Stories from the Field
• Dan Stefanac’s Egg • EcoSystem Services (Also published in Bill Gilbert’s book ‘Arts Programming for the Anthropocene’) • The Keeper of the Strathbogies (Listed in document form in post ‘Gallery Take-Away Documents’) • White Man with Hat (Listed in ‘Gallery Take-Away Documents’) • Plunge (Listed in ‘Gallery Take-Away Documents’) • The Kolaah and • Monga Cathedral
Dan Stefanac’s Egg Photomedia Workshop, Canberra School of Art, Field Trip. Early 1980s
Dan Stefanac was, and probably still is, an accomplished guitar player. As an aspiring fine art photographer and keen Field Study participant, he was destined to leave art school and like the ‘Stones’ before him transition to an illustrious career in music. He was without doubt a cool dude. A dark blue v-neck pullover was his signature flourish over bare skin and black jeans. There is nothing viral about this Dan Stefanac on social media. His curriculum vitae is discrete; reserved; exclusive.
Not all art school field trips are vehicle based. Certainly, in the early days of the Photomedia Workshop’s trips into the field backpacking prevailed as the main means of moving in the world so as to look at it through discerning eyes. The last field trip to favour the soft pack over hard containers and collapsible chairs (ferried awkwardly in a trailer) took place in the Morton National Park, New South Wales, decades ago - the very national park where Dan Stefanac lost his egg.
Richard B, the son of a medical practitioner from outback New South Wales, intended to take the trip along with Dan. Richard is a musician too and had a wonderful way of seeing things which led to his making hauntingly tonal photographs. He would be an obvious choice for bass guitar in a Dan Stefanac rock band delivering perfect acoustic foundations while dreaming visual images in black and white. Richard had asked me to collect him from home the morning of the field trip into Morton National Park. This request was made at 10.30 pm the night before departure when we had a chance encounter at the all-night supermarket. I was there to get one or two remaining items for which there was room in my pack. Richard Baldwin was pushing a large trolley packed with supplies. A case of eggs was perched dangerously on a bag of potatoes. I imagined that later his lounge room at home would be strewn with clothing and equipment ready to vie for space in his pack (did he have a proper one?) with five day’s supply of food. At dawn, I stood at his door to hear a feeble voice on the other side announce, “Sorry, John, I’m sick”.
The art school 11-seater bus had been requisitioned for the field study. Despite this, Dan Stefanac was taking his car. Robert M was taking his vehicle too. They were both candidates for early departures to return to the dentist and a 21st birthday party respectively. (What can you do? The trip did span a weekend). Mark A and other artists. none of whom had a car anyway, were comfortably installed in the bus - a row each. We set off in convoy. At the turnoff to the National Park car parking area, Robert M and I watched Dan Stefanac speed past. Quick to respond Robert leapt into his vehicle in hot pursuit. Stefanac releasing his mistake a few kilometres down the road, u-turns to rectify at speed his navigational error. Minutes later he collides with Robert M on a narrow bend. The expedition recovered from this incident, no human casualties. The two sedans exchanged a lot of bodily substances and depreciated in value only a bit. Dan Stefanac’s carefully packed solitary egg survived the impact.
Backpacking in landscapes that reveal little of previous human occupation is bitter sweet. Let me record my acknowledgement of the Australian Aboriginal land upon which we walked and express my sorrow to the Australian Aboriginal people who suffered as unceded inhabitants from the callus manifestations of my culture. Perversely, the suffering still persist. As we walked in single file for long periods in silence, I wondered what significance this country held for Australian Aboriginal people of the region. I was more confident of the appeal it had for our small band of artists nurtured in the western tradition. With every step something of that sensibility came under challenge from the phenomena surrounding us. ‘Faint scribblings of nature’, a colonial poet wrote of the eucalyptus forest, ‘learning how to write’.
Mark A was by far the most experienced and agile bush walker of the group. A crop of curly hair, eyes protected by big lashes accentuated by a wiry frame. He had state-of-the-art boots but could walk over virtually any terrain with bare feet. Schooled in a ‘School Without Walls’ he was suspicious of authority. He was all over the place both physically and conceptually. His graduating folio, fueled by his studies in the field, was an almanac of brilliant, fleeting insights. Examiners, looking for coherent ‘bodies of work’, failed to notice.
For backpackers wishing to travel light (namely without a tent), the Morton National Park is blessed with a coastal range of eroded sandstone known as the Budawangs. A conglomerate, the range is a remnant of a coastal sea bed salted with river stones dumped from torrential coastal waterways, uplifted, and exposed to offer very expansive overhangs at the base of towering cliffs - perfect accommodation to a point. The floor of an overhang consists of fine dust. Treading carefully is the solution to this issue. Another is the mental anguish of lying at night on a thin ground sheet underneath millions of tonnes of rock that at some stage in the grand scheme of things must fall. Although we all did have tents we resorted to communal living underneath a generous overhang. Dan Stefanac secured his solitary egg on a ledge near his quarters. For me, it became a symbol of encouragement. If it, in all its fragility, could rest in peace in a gaping wound in the side of a mountain so could I. Stefanac declared that the egg was to be a gastronomic reward - the centre-piece of his last breakfast in the Budawangs. It would be the fuel that would propel him back from a remote and alien precinct to familiar cultural settings. After four days of rationing food we all salivated at the thought of eating Dan Stefanac’s egg. At night, as we argued about art and life, the light from our fire leapt up the precipice. The egg shone like a beacon; a white discontinuity.
