Peregrinations

Birds of a different feather

by

A chilly early morning at Goulburn River Stone Cottages, the moon still high in the sky and the three peacocks still perched in their night-time tree.

They are ridiculous birds for flying or perching, one would think, with their disproportionately long tails and heavy bodies.  There are three show-off males here, two ‘peacock blue’ and one white, and a silent white female, with a shorter tail. She roosts down lower to the ground by herself.

These ridiculously gorgeous birds hide their brown and white wings under the iridescent finery. The back and tail feathers are amazing, bronze in some lights, green in others, and their shimmering chest plumage must have been the inspiration for velvet, shot silk and shantung fabrics.

They wander about, cocking their coronets, dragging those painted eye tails in the dirt, and flashing their pale pantaloons.  The blue ones were spending part of the day sitting on the sunwarmed roof of my blue ute parked in the open shed — until I realised they were covering it with large droppings. The ute is now parked out in the open; I hope they drop me a few tail feathers as compensation.

They get some of the chooks’ breakfast and afternoon tea feeds, sharing it with the blow-ins — the currawongs, choughs, wood ducks and plovers. The chooks here are of many different colours and patterns, but the roosters are — of course — the most spectacular.

The white male likes to promenade up and down the sunny brick verandah of the house, looking in the large glazed doors.  I assume it’s his own reflection he fancies. I have to remind myself it’s not a female, so like a bedraggled and rather hung-over bride does he look!  A tiara never looks right for day wear — but then all these peacock males live in evening wear.

Like kids playing dress-up in Mum’s old satins and furs — in the sandpit.

Riverside homes

by

The weathered sandstone cliffs by the Goulburn River offer shelter to a variety of creatures. Those who aren’t winged must like easy access; I fancied these caves had steps — foot and hand holds — cut into the face below.

Closer to ground level, smaller winged creatures — like native bees? or? — had chosen the underside of the ‘plates’ in a severely eroded sandstone cave roof. Unoccupied summer residences?

Walking back along the clifftops, I spotted this large Angophora hollow home with its beautifully rounded edges of bark slowly grown around it. I am sure some animal or bird has claimed such a desirable residence.

Underfoot was both crunchy and cushioned; the lichens and mosses on the rock base were dazzling in variety and intensity. Miniature forests and coral gardens.

On the path, a few tiny fluted fungi had pushed through the thin soil and brightened the bush with their golden trumpets. I think these are Cantharellus concinnus, Australian Chanterelle.

In this sort of dry country, the treasures are often shy and small, needing an observant eye, and worth it.

Animal Lady on the move

by

Recently I met Laura, a delightful young Spanish biologist with a passion for primates, while she was WWOOFing at Rocky Creek Wildlife Refuge. Here she’s been caring for wallabies and kangaroos, given that primates are a bit hard to find in Australia.

Her Animal Lady blog is both fun and informative as she travels to different places and meets different animals — and people.

“After spending five weeks in an orphanage for chimpanzees in Zambia in 2008 and ten weeks in the jungle of Borneo studying orangutans in 2009, this year I decided it was time to go a little bit further,” she said.

“When I finished my degree in Biology this June my parents gave me a trip around the world as a present. This 10-month trip is taking me through Borneo, Bali, Japan, New Zealand, Tasmania, the Australian east coast, California and Mexico.

“Everywhere I go I always try to be the closest to nature and animals I can. If you would like to join me in my trip around the world follow me here.”

Wines, not mines, in Margaret River

by

The latest unthinkable area to be targeted by the coal mining frenzy is the world-renowned wine and food area of Margaret River in south-west Western Australia. 

A town, a river and a region, it is one of that state’s main tourist destinations, offering a Mediterranean climate and a combination of surf coast and scenic hinterland as settings for rich and varied cultural and gastronomic experiences.

The people who moved there and gradually created this special — and sustainable — economic Eden know what they have to offer. They also know what they have to lose if the coal industry gets a toehold here.

Bye-bye Leederville aquifer, bye-bye rural peace and quiet, bye-bye Margaret River as a holiday refuge for the city-stressed.

