Well, here we are … and there we were. Among it are a pair of feet tuned like unto eardrums to the ground listening, feeling the ephemeral and events heralding.
The feet unclad, well travelled callous, easily reflexed to stealth health and fun above the soils and leaf crunch of a well-watered territory of awesome multi-season dynamics jeweled with living intrinsic, wafted in air, currents, rustles, bubbles and nothing missing. Maybe another abalone shellfish … that make the family happier.
The tall island walker, eyes lofty above an ant scurrying over a mountainous big toe, not only standing but being at a stage of his motion and sweaty from pursuit of furred food, is present on sloping land at the edge of a swathe of tea-tree scrub by a sparkling brook that was far wider than his leap. To the side, glassy flowed reflections of tall tall trees lightly swaying at the tips way up there in the breeze bearing prahna from vast ocean westage. His eyes are seeing currently north-east across the tidal brook estuary past well rooted aged deep blue green brown trees casuarinas fronded. An eagle bird settles talons a salmon fish near a shore distant, even by canoe, across a river flowing deep and engrossed in the salty flavor of the sea. Close in his gaze is a small island by which the bracken brook waters joined that salted deep. He could shimmy across the brook bank, along the wet sandspit and rock-hop across there to join the family, old and young breasted and chested smiled and disgruntled, at the treasured fire brought over by ember.
Being here is beautiful, among other parts, a day, five days, a moon away around and back; all of which he knows well. He feels it, he doesn’t think it – not at all … he doesn’t read – words … no idea. He stood firm a moment unaware to interpret the vast amount of what his feet could hear – behind the local worms, minerals and mountain echoes – emanating from an antipodean activity where two numbed leather-clad feet stood dead deaf on a squashed cockroach. These feet’s ears a world away up on their head hear the rhythmic lapping of brine on planked hull. There are gull birds there too, but there is additionally on shore immense peopled activity and among it his family is swaddled in and among many small townhouses allowing only smaller squares of sunlight and one-sided fire. The eyes everywhere in these vaguely title-boundaried built ownerships are absorbed in skyblocked constructed cupboards, hot plates, pump taps, oil lamps, constructed seats, beds and tables – all secured in cooked clay shelters and sawn nailed wood. The earth sound at this other side is further stifled under the leathered feet by constructed floor, a solution against the trampling of the virgin grass a generation ago. Stifled and missing here; as the pavement grows the consensus view notices nothing missing. A molecule of smoke blown round from the southern ocean finds company with that belching from coalfired chimneys among thousands of houses and tooled workplaces stores and markets all of fixed abode. And clothes; seeking washing machines to free them from smelly sweat and washboard wear. There they were …. well on their way … ahoot and hey hey. Something has made them well on the way to solar cells, extended leisure, reading screens and optic conduits …. all will spring from an earthy heart, continent or island. Not all earthy beginnings find attention to such things. Maybe it’s King Billy’s cousin by marriage standing a while longer on the brookbank near this tiny island off an island.
Through his feet came no comprehension that the hand of the land of the bustling city was about to clasp his own – we trust so and as it should – in this raw natural territory of firm notional boundaries securing hunting, people & personal effects among across an unowned common land. The hand arrived, several moons later gripped by a crewman crossing a plank of English oak from that boggling huge canoe that had been in the vicinity with white flapping wings of sorts onto that island, as it was conveniently steeply deep – the campfire, then elsewhere upbrook in sight of the old camp’s biodegrading coals, by nimble feet only a minute away. There was no comprehension but his feet always remembered that spot on that bank. The spot was and remains locally pivotal between the big river, the little one, the little island (little toe of kananyi, the mountain) and the nape in which he later camped; there were fossils gondwanian and they remain there now. There were shells and bone, stone shaped on the far east coast and the ground’s all but invisible patina of pattering listening feet large and small, busy and leisurely – mostly all still there resting all covered and changed and shifted.
