Across the Ditch

[excerpt from a forthcoming book]

Photo: on the Routeburn Track, NZ

For a Tasmanian, walking into a New Zealand beech forest is like finding a previously unknown relative. There is something so familiar about the colour, the feel, the look of the trees; the shape of the leaves, the damp tang, the fungi on the trunks, the texture of the forest floor, the glow of the mosses. Even some of the bird calls hook the heart toward home. These are surely some of the old trees of Gondwana, just like those I’d find if I crossed Cephissus Creek and walked up that ever so familiar track towards Pine Valley Hut in central Tasmania. Just like those I’d find in whole swathes of Tasmanian forest which continue to resist the almost irresistible advance of the eucalypt.

And of course the resemblance is a family resemblance. The various species of Nothofagus (literally “false beech”) are found in New Zealand, Australia, South America, New Guinea and New Caledonia. Its distribution was one of the keys to the theory of continental drift. Because Nothofagus seeds aren’t dispersed by birds and other animals, and don’t spread far in water or wind, it seemed highly unlikely that the current distribution happened across the oceans. Rather, it is now accepted, these landmasses were conjoined until their diaspora began around 80 million years ago. By that time the ancestors of the beech genus were established, and when Gondwana split, each part carried with it a botanical, invertebrate, mycological and microbial cargo that has continued to evolve and adapt to new conditions, and to the addition of other new species.

As we walked that day through beech forest towards Rob Roy Glacier, I noticed more than just the similarities. There were also differences; some obvious and easy to spot, some more subtle and profound. Tasmania’s beech forests are not abounding in obvious wildlife. Much of it is cryptic and/or crepuscular (most active at dawn and dusk), and so not always visible when bushwalkers are out and about. But the evidence is always there if you know where to look. It might be a whiteish, fur-filled scat giving away the scavenging diet of a Tasmanian devil. It may be a tunnel-shaped runway through the understorey betraying the presence of potoroos. Or perhaps a fur mass showing where possums have had a territorial scrap. And where the margins of the forest meet buttongrass plains or heath, the comically practical cuboid scats of a wombat are rather more obvious, deftly deposited on logs or rocks or tracks for other wombats to read.

In this New Zealand beech forest, the first thing I noticed was the lack of these signs, and thus the lack of mammals. Of course I knew that New Zealand didn’t have any native land mammals, and that this was another Gondwana-related matter. Although ancestral marsupial mammals had been in Gondwana before New Zealand broke away, none had survived in modern New Zealand (no-one knows why). So I expected no scats, no runways, no fur scraps. But it was still more than strange to think of a forest without native mammals, even at night.

Then a most remarkable creature began to turn my thoughts around. In the middle of the beech forest we quite abruptly came upon our first kea. Thinking it would be shy and soon fly off, we cautiously took out our cameras. Keeping a respectful distance, we took some photographs, the large sickle-beaked parrot patiently posing for us. But as we put our cameras away and continued our walk, the kea hopped nonchalantly onto the path and began to follow us.

Photo: Kea near Rob Roy Glacier, NZ

For a good hundred and fifty metres, we were tailed by this lord of the forest, hopping along the track like a green ghost of Long John Silver’s parrot. When we stopped, the kea stopped; when we moved on, so did the kea. It was as comfortable and confident as any Alaskan brown bear would have been in the forests of Baranof Island, where we’d walked just a year before. But I’d have to say I was a lot more comfortable being followed by a giant parrot than a giant bear!

In a strange way the comparison is not completely odious. In the absence of terrestrial mammals, the New Zealand food-chain is topped by birds and reptiles. In a real sense the kea is one of the kings of the bush in New Zealand – so much so that a bounty was once put on their heads because of the mayhem they can create among remote sheep herds. They will eat meat, especially seeking the kind of high-energy fat that will keep them going through the winter. The bounty system, which saw perhaps 150 000 keas destroyed, was ended in 1971, but the species was only legally protected as late as 1986. Today its range is far more restricted than it once was – largely due to human persecution. However its presence, perhaps even its place of honour, in the South Island’s high country forests, seems secure.

