On an island you’re never far from the sea – that is unless the island is huge, like Australia. In tiny Tasmania, perched like an afterthought at the foot of Australia, even the mountains in the centre are not far from the ocean raging around them – just as in the distant homeland from which those who settled it came. On the main island, though, everywhere is a long way from everywhere else. Two islands, very different in size, in many ways with both similar and different histories. Both on fire. But this not just about the fires – it’s about what happened in front of the fire, the life lived in a time of warming and burning, even if it sometimes felt like a rehearsal for the end of the world.
The year before the new decade started, the last year of the old decade, began with fires in the centre of his island home, Tasmania, where he had grown up. It was burning in the very spot where he spent his earliest years. That year he had decided it was time to travel back. It didn’t start well. The year started off dry and hot and ended even drier and hotter. Luckily global warming didn’t exist or who knows how bad it could have been. Luckily the Earth was flat, because that would stop all the water needed to fight the fires running down the sloping edges of the world and falling off.
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| Ferry leaving Melbourne for Tasmania |
It was a year book-ended by bushfires. A year that began with fires and ended with fires – a warning of a future to come.
The country where he grew up
When he moved to Australia’s capital city, he discovered that he had come back to the country where he grew up—the dry, high winter country in the shadow of the mountains. There in the sky country the coastal plains, after rising through the lush, damp forests of the Southern Highlands, finally gave way to the lofty rocky sprawl of the Southern Tablelands, with its stunted trees and thin, shallow rivers.
‘He could be in several, wildly different places almost at the same time. For a significant birthday celebration some years back, he had spent a Saturday night on the balcony of an apartment in Darlinghurst, in inner city Sydney, drinking large quantities of Semillon amongst many friends. The following weekend he was camped amongst massive gum trees in the Snowy Mountains, drinking tea out of mugs next to a smoky, spitting campfire.’
But he didn’t grow up in Canberra, but rather in the dry centre of Tasmania, where the Great Lakes and the mountains of the Western Tiers defined the brittle, stony landscape. It was as if there was a large mirror placed there, duplicating the other location, with the same images appearing again and again. The art deco polished dark timber work of Old Parliament House reflected the hallways in the stone chalets, the snow gums matched. It was Tasmania, with added proximity to the big Eastern seaboard cities thrown in—that well beaten and increasingly crowded path between Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.
Several wildly different places at once
He could be in several, wildly different places almost at the same time. For a significant birthday celebration some years back, he had spent a Saturday night on the balcony of an apartment in Darlinghurst, in inner city Sydney, drinking large quantities of Semillon amongst many friends. The following weekend he was camped amongst massive gum trees in the Snowy Mountains, drinking tea out of mugs next to a smoky, spitting campfire.
Who knew where he’d end up next, but, in the meantime he was making the most of it, shivering as the thin wind swept down from the mountains in winter, looking out over the slivers of frost in the early morning air, watching the dried brown leaves rattle along the empty streets, smelling the woodsmoke rising amongst the trees.
‘He travelled the back lanes of that strange land, marvelling at the people. They spoke a strange language, too, not all that different to Tasmanian, though he was aware that Tasmania had many languages – as did the island to the North. Deciphering them was the challenge.’
Tasmanians liked to call the larger continent of Australia, ‘the island to the North’, as he discovered sitting by a roaring fire in a wintry pub in the Central Highlands of Tasmania near where he grew up, after having trudged damp sand beaches on the Bay of Fires walk along the East coast of the island.
As a long-term Tasmanian-in-exile, even if of his own choice, it was interesting to think about Australia in the 21st century, as someone who hailed from another nearby island, looking at their neighbour as a foreign country.
He travelled the back lanes of that strange land, marvelling at the people. They spoke a strange language, too, not all that different to Tasmanian, though he was aware that Tasmania had many languages – as did the island to the North. Deciphering them was the challenge.
