Could have raised more than money

28 September 2013

I spent the last night of my residency with Tina, Delta and Dionne. They are not much chop at lullabies. From early evening until two am disco beats belted out from the direction of The Gardens Oval, home of the Waratahs . I didn’t know who was causing the noise or where it was coming from and thought it may have been a dance party at the Casino which is also nearby.

At 6.30 am when it started again I was almost full of admiration for whoever was running this dance party, obviously in the Territory they had great stamina. Pulling on my walking gear I headed off to complain, met a woman walking her dog but she did not know who was causing the racket and suggested that it was Territorians winding themselves up for Grand Final Day,

‘But did they have to do it all night and be so loud?’ I asked.

‘Well, they are fairly crazy for AFL here,’ she said.

Afterwards, yes, but before? I am crazy for AFL too, but wondered after four hours sleep if I would be able to stay awake for the entire game this afternoon. Her lack of enthusiasm for GFD was explained by,

‘I’m from New South Wales.’

Poor thing.

When I reached the oval I saw it was chockers with purple shirted people all walking around the perimeter. Slowly. Maybe it was some sort of weird ritual to get the Dockers over the line but the purple shirted smokers outside the gate told me it was the Cancer Council’s Relay for Life.

‘Almost finished,’ they said and dragged on their smokes.

I softened a little, the edge taken off murderous. Thanked the DJ for Nutbush City Limits at 1.30am and the four hours sleep. Sarcasm not registering, he laughed. He hadn’t played that in his set. It was him. He pointed at his mate who beamed. Only another couple of hours and it would be all over.

The relay participants looked like the walking dead. Underneath this oval was an old cemetery, headstones, bones and all, bulldozed to make way for sport. Not sure what the real dead thought about the noise but the appearance of a few ghosts would have been handy.

Donate to the Cancer Council Relay for Life here http://www.relayforlife.org.au/Donate.aspx

Togart Contemporary Art Awards 2013

25 September 2013

Yesterday I went to theTogart Contemporary Art Awards 2013, a regional prize for an area which has the highest per capita  number of artists in Australia. The artists must have some connection to the Northern Territory either as a resident or ex resident. The exhibition is a celebration of the diversity of the Northern Territory.

 Penny Rose Wiggins

 ’Landings’ Oil on a found object.

A New Zealander whose great grandfather was presented with a sacred paddle when he returned home wounded from Gallipoli. The paddle represents her own journey to northern Australia and reminds her of her past.

 Trevor Jenkins

‘Art Isn’t Art Isn’t’ Multi-media, video, found objects, sizes various.

‘Trevor is a homeless Christian activist who at times creates disturbances around Darwin by being poor and making no excuses.’

p44 Togart Contemporary Art Awards Catalogue 2013.

Trevor collects rubbish, man after my own heart and turns it into temporary works of public art. Classified as a Darwin character he is known as the Rubbish Warrior.

Mike Gillam
‘Before the Firestorm’ Digital image

An Alice Springs resident he captures the departure of a flock of budgerigars from a dead tree fleeing the oncoming fire which will burn fiercely because of the introduction of buffel grass, originally a native of Asia and Africa, now changing the landscape of the north.

Nancy McDinny

‘Story of Mayawagu’ Acrylic on linen.Nancy was born in the Gulf of Carpentaria and painted the story of her great grandfather, Mayawagu, who actively resisted the invasion of pastoralists. The painting shows an incident when he escaped wounded from police and trackers who wanted to arrest him. Paul Foelsche, an inspector of police, 1870-1904, who masterminded the massacres of hundreds of Aboriginal men, women and children is honoured by having a river named after him. Nancy McDinny would like to see that river re-named Mayawagu River.

Sonia Kurarra

‘Martuwarra’ Acrylic on linen

Sonia paints the sandy billabong country which runs behind Nookanbah where she now lives and used to help at the kindergarten teaching children art. This painting shows swimming and fishing in the Fitzroy River.  She has depicted parlka (barramundi), nganku, (shark), wirritunany (swordfish) sting-ray, wakiri (pandanus) and kalputu (water snakes). 

this morning

22 September 2013

In the rainforest this morning, clouds have dismissed the sun and among the trunks, leaves and tangled undergrowth there is a greenish gloom. We are not alone. More of our species are represented. Morning walkers cling to their coffee cups as if they are life preservers in a the green ocean. A stick falls close to me and leaves as small as a staple plit! plit! plit! onto the page. Black pipe as thick as your arm pythons its way through the undergrowth into places only reptiles would go. 

