To the trees

Plenty River

Ancient Red Gum

Twice I managed to visit my favorite spot on the river. 

This time of year is spectacular. The country is so green, the wattles are blooming and the air is fresh! Everything is alive.

A favorite track

On this visit I discovered several wombat dens, interesting sightings included 2 Wombats and 4 Swamp wallabies.

 I was surprised by how silent the wombats were, I saw them but did not hear them.

Highly cropped picture featuring swamp wallaby - bottom left

The Wallabies made loud thumping sounds as they bound away through the bush. Swamp wallabies are quite shy so I couldn't get very close to them but can confirm 4 in a relatively small area.

I went in search of maiden hair fern which used to cover most of the south facing hillside but this habitat has been over taken by weeds. I was fortunate to find a very limited patch which still contained a few plants.

Maiden hair fern, 30 years ago these ferns covered the south facing hillside

Sporting heroes and legends

(WARNING: This post is a long meaningless blithering of over 1,000 words. It contains nothing of any particular interest to cycling fans or students of fine literature. Just a shameful attempt to take a short and self gratifying stroll through memory lane peppered with the bitter residue of regret.)


I have just finished reading Cadel Evan's book 'The Art of Cycling', which is essentially a journey through his career as a professional cyclist with a few personal episodes along the way. If you're into cycling. Read it! The book I gives a pretty good sense of what it took for Cadel to go from an eager kid on a bike to an elite sportsman. He was fairly candid about difficulties he had within the the world of professional cycling however there was an element of restraint which I think allowed him to remain diplomatic in his treatment of some fairly contentious issues.

The cycling story was interesting but it wasn't what really got me in. Like any (auto)biography I wanted to get to know 'the man' (Or woman if it were a woman's autobiography... which it wasn't). The final chapter really endeared me to Cadel. His attitude and humanity make him a truly inspiring role model.

I'm no cycling expert so will leave all the technical analysis and sporting commentary to those who know that business... What I want to talk about is closer to home. Why Cadel Evans, is an elite cyclist and why I am not!

As I read I noticed convergences between the author's story and events in my own life. I doubt I'll have enough time to treat this topic effectively since I've just written only a few paragraphs and I'm already becoming weary of my own voice. (In drawing comparisons between the great sporting hero and I, this story could end here... I'm a lazy hack, he is a living legend!enough said!)

My new favorite bike parked beside a gully crossing

So I'm reading about the author's early life and I discover that although he was born in Katherine NT (as NT News liked to brag about while he was racing) he left the NT when he was quite young and moved to Plenty, Victoria! I have lived in the NT for 20 years now but where I grew up was in the Northern Suburbs of Melbourne, Plenty was my neck of the woods! I was surprised to learn that the fella who had become a national bicycle racing hero, had actually grown up in the very same neighborhood as I. Even though I'd probably heard it via the media, reading Cadel's account of growing up in my very own stomping (well to be precise stumbling ) grounds, brought it home to me, that as youths we shared some similar experiences, knew some of the same people, inhabited the same familiar spaces, but with a 7 year age gap... and a monumental psychic gap!

In hindsight when all is said and done, and the trophies have been (in Cadel's) case won, we can look back and say He was destined for greatness. But for me NO this is not the label they'll Dyno tape to my shoebox tomb when I have passed! 

I am sure as young people we look to the future and wonder if we might some day do something great with our lives... My Grandfather was a great athlete, a runner, I have his genes and may have had the potential but fast forward 30 odd years and you will see that potential equates to nothing. One must take action. By some twist of fate coupled with a bad attitude I dragged my arse bitterly and reluctantly through the minefield of lost opportunity and wasted potential only to arrive at middle age to discover greatness was not my path. 

My bike again (These are the only photos I have on hand)

 It can be exciting and somewhat confronting to read the story of someone who made the effort and achieved success. Reading Cadel's detailed explanation of how he did it was just a little confronting with regard to short cuts I'd taken to nowhere. The opening pages of the book lead me to wonder about the proximity to opportunities, chance of success, is there a formula for greatness or was I predestined to failure?