They are neighbours but sometimes he wondered if he was behind enemy lines. Was this another case of mainland China and Taiwan, paired but apart? Did they have a one Australia policy – or a two Australia policy? Would the island to the North ever invade if it did not like what was happening on the neighbouring island next door? In Australia government can make a difference, but it usually doesn’t. So perhaps fear of invasion was exaggerated.
From the end of the Earth to the middle of nowhere
Islands are easily overlooked – Tasmania is an island that periodically disappears off maps, sometimes there, sometimes not, at the edge of consciousness, at the end of space. Yet Tasmania has had an uneven history in the consciousness of its northern neighbours, both near and very far. There are no southern neighbours, just penguins and scientific observation posts.
The distant South land had often been seen as a place of refuge, far from the historical blunders, codified observances and ossified practices of ageing empires, where a prosperous, democratic land could thrive, free from these old ways. This was the case with Australia in the 19th Century but later became more so with Tasmania in the 20th, as a place even further South and even more distant from the centres of world power. This had been expessed most recently in the view of Tasmania as a place of clean air and water, free from pollution – pristine and pure.
‘Islands are easily overlooked – Tasmania is an island that periodically disappears off maps, sometimes there, sometimes not, at the edge of consciousness, at the end of space. Yet Tasmania has had an uneven history in the consciousness of its northern neighbours, both near and very far.’
Growing up looking northwards there had always been the Big Smoke of Melbourne and the jumping off point for the Tasmanian diaspora. Just as over many different decades and for many different reasons Australia sent hundreds of its most talented overseas, so Tasmanians migrated to the island to the North where some stayed – and some went on further.
Moving from Tasmania to the mainland was a form of island-hopping, to get you in practice for the long haul to the corresponding tiny island off the European coast on the other side of the world – hemisphere-hopping from one island and one era to another.
In the 1950s his parents had moved in the opposite direction, from Queensland to Tasmania, when the shadow of world war was still long and everybody could think of nothing else but reconstruction and construction. In the 1950s the tiny island was the home of nation-building in a small paradise, in the middle of a tiny untidy island, an afterthought at the southern end of the unknown world. They were part of a young crowd thrown together in the middle of nowhere in the Highlands of Tasmania, building the modern Australia everyone now called home. It must have seemed like the end of the earth, like travelling to Mars.
In just over two days time he would get into a car
It was February 2019. In just over two days time he would get into a car to drive for six hours to get on a boat to travel for nine and a half hours across a strait where stricken yachts had regularly sunk to an island where he grew up – an island which looked to be on fire. He was getting ready to travel from the high country to the island country, to Tasmania, his island home. This was his Sydney to Hobart yacht race, except he was travelling from Canberra (near enough to Sydney) and the Spirit of Tasmania ferry was no yacht – thankfully. He had moved from a small state at the bottom of Australia that kept getting left off maps to another right in its heart that is also often overlooked. Now he was going back.
He was planning to drive through the Great Western Tiers, past brooding badlands where massacres had occurred to a hotel on a long pier in the middle of Lake St Clair, Australia’s deepest fresh water lake. Possibly. There was the small fact that Tasmania Police had closed the roads for several weeks by that stage – not so much because of the fires but for the trucks fighting them. With no likelihood of rain for the rest of February, what was the chance they’d reopen them before he arrived?
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| Burned out bush, Tasmanian Central Highlands |
Bona fide locals
Within the last couple of days some roads had been reopened for bona fide locals. He thought ‘if you grew up there, but for sixty years had lived elsewhere, would that count? At what point do you cease to be a bona fide local?’ It reminded him of when he used to travel widely across Australia, arriving in some remote small town after hours, able to plead his case as a bona fide traveller, to access the local pub for a drink or two. Perhaps he stopped being bona fide decades ago.
He remembered, when he still lived there, the year bushfires burned right into the suburbs of Hobart. People died. That sort of thing wasn’t supposed to happen in Tasmania and it hadn’t happened there since. ‘Yet’, he thought.