This is the mine site on Osmington Rd, near Rosa Brook, 15km from the actual town of Margaret River, and a much-visited and picturesque part of the Margaret River region, with wineries, dairies, berry and olive farms, equestrian centres and charming rural B&Bs, like the owner-built Rosa Brook Stone where I stayed.

LD Operations is currently applying to mine coal underground here; other exploration leases await. As you can see from the swampy centre, it’s clearly a wet area, despite, as locals say, a dry winter.

It is inconceivable that they will be able to mine without damaging the aquifer, although I am sure they will find experts to assure us that this would be ‘unlikely’.

The visible neighbouring farmhouses are modern, new-ish; they weren’t expecting this. Nor were these inhabitants of the adjoining lifestyle block.

Locals like TV chef Ian Parmenter (left) and Brent Watson have formed a strong NoCOAL!itionmargaretriver group to fight this entirely inappropriate mine.

Ian Parmenter and his wife Ann moved here 20 years ago, building a haven — home and garden and orchard and vineyard — over that time. Brent Watson and his family run the highly successful Horses and Horsemen equestrian resort and training centre just down the road.

They have the support of the local Council, winemakers and tourism associations and notables such as James Halliday. Local member Troy Buswell says he’s agin it, but Premier Colin Barnett has finally stated that he is not about to step in and deny LDO their ‘due process’

And we all know what that portends.

At Rosa Brook Hall with Peter Rigby and Brent Watson. Photo by Derek Pool, Augusta Margaret River Times

Because I was visiting Collie, only two hours away, Ian asked me to speak at a public meeting the day before I headed home. About 70 people turned up at the Rosa Brook Hall to hear about what I’ve seen in coal areas in other states and were audibly shocked at the Rivers of Shame DVD shown afterwards. As a reward, I was treated to a Parmenter feast of a dinner — vegetarian, in my honour!

I know these good people had very full lives and livelihoods before this mine threat exploded and I know how much time they are now spending on trying to save them — and the future and water resources of the whole region. This is a huge part of the unfairness I see all around the country. I hope they can last the distance — and win — as all reason and justice say they ought.

If Mr Barnett is not thinking of the southwest’s water and longterm land use, he might like to think about this, which I’d read before this whole mining madness became public. It’s was in The Weekend Australian Financial Review May 22-23, 2010, ‘How space and place dictate your happiness’ by Deirdre Macken. She reported that Glenn Albrecht, Professor of Sustainability at Murdoch University, had studied the Upper Hunter’s existentially distressed coal mining area populations, where ‘everything they valued was being taken away, … shovel by shovel’. 

He became interested in finding places that work best for people, ‘health-enhancing environments’, and he and urban planner Roberta Ryan of Urbis independently agreed that  ‘the place in Australia that best captures the qualities that please the psyche is the Margaret River.’   

Says Ryan, ‘It’s the most extraordinary place… and it just feels like the most fantastic place to be. It helps that it has an incredible level of investment by locals and so the locals feel as if it’s owned by them.’

Which is why they won’t be allowing Mr Barnett to allow the mining company, under his rubber stamp legislation, to take it away from them — and the rest of us.

Collie, coal town

by

In Western Australia I drove about 200km south from Perth to spend a few days in the town of Collie, the state’s coal mining and coal-fired power base. Like many towns founded in the late 19th century on underground coal mining, Collie is proud of its history.

However, I fear the that townspeople have not realised the vast difference between impacts from those old mining methods and the large open-cut mining employed since the 1990s, now much in evidence — but only if you drive 10 minutes out of town.

Collie has two companies, Wesfarmers Premier Coal and Griffin Coal, the latter under administration, mining mainly to supply the four privately owned power stations, more of which are planned to to open or re-open in the next few years. Collie Basin is set to remain the carbon powerhouse we don’t need.

 As I first approached Collie, one obvious difference to the similarly coal-dependent Hunter Valley was the heavily forested, hilly surrounds.

