Darkness and light

On the middle day of this working week I took my day off. I am employed to work four days per week but as life has it, I have often given up my day off 
A. because there is always some little thing that needs to be done.
B. I'm a freaking workaholic who doesn't know how to have fun or relax.
(Mostly 'B' I think)

On this day I did not go to my Job. On this day I tried to practice being a human with only one day. It was a long and full day.



Bäparu (funeral) It's been a sad time lately, too many funerals, too many Yolŋu family passed away. I have also lost close friends this year who I know I am grieving and finding it difficult to let go.
Before dawn I had to take Mirriku to the airport, over the past six months she has lost three siblings. This time a Yapa (sister). A lady who I call Yapa, who I first met 12 years ago who I respected and admired.  She was a precious wise woman who has contributed to her community all her life, I cannot mention her name or show a photo but my memory of her sits heavy. I know why bäparu (funeral ceremony) is so important for Yolŋu. Things must be done right.   

The weight of my thoughts sunk in my heart and even my legs felt heavy and unwilling to move.

Doubt: I wasn't sure exactly what I would do but I knew I must get out of the house and not go to work! There had been a full moon and the nights were getting hot, I don't think I got enough sleep last night. Take it easy, no hurry.

Visual splendor: I took the coast road again and soon found myself crossing the Rapid creek bridge. The tide was high; It's always nice here at high tide. I gazed down at the creek, the red sand, the aqua tinted depth of the creek was clear enough to see Longtoms swimming effortlessly against the outgoing current.

Aimless: With no plan I rode slowly toward the coffee joint I always go to for a caffeine charge. I took my coffee back to a shady spot near the mangroves and contemplated the meaning of life, death and whatever it is I am supposed to be doing with my time, energy and physical presence on this planet. At this point it seemed a pretty pathetic failure of an experiment and I was wondering if it might be time to consider taking finding the exit ramp. 

Feathers of a raptor for freedom and flight

Inspiration: I scanned my phone for some kind of inspiration, looking at social media usually confirms the worst of my doubts... Odd things can happen! Two notifications appeared with links to a couple of lifesavers. Just some reflective writing and images from a couple of creative people it didn't take much... "...Never forget babe, you are the creator of your life"

Contemplation: I sat another 10 minutes, sipping the coffee, listening to the quiet sound of ripples through the mangrove, the smell of hot wet sand and mud. Glancing at the tree above me birds were darting about extracting nectar from occasional inflorescence. Dry leaves for a mat. I had relaxed, I have become calm and centered in my space. My restlessness and distressed mind was calm.


Connection: Finishing my coffee I mounted the long beast of a bike that is my cruising machine. All is right with the universe. "I am one with the force, the force is with me". Right, off we go.


Purpose: Rolling slowly along the path, still not sure what I should do with my day I passed a car that was covered in dust. it bore the words rubbed into the dust of the windscreen. "Clean Me!" Well OK. That seems reasonable. So I went off to Dollars and Cents got a bucket and some cloths, filled the bucket at the servo and returned to start the cleaning. It turned out that I needed much more than one bucket of water to clean this filthy car. Not a single tap in the area had a handle on it. They were all 'vandal proofed'. 

Company: I made a trip to the hardware shop for a tap master key. On my way there I saw Trev. the Rubbish Warrior. We had a bit of a yarn, walked together for a while until we arrived at the bottle recycle depot, I left him there and went back to my work. 

 
Completion: It must have taken about 10 buckets of water and over a couple of hours from woe to go but I eventually completed the task. The car was clean(er). I felt an overwhelming desire to chuckle, and cycled on with a big grin on my face. I commit random acts of cleaning therefore I am.
(Maybe I should have left this story untold but it was a funny thing to do, it amused me and I felt like I'd left at least one part of the world a little better than I found it)

Exploring: I turned the rig around and headed back toward the coast. Tide was really far out. 'What next oh great Spirit?' I looked to the sea, there is a tiny island sand spit with mangroves and a puddle that is only accessible at times like this... OK. Next adventure.

After picking my way through the mud, hopping across rocks I arrived at sand spit island. It's a quiet little oasis usually submerged. When the tide is out it's like a private beach surrounded by a moat of, yes, 'mud and rock'. 