This teller knows you know the story of how our man was still standing in that spot the hand, that should and may well have extended, eventually would have buried him to his thighs with stone drawn from his nearby echoing patina-ladened playground, capped with a macadam crush and more eventually again with a hands depth of bitumen from God knows where – on top of that a grotty soot from automotive brake shoes. In there too an imported working elephant let go a faecal pat, opening thought and freshening the broader nature. There he’d be standing in the shiftings of time, no idea of the sign ‘Campbell Street’ in front of a huge high face of biscuit coloured brick casting shadow and blocking blue clouded birdways. His spine shivered a little as he stood there clinging to his home; the rock-hop across to the little island now made easy walk and carriage from that flapping planked vessel to the flapping canvassed humpies up on the rise; all under the name of some key person, antipodean and not even anywhere near here – yet under the captains handheld hat felty and folded. Nothing at all like mudded dreadlock, possum skin or sea salted black curls – flint tool in hand. At his left the sparkling brook was grotted, buried to make a market place, a city hall (with capitals ha) … and snappy little domes on the corners.
Over his shoulder a colorful little pub and over the other, the new government built port interiors – leaving a little patch of the actual original brookbank shining through gasping for air; for it lived down there. Directly behind him and aligned to the rockhop runs a bitumen ribbon named macquarie, with capitals, – white thermoplastic markings, traffic lights and concrete edging – trucks, cars mind warping coloured forms running through him and onward by the biscuit coloured morning-sky-blocking bricked interiors. That big box full of rooms where people would go and then come and go to other interiors and cars again, buses at least three quarters blinkered, conditioned and even blinded by the trap of interior that has grown, being rooted in the discovery of ironsteel, in old London town stamped like an ink stamp cloning an odd phenomenon over the natural awe here in unviolated unsullied gondwanian raw. His spine shivered and his feet never forgot that spot and never listened to the woolen rugs in the govenor’s office. The governor’s advisor never thought to heritage list the Rock Hop as the umbilical of the pretty city of hobart. That umbilical, stomped across by deaf feet in bitumen soles hearing a drummer who wanted mostly horrible interior to hold lots Londoners in prison, bound by that ironsteel that shaped the axes saws and room boom. No these people were not like that – they heritage listed the city hall of course. But no not the Rock Hop nor kananyi’s little toe. Dam the little redback spiders, little native orchids and sleek sunned blue tongues all in an indigenous urban heart right there – an indigenous urban heart … right there. There’re plenty more elsewhere, for their wilderness was always just a barrel roll away, and then another barrel roll, and then a can’s throw. Now land and ocean are drudge dry underpinned by that ironsteel. They brought on beautiful boats the internalised (even on the wild ocean) and too the horrible bacterial sully of sniffle fever and die; grotty fermented sewage festered cholera.
The beginnings of the dirty armpitted city that enabled the perfect flexing sturdy of ballet floor, metal technical of saxophone, huge glass window, sleek liquid display, dimmer switch, little black box of music and … the awesome high end of peopled society the alfresco coffee.
They know frames of sticks and bark …
The teller knows you may be conditioned and blinkered. The Firsts of kananyi’s land scratch their heads. They know frames of sticks and bark, fully earth nurtured – complete with webs but only if left too long. A sharply edged gabled box, sealed, light-coloured interior, eight crisp three-planed-corners at floor and ceiling, awash with novelty, sitting in rich natural context; squares, prisms, corners, doors; a drawer holding a match-box – something fallen to Earth. So many people, for so many hours of so many days for so many years, are subject to the quiet bombardment of so many three-planed-corners. The corners counterplace the circular belt of sky that blends with the horizon below it and the dome of the heavens above. That belt remains there, thank God. Maybe it’s shrouded by depleted over-head forest leaves and life, distant it mooches warmly present, bombarding orgone glow, behind the flat white ceiling, walls and that skewed corrugated roof of unknowing. It is very significant: the roombooming corners counterplace the awesome dome of the fabled heavens above, behind the shade of the flat white ceiling & walls. The tight little boxes were cracking like egg shells and surprised lizards were too slow for the hawks. The interior with the three-planed-corners moulds our attention habits; into forms that differ to those made from wholesome embrace of the dome of the horizon. Closing the door may bring a touch of adversity. We need the solid tactile mooch of a polished tree limb flow through the windows of the eight cornered box but we often have to drive many miles to properly find it – and then we must return.