Failures we have become too familiar with
If all went well, he would be driving right through the burned out area. He saw there was an alert for the village where he had been born, though thankfully the Tasmanian Fire Service map had no red spots any more. He’d spoken to the accommodation where he would be staying for a couple of nights. He might have had to go the slightly longer way down the remote rugged West Coast, dodging the fires (and more importantly closed roads), since all the roads around the Great Lake were still firmly closed. Then roads were likely to be open again, but he’d be driving through vast areas of blackened countryside.
Life as we approach the end of the second decade of the 21st Century is a strange time indeed. As he readied himself to return to his island home, the location in the middle of nowhere at the end of the earth where he grew up, fires were burning out of control. Despite the smoke, he was looking forward to his visit, sometimes with more trepidation than others. It’s hard to imagine a simple journey that says so much about much bigger things. He couldn’t help feeling that this was a sign of our times – of various failures we had become all too familiar with.
He planned to stay with a friend whose family background was from the Torres Strait, so he used to joke that she had just moved from one island at the very end of Australia to another at the opposite end (though she was a Torres Strait Islander from Cairns, rather than from the Torres Strait).
‘Life as we approach the end of the second decade of the 21st Century is a strange time indeed. As he readied himself to return to his island home, the location in the middle of nowhere at the end of the earth where he grew up, fires were burning out of control. He couldn’t help feeling that this was a sign of our times – of various failures we had become all too familiar with.’
When you stay away on the first night of a journey, then you feel it has actually begun. In Melbourne on the way he had started talking to the young woman who took his order about his trip to Tasmania and she mentioned she had lived there for nine years. She asked sheepishly if he had ever heard of Tullah. He laughed and told her that because of the fires, he could be driving through Tullah.
Farewell to the island to the North
The last time he caught the ferry was over 18 years ago. He was on his honeymoon, driving around Tasmania. As the boat was about to sail a runner boarded carrying the Olympic torch and he spent the next week or so alternating with the torch as he travelled around.
There is not much to see on a ferry – he supposed like most voyages out at sea. Still, he considered that when you are used to 16 hour non-stop car trips from Sydney to Adelaide, sitting around and relaxing without having to worry about watching for other cars or staying on the road was a breeze. On the way over he watched the return ferry cross his path half way, as it mirrored his trajectory in reverse. Unlike the crowded sea lanes off Singapore, traffic was relatively thin on the way to Tasmania.
‘There is not much to see on a ferry – he supposed like most voyages out at sea. Still, he considered that when you are used to 16 hour non-stop car trips from Sydney to Adelaide, sitting around and relaxing without having to worry about watching for other cars or staying on the road was a breeze.’
He landed in the town where he went to both primary and high school. It didn't seem to have changed a lot since he was growing up there. In fact driving through town that night, he was reminded why so many Tasmanians headed off to the Big Smoke in search of work and opportunities. Tomorrow he would brave the remnants of the fires to make it through the fireground. Would he be devastated to see his childhood places burned to ashes?
Waking up the morning after his arrival, it was 17 degrees Celsius if he was lucky, with sleeting rain across the Mersey River. It had rained all the previous night. He hoped it had been raining in the Central Highlands as well. He felt as though he had come to New Zealand and he'd wrapped himself up in four layers of merino clothing, because it surely would be colder higher up. He was eternally grateful that he had suddenly checked the weather forecasts for the Central Highlands just before he left. Otherwise he would not have been wearing a single thing of the four layers he was depending on to enable him to go outside.
Dash to the Highlands
That day he was to try the dash through the Highlands. He'd rung about the road closures and apparently the way was clear. Beside his route the vegetation was lush and the soil fertile – chocolate and orange.