Collie itself is a nice town, with all the services you’d want. Residents can go ‘down the hill’ to the city and port of Bunbury for anything else — just as ‘flatlander’ workers come ‘up the hill’ to the mines and power stations. However, the Collie coal work force has roughly halved in the almost 20 years since the mines went open-cut and mechanised.

The mine landscape of overburden, dust mountains and vast stepped holes was familiar to me. There are farms under current impact right near these mines, which are expanding or moving operations along and so threatening more properties with unacceptable noise and dust. And of course there are the people already forced out, those who used to live where now nothing can.

From anecdotal evidence, I’d say that health damage from infrasound is likely to be occurring.

The other familiar aspect was the milky air. Pollution? It was winter and most Collie homes have wood fires, plus there was hazard reduction burning in the forests, following an unusually dry winter. I accept what the locals say, that it doesn’t look like this in summer. 

However, if Collie Valley holds the winter smog like this, it has inversions and is highly likely to also hold the fine PM2.5 dust particulates from those uncovered mines and those high coal-fired power station stacks. Plus the uncovered coal trains go right through the heart of town.

Since I was there, a 2008 Collie Basin air quality study has just released its PM 2.5 section and yes, there were ‘exceedences’, but hazard reduction burning seems to be getting the blame. Ongoing monitoring was recommended, however, plus particle analysis.

Collie itself doesn’t seem to want to know. Afraid of what might happen, jobwise, if health damage proved that mining might be stopped? How about insisting on better practices right now from mining and setting up cleaner industries for the future of Collie?

Instead they are planning a coal-to-urea plant! That should spice up the airborne particles with plenty of nitrogen and put Collie folk on a knife edge, as many are very worried about the dangers inherent in storing ammonia. They don’t mean ill-health; they mean almost instant and widespread death for the people of Collie. They have no faith in the assurances of Perdaman, the company wanting to establish this industry — who only estimate seven deaths at worst case scenario.

So that’s all right, then?

The other serious and totally unsustainable issue here is the dewatering of the area’s groundwater, estimated at about 1m overall drop across the Collie Basin, but up to 50m below the pre-mining water table in places.

The pools in the branches of the Collie River are not likely to join up soon and the outlook for what might still live there is bleak. Salinity is a fact of life.

The mines are supposed to treat their used water and put it back but it’s still too acidic. While also allowed to pass on their water to the power stations, the sums for overall water allocations do not add up.

With a drying climate and more water-hungry power stations to come, there will simply not be enough water for Collie industry or its people.

Who isn’t joining the dots — and why?

Another water issue for me was the water-filled old open cut void, Stockton Lake, a popular spot for camping and waterski-ing, and more are promised.

The tourist brochure warns ‘As the lake is a disused coal mine, the water is more acidic than other natural lakes and skiers are advised to limit their time in the water — especially those with sensitive skin. Swimming is not recommended.’

‘Yeah, they say they’re a bit acidic,’ said a local, ‘but I’ve swum in them for years and my legs haven’t fallen off yet’.

H-hm-m. Shades of The Simpsons?

What about the heavy metals this acid causes to leach out — lead, arsenic and mercury —  the effects of which may not show up for decades?

I liked Collie, and I am sad to see its head-in-the-sand response to the health issues and future job challenges, but they are taking their lead from the state government. A few well-informed local voices continue to tell it as it is, but, unlike the response to the boy who dared cry out that ‘The Emperor has no clothes!’ most of the townsfolk in earshot here would seem to be blocking their ears.

Flights of fancy

by

I am never a happy flier. I recently endured a five-hour flight to Perth from Sydney, and then a shorter return one of three and a half hours — don’t ask me why they can’t take the short route all the time!

However once airborne, so long as there is no turbulence and no odd noises, I do like to look out the window. I never, ever forget where I am, whereas my fellow passengers seem far more blasé, as if in a train or coach, on the ground, in their natural element, instead of thousands and thousands and thousands of metres ‘up there’, beyond even birdland.

On long flights the plane only flies low enough near the beginning and end for land to be seen as a photo map. I was lucky enough this time for the cloud cover to be thin and fragmented enough to reveal the snow-capped and dusted Snowy Mountains beneath.