Giving and taking: Looking back toward the northern Suburbs I could see smoke rising. Another fire! A big one. By now the time was about 1:30. I blasted home full speed, had a shower, put on some fresh clothes and rode to the Blood bank where I gave up 902ml of amber plasma, chatted with the nurses, watched a comedic film then ate cake and biscuits in air conditioned comfort.  

I sat there in the bloodbank, feeling totally at ease with myself. 

Summary: It had been a long day, I had observed the capricious extremes of my fickle emotional stability so easily affected by environment and the chemical reactions of my biology. Cycling miles eases my restlessness, sitting purposefully doing nothing settles my mind, doings something I feel is useful helps me gain perspective between the irrational fluctuations of my monkey mind and the capacity of my body to manifest change in the material world around me.

Final Act: Riding home I noticed the giant smoke plume hadn't diminished. Like any thing of such a scale regardless of it's ferocity of the harm it threatens, its enormity has weight, gravity. It draws the curious toward it. I followed the plume to Northlakes and Marrara Golf Course and could see the flames licking at the fence, smoke and flames rising like a tsunami, Shiva dances over the canopy. The roaring thunder of dry fuel consumed by flame. Late dry season fires are a bitch! 

Thank you oh lord for this day, one day, just a day. My day on this earth, should it end now so be it.  
 

King Lake National Park

I think the best thing I ever got to do when I was in school was Work Experience with the park rangers at the Kinglake National Park, north of Melbourne. I'd always wanted to be in the bush and found it difficult living in the urban and city environment. Somehow when I was in year eight I managed to score the opportunity to live and work for two consecutive weeks in Kinglake National Park! I think I may have received some extra help in scoring this opportunity based on my borderline delinquent status...

This was such a great opportunity, my previous work experience had me getting up at 5:30 every day for two weeks in the middle of winter to catch a train and bus to a skylight factory where I was stuck inside all day folding sheet metal and cutting perspex. At Kinglake I got to live in a small cabin in the forest just up the track from Mason's falls.

My work consisted mainly of digging trenches, track maintenance, cleaning toilets and painting signs. Most of it was pretty mundane but I just loved being there, occasionally there were opportunities to go on patrol with the rangers and visit some of the lesser known corners of the park. My favorite time was at dawn before the park opened, lyrebirds and wallabies would break cover from the ground ferns, they'd browse and forage in the scrub right next to my cabin, nobody else saw that!

I really wanted to be a ranger but was advised that if I didn't have straight A's at school and didn't have a combination of multiple degrees and highly specialized skills like mountain climbing or various other extreme sport activities up my sleeve, I might as well quit my fantasy of becoming a ranger. There were no positions for amateurs! (The previous work experience kid was a high achiever from a private school!) So I enjoyed my two weeks in paradise and returned to my destiny as a Pleb. (I was failing dismally at school, I'd never been given any impression that I'd ever be able to attend university) All evidence pointed to me becoming either a sheet metal worker in a factory or a second rate criminal residing in the  "Bluestone College" at Coburg. 

 Kinglake National Park was a place I'd visited several times in my Youth, it was the nearest 'mountain range' (mountain by Australian standards) and only place of that type that I was familiar with. I loved it there but by the time I got my license and became truly mobile I became used to venturing a lot further afield. I possibly only went back to Mason's falls three or four times after I left school.

The Lyrebird was a very commonly seen resident before the fires, I hope my kids can see one here some day

In 2009 After three days of temperatures of over 40 degrees C the tinder dry bushland ignited. On the 7th February 2009 multiple fires spread across the region and the hills burned! This was the day known as Black Saturday. The destruction was extreme, according to the statistics on the National Museum of Australia website 450,000 hectares was burned and 173 people died, 100's of houses were destroyed and thousands of animals perished. Impact on the environment was massive. Non fire resistant riparian vegetation and rain forest was lost.The tree ferns disappeared the earth was left bare and all that could be seen from the grasslands below were the eerie skeletons of 1,000s of dead trees rising above the bare hills.

I had been living in Darwin for several years at the time of the fire and didn't venture into the hills again for a couple of years after. Even several years later Driving through Flowerdale on my way to Bonnie Doon was a devastating experience! I couldn't recognize the landscape! What had once been a thickly wooded shady valley dripping with mountain dew was now a barren hillside covered with the grey and black corpses of dead trees. No foliage. As we turned toward Alexandra my eyes welled up and I began to cry. What has happened here was apocalyptic! It felt like The End! I couldn't stand it!