Some interesting similarities or paths crossed between but never intersecting: 

• Cadel mentions buying his first mountain bike from the bike shop in Greensborough 

I bought my first mountain bike from the bike shop in Greensborough... mine was the cheapest possible a Malvern Star, really heavy bike, lasted about 2 months before it was stolen from outside Andre's SSW, in Watsonia, where I worked at the time. I accidentally left my bike hanging from the rack over night on pay day. I distinctly remember walking to the bottleshop down the road, drinking at the abandoned house next to the supermarket.... waking up at home late for work without my bike and having no idea where it had gone... took me a week before I remembered! Thus severely hindering my asperations to become a long distance rider of that particular mountain bike.

• Cadel used to ride around Hurstbridge, nutfield Plenty and along Plenty Road

I too rode my mountain bike through Hurstbridge and Nutfield all the way to the Mernda cattle yards and home when I first acquired my mountain bike... Had a few too many at the Mernda pub and nearly forfeit my life by the side of Plenty road when swerving uncontrollably into the middle of the lane while cattle trucks were attempting to pass... Plenty Road is not known for it's wide verges!

• Cadel used to ride with proprietor of Walker of Walker's Wheels bicycle shop in Montmorency

Well I am proud to say that after several long years hiatus from regular cycling I finally got a job at Australia Post and became the bicycle postman (postie) on Montmorency round 14. Monty posties had to peddle the toughest hills in the region! Others rode motorbikes but we were committed to bicycle delivery. Of course I was in it for the fitness but I suspect others were unable to ride a motorbike for fear of having to remain below .05 blood alcohol content. Anyway I digress. One of my favourite places to stop for a mid delivery tea break was in fact the establishment of Mr Marcus 'Wheels' Walker! Yes! There were always a bunch of apprentices hanging around the shop and Marcus was always up for a yarn or to give some advice on maintenance. (He thought our clap-trap postie bikes were hilarious!) I didn't hang around the store for too long because I felt it was unprofessional to drink beer from a paper bag in front of impressionable young people. But if I had hung around long enough I may have actually gotten to meet the young Mr Cadel Evans! Could have even gone for a ride with him, if I'd taken Marcus up on the offer of a decent bike.

Finally and I think this is the one which probably pronounces the major differences in life trajectory between Mr Evans and my slovenly self.

• Cadel mentions riding single tracks through the Plenty River Gorge area, specifically around Blue Lake and I think Janefield. 

I practically lived in that gorge! I spent most weekends walking, hunting, fishing, drinking and even riding in that exact same area! At times when the river was up, and I had access to an old bike, my mates and I would attempt to ford the river at pebbles crossing and stay on our bikes as we were washed down stream. This is probably the most likely place I would have bumped into Cadel while he was engaged in his exhaustive mountain bike training regimens! It is possible we were there at the same time and I missed him. Unfortunately on the rare occasion while rambling in the Plenty River Gorge I did find myself overcome by a severe case of dipsomania compounded by symptoms similar to unconsciousness or as some would say passed out cold in a gutter! I do recall rousing in some of the most picturesque gullies in the catchment of the glorious Plenty Gorge. It is absolutely plausible that Cadel could have actually bunny hopped his bike right over the top of me as l lay paralyzed in a gutter beneath him.

Gutter drunk... Face down in a ditch... This was the ditch.

Hence I propose to you the reader that I too could have been classed as a cycling legend! 

IF ONLY: I had been more adequately prepared, If bad fortune had not deprived me of my wheels or the capacity to stand upright after a heavy session, I may have met and joined with the young Master Cadel Evans and possibly even bested him at his beloved cycling sport. Further it was only through my predisposition to the dropsy juice and possibly a less than obsessive interest in physical training, that I did not in fact also become a bicycle racing legend!

THE END!