He pulled into a service station to get petrol. The attendant rushed out to fill up the car. He thought he had suddenly travelled back in time to the 1950s. He said, ‘you must be the last petrol station on the planet to do this’. The attendant replied, ‘there's still a handful of us.’ Then, back on the road, he headed upwards. It was a shock, though, miles of burned out countryside – both areas of scrubby low bush and then forests of taller trees. Lots of charred trees near the road had been taken down with chainsaws because of the risk of falling limbs.
‘He finally made it to his childhood home, or at least the first one – he grew up in so many. It was good to be there at last, in this country where he felt close to his father, walking in his footsteps, here in a land of penstocks and flumes and spillways.’
As he drove along he kept rising steadily – up, up to the top and the middle of the island. It was hard to imagine that the road he was on was once just gravel (though there were stretches which he was convinced were not much improved since his childhood). On the way back it started to spit and was getting colder, but it never got to the snow or serious rain that had threatened, and which he knew from long experience was all too possible.
He finally made it to his childhood home, or at least the first one – he grew up in so many. It was good to be there at last, in this country where he felt close to his father, walking in his footsteps, here in a land of penstocks and flumes and spillways. Before he knew it, he was at the Lake. No, he was actually on the Lake, a converted pumping station out above the (choppy) water of the deepest lake in Australia. Looking at the coarse concrete from the 1930s that made up the hotel, he was reminded of the story his father told of how they used to carry concrete in open trucks as it set, then jackhammered it back into liquification. Ironically, subsequent testing showed this made it stronger.
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| Pumphouse Hotel - a converted pumphouse that sits in the middle of Lake St Clair |
It was wet and windy and cold and – he loved it. It was like summer in Scotland. It was like growing up in Tasmania in his old back yard all over again. He had brought the old photo he had of his father sitting on a log with the three children, on the shores of Lake St Clair. Looking at it, he suddenly realised that it was not just a record of his father and the three children, as he had always thought. It was a record of the four of them and also his mother, because she must have been the one to take the photo and been the invisible fourth presence in that distant moment.
Snow in summer
In the morning the surrounds were covered in snow – hard to remember that this was summer. He thought about what life here must have been like for the former Big River Nation, as they waged their 20 year war against the British, before the survivors were bundled off to Flinders Island for almost all of them to die. The track was edged (and, in some places, covered with) snow, which crunched underfoot, and it dripped with water. It was lush and green – temperate rain forest, big time. Up there, everything was changeable – for a change. Weather was unpredictable – fires one minute, snow the next.
When he was growing up in Tasmania, the prevailing wisdom was that all the Tasmanian Aboriginal inhabitants had died out, with Truganini the last (the exact historical details were somewhat sketchy in those days). Decades later, he discovered that Tasmanian Aboriginal communities were definitely alive and well (and kicking). It was a whole extra layer of his state of origin that he would have appreciated knowing at the time he lived there, rather than finding out decades later. It gave so much richer an appreciation of Australia – like seeing a two dimensional map in three dimensions, or a black and white photo in colour.
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| Quamby Bluff massacre site |
On the way up through the Great Western Tiers, he passed Quamby Bluff, a jagged outcrop that loomed above the lush Northern plains. Quamby Bluff was the site of a notorious 1827 massacre of 100 Aboriginal people by soldiers from the 40th Regiment, assisted by local stockmen, in response to the killing of three stockmen. It really was a war, but with a Government sanctioned and assisted campaign of extermination in reaction. In response to that dark event, Tasmanian-born Australian composer, Peter Sculthorpe, was moved to write his Quamby suite.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. He left behind the places that had the earliest impact on him on this little island. Despite the welcome snow and rain, so far it had mainly been about ash. He drove up through burned out bush and back again on the other side of the Great Lake, where the fire front had finally burned out. If anything the damage there was worse than on the way up.
Ironically only the previous year the chalet in the highland village where his mother and father lived when they first arrived in Central Tasmania burned down. Precious old black and white photos that adorned the walls were lost, including one with his mother on an Empire Day float celebrating Queen Elizabeth's coronation. Progressively bits of the highland heritage were vanishing – what would people do without photographs and memory? Ironically it was a similar challenge, though on a far different scale, to that faced by Tasmanian First Nations communities, who had been progressively rebuilding their original languages from the scraps they could still recover after decades of neglect and active suppression.
‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. He left behind the places that had the earliest impact on him on this little island. Despite the welcome snow and rain, so far it had mainly been about ash.’
He drove through the village, which by then had become a bit of a dump, and visited Pine Tier dam, the first dam his father ever built there. It was one of the oldest and earliest of the post-war dams, and even the concrete looked ancient and the lagoon behind the dam looked wild in that Tasmanian way – on the edge of the wilderness in the high heart of Tasmania. It was actually quite a modest dam but it was opened to coincide with the Queen’s coronation, so in the larger scheme of things, it had a significance beyond a tiny village in the bush in the centre of an island at the Southern end of the earth. Many years ago he had asked his father what he wanted them to do when he died and he had jokingly replied ‘you can throw my ashes in Pine Tier dam’ – so they did. The following year he planned to bring his mother's ashes to join his father there as well.
Crossing the Tiers
He drove across the Great Western Tiers – on one stretch he had to wait at a road block and then be escorted through because of the extensive road works and large quantity of giant machinery like ancient dinosaurs, clearing up after the fires. He headed South – to the city where he was born such a long time ago, after a dash in the ambulance from that far off village in the bush where his parents lived. It wasn't such a rushed delivery that they didn't have time to stop to kill a snake on the road. That was what you did in the 1950s. It was hard to believe he was really there. He’d been trying to work out when he was there last – years before, too many to count.
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| The main highway from Hobart to the West Coast |
Back in Hobart he felt he had come back from another planet, like some space and time traveller who’d gone back to the beginning of the universe. Even though he had been there as a child, he was too young to be conscious of much, so it was hard to even imagine his parent’s life in their tiny village. It was a world that seemed only loosely connected to the one he lived in now.
When he travelled around the North Island of New Zealand a few years before, roadworks seemed to be a national sport. Tasmania appeared to have adopted the sport as well. Everyone kept telling him not to broadcast how beautiful it was there, in case the place becomes even more flooded with tourists. That's why he decided to write about the crocodiles. On the way to Hobart he crossed the Wye River. Underneath the sign identifying the river some wag had added extra words. so it read ‘Wye River – because it's bigger than a creek’.
Birthplace revisited
Watching television in the hotel on the wharf one night he realised that at the bottom of Tasmania he was watching Imparja television from Alice Springs. A big country that keeps on going. The next day he strolled around that chilly capital city at the bottom of the world.
‘It reminded him of once filling in a security questionnaire for someone
who worked in his area in the Government. He was taken aback to come
across the question ‘does she show respect for authority?’ He was very
tempted to answer "no more than most Australians."’
Growing up, his family followed the work. His father was an engineer, but it felt as though they were part of a military family, always on the move. Of all the possible vocations in the world, he thought he most admired engineers, economists and musicians.
Waiting for his car to be brought round at the hotel the day before, he found himself amongst a security scrum as the Governor General arrived. That's the sort of place he was staying in. As he was plugging in the location coordinates for his excursion, holding up the mini cavalcade after it had dropped off the Queen's rep, his fellow traveller said ‘do you think they're waiting for us to move?’ He said ‘I don't care.’ It reminded him of once filling in a security questionnaire for someone who worked in his area in the Government. He was taken aback to come across the question ‘does she show respect for authority?’ He was very tempted to answer ‘no more than most Australians.’
High walls designed to keep thieves out – and in
He visited the Cascades Female Factory, one of the oldest convict sites in Australia, and a place he had never seen, despite living in Tasmania for 18 years. It reminded him that the British Empire was a pretty grim institution and made Australia’s current offshore concentration camps for refugees look like merely the latest example in a long Australian tradition. The Female Factory started life as a rum distillery, which went bust because so many distilleries sprang up overnight. The Government purchased it and used its high walls, designed to keep thieves out, to keep its thieves in.