For most of the flight it is cloud land, not earth land, that fascinates. On the early morning return flight we were flying east, so towards the sunrise, and I was struck by the way cloudland had a sunrise streak on its horizon — just like ours, and then a cloud layer above — just like ours.

As this was the first time in a while that I have flown Qantas rather than a very budget airline, I hadn’t experienced airline food for some time, and held an unpleasant memory of a rubbery textured vegetable protein slab like a Wettex  sponge. Having ordered Asian/Indian vegetarian options — and there are several — I was impressed with both the lunch and the breakfast I was served.

Later, well fed, sun up and back to the surety of which layer was what, I marvelled at the levelness of the upper horizon of this land, giving it such an appearance of solidity.  Why is it so, does anyone know?

Gippsland the varied — part 2

by

Travelling home after two months on the road, for once I chose to be kind to myself, to unwind slowly and not to let time pressures make me rush past all the interesting turnoffs — as usually happened.

Gippsland’s Wilderness Coast is somewhere I definitely want to return to, in another winter, with weeks to spend on its many inlets, points and headlands, beaches and rivers, and in its forests. Extraordinarily diverse, mostly unpopulated, it is full of the wilderness edges I like so much, and protected by National Parks like Cape Conran and Croajingolong, and Marine Parks like Point Hicks and Cape Howe.

Its pristine Tasman Sea beaches were empty, and faced across Bass Strait to Tasmania, a thought that appealed to me, even though I couldn’t see that now-favourite state. 

The rocks were different at every stop, but I was particularly taken by these stranded clusters of yearning dolphin-like rocks.

Inland, heading towards Cann River, spectacular and informative Rainforest Walks were signposted and accessed just off the Princes Highway — temptingly too easy to pass by. Suspended bridges crossed the creeks and the timber walkways were still slippery with ice at 11am.

Climbing Genoa Peak was not be missed, my brochure said. Only 1.5 kilometres — but straight up! The climb was mostly through casuarina and angophora forests, with twisted ti-trees higher up.  The paths were soft casuarina needle carpets, with bright correa (Native Fuchsia) blooming their sides.

The bush was very still and silent, with nary a bird call or rustle. Suddenly a whole series of calls rang out; it had to be a lyrebird! As it was, but a very quick lyrebird, so I only managed a glimpse of his gorgeous tail as he ran away.

The view from Genoa Peak was impressive. I must confess I didn’t make it to the very top, as the steel ladder to that was so steep that they had a cage around it so one didn’t fall backwards! The previous two steel ladders had been bad enough for height-challenged me.

I did see my destination for that night — Mallacoota Inlet, whence the Genoa River entered the sea, after curving between forest-cushioned shores through the Croajingolong National Park. Maybe I’d do some bushwalking there.

But by the time I was back at the car park at the base of the climb — two hours in total — my calves were screaming:’ Climb no more, you silly old woman! Give us a break.’  Going downhill had been far worse.

Magical Mallacoota

by

It was just on dusk when I reached Mallacoota, 23 km east of the highway. A stunningly beautiful spot, and quite a large village, but, as I discovered when I drove to the inlet foreshore, its population must explode in summer.

What I thought was just a pleasantly green and tree-edged park proved to be the largest camping area I have ever seen, with ‘streets’ of numbered empty sites continuing around the point. Hundreds and hundreds of sites. Rows of moorings edged the inlet itself. Mallacoota was clearly a boating and fishing paradise. Darkness was too imminent to explore further, but I vowed to get up early for the sunrise, thinking it would be over the sea, perhaps best viewed from Bastion Point.

 But I was totally disoriented, for by 7am the sun was rising over the inlet itself. And what a sunrise!

Within seconds the vivid colours had softened and, turning to where the river met the sea, I was met with almost unbelievable pinks and mauves. If I saw this on a greeting card or calendar I’d assume it had been ‘doctored’.

Back towards the mountains the pinks had taken hold too, with the small islands of the inlet beginning to show colours other than black.