He never felt the governors carpet nor the captain‘s cabin and never inkled an understanding of the nuances of those antipodean vibrations. He dreamed that night of a thick sandstone box containing crowding two men; it was hovering and buffeted clang and tear trickle in ocean cloud arcing across the world and was supplied in the meanest of ways by uniformly clad key jangling owners of land and things. It bought death and sprouted an urbia – from such a gene pool comes a new era Tasmanian who would starve before discovering the bushland berries while realising to love what they destroyed and to fight for truly just politics void of blindness and greed. If we can believe in primeval and lightning, here we have it again. If we don’t we are quickened by the truth itself and culture on; discovering the idiosyncrasies of natural peopled place – the very same that the british bulldog came upon. More treasure now missing than what they brought; if we count life, local wisdom and the hindsight of valuing, for a city centre, the soul of what was already here. An authentic identity of place supplanted by a synthetically propped exotic.
That place where this First’s footprints may be detected by hyper sensitive detective technology could well do with a small reminder more powerful than the local cenotaph – an ever over-riding cynic settling above that reminder on a cultural banner pole arm, grasping with one claw, the temporal winner in the warped humour of a timeless native crowbird, on the bag in its claw a capital M, watched by some at a latte table, it looked around for peace enough then put in its face to beak one of the fries sneaked from a nearby innocent afflicted fatty. Afflicted – with any of many social disease and new environmental chemistries – greeds, cholesterols, social, mental and sexual maladjustments, tumours, blinkers, mind noise; throwing off the balance needed for a humming mental-electric bio-dynamic burgeoning beauty city enjoying the happy acknowledgement of all of all creatures in a wonderful wonderful world.
The misplaced hotel …
In this context our man with hearing feet in a small city with foreign antennae is remembered via culturally established funds – a life size huon pine laser cut figure, feet on his homeground standing thigh deep in a set bitumen river mid macquarie and mid market place gazing north-east through the misplaced hotel wondering why. Why ever didn’t they design the lobby to value the kananyi water, the Rock Hop and the little island – at least. Surely can be seen even commercial value in this. The cultural funders followed through with a big glazed arch where the brook flow penetrates the macquarie façade, interpreted water flow to an internal natural water-featured expanse, muraled, written and grown imagery through rocks to bitumen, café boutique dining and hotel bookings and through the other side to the docks. The traffic can just slow … to go around the lasercut pine honouring a presence there today. Let it slow and go around; the drivers and passengers ay … to break the humdrum and breath the air to realise how close they are to the little cove and that local geographic pivot by which they no longer drive blind and traffic blinkered. Throw up four prominent poles, one on each the far campbell/macquarie corners, one behind him by the old pub and one across macquarie there aside the port buildings and the original bank still exposed and treed because it lived down there. This will mark a rectangle place for generations to feel the soul of the meeting of two peoples, of land meeting sea, of vast ocean powers, of bio-geomorphic nurture of their little growing city. It will mark that under there is the Rock Hop far more important to this local place than the sweet old lady city hall; she will grow new use from this memory. It will mark the buried brook once oar navigable to wellington court upstream and down, a wet link to the wetter out there and the silver flow back up the mountain. The poles are high to be seen from franklin square and central cove. They will present the characters of their place – one pole huge felt hatted for the ship’s captain, one woollied for our man, the other two for water and land far and near. The cultural kneejerk of the impassioned carried the day to a healing hey hey, hey hey … ay.
Another created synthetic prop but this: to authentic people and place at the heart of city settlement in indigenous land; the same in cities the world-over where the pompous have perched and traded soul of place for trinkets or else. That place where cities are born, flowering synthetic constructions with places within, blooms to become islands of types and servers for the lands between, lands which indeed spread to the places between the flowers – all looking to rosiness and identity where the agonies dare not fly.
*Monte John Latham, born mid century in Hobart, is a local artist, writer and architect married to a Kiwi, and parenting five children. He lives in Midway Point 7171 having remained 95% local since birth. He has written: Homartian – A small book: People, pleasure, character & truth in Hobart. There Are – ebook: A short few words: identity, people, place. Housefandango – 330,000 words; the facts & romance of housing as a verb. House Essence – ebook: An essence of HouseFandango.