‘He was reminded how coffee queues seem to have a logic of their own. Firstly there's the queue to order. Then, just to complicate matters, there's the queue-like crowd waiting to pick up their order. As a result it's difficult to work out where the end of the queue is – or even if there is a queue.’
He drove North for his final night on the island. At the local farmers market, he was reminded how coffee queues seem to have a logic of their own. Firstly there's the queue to order. Then, just to complicate matters, there's the queue-like crowd waiting to pick up their order. As a result it's difficult to work out where the end of the queue is – or even if there is a queue. In one shop the woman behind the counter turned out to be from Dublin. She said she wasn't yet a local – that took thirty years. She said that Tasmania was similar to Ireland, exciting, yet narrow and parochial at the same time.
Predicting sea sickness
The fires around his childhood home had illuminated an island with both a dark history and a potential bright future, a microcosm of the choice facing the whole globe. He saw how in a tiny community, small efforts can produce massive results – a useful reminder for the small national capital where he lived and for other parts of the troubled world.
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| East coast of Tasmania near Bay of Fires |
He had mixed feelings about his island home and its dark and melancholy history. It had been a state of origin trip, spanning both himself and people he'd met along the way, who had all sorts of relationships with their island home. It had involved his own trip back to the places where he grew up, but more than that. In Melbourne he met the young woman from Tullah on the West coast who had moved to Melbourne for work. In Hadspen, a tiny locality just outside Launceston, the woman taking his dinner order had grown up just down the road and was now working there. Those who had stayed and those who had left in search of other opportunities. Would they ever go back? Nine and a half hours on a slow-moving ferry was a good opportunity to think about it.
The first part of the voyage was rougher than the journey over. It was especially noticeable if he stood up, when he found himself weaving along the passage way. He was taking particular note because in just over three months he would be travelling the ancient Viking highway from London to Edinburgh, Orkney and Shetland, then across the North Sea to the Arctic Circle, before fjord-hopping down the coast to Bergen.
He was trying to gauge whether he would encounter bouts of sea sickness as he crossed the North Sea and the Norwegian Sea. He wouldn't have been too concerned except that his previous reasonably lengthy trip by ship involved near non-stop vomiting. It was a journey from Sydney to Hobart when he was still at school. His father had paid for all the meals for the trip for the whole family but, in the end, his father was the only one who made it down to eat them, while the rest of the family made do with dried biscuits and apples in their cabins. He remained confident he would be okay the next time because he fully intended to avoid the two lime milkshakes with which he commenced that unfortunate trip.
Massacres, freeways and ‘chic’ peas
When he lived in Melbourne almost forty years before he rented a tiny terrace in Collingwood, near Hoddle Street, one of those massive freeways that drove through the heart of old working class suburbs against much opposition. It's claim to fame was the Hoddle Street massacre, up there with Port Arthur in the history of gun outrages in Australia. He wondered how narrowly he had missed being one of those gunned down. Wandering along the river that night, wondering at how busy it was on a hot Monday night, he saw a much better side of Melbourne. On a chalkboard in a restaurant he saw that you could order ‘chic peas’, he bet the first time that humble legume had been so lauded.
Future fireground on a battle site
On his way home he deviated through the old, tired goldfields on a brief mini regional road tour of country Victoria. He drove through the crazily churned and mashed up landscape from the goldfields era in the mid 19th Century. The country looked as though a massive tank battle had rolled across it. He had heard that after the gold rush not a single stretch of untouched ground remained. It was as if the whole earth had been exchanged for another.
‘For some reason he kept thinking of that old saying, "for a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail."’
It was amazing what could be removed if there were enough men with shovels. For some reason he kept thinking of that old saying, ‘for a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.’ Littered everywhere amongst the gullies and dry rivulets of the turned soil was vast quantities of dead and fallen branches and even whole trees – an inferno waiting for a light.