Other writers have been here. Writing accounts of friendships, love lost and found, incest, relationship status and  Kiara B was here.

Someone has turned on the waterfall God or a gardener?

I want it to be God, it’s Sunday after all. The water begins to drip, leak, trickle, then fall over the rocky ledge as it will all day until sunset. A botanic garden miracle.

The water falls onto itself. Rocks will be worn away. The ferns have died en masse.

monsteria deliciosa grow wild

Kaye Aldenhoven

African trees

20 September 2013

This morning was the second of four en plein air writing sessions, Planting the Seed, in the George Brown Darwin Botanic Gardens. We are meeting under the George Brown Eco House which is in the Snakebean Community Gardens near the Orientation Centre, Geranium Street entrance. We start at 7.30am walk to a writing space, tomorrow the rainforest and write for half an hour then share our writing with the group. Bring a light chair for real comfort. Afterwards there is a possibility of tea or coffee. It is free. Everyone welcome. Ring or text me if you have any questions 0439 990 862.

Today we met in the African baobab collection, a dry part of the gardens.

African trees

 I have to stop trying to remember

 The poem I forgot

 And concentrate on now,

 This ‘dry spot’ set aside for African trees.

 A dusty rust-coloured road cuts past

 But the grass is damp straw,

 Not lush, but not arid either.

 African trees would dream of a place like this,

 Hurl their seed at the boats

 And hope they’re coming here.

 I wonder if they would let a Boab

 Grow in a detention centre?

 Dr Seuss must have travelled

 To Madagascar –

I’m sure the fox in sox

 Flew past trees

 Just like these.

 I’ve lost the poem I woke with.

 It was perfect,

 As dreams often are,

 Written and mentally edited,

 Polished between thoughts of moving house and lists,

 Big things I need to buy

 (Fridge, washing machine, couch)

 And weekend plans to drive 600 kilometres

 Instead of packing,

 To spend a weekend amongst women.

 With Abbott at the helm it feels subversive -

 Maybe that's what my poem was about?

Kaye Hall

bare branches except for a bird

baobab water filled trunk

green ants nest

the baobab plus poets

Helen using a tree for back rest

the fallen

Bad Karma

Monday 16 September

‘No stealing! No stealing! No stealing our vegetables!’ — a child’s voice in the community gardens.

In my stilted house 

woken by the spit-spit-spit of sprinklers

the wet drum of water 

on broad leaves 

I watch the visitors 

from behind slotted dark glass

in a house that should be empty 

I am a secret.

Thieves bold as daylight pluck 

eggplant

snakebeans

Brazilian spinach 

and make a getaway.

I see the thieves 

and become one.

I take tomatoes 

smooth skins explode under the crush of my teeth

my taste buds exclaim -  

this fruit is real.

Now I have two cherry tomatoes worth of bad karma.

I have an eye on a chilli 

I see it is hot for me!

  http://www.parksandwildlife.nt.gov.au/botanic/friends/snake-bean-garden#.UjZop8amhPI

My residence

The kitchen - last night I caught a glimpse of the resident mouse.

 Lounge with welcome vase of ginger flowers. My desk with NT News.

Bedroom -  where all night sounds are recorded by my hypersensitive hearing especially the bird which cries 'Halp! Halp! Haaaaaalp!!!' 

Bathroom. I am yet to get a pic of the tree frog in the toilet which gave me a 'You are in the Territory now' reminder on the first night.

Louvered view from my desk.

Community Gardens from the back stairs.

View in the other direction from the back stairs.

The green and the brown

12 September 2013 

To fulfil my promise to myself to re-establish my walking regime I set off early through the empty the community gardens to the lily pond to find a Nankeen Night Heron in mid hunting stare, having the wrong lens did not help with this picture.