Dan Stefanac’s last breakfast in the Budawangs, Morton National Park, rivalled a Japanese tea ceremony in terms of mannered choreography. The sticks for the fire were laid in perfect boy scout formation. Three carefully chosen stones made a secure tripod for the tiny frying pan. Being adjusted exactly to the gravitation forces of the Earth, the pan accepted the oil (precisely measured 4 days previously) at every point on its circumference and everywhere in between. A plate bearing Dan Stefanac’s last slice of rye bread was in position. Cruet was within reach. A match was struck with the crack of a starters gun. Everyone was watching. Dan Stefanac walked to the Silurian ledge to get his egg. He may well have been on the moon. Not a speck of dust was raised by his slow motion, considerate gait. His boots embossed the surface beautifully.
Single handed Dan Stefanac broke the egg into the pan. The yoke held, the white albumen obeyed the concentric confines of the pan. Dan’s culinary moment, heightened by the wild, by the vault of cool blue morning air, had arrived. Every sense signaled that the egg was ready to eat. He reached for the pan taking it from the fire place. Perhaps the Earth adjusted its orbit at that very moment. If only the pan had been fashioned with a deep rim. The egg, obedient only to the laws of nature, slipped from the lubricated pan via a fine arc into the black powder between Dan Stefanac’s boots. The puff of dust dispersed to reveal tributaries of yoke flowing like lava from a volcanic summit onto the pumice of its last eruption.
Mongarlowe River. NSW
Ecosystem Services ANU School of Art Field Study Program. Early 2000s
The tarpaulin is the Field Study Program’s portable Civic Square. Suspended over a spine of rope and spread both sides to its full capacity by poles and pegs, it becomes the communal meeting place, the centre for participatory democracy, the hearth, the forum, a gallery, a seminar room, a study and a shelter from the weather. The provision of shade is by far its greatest asset eclipsing refuge from rain and snow by miles.
The Field Study largest-tarp-ever was erected in Monga State Forest which was just as well for we had to cope with plucky, unexpected visitors. The tarp was pitched in a natural clearing a stones throw from the Mongarlowe River and several kilometres from the Kings Highway that linked Canberra with the south coast of NSW. The waters of the Mongarlowe are filtered by temperate forest vegetation as well as by surrounding strata of fine grain sands. It ranks in the top 10 of Australia’s most pure rivers. The tarp was pitched well back from its banks to keep it that way.
Partly because of its weight and partly to minimise take-off in the slightest breeze, the largest-tarp-ever hung low to the ground. Its overall architecture was complex. It had to drain water in the event of rain and allow air to circulate. It must look good. Not everyone can pitch a tarp and meet these criteria. (Ask artists Bill Gilbert and Yoshi Hitashi, two international guests who can testify this claim having experienced the worst-tarp-ever at Pambula Lake, NSW, in 2011). Except for the fold that allowed for the escape of smoke and hot air, one had to duck under the perimeter of the largest-tarp-ever to enter its voluminous interior. There was enough height in the centre to accommodate a modest open fire. One of several kettles was always on the boil adding steam to the nightclub atmosphere. Camping chairs were scattered about. It was a joy to behold. It was winter, and, believe it or not, it had started to snow.
Monga State Forest had not yet been formally registered as a national park. That achievement was to eventuate a couple of years later as a result of a determined and sustained community campaign of argument, protest and civil disobedience against commercial loggers and a State government fixated on the implementation of a disastrous policy of logging native forests. We were occupying a contested landscape. Scientists were being marshalled to generated reliable knowledge about the forest’s ecological condition and forest activists were rallying to risk their lives by disrupting destructive activity. Our role as artists was to aesthetically and visually articulate the cultural value of Monga and the social relationships it afforded. Oh …, and to record the natural beauty of the place. This was the third Field Study in Monga in five years. This time we were close to the battlefield’s front lines.
Artists flecked with snow returned to the cover of the tarpaulin - painters, drawers, printmakers, ceramicists and textile and glass artists. Landscape photographers remained on location revelling in the spectacle. My cameras, I had two fitted with rather cumbersome acoustically sensitive automatic orbital scan devices, were already installed along remote reachers of the Mongarlowe. They were linked to submerged sensors calibrated to respond to certain vibrations which when detected would activate the camera’s shutter. I was hoping to catch on film the illusive Fishman. I had to be patient. People took various positions around the fire chatting about the disruption to their afternoon plans and raiding packets of biscuits (cookies) with a communist disregard for ownership. To our collective amazement we were joined at that moment by a bold and courageous creature - a small marsupial that looks like a mouse but more closely related to a kangaroo than a rodent. It was an antechinus. They are shy and rarely seen. This one ran and hopped toward the fire like a streaker on the sporting field. The rustling of packets ceased.
At this time of year antechinus are more likely to be heard at night scurrying about in the undergrowth. Males charged with a one-off, lifetime’s supply of sperm frenetically mate with as many females as possible. There are stories of this animals sexual prowess that make for great fire side telling. We had all heard various tales of this remarkable little creature. This particular antechinus was unconcerned by the giant marsupials it had joined. It took its place at the edge of the fire. Had a Disney animator provided a suitably sized deckchair it would have slumped into it with limbs flopping over the sides. As it was, it absorbed not only the warmth of the fire but every eye directed upon it. It toasted one side of its brown furry body then the other.
Our kindred guest was undoubtedly a male, exhausted from a protracted sexual frenzy, and as a result his metabolism and immune system were in total disarray. He was at the end of his one-year life. Now, he had nothing to lose. With everyone still amused and biscuits forgotten, he was digging in the grass. He unearthed the tiniest green frog you could imagine. He ate it like a cookie then resumed his place by the fire - nonchalant.