Then, after his return, the year seemed to be panning out, relatively untroubled. Things seemed to have settled down. If only he knew what was to come.
Nature struck back
At the end of the year, in the months before Christmas, Nature struck back – and hard, and seemingly everywhere. All the places he knew and loved seemed to be burning – even places that had already burned. Even the backburns were burning. It was almost biblical – fire, drought. Then – out of the blue – hail and floods and, to cap it off, courtesy of a new virus from an animal market in a little-known city, pestilence and plague. Perhaps Nature was trying to tell us something – perhaps it was trying to tell us to fuck off.
Elsewhere in the world
It wasn’t as if things like this weren’t happening elsewhere in the world – ‘welcome to Aleppo’, he thought. A few years back, well before these fires, every day the news was full of barrel bombs destroying hospitals. He knew what country Aleppo was in, but little beyond that. Yet here it was, part of his everyday life. At the time he was beginning to think that, in part, everyone in the world was living in Aleppo. Every morning, along with shaving and brushing his teeth, bombing in Aleppo was part of his grooming routine. He lived in a country that, except on rare occasions had never been bombed. It had never really been under attack – except when it was being settled by the British, hundreds of years ago. A few Afghans with rifles in Broken Hill, Japanese mini-subs in Sydney Harbour, Japanese bombers over Darwin or Broome – not to be sneezed at – but that was about it.
‘At the time he was beginning to think that, in part, everyone in the world was living in Aleppo. Every morning, along with shaving and brushing his teeth, bombing in Aleppo was part of his grooming routine.’
It made the whole idea of reincarnation something to be feared. What if you came back in a part of the world dogged by war, a tiny minority discriminated against and hunted down by your neighbours? The odds were probably quite high. Much better to go down and stay down.
The markets
Everywhere local markets sprinkled across the continent are the lifeblood of communities. Where he lived they ebbed and flowed, depending on the state of the fires. The man from the coast who sold him mushrooms hadn’t been at the market for almost two months. He worried about him, imagining him beating fires back from the edge of his property. Then suddenly his missing-in-action vendor appeared. At seeing him, he was so happy he took a photos of both stall and mushroom seller. Just in case. ‘Smile’, he said. It’s true not many people were smiling.
That year there was an obsession with arson and looting. It was as if no-one could lift their head above local loss and individual responsibility – the idea of big picture failure was hard to grasp. The thought that not only had someone let the side down – but, in fact, had let everybody down – was too massive to admit.
Dust in the morning, smoke in the afternoon, fire at night
Dust in the morning, smoke in the afternoon, fire at night. A gasping capital city with the worst air in the world for days at a time, worse than New Delhi, fabled home of bad pollution. They became used to the sound of the helicopters in the morning, preparing for the day ahead, scanning the horizon for approaching threats. They became sensitive to shifting breezes that could suddenly bring smoke or fire fronts. At night the otherworldly glow lit up the horizons. Every morning, as soon as they got up, they checked the low horizon for smoke. There were fires on all sides and the threat that they would burn into the city itself was always there – it had happened before, when 500 houses had been destroyed and people had died.
‘Dust in the morning, smoke in the afternoon, fire at night. A gasping capital city with the worst air in the world for days at a time, worse than New Delhi, fabled home of bad pollution. They became used to the sound of the helicopters in the morning, preparing for the day ahead, scanning the horizon for approaching threats.’
Then, just as abruptly the rain came – and didn’t stop. He expected to see animals lining up in pairs. It was a respite, though it brought with it new problems – ash rushing into waterways and reservoirs, damaged towns, flooded and swollen with water. ‘What era are we moving into’, he thought. ‘Where are we going?’ He didn't know – no-one knew.
