes they are.

My Dad’s taller than you, Nanna Sarah.

No he’s not. 

Dad wants to know if you still have big frizzy hair. He says your frizzy hair makes you look bigger than him but he’s really bigger in real life. That’s not true, is it?

I’m taller than your Dad, Gracie. I don’t care what he says.

At the next exit, take highway 3 to Victoria Park. 

Can you turn off that machine please, Nanna Sarah?

No worries love. I’m getting better at this city thing. 

Does your frizzy hair really make you bigger than my Dad?

Not really. I dunno.

CHCHCH … southbound on Stirling shit’s happening up ahead.

 ***

Hi Gracie!

Nanna Sarah, here’s my NAPLAN test. Can I open it? 

No! No wait. Wait. I’ll ring your mum first and ask her.

But I’m such a good writer. This says my handwriting is bad. 

CHCHCH … it’s shit out there ay. There’s fucking dickheads about everywhere today. 

I’ve seen your handwriting. It’s really bloody good Gracie.

You just swore Nanna Sarah. 

Look, don’t pay any attention to this test. It’s rubbish Gracie. It’s not real. It’s not real! 

But it says, look here … 

Hey. What are you going to call in today?

Hello everyone, this is Grace reporting on channel 40. I wrote a story about a mermaid called The Pearl Princess and it’s about to be turned into a movie, you can see it tonight on channel nine. Grace reporting, over and out. 

CHCHCH … that sounds like a good story Grace.

CHCHCH … we need to hear more like this, guys.

CHCHCH … yeah, we need more of this.

CHCHCH … just a reminder everyone, there’s kids like her listening in, please tone down the language.

CHCHCH … Copy that.

CHCHCH … Copy

Copy

Copy

Copy that.

*** 

Gracie, I’m leaving, I’m going back down south tomorrow. So this is your last call. What do you want to say today?

Proceed to the roundabout and take the 2^nd exit.

Hello, this is Grace reporting on channel 40. This is my last call to you all. If you hear me, please say hello and goodbye. Grace on channel 40, over and out.

That was pretty cool, Gracie. Really great.

CHCHCH … 

Grace! Heeelllooo! Goodbye!

Hi Grace and goodbye

Hello and Goodbye!

Bye Grace

Hi Grace, see you on the road mate.

Hi Grace Bye

Bye kid.

I’m waiting for the movie.

I think you are awesome Grace.

Thanks for being there for me, mate.

Keep on trucking, kid.

 

 

 

 

 

Problematic wilderness

 The western narrative around wilderness is so interesting. Those places of 'moral confusion and despair', where Moses wandered for decades, where Sir Orpheo abandoned himself into the wilds to search for Euridice, growing his hair long, communing with the birds (possibly consuming a few too), hoping to entice the fairy king with his lute song, only to see his beloved wife pass by one day while falconing, her forearms clad in leather gauntlets, as she disappeared between cleaves of granite. Does not bode well for a woman to fall asleep under the ympe tree at noon.

This of course is all ancient history. 'For the Pharaoh will say of the children of Israel, they are entangled in the land, the wilderness hath shut them in.' (1) There is another quite famous couple who were driven from the garden to a harsh wilderness as punishment. In western lore, the deep forested wildernesses were home to wolves and witches; only woodsmen, hunters and abandoned children dared to enter the depths, where the trees sucked out the light. In Richard Powers' The Overstory, he writes a forest scientist Patricia Westerman walking through the thick forest to a clearing, where she thinks that these light-bathed circles 'make a reasoned argument to the loggers'. Emerging from deep karri forest undergrowth into the mossy, lichened open space of a granite cap gives me a familiar sense of psychological relief. The light, the space, the opening sky.

Millennia or centuries later, and right in the thick of the colonial project, along came the Romantics who made wilderness sexy by sublime.

 In Australia, the wilderness was still depicted by colonial artists and writers as a place of foreboding, of impenetrable forests and harsh interiors, peopled with Indigenous silences, malevolent swagmen and lost children.

 (2)

At around the same time in the Americas, the frontiers receded into rural domesticity, prompting books such as The Call of the Wild and countless Westerns. The Romantics and early environmentalists of the Americas claimed that the wild, sublime places allowed us to be closer to God. 'I'd rather be sitting on a mountain top and thinking of God, than in a church thinking of the mountain,' wrote John Muir. So the narrative flipped from wilderness flipped from being a place of purgatory and devilry, to a place with which a man (and yes, let's do that shall we?) can commune with God. The language of false idolatry, transgression and greed that originally condemned those exiled to the wilderness was now turned on those who sought to dam it or destroy its forests: 'Vandalism.' 'Desecration'.

These days the wild places are described in tourist brochures as 'untouched' and 'pristine'. Structures are built over the granites to give visitors an engineered sense of that sublime but perfectly safe near-death experience. 'Core Wilderness Values' can be almost virtue judgements which mean the difference between being protected and simply 'managed'. 

We all know that untouched wilderness is a crock during an epoch of climate change and ecological breakdown but calling a place untouched wilderness can also define it as a place empty of human beings; that as separate beings from flora and fauna, true wilderness can only exist without the human stain. And this, to me, is where the problem with wilderness starts getting pretty weird.

Advertising wilderness as pristine and untouched appeals to history's erasure. The removal of First Nations people around the world during the 19th century created 'uninhabited wildernesses' at precisely the same time as Muir was arguing for the Yellowstone National Park and the Australian John Mitchell called for a national park in the Nornalup area. 'There is nothing natural about the concept of wilderness. It is entirely a creation of the culture which holds it dear, a product of the very history it seeks to deny.'(3)

 And then, back to the fall, as Cronon writes, 'If we allow ourselves to believe that nature, to be true, must also be wild, then our very presence in nature in nature represents its fall.'

1. Exodus, King James Version.

2. Hanging Rock, with ceremonial dance (look closer!)

3. Cronon, W. 'The Trouble With Wilderness or Getting Back to the Wrong Nature', Environmental History, 1995.

4. https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2021-10-02/wilderness-conservation-indigenous-science/100500954