Fred Baker

Rocks rule

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As my mountain is not of sandstone, the sandstone ridges and gorges through which the Goulburn River meanders (when it isn’t rushing along in flood!) provided visual treats that no manmade sculptures could rival. The range was staggering.

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Mighty boulders, long broken off, rolled far from their parent cliffs, rested at odd angles in a sea of grass, gathering lichen and inviting fancies of petrified creatures.

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On the slopes, small and perfect grottoes, protected, glowing pure white or golden, offered shelter to wallabies.

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Less common were the very large caves, stepped, sand-floored, roofed with intricate honeycombs of differing colours and materials – and these must have once offered shelter for humans.

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And humans had been here. Elsewhere in the National Park there are apparently caves with Aboriginal paintings on the walls. There was evidence of later occupation, and typically, of greater impact.

Off a management track, an uphill offshoot, faint and overgrown, became an old wagon track, hewn – not blasted – out of the rock to reach the ridge and continue over the plateau to the next valley.

I hope that determined settler found the effort was worth it. The rock remains indifferent to that blip in its time.

Angophora camping

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Between Christmas and New Year the Suzuki and I and a friend went camping in the Goulburn River National Park.

The camp site itself was far more civilised than I’d expected: mown grass around moss-capped and lichen-patinaed rocks emerging at different levels in best landscaping style, under beautiful big angophora trees that leant and twisted over all.

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There were even fireplaces, tables and a pit toilet that was almost as good as mine except that it had a door, so no view!

Unfortunately the river was in high brown flood, with quite large casuarinas laid flat in its current. No chance of swimming.

I was expecting this camping experience to be like at my place only more primitive and by a river, but I had to adjust to the fact that it was actually more public, for other people came and camped under the angophoras, not really close by, but even so I felt crowded!

angophora

But the surrounding bush offered much to look at, not least the erratic but amazingly intense blooming of the angophoras, with their clouds of clotted cream blossom on arching or drooping branches.

Envirowiki

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windfarmThe Envirowiki website was started in late August, 2006. It’s slowly getting bigger, but it needs your help!

For it to become a great resource for environmental and social justice activists of all hues, people like you need to help out.

It is now available in several languages, so take a look and make an entry on your pet topic.

Sunset moon

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mountain sunsetMy last full moon teamed up with the sun for a brief pas de deux between their respective acts.

To my north-east, the soft pinks and blues of a reflected sunset are always more delicate than the vibrant western reality, but this time the former won my attention, with a pearl of a moon rising above a long low cloud bank over the mountains.

Until the final curtain fell, the changing light was the most evident feature, with my foreground garden and forest turning to black, demanding the flash on my camera, while on the far stage the blues intensified and the pinks flushed dark rose and lilac before reaching for the deep purple of late twilight.

Through all this light and colour action the moon simply stayed where she was, steadily gaining a more luminous prominence, biding her time until the sun would have finished its flamboyant exit display — and it would be her stage alone, with no light but her own.

To the west the sun’s act always lasts longer, bolder and brighter — but it cannot ever dance with the moon.

My last picture shows the ‘real’ sunset.

Summer slime

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This summer is atypically steamy for my altitude (around 1000 metres or 3250 feet) and I am seeing strange phenomena that appear to be related to this new climate.

Not the least of which are these surreal deposits, spotted only in one small area up the hill from my cabin.

Several white blobs stood out amongst the greens and greys. Going closer, I saw that clumps of grass stalks were coated – or being coated?– with a sort of slime, translucently white, soft, yet firm enough to hold shape, some still dripping.

‘Ectoplasm’ was my first thought, thinking of the Ghostbusters film. It was immediately dismissed of course.

But had these rather disturbing gobs come from above, been dropped or spat? Or were they oozing up the stalks from the leaf litter below?

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Then I noticed that a nearby stone bore an equally strange blob of speckled grey slime.

Half a metre away, a twig was smothered in what appeared to be a combination one, white on grey.

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They all had to be some sort of spore.

The grey one was tough and rubbery to the touch, the white felt like powdercoated soft jelly.

Grass stalks collapsed under the latter’s weight as the day heated up, the powder darkened to cream.

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By next day they were all grey.

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It turns out they are Slime Moulds, from an extraordinary group of organisms called Myxomycetes — neither plant nor animal nor fungi. With more than 1000 species of these ‘intelligent slime’ identified, I am struck that I had not only never seen them (that I am aware of) but had never heard of them.

What a rich world!

Apparently they suddenly get together in a mass of protoplasm and ooze along very, very, very slowly, feeding until ready to start producing spore.