A couple of months earlier I had the opportunity and privilege to take my place in front of a bulldozer hell bent on making a logger’s road into Monga Forest. Together with a poet and a seasoned forest campaigner I stood my ground during a polite, six hour ritual that ended in arrest. I was soon to face court for breaching a Sate Forest ordinance. With snow falling thicker than ever, the tarp still standing despite its extra load and our little marsupial content with its level of palliative care, I decided to work further on my statement to the court. It was dark now under the largest-tarp-ever. Someone had lit the gas lamp. It hissed light. Hot beverages were made (every conceivable type) and journals were opened. A contagion of quiet, mental activity settled the camp. I reviewed what I had written so far:
It was in my capacity as an artist and teacher that I stood my ground in front of a NSW Forest bulldozer to send a desperate message to the NSW Government Minister for Forests concerning the impending destruction of the cultural heritage of Monga State Forest. If we depreciate the natural qualities of places like Monga State Forest we lose places, here on Earth, that are relatively free of artefact and where we can teach successive generations how to wonder.
(Tender photographs of the destructive impact of the road making and the first side effect of the road construction - the removal of tree ferns from the forest)
As a teacher, I have witnessed visual arts students from the School of Art, Australian National University (ANU), draw inspiration from the forests of Monga. I have witnessed them working in Monga with landscape ecology students from the ANU. The ecology students shared the outcome of their scientific investigations in the forest with the art students and they, in turn, shared their skills in the aesthetic communication of knowledge. The students' visual art imagery and scientific text came together in the form of a public exhibition and a limited edition hand produced artist book, one of which was presented personally to the ACT Minister of Tourism and the Arts at the opening of the exhibition in Canberra.
(Tender catalogue of Monga Exhibition, School of Art, ANU)
I have also witnessed visual arts students work together with musicians and composers from the ANU School of Music in Monga as a source of inspirational experience for the composition of musical scores and the making of non-traditional musical instruments with a view to ensemble performances.
(Tender CD recording of The Colours of Monga performed at University House, ANU, for the joint meeting of the National Environment Education Council and members of the ANU on 31st May, 2001 and broadcast on The Science Show, ABC Radio National.)
As an artist, I too have found inspiration in Monga and have experienced the power of this ancient place to bring to mind the eternal narrative themes of human kind - themes that enunciate the symbiotic relationship between the human species and other forms of life.
I looked up from my draft. It had stopped snowing. I looked at the the antechinus. It was dead. It and the frog (I expect not much digestion had taken place) were gently transported on the detached flap of a cardboard box to the outskirts of the tarp. A camping chair was placed so as to protectively straddle the body. The colourful canvas drooping in sorrow above the corpse imparted a regality to the makeshift mausoleum.
Photographers had returned to camp. The group was accounted for on the schedule of individual daily activity. Meals were being prepared in pots and pans on the generous grill. Invariably these were gourmet creations. Cooking consortia of two or three would form around a reputable cook. No one went hungry or dissatisfied. After dinner there was usually one dominant conversational theme. After we had all tried to imagine what a 14 hour session in the cot might be like for both the female and male antechinus, the discussion shifted to airing the dirty laundry of NSW State Forests and their wanton rape of native forests. Everyone had a statistic to fuel our mounting anger. Someone disrupted the flow by filling a hot water bottle and that was the end of it. We all went to bed.
I got up early to stoke the fire and write more of my court statement before the succession of morning greetings. Hopping around the tarpaulin was a pied currawong, an onomatopoeic name for a medium sized bird resembling a crow but, as usual, only distantly related (all Australian animals have distant relatives). Currawong are omnivorous. I wrote:
I have raised these details to demonstrate the extent of my professional association with Monga and its wonderful forests. I personally believe that no native forest should be logged for any purpose for which an alternative material can be used.
The currawong was casing the joint and I had the impression that it was also getting my measure. It would advance, gauge my reaction, then retreat. Next time, from a different angle, it would advance a little further and, in view of my inaction, add that bit of territory to its zone of safe passage. I continued with the draft:
These points of view, together with other compelling conservation arguments for the preservation of Monga State Forest, led to my protest action in Monga that subsequently brings me before this Court.
The currawong was still very interested in my presence. We held a mutual stare. Its yellow eyes were piercing. I could not match the threat of the hook at the end of its conical beak. I opened conversation as gesture of goodwill. “Did you know, Currawong, that Ghandi used civil disobedience as an effective tactic in the promotion of his ethical quest?” The bird did not falter. It retained its council. I wrote:
I believe the preservation of our natural forests to be an ethical quest. I am not in any way disrespectful of the law. Quite the contrary. I subscribe to the view advanced by the philosopher Wittgenstein …
“Currawong! Do you know about Wittgenstein?”
… that laws serve to enunciate meaning and their wanton breaking only serves to destroy that meaning. My stand in Monga was not a wanton act. It was a carefully considered act. What is at issue in Monga subscribes to a higher jurisdiction than that which informs a statuary Forestry Regulation.
The currawong made its move. With wings half spread it darted in under the chair under the tarp and took the antechinus. In a moment its wings were flapping and it was airborne in its characteristically undulating flying style. The antechinus was secure in its claws with the frog, some what dismembered, packaged neatly inside it. It was a fitting funeral procession. The bodies rose through the air laden with the vapour of eucalyptus into the first rays of morning sunshine. With considerable volume the currawong called triumphantly to its family spread far and wide and who, presumably, had already eaten breakfast. “I’ve got lunch! I’ve got lunch! I’ve got lunch!” It cried. I knew the commotion would usher someone from their tent. I hastened to finish my draft.
I apologise for inconveniencing this Court but request its understanding, in the knowledge that half our precious natural forests are already gone, of the need for drastic and direct action to save what is left.
“Good morning”, I replied to an artist who looked like he had spent 14 hours in the cot.
The Keeper of the Strathbogies. East Lima Vic
The Keeper of the Strathbogies East Lima. Benalla Field Study August 2009
There are no signposts. The track from the picnic spot at Moonie Moonie Creek is its own advertisement. A trail of black soil shaped by the fantastic treads of contemporary footwear draws the eye to a formidable slope at the edge of the Strathbogie Ranges. No need for a mud map. The footpath meanders through the eucalypt forest like the passage of Indian ink on crumpled paper. School children shepherded by teachers with abseiling ropes, stern bushwalkers with timetables and trim packs, family groups in need of therapy have taken this route.