This ecological niche-shifting – at least in comparison with the hierarchies I’m familiar with – was further illustrated as we walked along the West Matukituki River. Pied oystercatchers (Haemotopus ostralegus) are common in Tasmania, as they are in many parts of the world. At home they are almost entirely coastal birds, partially living up to their name by feeding on molluscs, crustaceans, worms and other seaside treasures found on beaches. They breed along those same beaches. But in New Zealand, perhaps because mammalian competition and predation is minimal, these oystercatchers mostly breed along the braided rivers of the South Island. The changeable but fast-flowing inland rivers must create similar conditions to saltwater tides, stirring up sediments, creating water and air movements that encourage edible invertebrate life. Certainly the equally incongruous presence of terns and gulls along these rivers points in that direction.

Regardless, hearing the oystercatcher’s startled wik wik cry, so familiar from my Tasmanian coastal walking, still caused a double-take here by the Matukituki. It was like hearing a rooster in a restaurant: a normal enough sound in an altogether unexpected place. The restaurant analogy was once sadly apt, as these New Zealand oystercatchers were hunted as gamebirds until protected in 1940. Apparently no-one told Tasmanians, as I’ve not heard of them being eaten in my home state. But this particular day, along the beautiful Matukituki, they seemed perfectly at home, foraging by the river or prodding sods for a morsel. It’s good to hear that their numbers are increasing now that hunting has ceased.

Taking the long view, it’s harder to be optimistic about the many other kinds of change that human action continues to bring into all of the world’s ecosystems. We may no longer hunt down keas, oystercatchers and Tasmanian devils, but they – and we – are slowly being hunted down by that 21st century scourge – climate change. In Tasmania, for instance, the advance of the eucalypt, so brilliantly adapted to drought and fire, will sooner or later displace the old Gondwanan brigade.

This was poignantly illustrated while we were tramping in the wet New Zealand spring/early summer of 2006/7. As we slopped through a very wet final day on the Routeburn Track, Tasmania and much of eastern Australia was having an early and severe bushfire season. Projected long term, for Tasmania at least, there must be concerns for the long-term survival of drought and fire-intolerant species such as many of the Gondwanan species.

Climate change predictions for Tasmania and New Zealand’s South Island may drive the former Gondwanan mates further apart. Species such as the devil, already threatened by a cancer-like plague that has seen them officially declared endangered, look far from secure in the very long-term.

In New Zealand the ongoing mayhem caused by feral animals is considerable, and no case is worse than that of the possum. The deliberate release of Australia’s much-loved brush-tailed possum (Trichosorus vulpecula) in the mid 19th century for the fur trade has had disastrous results. There are now estimated to be up to 100 million of them in New Zealand, and they’re found in virtually every part of the country. I have a vicarious sense of shame in the fact that they are dubbed “Tassie blacks” because of their fur colour and their state of origin. There is only a slight easing of that feeling when you find you can purchase gloves, thermal and fashion clothing that uses possum fur to add warmth and weather-resistance to wool. With typical Kiwi flair it’s referred to as “merino mink” – a neat marketing tag that combines wool of Spanish provenance and fur with Tasmanian origins, adds an allusion to a now-rare European fur, and somehow makes it sound 100% pure New Zealand.

Of course change will always happen, whatever effort we might make to forestall it. And there will be some winners as well as losers in the natural environment. But as I walk in these delightfully wild areas, it’s hard not to feel the sense of an old order passing.