Yesterday nearly 9 years after the fires had passed, I finally felt OK about visiting the National park at Kinglake. On the way I was shocked to see how much development has spread along Plenty Road. People everywhere, cars, flash houses, the lot! All plonked on top of a land which had it's own spirit. The new comers oblivious to the space they now inhabit, will they ever appreciate the place that lies beneath their roads and streets of houses?

As we approached the park it was confronting to see how the vegetation has changed. The mature forest was gone. There had been quite a bit of re-growth but this was not the same forest. It's taken so many years, nearly a decade, for plant life to begin to restore, but at least it is happening, God knows if it will ever become the wet forest it used to be.

At the park itself I could see that a lot of the tall trees remained, but most of the shrubs and ground cover had been replaced with eucalypt saplings and acacias. The riparian zone appeared to be in reasonable condition, there were actually still a few tree ferns very close to the water and the stream flowed clear. We didn't get to see any Lyrebirds but I have heard there are some around. 

Tree ferns still exist  but there are much less than there used to be

A lot of tall trees were felled after the fires

This is a park which attracts a lot of city visitors, it has always had a fairly heavy impact. The attitude of visitors was particularly obvious to me this time around. After the bushland here had suffered so much through the fires it was very saddening to find that every tree trunk in the visitors area had been defaced. Some fools saw the blackened trunks of these great survivors as nothing more than a canvas for their self indulgent need to leave their mark. Every visible tree trunk had people's names and various other messages and vulgarities scratched like graffiti in the charred bark of the remaining trees! Although this has relatively low impact on the health of the trees, it reflects a general contempt for the majesty of these beautiful trees and a lack of appreciation for just how precious this place is. As I walked the Lyrebird path with my children and my mother I saw other artifacts of spray painted graffiti and wondered who would perish first, the forest or the destructive culture that has altered the climate to the point that such a fire is likely to happen again. 

Every tree in this area had been defaced

Getting back to my original hopes to become a park ranger, I did eventually study to become a ranger in the NT, where there were actually ample opportunities to work in the field and in some very remote and beautiful places. I chose not to pursue that career due mostly to the fact that a large portion of the job involved managing the people who want to use these places for quite destructive recreational pursuits. NT parks, particularly those close to Darwin tend to be used as places to congregate in the bush with a ton of booze and loud music. 
I've chosen for my relationship with the environment to be a more personal affair.

Another jaunt along the Cox Pen Rd

Last night I decided I'd get up really early and cycle around to Mandorah on the Cox Peninsular Rd... I had intended to do most of the ride in the dark but was somewhat unprepared and found myself fixing my tail light when I should have been peddling!
Instead of leaving home at 3am I didn't wake up until 3:45am and didn't actually get on the road until about 4:30am. A very nice hour for cycling but not quite as early as I would have liked. I have always found the best way for me to leave all my troubles behind... is to get on my bike and leave all my troubles behind! With the thought that I might just keep on riding and not look back... (I always manage to get it out of my system by the end of the day, after a long ride)

I have thought a lot about cycling at night without lights but realistically this would only work on outback roads where there's no traffic. This morning there was no moon to ride by and I really needed my headlamp. The dark path between McMillans Rd and Howard Springs has all kinds of potential dangers if you can't see where you're going! The main hindrance to riding without a lights is the traffic. Riding on the Stuart Highway without a taillight could lead to a very short journey interrupted by a cattle truck. The other issue the problem of oncoming traffic... Even though much of the road is divided, headlights still pierce the night and any oncoming traffic will ruin a cyclists night vision. At least with a head light I can see something once the initial glare has worn off.

It was a beautiful morning for a ride, the sky was clear and without a moon I could see all the stars... for company I had Tom Petty on my music player and Jupiter and Venus to watch over me as I peddled. These two made powerful companions.

Light finally began to filter through the sky just as I was leaving Noonamah, I was really starting to like riding at night and had hoped to get a bit further but was happy with my progress. Riding by torchlight is actually really nice, it made it much easier for me to stop anticipating what might be around the next corner or how far I had come. Most of my attention was focused on the tiny portion of road that came into the beam of my headlight, nothing more. As I rolled on my mind began to unwind, I pondered some ideas and gave them up to the road. Free at last!