Partway up the incline there is a perfect place to take breath. The path fans out to become a rest area with ample fresh air cut-on-site by hundreds of lanceolate leaves that hang overhead. The proposal to pause is also forcefully put by several granite boulders – massive forms that pull with their own gravity on the imagination. At a respectful distance, the undergrowth resumes its vigor. Botanical chaos camouflages a cosmos of miniature life. For the observant, there are lookout points to faraway places.
Here, at the resting place, amid this cascading landscape, is the perfect position for a gate. It’s not a typical gate. It has no latch; there are no hinges; there is no fence. Consequently, it is easy (especially if your body is focused on the thrill of free-fall; or moving briskly to the top) to walk through the gate unaware that a boundary has been crossed. Fortunately, this gate, such as it is, has a Keeper.
The Keeper of the Gate is also easy to overlook. There is no failing on the Keeper’s part for it is not the Keeper’s role to confront or obstruct. The Keeper stands ground for no other reason than for being-so and knowing-so. The Keeper of the Gate on this side of the Strathbogies is manifest as a mountain face.
Were it not for this anthropomorphic rock the idea of a gate keeper would rarely, if ever, arise; and hence the awareness of a gate itself; and in turn, by its realization, that a boundary exists; and that one enters ‘another place’ when the boundary is crossed.
Naturally, the mountain face that signifies the Keeper of the Gate does not perceive the world through its crudely rendered sensory organs. The eyes, mere slits, have been sealed since its first appearance. (Delicate tissue like our eyes is of no use on a mountain face). There is a faint suggestion of a nose or the place where it might have been. Probably, it was cast aside eons ago to cheat the inevitable attention of vandals. The lower lip survives, cracked and weathered, still protruding from the formation of an ancient utterance that was never delivered. The ears, flattened by a grinding birth, are clogged with an infusion of flesh-pink quartz.
In the light of these observations it would be a mistake to regard the mountain face, the apparition of the Keeper of the Gate, as nothing but an unknowing mask. There is a matrix of igneous minerals that links every point of the face to the vast mountain core that extends for kilometres into the Earth – billions upon billions of disciplined crystals jostling for action. The vibrations from every footstep that passes through the gate are registered in every detail. Maintaining this register is the business of the Keeper of the Gate.
All animal incursions into the Strathbogies are monitored by a guild of Gate Keepers. The ledger of movement is sublimated in the plant life that the mountain supports. A human footstep provides energy for a flower head of grass. A breath might settle in a bog and add to the growth ring of a gum. The warmth of a touch might be assigned to sprout a rare orchid. When animals depart the Strathbogies there are no deductions. Should a creature die on one of the mountain ridges, in the shelter of a valley or somewhere in between, the nearest Keeper takes note. A tremor, like a feathering of kettledrums, continues the heart rhythm for an extra beat. The Strathbogie Ranges settle a notch into the crust of the Earth.
White Man with Hat. Cattai National Park NSW 2012
White Man with Hat Contested Landscapes of Western Sydney Field Study Cattai National Park
2010-12
In the late nineteenth century, a white man saw a black man etch with a metal axe a figure of a white man, with hat, on the surface of an exposed sandstone platform. The etching site is near what is now known in some quarters as the Hawkesbury River in the vicinity of Cattai in the north-west corner of the Sydney Basin, New South Wales. The Dharug people have another name for it.
On the morning of the 27th November 2012, a white man conveyed this information to another white man, a visual artist, and showed him the location where the incident was reputed to have taken place. Although both men looked for the etching in the sandstone outcrop (the artist more enthusiastically than the other), surface markings were difficult to discern as the morning was well advanced and the sunlight was harsh.
The artist, who was camping nearby, returned to search for the etching in the late afternoon light, which is perfect for revealing subtle relief in surfaces (a fact exploited by real estate agents desperate to sell clapped-out rural properties). As an additional aid for finding this etching, the artist imagined a simple outline of a man, distinguished as white for sure, but a feature of no investigative value. What else, he wondered? Would it be a narrow protruding nose? He formed a rudimentary image of a hat in his mind. He thought that the black man, an artist too of course, would exercise the keen aesthetic ability abundantly evident in Australian Aboriginal art to represent the hat as a culturally partial piece of mark making – in which case how could he possibly conjure up a useful template? As he had no idea of the style of hat that informed the artwork he dismissed his imagined rendering of brim and crown as more hindrance than help.
He made a thorough inspection of the area: approaching it from many directions; varying his angle of view from acute to bird’s eye; and being ever alert for linear compositions that natural processes would be unlikely to deliver in the medium of fused sand. Like sponge, the grains of quartz quickly absorbed the shadows of the night. The artist was forced to abandon his quest.
Returning to his camp he: prepared a meal of steamed potato and pumpkin with string beans sizzled in soy; sat by his tent still as stone in the moonlight unsure how long human beings could endure their place in the cosmic dust; wrote in his journal about the day’s activities (distracted between jottings imagining life as a hunter-gather); and eventually retired for sleep without the pillow he always forgets to pack.
Lightning flickered on the horizon. Decreasing intervals between strikes and thunder confirmed an encroaching storm. Heavy rain fell on the white man’s tent and on black men’s patches of sandstone soaked otherwise in the sweat of stone grinders and, presumably, in the ceremonial blood of initiated youth.
The storm passed, as did the night. The artist rose in the half-light of the 28th November 2012. With camera, tripod and hat he returned to the black man’s studio so that he might respectfully resume his inquiry and find the illusive image. His camera would record in stop-motion the procedure and, hopefully … eventually, the anticipated outcome.
Fixed to the tripod, the camera was configured to render the parameters of the site, accommodate the gradual increase in the incident light and make regular exposures to record movement.