A HEART NEEDS A HOME: Finding A New Nature Literacy For Australians

Photo: Robert Frost's cabin, Vermont

[Paper presented to the Interpretation Australia Association conference, Alice Springs, August 2001]

Introduction

What role does the written language play in the development of attitudes toward the environment? Is it mere coincidence that Australia – with its appalling extinction and land degradation record – is a nation with low levels of nature literacy? A largely urban and coastal people, we seem happy to acquiesce to glib views about Australian nature, settling for the “wide brown land” over more nuanced understandings. Could the way we think and write about nature become a catalyst for changing our attitudes toward the environment?

European Ideals, Australian Realities

The European appropriation of Australia coincided with the Romantic Movement, a literary and artistic development that lasted from the late 18th to the mid 19th century. As the First Fleet set sail, William Wordsworth was wandering lonely as a cloud and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was completing Don Giovani. The ideas of the Romantic Movement grew out of revolution and nationalism, and included a strong reaction against rationalism and industrialisation. As a consequence writers and artists were drawn in a new way to nature and landscapes.

It would be easy to underestimate the impact of the Romantic artists. It is unlikely, for instance, that Wordsworth could have anticipated that his writings would lead to the establishment of national parks. Yet such a consequence can be traced from the growth in nature-consciousness – this “new” way of looking at landscape – not just in his beloved Lake District, but as far afield as the United States. Words such as sublime and picturesque were applied to landscape for the first time, and the desire to protect and preserve such places from newly rampant industrialisation grew strongly.

The Movement also effected mainland Europe. An instructive example is the establishment of an independent Norway. The Scandinavian nation’s break with first Denmark and then Sweden was very much influenced by Romantic notions. As 19th century Norwegians searched for ways of establishing their own national identity, they turned to their landscape – the mountains and fiords – to distinguish Norway from its flatter, forested neighbours. A new wave of nationalistic literature celebrated Norway’s own landscape and lore. Nationhood and nature; literature and cultural self understanding became deeply intertwined.

Meanwhile what was happening in Australia? During this same period the British were struggling simply to survive their first decades in New South Wales and Van Diemens Land. By the time they’d gained any sense of security, let alone prosperity, the Romantic Movement was already on the wane. The urge for nationalism, which might have spurred a cultural self-understanding based on our own physical environment, was past. Instead the European Australians camped on the land as exiles, attempting to assuage their homesickness by creating an antipodean England. This made them more inclined to exploit the new land than to love or understand it as it really was.

But if that boat was missed, did all chance of an environment-based self-understanding leave with it? Is there no way that we can re-invent our self-understanding so that Australia’s unique and diverse natural environment is better incorporated?

A Quest in the Romantic Tradition

In true Romantic fashion, I decided to travel to the wilder parts of the UK, Ireland and the USA seeking possible answers. Could the roots of British and American nature writing provide clues as to how Australians might grow their own nature literacy? I found much to encourage such a quest, but also cause for caution and further thought. Though my findings are selective and somewhat anaecdotal, this too seems appropriately Romantic.

In Scotland my visit to the Isle of Skye was greatly enlivened by reading the late Gaelic poet Sorley Maclean (in translation). Here was a modern poet of place, writing for and about his own small group of Scottish islands, which are dominated by the Cuillins, two prominent sets of mountains. Strikingly Maclean uses “Cuillin”, among other place names, as a metaphor for beauty. When I asked myself whether Australians would easily use a geographical point as an adjective of adoration, I could only conclude that any “Kosciuzko of my heart” would be met with derision! Yet this was the first lesson of my travels. Deep connection to place may best be expressed in language derived from the experience of that place – in short an endemic language.

While still in the highlands of Scotland I had the opportunity to canoe the Spey River with a group of Scots over several days. As we progressed from mountain to sea, I began to see and hear things that made me aware of the different ways in which Australians and Scots see the natural world. But it was a conversation with an old Scot in Grantown-on-Spey that crystallised one of the key differences for me. In explaining that he wasn’t born where he now lives, the old man said simply “I belong to Wick” (a town in the far north of Scotland). Whatever deep sense of belonging Australians may have, they would not express it in that way. I, for instance, would never say “I belong to Tasmania”. Yet many Scots that I met showed this kind of deep attachment to their town or district. And this attachment comes through in conversation, in music, in story and in the deep Scottish fascination with history. This was the second lesson: Authentic cultural expression – including a vibrant nature literacy – may need to grow out of a deep and prolonged sense of belonging to place.

