Paying Ready Attention

“One cannot be uncheered with a balloon” a rather famous bear once said. And while this is clearly true - only the deeply, resistantly, grumpy can remain uncheered by a balloon - it could also be said “One cannot be uncheered by parrots”. The simple fact of the matter is that I like parrots. However, none of the parrots that I have seen have passed on their opinions of me. This seems a familiar, distant adoration, the reawakening of a teenage relationship, where you stare at the subject of your affection, but that source is blissfully unaware of your thoughts. And would probably be scornful in dismissal if it was aware. But such thoughts are of little consequence here. Parrots will brighten your day, but I doubt they will break your heart. Twice over the last week I have found flocks of parrots around my home. Their calls, silver and weird, have pulled me from the house to watch them, high in the trees, feeding, calling, being there for no purpose but their own. At first glance parrot...

I visited an island this weekend. Not a large island. Not an impressive island. Held in the muddy waters of the Yarra, flanked on one side by the freeway and the other by school boatsheds. The drone of engines on one side and the strain of muscles on the other. It is reached by a very short journey on a flat bottomed punt with an engine of seemingly unnecessary size and power. For a place surrounded with water it was surprisingly dry, with dusty paths, stressed plants and many weeds. There are barbeques and at one end an art gallery. This shows we are not on any regulation island. Both islands and rivers bring easy life references, one a clear destination, the other a journey. Sitting in the Yarra the island is a surrounded place in a linear feature, a dot within a line. While noisy miners live up to their name in the bushes and magpies follow you, begging for food, this is not really a place to visit for the wildlife. This is place you visit for the abstraction of sculpture, rather t...

So far this year we have been lucky. It’s been cooler and damper. The fires that have flared have been small, contained and, in the end, extinguished. This is more to do with luck than good judgement. Things have gone our way this year. This is in stark contrast to last year. The Black Saturday fires that ripped through bush, communities and people’s lives last year are the ones that people remember. That’s understandable. But they were not the only fires that flared at that time. Others burned as well, and in these we can see the other side of Australian fires. On Sunday 8th February Victoria awoke and tried to comprehend the unimaginable. How could so many, so much, have been taken in a single day? Such things should not happen here. On that day, as the news from elsewhere became worse and worse, lightning struck near Sealers Cove, on the east side of The Prom. The fire that was sparked did not claim any human lives. It did not burn any buildings. This fire was started by nature, no...

It was wet on the way to work. Yesterdays rain still in the gutters, on the pavements, on the leaves of the plants pushing out over the path. Leaves, gum nuts and lost twigs were heaped in the gutter and packed under the tyres of parked cars. Water bottles, scraps of paper, random litter, buried in the flood line high point of the water's flow. But the sky had a blue tinge, the cloud was thinning, the rain gone. It had moved north. All that was left was its ghost. As I stepped over the puddles and around the flood-washed wreckage I was walking through the past. Ghost water from yesterday sitting in today. We are surrounded by ghosts, but mostly we don’t see them. Old trees. Old houses. Long abandoned signs on the sides of shops. Even the names of the suburbs I walk through are ghosts of a different time, when all things pointed to the north west where the point and source of it was. These ghosts tell a tale of a different time. Our landscapes are full of ghosts as well. Ghosts of t...

Cut into the south coast of Victoria is Port Phillip Bay. In typical style this is shortened to The Bay by most people. If you are from Melbourne this makes sense. There is only one bay for Melbourne, so there is no risk of confusion. The Bay is no neat apple shaped incision into the main land, and the way to the sea is narrow and dangerous. The Bay’s entrance is known as The Heads, and within this is The Rip, a narrow passage of shoals and rocks, through which the water does literally rip . The spelling is significant here. If you miss the 1 km of navigable water R.I.P could be for you. Rapid currents, reefs, contrary tides, all guard The Bay, and with it the entrance to Melbourne. The Bay covers almost 200 km2 , but nowhere is it deeper that about 25m. Just like that other shortened location, The Prom, the Bay is a flooded landscape, brought about by the melting of the ice sheets as the last Ice Age dripped back from its maximum. People chase fish where they once hunted on foot. Mass...