Most are brightly coloured and their forms are vastly varied – one of which has led to it being named ‘dog’s vomit’ slime, since that was the explanation usually given to its appearance.

Check out these sites if you want to get to know slime moulds better:

Great photo gallery

Nice short explanation by a Canadian botanist

Lily pad life

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dragonfliesOn my small dam the waterlilies are blooming, their large circular leaves so abundant that they are overlapping, curling up at their edges.

There are two green floating islands of them, one bearing pale pink lotus-like cups, the other such a pale lemon as to seem white.

Since these aquatic plants had all but disappeared in the drought, I went down to have a closer look at their new burst of life.

Life indeed, for the waterlily rafts are hosting a multitude of fauna.

Two tiny tortoises slipped back into the water as I approached.

The dozens of tadpoles apparently hanging from the water surface soon proved to be hundreds, of several types, and all fat and healthy.

Some of the smaller ones already had legs sprouting from their translucent brown sides.

In the middle of the lily pads I spotted a tiny jewel of a green frog.

‘Water boatmen’ rowed their skinny insect selves across the surface.

Delicate blue and red jointed sticks with gauze wings perched rigidly solo, or curved in what I presumed to be copulating pairs, on lily leaves and reed stems — mayflies, dragonflies?

Beetles and other strange insects busied themselves on the pads.

I came home to refer to my old pond life book, to be able to tell you with authority what these dam inhabitants are, but like so many other books — I must have lent it out long ago and forgotten to whom.

So nameless but beautiful they remain.

Free summer blinds

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stepsIn Autumn the ornamental grape and wisteria vines on my verandah were a visual treat — a rich riot of warm colours.

The vines are bare by winter, allowing the low sun to enter my house.

No matter how severely I trim them back, come Spring they always take off with such vigour that here we are at the beginning of Summer with fully drawn blinds of many different shades, shapes and textures of green.

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in flower‘Pray enter a refuge from the glare and heat of summer’, say my front steps, leading to a doorway in the vines.

They do not lie. Once on the wide verandah, which is my summer living area, the contrast is extreme, the shade is dense and cool, the very light is green.

And to think these passive solar blinds are free, with guaranteed annual installation!

Up the north-eastern end of the verandah, morning summer sunlight is welcome, so the free blinds are allowed to be of more lacey material.

The climbing Crepuscule rose is finishing its blooming, just as the ‘Chilean Jasmine’, Mandevilla Laxa, is beginning — highly perfumed white clusters on delicate twining stems.

Summer lighting

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Now that the sun is back to having the full sweep of the sky for rising and setting, it’s reaching windows that have not been sunstruck for months.

Even through my closed eyelids, somehow I know that the morning sunlight has snuck over the ridge to the east and is stroking the edges of my bedspread, browsing over my wall of books — and implying I ought to be up.

Given that I only like to work outdoors in the cooler ends of summer days, usually I take the hint and arise. I’ll spend a couple of hours raking horse manure or reclaiming parts of the yard that have been neglected over this last busy year. Then I feel I deserve breakfast.

decorated window

Later in the day the sun is now lighting up a fixed window high under the western gable. It was a plain multi-paned window, decorated only with fly spottings until I got the bright idea of filling in the panes it with those flat-backed iridescent glass beads sold in bargain shops.

On the inside, I glued them on with clear silicone into a vaguely Arabic-cum-Art Nouveau pattern in cool colours, thinking this would create a cooling impression. However, the iridescence proved to be only evident from the outside, and really only in summer when the sunlight was low and bright enough to reach it.

I also thought the extra glass layer might increase the insulating qualities of the window, but when I indulge in this sort of nest-decorating behaviour, I can always find a practical reason why I must do it ahead of pressing work. Once it’s done, the visual pleasure it gives me is reason enough.

Food and fun

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dandenong forest

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Sharyn&AnneWhile in Victoria I spent an amusing few hours on a community radio (3MDR) show with host Ann Creber. This dynamic pixie of a woman also hosted me for several days at her home, which she shares with husband David, two large poodles, Nina and Georgie, and hundreds of antique dishes and pots and pans — props for her food photography styling — plus more modern gear for menu testing as well as cooking for her ‘Whispers of Provence’ lines of preserves, jams and vinegars.

Rose petal vinegar was in process, the petals collected from Ann’s wonderfully wild Dandenongs garden, where natives like fern trees and giant mountain ash eucalypts happily share the slopes with oaks and birches, lawn daisies and buttercups, foxgloves and heritage roses.

At the bottom of the garden she keeps alpacas, ducks and chooks. And I can vouch for the quality of Ann’s omelettes.

