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

Starting from this

Starting point for my writing 'my' history of a small section of the Plenty River begins with this...

Exploring the hand cut gold mine on steep cliff edge of Plenty River bank (circa late 1980s)

A few odd photos from times spent on the river bank and exploring an old mine on the hillside of the plenty river...

The author with the dogs Tessa and Ben at camp A (circa 1987)

Renegade delinquents honing their skills (circa 1987)

The Outlaw retreat - Camp A

Holding my old Bowie knife and dusting off a moldy pair of boots.

Not much of a starting point but a bunch of fading memories could polish up ok with a few visual prompts and the help of my new State Library of Victoria Library Card.

Some say the river was lost after they built the Yan Yean reservoir... Gold was a passing fad... But there is treasure beyond gold in the past and I pray the future of the Plenty River Valley.

A creek a day 7: Plenty river again

OK, I know I've already done the Plenty River but I did intend to visit here again. There are some special places along this river I'd like to share some stories and photos of. Unfortunately I couldn't reach those parts of the river. Because of the heavy rainfall yesterday and through the night the Plenty River is swollen and flowing fast!

Plenty River with good flow of water

Pebbles Crossing, Plenty River with a decent flow of water

These photos are of a part of the river known by the ratbag local kids of my vintage as Pebbles Crossing. It is a point in the river where several tracks converge at a shallow bar in the river where the opposite bank has been cut away. 

The track we used to take through the cow paddocks is still there, it used to follow the fence line past the cattle yard and troughs and linked up with an old roughly cobbled path, we were never sure of the history of that track but the new sign they installed when the area was turned into a park calls it Cobb and Co. Track... Well that's pretty interesting! We always imagined it was used by horse drawn carts.

Cobb and Co. Track

For most of the year this is an easy place to cross the river and follow the bush track north toward what is now signposted as Janefield Ridge. It's a good steep climb up the other side but once over the creek the country changes dramatically. Thick clay and black soil gives way to a much thinner profile which barely covers a rugged quartz and shale hillside. Beyond that a volcanic igneous rock starts making an appearance.  

When I arrived at the creek I took one look and knew I would not be attempting to cross! When we were young, my mates and I used to have a lot of fun crossing when the river was high, or even in full flood! We'd try to get across with our bikes and too many times one of us would get dragged a long way downstream, bike and all. There were too many close calls! We nearly lost a few bikes at that crossing and once or twice came close to losing more than that. At my age, level of fitness and sundry adult responsibilities, with no pier pressure to inspire me into an act of utter stupidity, the decision was simple. Turn around and enjoy the civilized side of the river with it's paved bicycle paths and street signs and fresh water drinking fountains. 

As I headed back along the paved path I did get to see some pretty cool birds. 

Crested Pigeon

Red-Rumped Parrots

Rainbow Lorikeet

Corellas

Boy did we have some fun back then... (Idiots!)

Following the scent

For 20 years I've lived in Darwin NT. I came there by accident, needed a change of scene from life in Melbourne and decided it was as good a place as any to make a space for living.

One thing led to another, l set down roots, took on social responsibilities, studied, fell in love, got married, had a couple of beautiful children, and before I knew it I had become a long term resident. I have a very strong feeling for the Top End, the environment and the people, particularly those I've met and worked with in Arnhem Land... But something keeps calling me 'Home'. 

What is Home? Well like they say it's '...where the Heart is.' My home is with my family, my wife and kids. But I still have a strong connection to the place of my birth and, where I grew up. My extended family, the Landscape, places I spent my youth, these memories keep calling me back. The places.  The narrow stretch of land, remnant bushland between housing developments which follows the course of the Plenty River, the smell of dry grass in summer, the potent oily resin of eucalyptus, magpies, the coast, Port Philip Bay. 

Whenever I come back to this place I like to find connection with the land, as I get older I am searching for those friends who managed to survive our youth and lost years in between. I see my family, siblings, nieces, nephews and my parents. I try to help them with the manual stuff around the house which they are finding too difficult to manage on their own.

The ticket says 'REAR STANDING' But with the Bos on stage it was UpFront Dancing!

 

I made this trip with one specific thing in mind. To see the Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band concert! Due to lack of finances in 1985 I missed out on the concert, which I believe 'Went Off!'. I have been a devoted listener to Springsteen's music ever since that time so when I found out he was coming to Australia this year I made the snap decision (with approval from my wife) to get down to Melbourne and see him. This could very well be the last chance. He is 67 years old! 

(No offense to my religious friends but for me this was a 'spiritual experience')

THE HEAR OF A LION!

So now that I'm here in between catching up with family and helping my parents around the house, I'm trying to squeeze in as many adventures as I can before I return to Darwin.

So far I have been blessed to spend half a day with my nephews on the day the eldest started his first day of school. I rode my bike along a section of the Maribyrnong River and visited Ceres without falling off my bike and breaking my neck (again)!

Overlooking the Maribyrnong River valley after a hard climb

Fixing bikes with George and some handy kids at Ceres

 I wove my way through the inner urban heartland of Melbourne, enjoying the strange fusion of old neighborhoods transformed by inflated property prices and wealthy investors, yuppies and those odd looking marvels of cultural appropriation... pseudo-craft flogging Hipsters!

St George's Rd bike path... (They were in the process of cutting down trees)

Blackberries (Not cultivated but left to grow)

A pear, too woody to eat but there were plenty of other fruits hanging from trees

Somewhere among mess of people and groovy new development I found a few remaining thresholds of first generation European immigrant Australians (mostly Italian and Greek I reckon) who still maintained their beautiful front yard  veggie gardens and bountiful fruit trees which in some places, hang over the fence into the street.