This was also the first warning sign in my quest. Is there any way that such a sense of belonging can be hurried? Must white Australians inhabit this land for many more centuries before they belong? Some Indigenous Australians believe this to be the case, and certainly white Australians have much to learn from the first Australians in terms of understanding the country. At the least I see an orange light against any easily gained sense of belonging. On the other hand, who can tell the heart it doesn’t belong when that sense grows within? To quote another Scot, singer Dougie MacLean, “you can’t own the land, the land owns you”.

Ambiguities in Ireland

In Ireland there was ambiguous evidence on this issue of belonging. On the one hand I was struck by the nature writing of two expatriate Englishmen now living in the west of Ireland. There could hardly be two people more deeply immersed in place that Tim Robinson and Michael Viney. Robinson’s remarkable books about the Aran Islands – “Stones of Aran: Labyrinth” and “Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage” – are extraordinary for their detailed evocation of both place and the past. Robinson lived for many years in the Aran Islands and, “outsider” or not, there would be few in Ireland who would deny that he has caught the essence of that place with extraordinary skill. The fact that Robinson is also a cartographer who has produced what many see as the definitive maps of the Aran Islands further attests to his devotion to place.

The other case that dilutes the argument for endemism in these matters is Mayo-based naturalist and writer Michael Viney. I was privileged to visit Michael Viney at his remote west coast home. The author of a “A Year’s Turning”, a nature diary of a year in the Irish countryside, Viney also writes a weekly nature column, and contributes to numerous natural history publications and television programs. The most pertinent lesson of my meeting with Viney was to note the degree of his dedication to finding out every possible detail of the natural history of Ireland. After some 30 years in Ireland, he has become one of the most sought-after authorities on Irish natural history, even if some of the locals still see him as an Englishman! The book-lined interior of his home attests to his strong desire to follow-up his frequent fieldwork with careful reading and study. From these two examples I took another lesson: Obsessive curiosity about, and dedication to, a place or subject can outshine the contempt of familiarity.

On the other hand the Irish feeling of belonging in the landscape also comes out
strongly among those born there. While preparing to explore the hills and bogs of Connemara, I came upon Seamus Heaney’s poem “Bogland”. It captures superbly that sense of long human attachment to place.

Our pioneers keep striking
Inwards and downwards,
Every layer they strip
Seems camped on before.

Reflecting on this as an Australian in Ireland, I felt a compulsion to acknowledge – almost an urge to boast about – the vastly greater timespan of Aboriginal occupation in our country. Yet that raised again a personal sense of both indebtedness and sorrow in relation to our Indigenous people: indebtedness for their long stewardship and intimate knowledge of the land, and sorrow for white Australia’s treatment of Aboriginal Australians. It is hard to see a way forward, not just socially, but in terms of our broad cultural self-understanding, that rejects a full accounting for our past. This was the next finding: That there is no going forward to new ways of understanding our natural environment without an open-hearted accounting for past wrongs, both historical and environmental.

Backwoods USA

During my brief time in the United States, I had a more purely interpretive encounter in the tame wilds of Vermont’s Green Mountains. It opened a small window on how interpretation and nature literacy might go forward together.

Robert Frost was an unofficial poet laureate of 20th century USA. A teacher at Middlebury College in Vermont, he used to take a “road less travelled” and retreat for long periods to a cabin in the backwoods of the Green Mountains. There he would muse and write, turning much of his inspiring surroundings into memorable verse. Of course fame has long since caught up with the great dead poet. Interpretive trails have become a part of the on-going merchandising of Frost. The local Forest Service has a “Frost Trail”, and panels of his poetry pepper the countryside. However the back-country cabin that he used to frequent has mercifully – even miraculously – escaped this attention. I had a memorable time exploring the outside of this almost un-signposted cabin, and wandering in the woods that still surround it. My hosts and I finished the visit by reading aloud several of Frost’s great poems, including “The Road Not Taken”. It was a far more powerful experience than any sign-posted interpretive walk or visitor centre might have offered.