Being a professional foodie, Ann gets invited to cookbook launches like the one she took me to, somewhere posh, high above the heart of Melbourne. It was for a truly beautiful book called Turquoise by Ann’s friends, Lucy & Greg Malouf. Published by Hardie Grant, it’s as much Turkish travelogue as recipe book; the photographs are stunning.

The gathering included the sort of glitterati and fashion followers that you just don’t see in a country town. I was gawking unashamedly as I scoffed whatever vegetarian offerings passed by on platters carried by extremely aloof young men.

Preston market

The other Victorian food treat was a visit to Preston Markets, where people of every colour and culture mingle around shops and stalls offering every imaginable type of produce.

They even have a wine stall, where you can refill your ceramic stoppered glass bottles! Now that’s civilised.

Clearly not everyone found the experience as fascinating as I did.

I came back to NSW determined to use more fresh dill as well as mint and parsley in my Middle Eastern concoctions, to have another go at keeping the possums off my roses, and wishing we had more migrants in our Hunter Valley towns! Woollies just doesn’t compare as a sensory shopping treat.

I love libraries

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November was another month of library talks for me. Victoria’s Eastern Regional Libraries booked me to address their Reading Café at Lilydale.

This is a most civilised affair where the audience munch on sandwiches and cake and sip a cuppa while I read from my book and generally rave on.

Sharyn reads

Sharyn with booksAt the marvellous mudbrick Eltham Library they nibbled on cheese and bickies and sipped wine in an equally civilised manner. Hot question times followed, and at Eltham we only stopped because the library was closing.

But the most civilised part about Victorian libraries is that they pay their speakers! They appear to understand that writers need to eat in between the free fare do’s.

Back in NSW, I was treated to an underground tour of the warrens beneath the State Library as their vibrant PR person, Deb McBurnie, guided me up from the car park to the elegant Friends’ Room. Once again the audience nibbled while I talked, only this time they paid for the privilege.

As part of the Library’s free exhibition, ‘Impact: A Changing Land’, I thought it a good chance to go to town about the impact of coalmining in the Hunter Valley, showing large photos of treasures like Anvil Hill that will become trash if that mine goes ahead.

NSW Talk

Given that the State Parliament is only a few doors up the road in Macquarie Street, there was a lot of fingerpointing and blame allocation from me. The audience didn’t exactly stand up and shout ‘Shame!’ when I mentioned Mr Sartor’s name, but there was a great deal of vehement head-nodding.

I also took the chance to plead for environmentally-minded Senate voting the following Saturday.

And it would seem that they and thousands of others did just that. Let’s hope the new gang finds the courage to take us beyond coal.

Goanna brunch

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goanna one

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goanna threeI haven’t seen goannas on my mountain, but they are quite common in many places. This one, the Lace Monitor, is the only type I’ve ever seen, mostly in sandy areas.

It’s one of Australia’s largest lizards, with the males sometimes exceeding 2 metres in length. Having always been told that goannas will run up the nearest vertical object, be it tree or person, when disturbed, I watched this Hunter resident from a safe distance, grateful for the zoom on my camera.

I was very wary of those sharp claws and powerful legs. Admiring the pixellated pattern of stripes and spots on its loose skin, I could see why ‘lace’. It also recalled certain indigenous art styles.

They are carnivorous, eating any carrion. And many a farmer has cursed the egg thief in their hen house. Tossed an egg, this goanna caught and swallowed it effortlessly.

No more eggs forthcoming, it turned and lumbered away, swishing its long tail, which ended in a brown needle-point, in poised arcs. In the shade of a nearby ironbark, it sprawled its back legs flat and settled down to contemplative digestion of that egg, which had so mysteriously arrived in time for brunch.

Victoria, here I come!

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Next week I’ll be passing once more through the dust-laden skies of the poor old Hunter Valley. Looking north to Muswellbrook, you’d think it was Los Angeles smog, but no, just way too many coalmines.

I’ll be heading south, booktalking again, to Victoria. Having won two national short story awards given by Victorian Shires in the past, I’m happy to be returning.

On Monday November 12th I’ll be speaking at Lilydale Library’s Reading Café at 12.30.

On Tuesday afternoon the dynamic Ann Creber will be talking with me on her 3MDR radio show, ‘The Good Life’.

On Wednesday 14th at 7pm I’ll be speaking at the Eltham Library as part of their Red Chair series by artists.

Back in NSW, the following week I’m speaking at the State Library in Macquarie Street, Sydney, as part of their exhibition, ‘Impact: A Changing Land’.

This will be at 12 noon on Wednesday 21st and I’ll be doing a double act on the topic of ‘Choosing the good life’ with Adrienne Langman, author of ‘Choosing Eden: the real dirt on the coming energy crisis’.