Category: Australia

A Brumby with Bangles

On By cjx07sterIn Art, Australia, Dreaming, ExistentialismLeave a comment

Tersiiska Bangles

 

I found the first bangles in a dream.  We’d been climbing a steep volcanic mountain, and as we got back down below the snow layer the white melted out into a field of slippery silver bangles.  They had a kind of strange magnetism and as I got down to collect them they would fling away at high speed and land with a tinkle at some distance.  After a while I realized that the more I tried to collect them the more the ground cleared away to the black lava field underneath and in the end… frustration.  It’s not the first dream of frustration felt.  But I did not wake up in frustration but walking, some of the bangles caught on my foot and I managed to collect a few.  After waking I struggled to remember what happened next. I’d no idea what to do with the bangles  I had in my hand, so I’d thrown them  in a drawer in my desk, where all other travel collectibles are. I had no idea who I’d been climbing with either.  She’d been there climbing too but seemingly not interested in the bangles but wanted to get into the white zone at the top of the mountain. Did she come down ? No idea ? but I know when I woke I was in my room in my hotel nowhere near snow and out in the outback, far from any mountain.  But I opened the drawer and there they were, the bangles.

She’d been dreaming of riding a wild brumby in the snow country down through the rafts of snowgums, down to the creek.  The snow gums white trunks flashed by. The trees parted as the horse charged through them, shifting aside and springing back in time with the gallop. But then she felt as though falling and the ground rising up to become snow and white and cool.

As I got dressed I saw that the hotel had some prints of the snow country on the wall.  Memories of Clancy of the Overflow perhaps.  Hotel decor was low cost and somewhat stereotyped.   I imagined that all other rooms in the hotel had similar prints.  I opened the door and the light from my room streamed into the darkened corridor.

“What are you doing here ?” I asked on leaving my room.  There in the darkened cool corridor was a woman wearing the bangles I’d put in my drawer.

“What are you doing here ?” She asked with some affront. She looked past me into my room and her expression changed.  I turned around and saw she’d been looking at the print on the wall.  The one with the horses and snowgums.

“I’ve opened the door on my dream reality of bangles” I said.

“That’s funny – there is my brumby dream on your wall” She said.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo Courtesy Tersiiska / Flickr / Bangles

related but interesting history gemaffair

Minnamurra Call Unexpected Fall

On By cjx07sterIn Australia, Sunday Posts, TravelLeave a comment
Photo 2013-01-11 14.00.23
The sound of birds and water falling

The bird – I don’t know what bird – maybe a lyrebird mimic was there. In the gully just down by the falls. A bush rat ran past in a hurry. Old cold blocks of rock hemmed us in between the west cold mountain and the sea. We’d climbed 400 metres up along the elevated walkways and rope bridges straddling the rivulet. Past giant strangler figs and stinging trees. Past ancient red cedars, the survivors of past logging trails. A native rainforest in a sandstone slot gorge carved out of the old dividing range with a view of the pacific ocean to the east over Kiama.  Now we had arrived, a long walk up to the top where the falls are found. Here though the long curtains of lighted water falling are thin and scarce into the pool below.

I just wanted to see it, having heard it. With no cautionary thought, I had jumped over the railing and landed heavily in the bush below the viewing platform.  Jane cried out, “What are you doing !!!”.. but too late, as I started sliding down into the gorge, trying to grab something but moving down fast. Rocks and sandy bits came raining down on me as I clung onto a gum tree branch overhanging the falls gorge below.

“It’s nothing” – I called back, listening to the sound of my voice bouncing off the rock walls.

Jane muttered something about stupid and moronic – how I could have killed myself.  The wind was up, and I carefully thought through the sudden kind of stuck predicament I was in. I’d shoved my phone in my pocket before clambering over the fence, so I should be ok.  My clothes were kind of ripped up and I worried about how dishevelled I would appear  once I got back the platform.  How exactly since I had only a grip on a branch hanging down with the slippery rain forest ground cover between me and the platform.

I was hanging on this branch, I was ok. No clue now how to get back up to the platform.

“Jane, can you see if someone has a rope ?? and throw it down ?? . I can’t get up.” – I called again… loudly…  More echoes.

“Why can’t you just pull up on that branch, and get up here that way ?”, she said.