Seduced by the sight of puddles and thought of moist moss on bare feet the artist removed his shoes. He removed his shirt so that cool air could flow over his back, which in turn led him to cast off all his clothing for a full-bodied sensory embrace of the world around him. Urged by an unconscious desire, he put on his hat.
The camera did its job for several minutes then stopped. Alerted by the silence, the artist interrupted the choreography of his search. He walked to the camera, mute at the edge of the arena. An orange light indicated that a reserve of power was still available. He pressed a button at the back of the device to reveal the last exposure.
The artist looked at the diminutive picture revealed on the camera’s illuminated screen. He stood motionless as he made the transition from looking at nature to looking at culture. There he was – white man with hat exactly where he was supposed to be. He surveyed the image as one might view an artwork on the walls of a gallery. He closed the camera to preserve its historical collection.
The artist returned to his survey, passing a depression in the sandstone where water had gathered like a communal baptismal font. Again, he peered into it. This time he knelt tolerating the grit of sand that had previously discouraged this particular view of the world. He caught the eye of a white man in a hat looking back from the sandstone – just as the white man’s story would have it. This white man with hat, delivered by the echoes of a black man’s axe, held the artist’s gaze – rock solid – while the teeth of the sandstone grains, drew tiny dots of blood onto the surface of the artist’s knees.
Left object: A conglomerate ‘bomb’ dropped by the Kolaah
The Kolaah Field Study Expedition, Budawang Ranges, Morton National Park NSW. August 2004
Like water vapour, the Kolaah sublimate in the colder precincts of the coastal ranges of south eastern Australia. Winter is the time for witness. In the Budawang Ranges, Morton National Park, the Kolaah gather in the bright, frosty valleys that cradle banksia and xanthoria between crests of abrasive conglomerate.
In their material form the Kolaah are flat creatures. They are leaf-like in both shape and colour; slender in profile; broad face-on; tiny flipper limbs. They have no mouth as they draw nourishment from the air alone. Their nose comes to a point as if it were there that the umbilical pinch took place. Other bodily features are ill defined; inconspicuous pudenda; no obvious stomata for the release of spent reagents. Their camouflage is the blue-grey castaway colour of the underside of eucalyptus foliage. They hover, float, flit and flee on the wind.
The Kolaah congregate in the Budawangs to mate and to die. Rituals of courtship, coitus and birth take place beneath the sweeping overhangs that skirt the elevated valleys. Smooth layers of fine interstitial dust that settles on gently sloping ground are essential for birth. As summoned by their cycle of life, the new born evaporate quickly into mist.
Backpackers in Scandinavian boots, New Zealand socks and floppy Australian hats have impacted heavily on these sites of supreme importance for Kolaah survival. The Kolaah retaliate to this intrusion by loosening boulders in the overarching conglomerate to drop like bombs. As the bee stings, boulders fall with dire prospects for both parties.
A Kolaah uprising in August 1999 was experienced first hand by Mr Jason Doyle from Kiama, NSW, who endured a major boulder fall while he was having lunch under a Budawang overhang. Boulders fell crushing a steaming billy of tea scolding Doyle, members of his party and, no doubt, rioting Kolaah in the vicinity. (Deceased Kolaah are difficult to distinguish from leaf litter). Spooked by the event, Doyle and his shaken companions hastily departed the Budawangs. As they travelled along the Burrumbeet Trail and onto the relative safety of the Scenic Rim they were able to detect fresh boulder falls along the extent of the escarpment before the valley faded from view in a shivering mist.
Plunge Tumut Field Study Goobarragandra River Valley NSW 2008
Journal Entry 14 March Traveling through the Goobarragandra River Valley in the afternoon light was a journey through honey. The further I went along the narrow road, forced by the river’s course to constantly turn left, right and left again, the more viscose the atmosphere became. Eventually the dust, the pollen, the eucalyptus vapour reached sublimation point. As I turned a corner into the glare of the setting Sun, the Valley congealed before my eyes. I pulled the car to the side of the road. The engine stalled. I sat still and closed my eyes. I could hear, faintly at first, the song of the River. It was only a few metres away, running its course, unaffected by the gravity of events that had beset the rest of the world. I could see clearly again. There, in the middle of the River, in shade cast by the protective incline of the valley wall, was an outcrop of granite. Stepping-stones conveniently led to a flat rock in its midst. I was drawn to its surface in anticipation of the healing power of cool, igneous crystals. I needed relief. It promised it. I sat surrounded by the current of the River. It began to murmur at me. I was mesmerised by its passage. I took a photograph.
Journal Entry. 18 March I was stunned by what was revealed in the picture I took of the Goobragandra current. The visual qualities of water – the transparency, its refraction of light into a spectrum of luminous blues, its fluidity, its parallax error – had explicitly rendered a face. The face of a Wild Man by any account, artfully formed by water as it raced past the rock upon which I sat in the dying light four days ago. Its eyes, glowering and recessed into a broad forehead, are punctuated by curved strokes of white foam. Its nostrils are flared for air. Its mouth, set (I am certain) for a stern rebuke, protrudes from a fantastic beard that gives way to a massive crop of hair trailing Viking-like downstream beyond the frame of the photograph. What am I to make of this?
Journal Entry. 21 April I have identified a reach at the headwaters of the Goobarragandra River where I intend to plunge when we return in May. What I have in mind is not a recreational activity but rather an immersion as both a contemplative experience and a communication strategy. It will be a performance artwork – a pre-cultural offering that this spirited river might accept.
I will use my body as the medium. I will not assume to be another character as one would in theatrical performance. Neither will I behave in a way that is typical of myself. I will postpone my conditioning. There will be no rehearsals. The presentation of the artwork will be coincident with its inception. I will not draw on any virtuoso skills. In fact, I have none. I will simply focus on my breathing. I will need to enhance the performance of my lungs to fuel sensory awareness to extend time beneath the surface to summon the sublime.