Here then was the final finding: What we say or write about nature or culture must never replace the genuine experience of nature or culture itself.

Conclusion: A role for Interpreters

This paper’s aim was to contribute to the growth of a new Australian nature literacy. Because interpreters use language – written and oral – as a tool, we are automatically among those at the front line of cultural selfunderstanding. If we also interpret nature, we add to that the chance to be leaders in generating nature literacy.

Although the findings of this study trip are both personal and selective, I believe they suggest fruitful ways in which interpreters can be involved in this process. They suggest the need for:

· Strong connection to place
· Deep engagement with, and authentic experience of, our subject
· Obsessive curiosity about detail
· Openness to endemic modes of expression
· Willingness to reconcile our past with our projected future.

In the hands of skilled and caring interpreters, such a combination of mind and heart; science and poetry, can help the Australian heart to find a home within its own natural
environment.

References
Bate, J. (2000) The Song of the Earth, Picador, London.
Heaney, S. (1998) Opened Ground: Poems 1966-1996, Faber and Faber, London.
Maclean, S. (1976) in Modern Scottish Gaelic Poems: A Bilingual Anthology, Edited by D. MacAulay, Cannongate, Edinburgh.
Robinson, T. (1990) Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage, Penguin, London.
Robinson, T. (1997) Stones of Aran: Labyrinth, Penguin, London.
Viney, M. (1996) A Year’s Turning, Blackstaff, Belfast.

Orkney Dreaming

Photo: Skara Brae, Orkney


[a travel piece about Orkney, published in the Sunday Tasmanian, late 2000]

John O’Groats is a popular place to leave. Most people, from charity walkers to place-name collectors, leave the British mainland’s most northerly town as soon as they get there. Usually they’re off towards Lands End, Britain’s most southerly point.

So was it just perversity that saw me joining a small passenger ferry going in the opposite direction? I like to think it had more to do with the allure of the low-lying group of islands just visible to the north of John O’Groats. Orkney – as this archipelago is collectively called – is next stop north of the Scottish mainland.

Although you can fly there, part of the adventure is to arrive by boat. After all the seas were once the highways, and coasts and islands the crossroads of the old world. What we now see as outposts were once closer to the ebb and flow of civilization. Nowhere does this feel more true than in the history-saturated Orkney Islands.

Recent history hits you first. After arriving at the port of Burwick, we travelled north from island to island across the Churchill Barriers – a series of causeways built during World War 2 to connect some of the Orkney islands. Much of the work was done by prisoners of war, especially Italians. On the tiny island of Lambholm they have left behind a remarkable reminder of their stay: The Italian Chapel.

This comprises two Nissen huts joined together into a small but amazingly intricate church, complete with statues, altar furniture and ceiling decorations reminiscent of the Cistine Chapel. The Italian prisoners, some of whom had been craftsmen in their native country, did all the work in their spare time.

Wonders of a greater scale and age are not far away on Orkney Mainland, the main island. Stone is the theme, with remains of civilizations dating back 5 000 years and more to be found all over the island. The Stones of Stenness, the Ring of Brodgar and other lesser-known sets of standing stones are set quietly amid the on-going agricultural activities of today’s Orcadians (as Orkney islanders are called). Despite the setting – or perhaps because of it – the stones still resonate with a mystery that is added to by our ignorance of their purpose.