By the time I got to Point Bastion, my original destination, the sun had risen. There seemed to be islands and a lighthouse floating in the sea — or the sky? — detached and wavering, like a mirage. Gabo Island is real, so I guess that is what I was seeing.

I walked around the Point itself, no easy feat, as the rocks run in long narrow spines towards the sea. I found myself walking sideways to cross them. By the time I left, there was a large yellow machine of some sort — a front-end loader? — revving up noise and black smoke, preparing to help launch several large boats. To my ignorant eyes, they looked the sort in which Hemingway types chased marlin, so I assumed deep sea fishing.

Imagine how this would be multiplied in summer. The magic of Mallacoota is best by far in winter.

Gippsland the varied — part 1

by

I discovered that Victoria’s Gippsland region, while small by the standards of bigger states, is vastly varied.  I had stayed at Mirboo North, with the extremely generous and helpful Kate Jackson and Phil Piper, who had welcomed me, sight unseen.

As I left on a frosty morning, with a chilled mist in the air, the rolling hills around their place typified what I had always thought of as Gippsland country.

 I knew by now that the Latrobe Valley is part of the region too, but as to what lay north of that coal hub, I had no idea.  I hadn’t planned my route home, but on the map, one place had caught my eye : ‘Munro’. I took the turn-off.

Munro proved to be a tiny village in a potato-growing and grazing area. It had no shop, but a Munro Hall and a quaint little wooden church– St Mary’s Anglican Church. What struck me was that its stained glass window could have been made for me and my place, as it featured gum leaves, a possum and a Crimson Rosella!

From there I headed to Bairnsdale, where I would have to decide whether to cross the border via Omeo and the Great Alpine Road, or the coast. Informed that, it being snow season and school holidays, there’d be unlikely to be any accommodation at Omeo and I’d have to carry snow chains  — I chose the coast.

Orbost on the Snowy River was my destination for the night, and I reached it around 4pm, tired, unwilling– and probably unable – to drive another inch. This pretty town had two motels – both with ‘No vacancy’ signs. Desperate, I drove in to the Orbost Country Roads Motor Inn, where owner Helen Dounan explained that contractors had filled the town’s rooms at this usually quiet time. No room at the inn, even in winter. 

Displaying the sort of country kindness I thought had long disappeared, she took pity on me and rang around to find me a cancellation, a room, a caravan, a cabin– anything, within driving distance. After several calls, she said Greg at the Orbost Caravan Park would ring up any unclaimed bookings. He did, and rang Helen back to say I could have a cabin. As Helen said ‘The lady will be ecstatic!’

I was.

The cabin was clean and cosy, Greg was as kind as Helen had been, the Park was leafy and green, and just across the road from the Snowy Rver, the Forest Park and the Waterwatch Walk.

I took the Waterwatch Walk next morning, never having seen the Snowy so broad and calm and un-alpine-like. The Walk documents the rehabilitation project for the banks of the Snowy down here in the lowlands.

I followed the river by road to Marlo, ‘where the Snowy meets the sea’. It was odd to think of the Snowy as this amiable sand and seaside expanse.

This pelican kept a close eye on me and the river as I wandered about; I love the weird individuality of pelicans! 

I thought how nice it was to be in such an obviously desirable and thus crowded summer spot – in winter. But this was just the beginning of my experience of Gippsland’s Wilderness Coast.

Coal-powered clouds

by

Victoria’s Latrobe Valley is the state’s powerhouse, burning their abundant brown coal for 85% of that state’s electricity. I knew that, but until I went there and stayed to see it in different weather conditions and times of day, I didn’t know it made its own cloudscapes.

The eight little dots creating this amazing, yearning sort of cloud are the tops of the eight stacks at Hazelwood, their oldest power station. Here the output looks harmlessly white and fluffy, which is surprising, given that Hazelwood doesn’t use water cooling towers as the more modern stations do — but then, since Hazelwood was supposed to be dead and buried already, nothing should surprise about it.

That afternoon, Hazelwood seemed to be making the dark cloudscape that hung over the valley. That’s not true either, but it seemed more appropriate than white and fluffy.