© Stephen Cassidy, 2021
See also
‘As we prepare to visit France yet again later this year, I had to ask myself why I find it so fascinating. Part of the reason is the influence French culture has had in so many areas. Part of the reason concerns a story told about Zhou Enlai, the former Premier of China. Asked by Kissinger what he thought were the long term effects of the French Revolution, he replied ‘it’s too soon to tell’. Even though it seems he was referring to the student uprising of May 1968, the truth is his answer could more accurately be a reference to the original French Revolution. I am very fond of a long term view – which seems particularly Chinese’. Returning to France – liberté, égalité, fraternité.
Travelling light – Into Northern seas: UK, Norway, Denmark and Germany 2019
‘Neither I nor my fellow traveller had been on a cruise before, but suddenly we were sailing from London to Bergen, retracing the steps of the ancient Vikings. When we were in Scotland in 2017, we became entranced by the centuries of exchange and movement between Northern England and Scotland and Norway. We saw a cruise that travelled from Edinburgh to Bergen and became quite excited about the idea. Before you knew it, we were booked to sail from London to Edinburgh, then across the Norwegian Sea far above the Arctic Circle to the Northern-most tip of Norway before working out way down through the fjords and passages of the Norway coast to Bergen, the second largest city in Norway. We hadn’t even been discouraged by the fact that earlier that year another Viking cruise ship was nearly wrecked when one of its engines failed in a huge storm and passengers had to be lifted off by helicopter above raging seasT’, Travelling light – Into Northern seas: UK, Norway, Denmark and Germany 2019.
‘Smoking baby cigars in the dark of the backyard. Like some Cuban presidente haranguing the crowd with reminders, I proffer a list of romantic anniversaries, our May 4th movement, our July 12th uprising – our moment when everything became new’, I smoke baby cigars.
Cut back to black
‘Cut back to black, thin chill drizzle mid-winter – infinite regression on petrol’. Also called ‘Revhead heaven’, Cut back to black.
Coming back to these stones
‘Coming back to these stones – in the sandy dry reaches of the Coorong in South Australia’s South East birds flicker across the flat water like beads of run-away mercury’, Coming back to these stones.
Landscapes in a rear vision mirror
‘Heading at a moment's notice into Broken Hill, breaking several traffic laws on the Barrier Highway, in the rear vision mirror the land kept switching colours’, Landscapes in a rear vision mirror.
Stopping by Lake George
State of origin
Multimedia piece developed with visual artist, Deborah Faeyrglenn, State of origin looked at where we come from, where we go next and where we truly belong. In this work the writer and visual artist combined word, image and computer technology to make visual music. Words and images moved across the computer screen, with no fixed address, State of origin.
The lost art of conversation
Installation, developed with visual artist, Deborah Faeyrglenn, on words, meaning, reflection and infinite (or at least, partial) regression. Three tall thin vertical mirrors stand against the wall, covered in bursts of words. Three matching paper shadows flow out from the wall along the floor. Words on the mirrors flutter and blur into shadows, The lost art of conversation.
balloon
A fictional narrative work in the form of a website, the website as writing. About the adventures of a refugee from the big city who sets up the High Country Thought Balloon Company. A series of brief vignettes about the characters, situations and stories which intersect the path of the balloons as they soar across the skies of the Southern Tablelands and Snowy region. It is about changing perspective, balloon.
Malacoota Inlet
‘Shutdown in a flat, wet land, the line beween sea and sky where grey meets grey, where stricken yachts come in’, Malacoota Inlet.
Sitting on twigs
‘Sitting on twigs in the flat lands, in a piece of country loaded with meaning, like a tightly coiled spring’, Sitting on twigs.
Signature of water
Lovely story Stephen. I really enjoyed reading this..
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Lovely story Stephen. I really enjoyed reading it.
ReplyDeleteThanks.
Me again! Just found a mention of Margaret Scott in something I was reading in a newsletter from Fullers Bookshop (Hobart) and wondered if you knew her poetry? Whatever I was reading mentioned a line of hers that immediately made me think of this story: "‘this place of unremembered graves". Although now I don't know why this made me think of your writing...
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