The course of the Goobarragandra I have chosen for this work includes a deep hole – a vertical fissure in the granite riverbed. It appears possible to descend to a depth where daylight is subdued and distorted by the body of water above. Here, a fraction closer to the centre of the Earth, imagination can make things with the shadows of half-light. Just as the River personified itself as a Wild Man for me, I want by way of reciprocation to depersonalise for it.
The Wild Man of the Goobarragandra, as I understood him, appeared as counsel for the Valley to submit an appeal. My concept is to release myself into the River as an advocate too – as kinetic energy, as current – and thereby make my representations to Illiterate Creatures, Deaf Vegetation and to Life without Culture.
The deep hole will provide the conditions under which it may be possible to retrieve a semblance of a pre-cultural human who was unencumbered by the desire to process experiences of the world as graphic symbol, dance, and song. This wild-state-of-being resides deep in my constitution close to where the origin my species is registered. Immersed in an unsustaining medium, without clothing or other artefact, with physical forces modifying the familiar fall of the flesh, with senses heightened by the prospect of being touched by the unknown, with the imagination forming monstrous aquatic beasts, I will be predisposed to image this human ghost.
The Valley’s constituents will recognise in it something of themselves and take hope. I expect my face to form the most expressive account of this intention. When fear takes hold, demons circle and anxiety is rife, I will permit the physiological manifestations of my instincts to surge to my head. A film of water, warmed by contact with this primeval flush and shaped by my acquired facial features, will rise to the surface embodying the delicate transfer. The artwork will be done. This product of embossed water – each molecule gripping its neighbour even closer in wild excitement – will be a gift of human empathy to the Goobarragandra Valley and for the River to convey.
The Wild Man of the Goobarragandra
Monga forest in the distance being engulfed in a coastal front
Monga Cathedral Going to Church in Monga
Monga: Near Misses. 1960s and 70s In the mid-1960s, the Australian National University in Canberra became my operational base. Seduced by undergraduate study in both the humanities and the earth sciences, I became a visual artist. Eventually employed at the School of Art in 1978, topographic maps, powerful artefacts that they are, held my gaze amid tough competition. These aesthetic factums of technology and history lured me with unconditional guarantees to the Budawangs, the Monaro, to Kosciuszko, the Hay plains and to the Far South Coast of NSW - to Mimosa Rocks, Eurobodalla and Murramurang. If it is possible to play hard-to-get with a forest, that's what I did with Monga. I sped past it many times in a Valiant Safari Station Wagon intent on surfing the hills down through Buckenbowra to the visually stunning coastal fringe lapped by the Tasman Sea. In winter, I swam beneath the surface like a porpoise rolling with the swell perfectly shaped by an incisive offshore breeze.
Monga Map: 8826-I-N
Monga: 8826-I-N. 1980s The sign to Monga was made to standard specifications - a white hardwood post standing askew on the side of the highway. A plank bolted to the top bore the mechanically routed letters and directed attention over the Mongarlowe River to a gravel road heading south into the bush. Vehicles that had stopped by the post had made a sizeable parking area – a place where motorists could pause to make up their minds or seek relief from sitting behind the wheel. Over the years a local wisdom emerged. If the Monga sign were touched affectionally with one hand before entering the forest, something magical would happen. On the other hand, if you peed on its patch you could expect disaster. The sign has now disappeared (possibly because someone did both).
It was the topographic map of Monga that actually launched my first sensory experience of the place in the early 1980s. Monga 8826-I-N, published by the Central Mapping Authority of NSW, is an impressive work of ink on paper. What, I wonder, became of the cartographer? Laying steady eyes upon the map induces a trance. The landscape rises from the surface and takes shape without stereoscopic aid. Dense contour lines buffer Monga's eastern boundary from seaborne invasion. As the brown ink erodes to the coastal plain there are illusions of shimmering panoramas where waves break in silence on a distant shore, of vistas in which human dramas might transpire, and escarpments to steal breath from unsuspecting lungs. The threat of the sublime is cast emphatically upon the sheet.
Central Monga assumes the shape of a giant coolamon. The Mongarlowe River marks the keel of the shallow watershed. What creatures dwell in the granite fissures concealed by reflections of the material world? A sawmill - steel cables intertwined with folklore; and cottages - far enough from the main road to conceal secrets; stake their claim. To the west, desiccated buttresses of Mt Monga keep sheep and cattle from quolls and owls. Possums hide on the ridges. No map symbols for fog. No keys, yet, for securing intangible things.
8826 occupied the passenger seat of my vehicle. I had driven to Monga to explore its river. I stopped near the Mongarlowe by a patch of grass prepared, it would seem, by a enthuastic lawn mowing club. I could travel no further along River Road without negotiating a puddle that swallowed the long stick I plunged into it. I pitched a backpackers' tent on the turf. Daylight faded quickly and it began to rain. I was forced into my fabric shelter without making fire or tea. It was a torrential downpour. I imagined a mutiny of puddles forming along the road behind me. Branches heavy with moisture were undoubtedly straining above. I emerged from the sagging tent, fumbling into the wet. I bottomed over slippery trunks and stumbled through sodden vegetation to reach the riverbank. I expected a swift and determined flow. Surprisingly, the Mongarlowe was placid. I could not detect a current. I focused my torchlight to better penetrate the rain and the bubbling surface of water. I peered into the river through hundreds of flying droplets, intersecting circles and leaping beads of water. It was as if the Mongarlowe had a bed of white sand; and then, in a moment, it was swept away. The visual effect was disorientating. I summoned every muscle to prevent myself falling in. As I staggered backwards the bank began to subside under foot. Water surged into my retreating boots. There was a second staggering realisation. The water was hot. I had no idea how to frame this experience.