(Apologies to those whose names I have used in this gratuitous piece of drivel. I hope I have not defamed them in any way. The purpose of my writing this is as a means of showing appreciation for the effort and dedication made by some while lamenting my own wasted opportunities. But in truth I have No regrets and total respect for those who put in the effort it takes to be a sporting legend!)

Home sweet River

Do you feel it? Can you feel it?
The incredible weight and the pull of the land where you were born, the place which raised you... It is calling always for you to return. Can you hear it? It is strong, it's in the blood and the metal of you. It hurts to go back but if you deny it you will be dragged... It will always be within you whether you respond to it's claim or deny...

I am back. For just a short time, in the cool of spring and the cold rain and the wind and the paddocks are wet and my feet are cold and my heart is pounding and the river is flowing and the birds sing and the roos bound and the trees remember.

Ancient trees remain where they were before my birth and I pray will continue when I'm gone

At times like this I remember a few lines from Roger Waters song 'Sunset Strip'. 

"And I sit in the canyon with my back to the sea
There's a blood red dragon on a field of green
Calling me back, back to the Black Hills again"

Billy, a young man from Wales many miles from home, trapped somewhere in the mad rush of Southern California and Sunset Strip... but his roots demand his attention and he cannot deny it!

From my parents house I have made a couple of early morning treks back into my old stomping ground. To those secret places which formed me in some way in the valleys among the trees, on the steep and craggy dry slopes, the cliff side ledges and river flats of the Plenty Gorge. I knew that place before. Does anyone know it now?

The old trails remain

Wombats have appeared, I never knew them here

Where there had been impenetrable blackberry now fields of grassy tussocks.

 This place is burned deeply inside me. I am overjoyed to see it spared from the urban sprawl and possibly even  forgotten or ignored by the mass of humans entrenched on the other side of it's boundary fences. I wish I could stay to care for it, but maybe it's best left forgotten, long live cable TV and the sedentary life of consumers!    

Connection to place

I am an Australian Citizen.

My ancestry on both my mother's and my father's side originate in Scotland. Both families settled in Victoria several generations ago (sorry if this information is a little vague, this is not a genealogy post)

I grew up in the outer Northern Suburbs of Melbourne. My parents house was build in a new Estate back in the late 1960s. Prior to this the land had been a farm, which I believe was owned by ta family by the name of Black. I have heard that an elderly lady, Mrs Black (possibly the original farm owner prior to subdivision), still lives in the old farm house around the corner, but I've never met her. I don't know the true history or the  original People who belonged to that place, although there must be one. It is known to be part of the Wurundjeri people's country. I can see evidence of where and how they lived in books, but their story is not commonly known to the settler inhabitants of their land and I can imagine those who remain do not fully know their land like their ancestors did.

Growing up I never heard their language or even of their existence. It is only now and due to all the work that has been done to rediscover our countries Indigenous heritage that these stories are beginning to be told, but they are revealed like relics from the past rather than threads of a tale that might connect us to the land we are on.

When I was a kid our house was still surrounded by open paddocks, horses would occasionally visit our yard. At the bottom of our street there was a fresh water creek and a patch of bushland that  must have been considered too steep to develop (The creek has since been filled in, the bush cleared and houses stuck on the side of the hill). Beyond the creek was open woodland on the steep slopes and dairy farmland on the flatter country, all subsequently redeveloped as housing estates. An open aqueduct passed through the farmland but beyond that was the Plenty River and more native bushland in the valley around the river. As the land on the city side of the aqueduct gradually became suburbia everything North of the aqueduct remained, The Country!'. This was where I liked to go most, it became my second home.

Land for Wildlife
Unfortunately it seems everything is up for grabs if you have a few bucks more...FOR SALE?