Onwards out of the deep green of the gardens onto a road already heavy with traffic, past a stony patch of what was probably natural Darwin bush land suffering the end of the dry season.  I was thrilled to spot a group of bush stone curlews. I have only ever seen these birds in zoos before and here beside a busy road was an entire flock of them blending with the dry rocks and sticks standing as still and as straight as those dry sticks and dead. Across the road was a bright green lawn, splashes of luscious palms swaying in a small breeze and a leaf free concrete path. I could not help imagine the manicured green and clean concrete creeping towards the scrubby block the bird’s perfect camouflage lost. To me it seemed as if these thin brown birds with pleading eyes were huddling together in a last refuge. Although the greening of Darwin is a comforting and beautiful maybe some browning is a good idea too.

The rest of my day was spent working on a manuscript with Sandra Thibodeaux, http://sandrathibodeaux.wordpress.com/2013/09/08/the-casualties-of-the-season/  and lunching in Fanny Bay (poets have to eat ).

I attended the first session of Read Back http://ntwriters.com.au/home/ — a new critiquing group held in Frog Hollow at the NTWC with Kaye Hall. Great to hear from some Northern Territory writers Jahn read a short story,  Diggy  from his novel ‘Slow’, James from work in progress ’Longgrassing with a Laptop’ and Helen read from a novel in progress about the sex industry. Matt and Anne were happy to join in with the session listening and critiquing.

I know you want to know what happened in the night. First off, more gunfire, read fire crackers, you’ll get used to said the locals. A helicopter made several passes over the George Brown Eco House; I wondered if they could see an image of me green curled in my bed on the night vision heat seeking cameras. Heavy breathing in the undergrowth – a possum said the locals, in the morning confirmed by the community gardener who said someone had been eating her bananas.

At first I was afraid...

10 September 2013

‘At first I was afraid. I was petrified ‘

 I Will Survive by Freddy Perren and Dino Fekaris

What a night in the George Brown Eco House. It was a night with life - it lived, not like my woollen blanket desert nights that fit flat over you, fillyour ears with wool, muffling any sound or movement - desert animals have padded paws and low voices. The tropical night is filled with sound. It rushes in as if the setting sun has created a vacuum. Everyone is screaming. All living things suddenly find themselves in the dark and react as if they has never seen it before. Alarmed, they blunder about in the undergrowth fall from perches, crash into water, blind, crazed  and screaming. Murder is being committed out there in the dark. Trees fall apart branches, bark, husks, fruit, smash and clatter down , chaos in the night. And my eyes like automatic doors open and shut with every unknown rustle and crash .

I arrived on the morning flight from Perth after being placed like a parcel in the Standby Passengers Only area until I was given the golden ticket to board flight QF792 to Darwin. The plane was full of men all going to work, they were clean and neat, oil and gas men. It was hard not to compare them to the plane load I had travelled with from the goldfields, a grubby lot, some still in hi viz with dirt on their boots, gold dust under their fingernails. Differing kinds of mining men.

I sat next to bloke who ordered beer after breakfast. Ah yes I am on my way to the Territory - gateway to the outback, place where some pack their addictions and go to hide from wives, relations, themselves, the law. All I had to worry about was my luggage and if it would arrive in Darwin with me or would I join those with lost luggage stories and have to whip off to Target for a fresh set of undies while my bag flew around Australia but the system worked and there was my bag on the carousel and Kaye Hall from the Northern Territory Writers Centre http://ntwriters.com.au/new-nt-writers-centre-website/waiting to greet me.

George Brown Eco House is in the George Brown Darwin Botanic Gardens http://www.parksandwildlife.nt.gov.au/botanic The botanic garden staff were welcoming and presented me with keys, tea, coffee sugar and phone numbers. The house is a typical pre Tracey louvered  house, on stilts light, airy and welcoming surrounded by community gardens filled with a variety of vegetables and pawpaw trees. Beyond these gardens is the botanic gardens, a collection of tropical orchids, bromeliads, a rainforest walk, Tiwi wet forest and a collection of African baobab species. I can’t wait to visit every feature of the gardens which were destroyed by Tracey (everyone knows Tracey don’t they? http://www.naa.gov.au/collection/fact-sheets/fs176.aspx) and resurrected by George Brown the botanic gardens curator and Lord Mayor of Darwin 1992 – 2002

sea breeze cools

brahminy kites wheel

smudged blue sky

burn off season

an end or a beginning