Andrew Wong, The Wilderness Society (Second from right), and members of the Monga Field Study
Monga: A Congregation. 1990s My next forays into Monga were with company. I went there with members of The Wilderness Society. Their passion was infectious. They were lucid in their identification of the conservation highlights of Monga. I enjoyed their political savoir-fair. I went there with colleagues from the Australian National University, with artists from the School of Art - their inspiration was palpable; with ecologists from the School of Resources and Environmental Studies, their capacity for enunciating the relationships between life and place was insightful and enthralling. I went there with philosophers who extracted wisdom from waratahs, with historians who took reflective notes and with friends who took wine and bread. I went there with a group in protest to strengthen conviction in my beliefs. I went there with my children to extend their scope for wonder here on Earth. I folded up my map. I was no longer a stranger. I had been converted. I had found my church.
Monga: Fishman Saga. Early 1990s The Mongarlowe River runs parallel to it for a kilometre or two toward the township of Mongarlowe. The watercourse eventually falls into a deep granite rock pool. I parked the vehicle nearby and began to install an acoustically sensitive automatic orbital scan camera* at the river’s edge.
That evening, back at the School of Art, I wrote in my journal:-
Ultimately we all make up our own minds and this is precisely what I am striving to do. I will attempt to order the sequence of events that encompassed a lapse of consciousness. I have just processed film that was exposed on the Mongarlowe this mornig under the most bizarre and frightening circumstances.
I was assembling camera equipment at the water's edge. I had just coupled the camera to the tripod, and the acoustic sensor and power cables to the motor drives, when the device was activated. The camera went through a scanning sequence exposing 52 frames. I have no recollection of events recorded in frames 1 to 32.
I became conscious again - frames 33 to 52. I was naked. I was clutching the neck of the tripod that had been dislodged from its position. I can recall the whirring of the gears and the clack of the shutter as the last of the film was exposed. I was dazed and exhausted. My skin had wrinkled in protest. My clothing had disappeared from the bank.
To compound the physiological shock, I eventually saw my face in the vehicle rear vision mirror. My hairline had changed. It now receded behind the temples. Elsewhere, much of it had fallen out. I don't know how I drove back to Canberra without accident. I could not take my eyes from the mirror for I was not sure if I was looking at an image of myself.
Monga had asserted its place explicitly in my consciousness. However, the colonisation was not as discordant as one might imagine. Despite the associated anxiety, these events settled comfortably next to other inexplicable incidents already registered in my mind. Like a cinema hero reassured by having studied the script, I was learning not to fear mystery. In a short space of time I had twice crossed paths with the most shy and illusive creature to inhabit remote SE Australia. I had encountered the Fishman in the Mongarlowe River.
My previous experiences of Fishman were already on the public record. Fishman, some members of the public may recall, is a piscine, human-like creature that was first documented by a group of photographers, of which I was one, not far from Monga in an easily accessible section of the Wyanbene Caves. Its discovery can be attributed to the love of walking in the Australian bush. Public knowledge of it can be attributed to my love of talking. I was the designated spokesperson. More than '15 minutes' of media fame surrounded the first public lecture about Fishman that I delivered at an Australian National University Open Day in 1992. It had taken an excruciating period of time to reach the point where I felt that our findings could be disclosed without placing the creature at risk of destructive scientific sampling. Fishman, I asserted, was a fine art discovery not a scientific one. As the sole public exponent of its existence, and by couching my experiences of Fishman within the visual arts, I aided the public perception of it as myth. Through the application of artistic method, Fishman was elevated from specimen to symbol.
The Fishman saga began at the very moment we saw the developed strip of film that was exposed at Wyanbene. It had recorded the torso of a human-like figure swimming in the stream that flowed through the cave. We were incredulous as we gazed upon the images. Darkroom work ceased. We gathered around the negatives. Heads bobbed above them. Magnifying glasses, like referees, intervened. Irrespective of how the content of the photographs were interpreted, we knew that we were onto something truly remarkable. “The Fishman”, someone uttered. The term like a virus quickly passed everyone’s lips. Now we had words as well as pictures. We were acutely conscious that together they advanced a powerful proposition, and one with fantastic implications.
An obvious course of action was to return to Wyanbene. I was prepared for a subterranean swim. I had wetsuit, flippers and an underwater camera. I was like a seal with a ball on the tip of my nose. I was going here, going there, going nowhere. The cave was flooded and dangerous. By way of consolation we set up an orbital scan camera on the banks of a seasonal watercourse that we knew to be connected to the cave river system. Eventually we succeeded in recording a second image of Fishman. That's when my doubts were dissipated. I realised then how reassuring scepticism can be.
Fishman is a gift of the forest. For me, it became an instant metaphor for all that is unknown in our wild rivers and forests. In this respect, the power of its symbolic eloquence resides in its human resemblance. We also took great care to photograph this creature in the context of the landscape with its own aura and visual subtleties. Surveys of the Deua, Shoalhaven and Endrick Rivers; and the upper reachers of the Murray and Murrumbidgee, yielded stunning results.
The realisation that Fishman’s domain extended to Monga, together with the prospect of documenting Fishman in the beautiful Mongarlowe River, revitalised my quest. I was lured back to Monga several times. My expectations were met. I succeed in taking wonderful photographs of Fishman in the clear waters of the River.
Fihman Dodumentation Mongarlowe River Monga
I was attracted also by Monga's evocative attributes of place. Its splendid tree ferns, embracing Eucryphia moorei, its mist and water arouse sensibilities asociated with ancient life cycles. There is an alluring call from Gondwanian Monga. It is the inkling of such distant and basic notions of survival that makes Monga the perfect place for a heightened appreciation of culture.
The Cathedral
Monga: A Catherdal No Less. Early 2000s A party of two or more is recommended for attending the cathedral in Monga. It is an excursion to share and the approach is open. What is it to be - a journey in spiritualism, materialism, aestheticism or all three? There is no known protocol so one may pontificate with freedom. A congregation encourages delivery.