(The orange flags hanging on the fence mark out land to be bulldozed and paved)

As a kid I spent most of my time outside, riding my bike and exploring  having adventures of one kind or another. I explored every corner of my neighborhood especially the waterways, creeks, rivers and dams. I ate it's mushrooms, blackberries, cherry plums, sour apples and pears as well as whatever fruit I could reach over local gardeners fences. I noticed every bird, lizard, wallaby and roo; there were even turtles and bats. As I got older I'd often spend nights in the bushland adjoining the Plenty River with one or two of my adventurous mates, we'd catch eels and the occasional fish from the River. There was a special place on that river  where platypus lived. At night Sugar Gliders would leap through the acacias back at camp. My friends and I also spent many hours hunting rabbits along the banks and in the cow paddocks surrounding the river. We knew all it's secret places.

A sacred space by the river

Pebbles Crossing... As known by some

I often wondered about the original people, how they must have loved this place and why there is no apparent sign of them now. I grew up in that country and lived in it, I have been burned under it's sun and drenched in it's rain. I have walked across it's frost covered fields and felt the frozen grass snap under my feet while my toes froze in wet boots. I've drunk water from it's creeks, sat by the smoky fire of it's eucalyptus trees and sweated across miles of track and through the scrub. I've assisted the farmer to deliver a still born calf and skun my own calves crossing his barbed wire fences. I am not an Indigenous person of this country but can sympathize with those who are if they love it like I do. Although my ancestry is Scottish I  can only consider myself a native of the place I was born and grew up. I have traveled and lived a long way from the Plenty Gorge but my mind and heart keep tripping back there. It is my country. Yolngu friends have told me that it is quite natural for us to become part of the place where we are born. Even if it is not our own Clan Estate  the spirit of the place will be part of us and we a part of it.

It is no dream of mine,
To ornament a line;
I cannot come nearer to God and Heaven
Than I live to Walden even.
I am its stony shore,
And the breeze that passes o'er;
In the hollow of my hand
Are its water and its sand,
And its deepest resort
Lies high in my thought

(Henry David Thoreau)

I have heard it said that the land is not dead.
It is sleeping and waiting for it's people to come home. To sing the songs and call it by it's true name. Even though Piece by piece it has been sliced up, re-allocated, subdivided and sold! Dozed, filled in and paved, barely a scratch of earth remaining beside the concrete, bitumen and bricks! Ignorant and ambitious to profit from what cannot belong to them the developers have moved into places they should never be granted to step! They haven't ever seen a single mist rise from the river.

Drainage from the road straight into the creek

A pretty view for new home owners, but will it ever mean anything more than that?

The reality of modern 'best practice' land development technique

Out of site out of mind!

As Thoreau foretold in his reference to Flint's Pond, they have even re-named, profaned it and ultimately shamed it!

"Flint's Pond! Such is the poverty of our nomenclature. What right had the unclean and stupid farmer whose farm abutted on this sky water, whose shores he has ruthlessly laid bare, to give his name to it? Some skin-flint, who loved better the reflecting surface of a dollar, or a bright cent, in which he could see his own brazen face; who regarded even the wild ducks which settled in it as trespassers; his fingers grown into crooked and bony talons from the long habit of grasping harpy-like;— so it is not named for me. I go not there to see him nor to hear of him; who never saw it, who never bathed in it, who never loved it, who never protected it, who never spoke a good word for it, nor thanked God that He had made it. Rather let it be named from the fishes that swim in it, the wild fowl or quadrupeds which frequent it, the wild flowers which grow by its shores, or some wild man or child the thread of whose history is interwoven with its own; not from him who could show no title to it but the deed which a like-minded neighbor or legislature gave him who thought only of its money value; whose presence perchance cursed — him all the shores; who exhausted the land around it, and would fain have exhausted the waters within it..."

(Henry David Thoreau - Walden - 1854 The Ponds chapter)

If language is a gift from God, how many generations will pass before those who live here now will begin to speak the language of the places we inhabit? When will it be revealed to us if this place is Dhuwa or that place Yirritja? Who is this tree, rock or animal? What name should that sunset have? What songs do they sing and call me to dance to? Do I call this place mother, sister or brother? Will finally know that to kill a river is murder?