Had dinner with my little brother and spent some quiet time with mum and dad... (occasional rants at the TV news aside)  

Front yard food

Sat in my favorite spot on the Plenty river, where time stands still and the spirit of my youth and ghost of a lost friend reside.

I felt he was speaking to me.... "You Shall Not Pass!

My new secondhand travel rig. Love this bike!

A glimpse of my special place

 

Unfortunately attended the funeral of a member of our extended family who was taken far too soon, then went and visited my aunt at Indented Heads, cherishing the lives of those still with us. I sat a while at Port Pier contemplating time and purpose on this earth and how to best honor it.

Fish'n off the pier at Port

When my ship comes in

Visited a couple of lifelong friends in Ballarat, it was so great to re-connect after so many years. One of them, my cuz has cancer, it has caused her a lot of suffering over the past couple of years. I was so grateful for the brief reunion that I was oblivious to the fact that they'd just sat down to watch the first televised game of Women's football! Woops!

The following day I caught the train back to Geelong and cycled the Bellarine rail trail from Geelong to Queenscliff

 

Bike on a path (bracken and hay behind)

Bike beside rails

Cruised across the bay on a ferry

Big boat that opens up and cars drive in! (only $11 to cross with a bicycle)

Toured the bay side of the Mornington Peninsula from Sorento to Rosebud and yesterday spent a day with my oldest mate and his family in Rosebud before cycling on to Frankston station just in time to beat the flooding rain! 

Laughing Kookaburra in an enormous ancient coastal Banksia tree @ Rosebud foreshore

Bike in the foreground Swans to the rear

Regatta - Safety Beach, Mount Martha

Dudes jumping in the sea

So far it's been great except for one major detail, I have left my family at home in Darwin and I miss them.

Graphic wall art Bundoora Concord

A creek a day 2: Plenty River

OK, when I said creek what I meant was watercourse... i.e. fresh water stream/creek/river/brook...

Day 2: Plenty River

The Plenty River is my place. My country, it is etched deeply in my heart... I'll probably post more than once about this one!

The view from cliff edge toward a quiet bend in the river

Homeland calling

Yolngu friends tell me without hesitation; “The place your mother carried you, the place of your gestation and birth is your home”. (There are other lands you can belong to but that place has a special primacy) I have no idea where my mum went while she was carrying me but for sure I was born in the old Hospital at Greensborough On Wurundjeri land in Victoria, I lived in that area the first 26 years of my life, it is part of me. I grew up on that land and always wondered about the people who belonged there but in all that time I don't believe I'd ever been introduced to a Wurundjeri person. It's possible I've met some but with the shame put on Aboriginal people when I was growing up who would dare say!

My folks place... Once an outpost of native shrubs they now prefer the cottage garden. No lawn for 30 years!

When I was a kid I spent a lot of time playing in the earth around my family home, must have eaten my share too! Grass bomb wars with neighborhood kids in the paddock across the road were a regular event in primary school days, much soil and some stones were absorbed one way or another. Plucking raw food from my parents garden all that stuff.

As I grew I hit the dirt slightly further afield, sometimes literally (rough play and bike crashes), eating cherry plums from derelict fruit trees, cow pat mushroom picking along the old aqueduct, camping in local bush-land, eating roasted rabbit, greasy fried eel, swimming in the swollen Plenty Rive and swallowing too much of it’s muddy brown wash… 

Plenty River below Western Ring Road bridge

Whenever I return to my childhood home all those memories engulf me in a homecoming melancholic delight that is sometimes overwhelming, the angle of the sun, the scent of foliage in the heat or the rain, the wild grassy weeds, everyting! I want to share it all with my kids!

So regardless of how it happens, I have a very strong connection with my childhood home and I believe ‘it’ is quite literally in my blood. 

Roos in the Janefield paddocks, Plenty River

Visiting my parents last week was the perfect opportunity to share my ‘homeland’ with my kids, who were born on Larrakia land in the North. 

As I write this I know I must have told the same story before, here, maybe the same, maybe slightly different but most likely retelling the same basic narrative of my origins. I tend to tell over the story, as I recall it maybe as a way of affirming some kind of identity, belonging to somewhere....

 

Riding across the Partington Flat Swing Bridge

This visit was perfect, we cycled a lot of my old haunts and visited many of the special places. We breathed in the cool dry air, took note of all the different animals and birds, Rosellas, sparrows, roos, maggies, hover flies and bees... Rainbow lorikeets and starlings.

Invasive species trashing Feijoa flowers

Mum's Feijoa tree is in full bloom but has fallen victim to the latest wave of invasive species. The otherwise beautiful Rainbow Lorrikeet who appears to have replaced the Starlings and Minahs as usurper and thief of breeding hollows from the local species such as Red-rumped parrots and Eastern Rosellas.


Mid week we traveled down to Barwon Heads (Wadawurrung country), somewhere I'd always wanted to spend time. When I was young I used to pass through this way often, seeking excitement on my motorbike along the Great Ocean Road. I did happen to sleep in a cave on the bluff one New Years Eave but left at dawn. This was my first stay at Barwon Heads, during the off peak season it's a beautiful quiet place. We had a great time here and the kids got to chill out with their grandparents.

Barwon Bluff

Returning to Melbourne we had a wonderful day with my Nieces and Nephews celebrating three birthdays in one. 

Fishing off the jetty at Barwon Heads - Ship entering Port Philip Bay in the distance

Now I'm back in the NT and back at work. It's hot and feeling kind of foreign to me. I have a few connections here and have become fairly familiar with the land and environment. This place has it's own rhythm and pace, The bush is alive and Yolngu know it's seasons and ways intimately. I have learned only a little about these things but it equates to a lot more that what I know about my own country, yet somehow. Regardless of my ignorance, my heart and blood remains tied to the land where I grew up. 

Maybe one day I will live there again?

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!