The cathedral is set into a steep south-easterly slope that slips under a vast coastal sky and is easily overlooked from the road that passes by the close. A cloister of wattle and eucalyptus inclines steeply beyond the graded shoulder of the track. Steps that have been embossed into the scree by the feet of pilgrims break the decent. The overhead vegetation recedes before an open, level vestibule - a semicircular terrace of stone bound into the red earth by the roots of stunted ferns and tough bladed grass. Still the church is not discernible. An immense dark green crown of Eucryphia obscures the way. Each leaf shimmers like the pixel of an image miraculously projected to test the faithful. On the other side of this facade of foliage (wait for eyes to adjust) the path plunges again. It follows the trunk of the tree 15 metres to a more gently sloping ground. During this fall the great central space of the cathedral reveals itself.
Dense canopies of ancient Eucryphia combine in the thin haze to articulate a complex vaulted ceiling. Shafts of sunlight surrender on stained eucalypt trunks that form the vertical elements of the protective walls. Under the soft and fragrant floor millions of tiny roots labour as a social force to maintain the building. In this cathedral, there is an apse for each member of the congregation. Tree ferns with their domes of nodding fronds recess places of human scale within this grand shrine of nature. Who will dare to sit in this cathedra? A wallaby will for sure.
There is one magnificent Eucryphia that could lay claim to being the seat of governance for all that is forest in Monga. It is there, rooted in that impressive place. Embodying many hundreds of years of patient growth, the tree is a testament to Monga as a place of wonder here on Earth. Before it, any soul can test itself - the extent to which it has been cauterised, for example, by the searing energy of electronic media and its highly processed content. Solace can be found there. It is a place where peace pervades as a companion to mature, rich and sustaining life. If ever the hand of a heavenly God were to reach down in wrath or jealousy and tear this tree from the Earth it would come away slowly even in the face of such strength. With it would come every Eucryphia in the forest. In an act of solidarity other species would mesh their branches, animals would leap into the tangle of roots and birds would dislocate their wings in resistance.
Deep pools in the Mongarlowe River. Looking downstream beyond the Falls. Monga National Park NSW 2000s
Monga: Last Trip. 2000s My last trip to Monga … (I have no definitive answer for this ambiguity. It was my most recent trip, yet I cannot be certain that I will ever return. Writing drains the desire to face its subject) …
My last trip to Monga was instigated by impulse. Or, at least that's how it seemed. I returned to the place on the Mongarlowe River where previously I had lost my senses. Again I parked a few metres from the deep granite pool. Wattles that surrounded the perimeter were in flower.
This time, I prepared to enter its waters on my terms. I had summoned the fortitude to confront Fishman. I removed my pack, my boots, my clothing, my spectacles. I entered the Fishman's aqueous medium. I was taken within moments by the eternal current. Its chill shocked my body as I swam beneath the surface. I went down, not along. I confronted my fears.
In the course of this brief adventure, I had to choose between culture and the wild, between staying and returning. It came at the moment that my lungs lost volume. I could not cry out as one would, instinctively, when falling over a cliff. I was as silent as a fish. My neck strained, its taut skin preparing to tear into ribbons and admit water beyond its cutaneous layer in defiance of the set of my jaw.
It was then, as I surged with all my strength through the half-light toward the surface, that I recognized wilderness - a full sensory experience of the world unmediated by artefact.
I walked the thin umbilical track from wilderness (represented at its periphery by gasping and wet footprints) toward culture (represented at its heart by the artist's studio, the poet’s desk, the scientist's laboratory).
I took the long way back to my car. I crossed the paddocks on the other side of the Mongarlowe and picked up the River Road into the forests of Monga. The fog descended. Somewhere, close to the slopes of Monga Mountain, I sat by a waratah. A leach had crawled onto my leg. I watched it make its incision. As my life’s blood became its life’s blood, the light changed. There was a flash. It began to rain.
I walked again and as I did so I examined my neck with my fingers. I tested my voice. I addressed myself. This reflexive conservation was a rehearsal for my story. How would these corporeal experiences translate into words, into English? My first utterances fell among deaf vegetation and on the ears of illiterate beasts.
If I were to return to Monga, now that I have written these pages of personal witness, the creatures of the forest might look intelligently upon them as maps - inked guides to the bizarre but not unfamiliar landscape of the human mind. A mental disposition they already know to be capable of either conserving or destroying their world. If I could win their trust and get close for long enough they might recognise an ‘o’ on one of my pages as the last contour line of an eroded mountain. To them, the ‘s’ could be the shuttle path that traverses an isolated flat. The ‘p’ and ‘d’ would no doubt be controversial. Asylum seekers who have had their homes severed from beneath them in deafening, savage strokes would immediately perceive these characters as chilling symbols of a chainsaw massacre. An innocent generation of birds and tree climbers might view either of the letters as nothing more than the supporting pipe and scale of a river-level indicator. I would expect my entire forest readership to mistake my personal pronoun for a lifeless, metal post.
As for the rest of my part in this scenario, I am realistic enough to appreciate that after scrutinising a page or two my beastly friends will instinctively resort to the nebulous area of literary taste in their attempts to judge me. I anticipate that there will be few polite responses that I will understand. Having gathered my sniffed, gnarled and nibbled pages, I shall ameliorate any anxiety by heading off to church. An old whiskered friend will be waiting there.
Along the way I pick-up a bushwalker, poet, tourist, ornithologist, photographer, wildlife officer, scholar, reformed trail-bike rider, life-long student, local resident, international visitor and a child lost in wonder. A wandering musician joins us. We make a merry procession. I can see now the expression on the face of my muddle-headed mate as he spies me, and the unexpected crowd, coming down the cloister. As I get closer Wombat looks at me again with glazed eyes, and for a moment I see the shaman’s mask dance a few inches above the ground.