There may be slightly less mystery about Skara Brae, but its presence is still stunningly powerful. Literally a stone village from the stone age, Skara Brae’s huts lay buried beneath the sand dunes of Skaill Bay until a storm uncovered them in the mid 19th century – nearly 5 000 years after their construction. As we wandered among the roofless huts, we were struck by how aptly named the stone age was. Everything in these huts seemed to be made of stone: with stone beds, stone dressers, stone tables, stone fireplaces and even stone water basins still there to be seen.

Skara Brae has a modern visitor centre, which is both well appointed and unobtrusive, sitting more than 100 metres from the village proper. And by including a fully-roofed reconstruction of a stone age house, Historic Scotland, who manage the site, have helped the visitor to make more sense of the remains. They have also taken advantage of the distance from the Centre to the village by turning it into a “time walk”. Significant dates from the present day right back to 5 000 Before Present are marked on track-side signs. As you walk back through time, passing the date of Christ’s birth; passing even the date of the construction of the pyramids, you gain a very strong sense of the antiquity of this village.

Of course there’s more to the islands than history. Even on the ferry trip across the Pentland Firth to Orkney we’d seen large numbers of sea birds, including puffins and razor bills. Not to be outdone by the birds, grey seals and dolphins had also shown themselves. Later I was even dive-bombed by breeding skuas on Orkney’s only mountainous island, Hoy. I’d gone there to see the famous coastal rock stack known as the Old Man of Hoy. An hour’s walk from the remote and tiny settlement of Rackwick, the stack was first climbed in the late 1960s – an event of such drama that it was broadcast live by the BBC. Today its ochre coloured sandstone slowly crumbles into the sea, though sea birds and climbers still vie for footholds.

Photo: Old Man of Hoy

Orcadian writer George Mackay Brown was a frequent visitor to the island of Hoy, and he wrote beatifully about a visit to Rackwick towards the end of his life.

That Sunday, the beauty of Rackwick struck me like a blow. Once it had been a populous valley, but already it was drained of most of its people. Many of the little croft-houses were derelict; decay was beginning to eat into others - the roof flags were slipping, doors hung on rusty hinges. Slow fires of rust were devouring the pots inside and the iron ploughs at the gable-ends. It seemed a melancholy place, threatened with imminent,utter desolation.

- from “For the Islands I Sing”, (John Murray, 1997) pp. 81-82.
Mackay Brown lived in the town of Stromness on Orkney Mainland most of his life, and wrote tellingly of the many layers of life there. His stories and poems often wove together that blend of Scots and Norse that make Orkney stand apart. Stromness remains a town of great character, with solid stone buildings and narrow cobbled lanes that almost drop straight into the sheltered harbour. Yet it is no museum town - the locals are as likely to offer you a latte or sell you on-line services as to talk about the old days.

Photo: A back lane in Stromness

The same forward-looking approach is true of Kirkwall, the capital and main town of Orkney. This 1000 year old town, founded by vikings, centres on the imposing Cathedral of St Magnus. Kirkwall hosts an extraordinary event every Christmas Day and New Years Day. Called “The Ba’”, it involves hordes of local townsmen running through the streets disputing possession of a cork-filled leather sphere (known as the ba’). The ancient game, whose grizzly origins seem to have involved the head of a defeated enemy invader being kicked around the town, is played between the “Uppies” and the “Doonies” (men from either side of town) whose aim is to get the ba’ to the other end of town and score a “goal”.

Despite the fierceness of such customs, today’s “invaders” will find that Kirkwall warmly welcomes visitors. The town offers all the modern comforts – on a modest scale – without compromising its obvious pride in a long and different history.

Much of Orkney’s difference has to do with its viking heritage. Given that the people spoke a Norse dialect for nearly 1000 years (up to the 1700s) that shouldn’t come as a surprise. You get the definite impression that its people are Orcadian first, and then it’s a toss-up whether their next attachment is to Scots or Norse heritage.

Tasmanians often remind mainland Australians that some of the best kept secrets are to be found on off-shore islands. My visit to Orkney convinced me that same is true in the British Isles.