Next morning, the Valley was lost in fog, but the many stacks rose above it, erupting like boiling lakes in a sci-fi film. The Valley being also home to huge pine plantations for the paper mill, the stiff foreground outlines of the young pines added to the strangeness of the scene.

Driving down into the fog was eerie, the sun a cold white dot, the town of Morwell as murky as I imagine 19th century London was.

And yet after my visit I know the Latrobe is nowhere near as polluted as my Hunter Valley, so all this is illusion — my imagination working overtime, my head in the clouds, as usual.

Macedon mists and cool crafts

by

I like the mystery of mist, of fog, of cloud that comes down to join the land. But as a rarity, not a norm.

The Macedon area in Victoria is on a high plain, about 700 metres up, above which rise its ranges. ‘Naturally cool’ is the shire slogan. And it is, on many levels.

Misty moisty mornings do provide some beautifully lit scenes and special effects, both distant and close.

They are not so good for sightseeing. Giving up on a clear day down here in the lowlands, hoping for a change higher up — as I find at home — on two separate days I climbed to the Lookouts on Hanging Rock and the Camel’s Hump (Mount Macdeon). At each the view was of mist.

Apart from climate, the area is pretty cool when it comes to food and culture and shopping too. Every weekend one or other village has a farmers’ market of local produce, and some have local craft markets.

Amongst the latter, I was lucky to make the Gisborne market, where I found a quaint Celtic gypsy tweed ‘hat’ that not only fitted, but didn’t make me look dopey, as beanies do.  Made in Gordon, Victoria, by Seina and Bob Petch of Wild Trout Headwear, it warms my head and my Scottish heart.

As if that wasn’t a treat enough, in the main street itself is the best little shoe shop I have ever been in — that is, if you like quality shoes that are actually designed for human feet, are meant to be worn without pain and are beautiful to boot (sorry, Victoria seems to bring out the punster in me).

Being an impoverished writer, I wouldn’t normally go in to such a shop for fear of being tempted — but it was having a half-price sale on boots. 

I’ve been looking for years for flat-soled long plain boots to replace my old faithfuls, now 25 years old, and at which my local bootmaker now just shakes his head. But I didn’t want fake buckles and ruched folds and silly patterns.

God bless Gisborne Footwear! The owner cheerfully (another novelty) pulled out box after box as we refined my ideal.  I found them, I love them, I could afford them – and I am sure I will have them for 25 years too.

I actually sang on the way home that day.

An old garden’s treasures

by

The quaint Rosebank cottage where I stayed ( courtesy of Mary Delahunty and the Victorian Writers’ Centre) was surrounded by introduced trees and garden plants – and did have a bank of roses.

The king of the garden was this giant oak, whose bark was dappled blue with lichen and whose branches reached 15 metres in every direction. A tree to inspire awe, but not for the many immature Crimson Rosellas who daily raided it for acorns. The generous oak dropped shiny acorns, knubby caps, brown leaves and endless twigs for kindling.

Rosebank’s old garden added two new plants to my botanical knowledge.

The first was  a tree bearing a strange sci-fi fruit, with its pronged antennae. It turned out to be a Medlar, Mespilus germanica, a fruit popular in mediaeval times, able to be eaten only when soft and half rotten, a process known as ‘bletting’. Then it is like spiced stewed apple — reputedly best accompanied by port. I had no port, but wasn’t keen on the fruit’s texture. However, medlar liqueur sounded tempting.

The other plant was a tall and wide shrub with arched and drooping slender branches, bearing only a few autumn leaves, but masses of trailing bunches of small hot pink flowers with orange centres.  Close up, I saw they were more like pods, beginning as quadruple pockmarked globes that split to show the four orange ‘seeds’, which were also rough-skinned like mini cumquats.

When the Woodend nursery identified it for me as Spindle Bush, Euonymus europaeus, I learned that the pink is the fruit and the orange are the seeds, and that they are poisonous. The flowers were described as ‘insignificant’ so I need not regret missing the Spring for them. Common in the Northern Hemisphere, it was named for its hard wood, used for making spindles because it can hold a very fine point.