“Look, just go get one from somewhere quick.:” – I said, and then with that the branch broke.  No need for a rope anymore I thought tumbling down through space and straight down into the slot – basically free fall, until I hit the side of the  gorge and bounced all the way down into the water below…  which hurt  and suddenly the noise of the birds was replaced by the frigid cold murk of the rock pool at the bottom.

COLD COLD WET COLD LONELY COLD WET SLIME COLD WET BUBBLES GREEN AND ROCKS AND THINGS

PAIN PAIN AHHHH – blood coming out — my knee hip and elbow seem to have got hit on the way down into the pool.  I clambered onto the rocks and lay there for a bit.  Coudn’t hear anything – too preoccupied with the body signals coming from all over me.

After I bit I tried to get up – Jane was way up there, about 100 feet or more up calling frantically.

“You ok, Where are you ?, Where are you ? John ! : “where are you “. she called.

I had landed below a ledge somehow and could not see directly up to the platform.

“I’m down here below .. I’m ok but I don’t know how to get out of here.” – I yelled again.

It went quiet , quiet like the birds wanted to know what just happened. Quiet like I did as well and Jane must have run off to get a rope [finally] or help of some kind.

Rust Wreaks

On By cjx07sterIn Art, Australia, DreamingLeave a comment

IMG_5375Love the feel of iron to the touch. It’s genetic for sure.  You touch it’s cool metal and watch it shine or glow. You feel the temperature, so slow to rise and catch your own. Heft the weight of it and understand it’s hardness for something mind bending and banging down wrought your Imagination. When it comes to rust though, it’s the weather and age that starts it’s decline.  A red mirage of it’s strength remains.

Remember machine how you art rust and unto rust you must return. Long forgotten machinery. Sitting there, with no oil, no attention, and no care.  The machine’s work is gone.  It’s lonely there, rusting slowly to a death of red.

Red rust is the outback of Australia, how the oceans rusted bad back before it all began, where the watery iron ions sat waiting and came out as red dirt for the land to occupy. A land occupied by iron tools on a red horizon full of flakes of past imaginings, past hopes, past dreams.

How my mind feels like that steel trap, which one day will lose it’s sparkle and spring. Which one day will be there rusting in spots and flaking off into the dirt of the past, for others to tread all over.

How my mind is a field of red rusty dirt just waiting for outback rain ready to bring sparkle and surprise to an ancient wandering.

— cjs – jan – 2013

When a kid turns 100cc and bends something

On By cjx07sterIn AustraliaLeave a comment
on the road somewhere in Australia..

Ho Ho, on the bike at last.  The sun was going down at the farm, and the old dusty farm homestead road was the only track there was.  Such a bike at such an age of 15 or so, meant a chance to prove what a rider I could be.  No more stupid mini-bikes for me. With no thought I took off at flat chat. The road was narrow and once past the first curve in the drive started down a steep grade with corrugations all over, and the sun strong going down over the mountain.  I tried the brakes, of course they were bent or something from some prior stack.  I ended up in a heap of dust and rocks after squealing all over the dirt.

I must have been knocked out a bit, the bike’s headlight was climbing up through the dust into the sky, the hot heavy engine was stopped, and I was under it all.

I made it back to the homestead in the dark somehow, not with the bike, which wouldn’t start, but somehow I had made it back. I explained how the bike must has slipped from under me.  The brake lever was bent or something.  Perhaps I bent it.

I got in the shower to get clean, my arm hurt a lot, and my hip as well.  Painful it was to wash it all off. The blood and the dirt.  The mother of the house took a look and said, you will need a stitch.  Lets find the doctor.

We got in the sulky, the only vehicle left and went into town.

The doctor was no where to be seen, it was night, and all were at the opera house for a centenary celebration,  not too common in the outback.

He came in to the surgery, and stitched up the arm with black thread. Took a look at the hip and put a few in there as well.

It was late, and outback getting real dark and cold.  We piled back into the sulky and took off back to the farm.  The arm had got a bit stiff on the drive back but the mother of the house where I was staying seemed a lot happier to have had the doctor take a look and do some repairs.

Of course I was totally humiliated, having to admit that i had fallen off a bike, a 100cc motorbike at that. Bit the dust ! ! and had a scar on the elbow to remind of the event forever.  Ahh.. the mental pain was far greater than the actual.

100cc of blood lost – of petrol used – or power given – or forgiven – in the outback – a night to remember for the town’s 100th birthday – and my elbow is still bent,  just like the brake !