Hard to breath, hard to see!

Berry Springs CFA, have their work cut out for them!

Approaching Berry Springs I cycled through a think haze of smoke, which lasted almost all the way to the Blackmore River. There were several tree trunks burning in the scrub by the side of the road and the silhouettes of dead trees all over... everything was blackened right up to the canopy. It was easy to see how quickly the bush was being thinned out by successive fires, this is Gamba country and it is copping a pounding! So were my lungs!

Blackmore River Bridge

Blackmore River Bridge (posing with bike again)

When I got to the Blackmore river bridge I stopped for my second breakfast and the obligatory photograh. I haven't done much riding over the past month... Too busy. My legs and arse were starting to feel the strain of this ride. After sitting by the river for a while I inspected my bike. She's pretty rough now. I really only ride this bike on long road trips and the rest of the time she's sitting around gathering cobwebs, with vines growing through her spokes. I did nothing before leaving home to make sure the old thing would make it all the way around except put some air the tyres. On closer inspection I realized that the rear tyre had vertually worn to a completely flat surface, it was becoming thin, and covered in small cracks! Maybe a new tire would have been a good idea... and the chain had started squeaking... I can't remember when I last oiled it!  Oh well off we go again!

As usual by the time I reached the Blackmore river my energy was spent! I pressed on regardless (thank goodness it was a cool day!). The panier was full of food and I pulled up at 20km intervals to eat. Everything tasted amazing! My energy was so low and muscles were exhausted so I tried to compensate with food! So much for improving my stamina and condition... When in doubt Pig Out!
Here's what I ate on the trip:

2 x Pink Lady Apples
6 x Museli Bars (the sweet sugary type)
1 x box of shapes biscuits
3 x liter water

As usual the second half of the ride was less fun than the first. My shoulders and wrists were aching from the riding position, knees were unable to bear heavy peddling (they don't want to bend at all now!) and my feet had gone numb from having to wear shoes! Oh yeh and the toe I'm pretty sure I'd fractured a few weeks ago was telling me it didn't want to do this anymore and puffed up a bit causing more numbness and pain in my feet.

The sea was a milky blue but clear beside the Mandora Pier.

Arriving in Mandorah the sea was incredibly flat, no wind. I collapsed in the shade of the shed on the pier and waited for the ferry. Within moments I'd drifted into a semi dream half sleep. Soon the ferry arrived, full of tourists headed for the pub. I dragged myself and my bike down the stairs and boarded the vessel... by now my body had given up the fight and I just wanted to lay down somewhere and have a nap! It was a grueling journey, yet again, but somehow the physical punishment does something good to my soul!

The trip home from the ferry was very slow. I'd read that Kris Larson was manning his mobile caffe, 'Brown Sugar', down at the yacht club and I was craving a cup so headed off that way but must have missed him by a day or two... Bummer! Dragged myself up the hill to Fanny Bay and then laboured along the bike path to a shady spot near the beach on Nightcliff foreshore where I lay down and dozed. I eventually made it home just before two, had a shower and collapsed... completely spent.

The scent of rancid coconut

There is a foot on my head and laughter at my back,
Nothing I do will release me from this trap.
Run around, jump, spin, stagger and fall!
Trapped in a spastic dimension,
Like a clown in a glass box.
Jump, spin, stagger, run around again
You can struggle and strive if you like.
To all ends, No difference made!
You will be greeted by more of the same.
Try to make it work but some things never change!
No talent, No chance, nor music or art,
Just these spastic jitters and a crumpled heart.


I lit a fire to calm my aching soul
Smoke billowed through the yard and the street
A few coconuts for fuel, and their rancid fumes filled the air
Peace torn apart in the smoke and choking stench
Dark birds gathered to pick over burned offerings
My wretchedness exposed
Ready to be devoured like flesh from scorched bones
No time to ponder or chance to grieve
Back to bread labor put away your dreams!

Sometimes every effort is met with calamity, shame and ridicule...
I take comfort, to laugh heartier, louder than the din that surrounds me!
Not hollow or empty but maniacally in Zen.
All is ridiculous, Lets not be serious!
The Gods of Olympia might scoff and scorn but to this life I was born. And so will proceed, whither my headstone does read, Here lies a joke, mock him while he sleeps!