Once again, we visit the protest camp. Our host, come presenter, is another of life’s psycho-nodes who are washed up in the backwaters and eddies of society. Let’s just call him the gate-keeper. He did actually confront us at the gate, fearing we were WMC people.
When asked to expand on the “water issue” at Lake Eyre south, he quickly went off on a conspiracy theory. He told us about the underground, how it’s inhabited by aliens with eyes as big as a phone book. They inject your blood with “irradium” so they can track you. He is an orphan because his mother (who owned a $10,000 green couch) worked for, and was murdered by, the CIA & AMEX. His father died when his pink coupe with black stripes careered off the end of St Kilda Pier. He has a CD that details the genocide of humanity that he has to reveal to the world. Tomorrow night is a full eclipse of the moon by the earth’s shadow, and he is off to a dance party.
0 Comments
Arrived in the dark after a dash up the Birdsville Track from Lake Eyre South. Birds were on our mind. At dawn, a short drive to the northern end of the dune revealed a wonderland of water birds. The water was flooded to the horizon, and supported an enormous population of birds. Ducks by the hundreds of thousands, heron, tern, pelican, cormorant, dotterel, geese, gulls, etc. Great black swirling clouds of waterfowl disappearing as the flock turns into the light, then rolling and unfolding into view.
Noises, like a great, murmuring crowd, bursting into cacophony and wing, as a shadow passes by. Birds of prey, fat sleek and lazy, occasionally working the nesting sites. Squadrons of pelicans beating their wings slowly, defying gravity. We, the humans, sit on a red rippled sand dune and wonder at the abundance of a sometimes dry and empty place. After a clear and cool moonless night, we awoke to a sea mist rolling in from the lake. The camp was in a damp fog of the likes of Bass Strait. If you turned your head back and looked straight up, you could see the duck-egg blue of the clear sky shining through. As we wheeled the circus out of camp and on to the track, the sun was placed at our tails. Ahead, hanging in the fog, was a white rainbow. No colour, just white against the grey fog, with the blue overhead.
Dusk-time down the billabong
The soft grey tones entrance My bush friends sing their evening song And the river gums softly dance. The ancient things are very slow Secretive, knowing where they belong Yet they move onward with the flow At dusk-time down the billabong. Dusk-time down the billabong Rambung rose and frosted glass A white man’s dream gone wrong Broken pieces of a recent past. And as always, the pastel pink and greys Dance shyly on a golden muddy billabong Reflections of mad galahs and passing days At dusk-time down the billabong. |
Author"Words are clumsy pretenders of the images of my mind." Categories
All
Archives
May 2017
|
As a practicing artist I have travelled far and wide across Australia, walked on country, camped on country and rolled out my swag. I thank the custodians and I acknowledge the traditional owners of country throughout Australia and their continuing connection to land, culture and community. I pay my respect to Elders past and present.