Girls with green hair

Awe struck by the number of girls I see with green hair lately....
Seems like everywhere I look there's more green.

Having recently commented on the green cycle path that caught my eye on Monday morning I called in at the local supermarket and came across a couple of young ladies with green hair. I hadn’t intended to focus my attention on the colour green but for some reason, maybe the unusual tone, the colour green has caught my attention. I lingered outside the shop for a little while, procrastinating over whether or not I would dare to ask if I can take their photograph. Predictably I got on my bike and cycled away… Unpredictably, when I reached the street I decided I really wanted to take their photo, so I turned around and tentatively approached the group of half a dozen girls and ladies who were still waiting outside the shop. As they were chatting in a language which I recognized as Yolngu matha I approached the older of the two girls and explained awkwardly that I am collecting images of green things and I liked the colour of her hair. They all stared at me like I was mad…. (Standing in my shorts, thongs, green safety vest, flabby gut protruding, straddling a rig of my long bike, towing some other bike which looks like it could have been stolen) So we get into a brief conversation which begins awkwardly, (as it should given the unsolicited approach by an older man) I discover that the group are Yolŋu from Galiwin’ku… Well after about two minutes of exchanging relational connections, I discovered that I was talking to my Gutharra, Gaminyar, and Mukul Bapa. (Adoptive family references) "Hey no problem Mari." I’m sure they all still thought I was mad but with extended families as big as Yolŋu have there’s no shortage of mad adopted misfits. Hoping to get a decent shot I am hurried with the demand “Bundi, bundi, bundi” (quick, quick, make it snappy) So it was that I quickly took this photo, which does not do the girls or their hair any credit at all but I will treasure as a moment not lost but taken without regret. Rewarded with moments of green. 

Drawing by Alison Dowel

Then at home I discovered this beautiful green haired Folkie Punk-rock guitar playing superstar kid!

Splasha Green

A hue caught my eye,
A splash of green
radiates up from warming bitumen inky and black
Bright mangrove leaves feather the fringe
Soft background, bright green foliage, turned to the sky
Bird haven
Shaded wetlands ride
Light filtered by salt stained leaves at dawn
Life breathes in, the remaining cool
That moment, magic,
The impending glare.
Car, traffic begins to churn
Early morning, grinding thunder, hot engines, diesel fumes.
Concrete curbs mark the street, only centimeter's high
Commuter lives corralled, between the road the sea and the sky
Pedestrians and cyclists look to the shade.
Green paint on the bitumen
A place to cross, but nowhere to go, no path no track no way
Step out, take a chance and dash to the other side,
figure the rest out if you make it alive.
Green is the sign, where is the way?

That green, it mesmerizes me,
strange, not belonging, out of place
I had a tin of that colour once.
It reminds me of home.

Simplify

Right now here in Darwin we are experiencing the eye of category 1 Cyclone Carlos. Prior to the development of the tropical low and the accompanying 'very' wet (Over 400mm in 24 hours) weather I was busy getting on with simplifying my life and leaving the blogging world behind me. Just give it up, cold turkey like a bad habit or addiction... (I'm sure Thoreau wouldn't have spent his days blogging...! He'd probably have some great derogatory description for those who waste their time on such egocentric nonsense)

Instead of blogging mindless 'twitter' I have been reading 'Walden' by Henry David Thoreau and spending my days exploring, walking, paddling, planting etc... and loving it! But now I'm housebound, taking shelter from Carlos, the Wind and the Rain,and I'm too close to the computer to resist.

Here's some things I've seen over the past month or so.


(A great train headed south)


(A walk through the mangroves amongst the Mud-skippers)


(A mossy wonderland)


(Wild Ginger on a hillside in Litchfield National Park)


(Giant Myrtle Beach trees in a sacred gully in the Otways)


(Paddling a swollen river in Geelong)


(A living sculpture of plants and food in Collingwood)


(A magical era of bicycle innovation and invention)

Over the past month I have enjoyed some really wonderful experiences. I have shared most of these with the ones I love and we have felt blessed to live in a place that has so much natural beauty and to have the right to travel freely to almost any place we like in this country. 

I have also seen the continued trauma and pain suffered by Asylum Seekers and the lack of compassion shown by our Governments, media and many members of our society toward these vulnerable people. 

I have seen the continuation of racist policies and sanctioned discrimination against Indigenous people in the Northern Territory and I have seen the destruction and defilement of places that are incredibly dear to me.

It's a busy time in this life and everything seems to be moving way too fast. I resolved at the end of last year to make better use of my time and not bother too much with useless things. The more practical the better and there's no point to prattling on about it. I may find that while tapping away on this keyboard I have missed a perfect opportunity to learn to knit, sharpen a tool, identify a plant, skin a rabbit or grow a bean! Right now I could be writing a letter to a certain Shire Council challenging them on their decision to allow developers to channel their stinking festering drain pipes from their environmentally disastrous housing estate straight into the Plenty River that I love!
Maybe if I'd had just one spare day I could have spent it collecting all the shit that has washed through those drains and dumped it in the nearest showroom of that housing estate? Now that would have been time well spent!


(The destruction of the fields where I used to roam)

I took my boy out to the fields so he could experience the fresh air, the smell of the grass and to feel the dry bark and clay under his feet just as I did when I was his age! Alas I was too late! They have taken it all away!