A poem by dheborah: BLACK COCKATOO TRIBE.

BLACK COCKATOO TRIBE

Red rings for eyes,

held he

the dead chick

In his black beak.

The tribe drank from the broken concrete

Bird baths

in my back garden.

Two years I waited

After

Silent black cockatoos came two,

at fourty degrees and three.

Two winters. One summer.

Sixty seven nights, and

One dawn.

 This year

Fifty intoxicating, black and white winged chess pieces

 landed around me,

Bringing me

bird turmoil.

They chopped off my flowers.

A poem : 'Stainless steel bobbin case'.

illustration by Dheborah

‘Stainless steel bobbin case’

By Deborah Quirke

An equi-distant, circumferential silver mask

with one gaping black eye in the centre of my face.

My nose flips open to one side.

A door covers my string-like brains.

I am neat. A miniature, 

rocket-launched, unpowered, revolving space shuttle 

but 

my soul 

is merely a coil.

My face latches on to 

an uncomfortable machine all day  

and 

I 

can’t 

             breathe.

The Belier Wetlands Dichotic : R-F-C trees for Kwinana and Roe highway roadworks.

photograph taken in Quairading

The Roe highway extension to Fremantle, which is proposed to cut through the Belier Wetlands, has many voices. Connect with our land is more than protesting. It is likely that construction workers also sympathise or have family and friends that sympathise with the plight of wildlife. 

One of many  definitions of 'dichotic" : involving or relating to simultaneous stimulation of the right and left ear by different sounds.

Using a dichotic approach, my first consideration is the effect on the birds. You can usually hear them coming. The Carnaby Cockatoos and Red-tail black cockatoos take incredible risks to cross the Kwinana Freeway to reach the Belier Wetlands. It is one of their vital feeding areas. I once sat in my car on the slow moving, congested freeway during road-works, watching as a group of between 20 and thirty of the birds hesitated for a second, then flew over me in a tight group at a height of only 2 meters. They would have been scared. There was a line of a few hundred trucks and cars. They never made a sound.

The Roe highway extension has made me think about how the birds will cross over roads and road-works safely. This used to be a country that cared. Is it possible, and I think it is, to create Shire or state regulations that make it mandatory (such a simple measure for architects and road planners) to leave trees that connect flight paths and food areas for birds during road constructions. An example of this, would be to leave four or five high standing trees on opposite sides of a freeway (e.g. Banksias, gum trees) so that the birds can rest, feed and connect. The Rest-Feed-Connect trees will be rest and shelter spots in bad weather when bird flight paths are interrupted. The brilliant green feathered ring-necked parrots cling to branches and tree trunks during storms. The cockatoos travel back and forth between the Wheatbelt and the Perth metropolis. The younger cockatoos cannot fly the bigger distances until they are 2 or 3 years old. When we strip the R-F-C trees, we put the babies at high risk of perishing. 

The cockatoos watch us too. The R-F-C trees will be ideal for these intelligent, endangered birds to watch us so they can plan their feeding and flight routes. R-F-C trees seems so simple and logical from my perspective. 

Deaths of divers in Australian waters - November 2016

It has suddenly occurred to me that the unprecedented number of diving deaths which have occurred in Australian waters in the past 3 days, should not to be merely brushed off as being a result of having 'underlying medical conditions'. Two more have been reported today...at Garden Island (Perth) and in Tasmania. That explanation would be too simple. It would be too one-eyed if any intelligent person on earth accepted this.

We know that various highly toxic, venomous stingers (such as box jellyfish and blue-bottles) proliferate between October and May. However, the most glaring thing that is staring at us... right before our noses is ...the sea floors are moving. We have had massive regional earthquakes. The sea floors have risen. Volcanic activity is happening-at this very moment. This is not a time to be in the sea.  Ask anyone with Maori ancestors. Just remember this...in the past, storms have carried clouds of butterflies between continents. 

Halloween ...it seems like a thousand years ago.

 

photographs by dheborah

I made some tiny terracotta pumpkins and  placed them on some linen napkins; found some delicate twigs; placed an antique candlestick on a large stainless steel tray; filled some martini glasses with eyeballs (the kind that stick to your forehead), and added three healthy sized plastic tarantulas...this made a tiny, but inviting, display on my porch for the trick-or-treaters that were brave enough to come to my door for a little bag of eyeballs, spider webs and plastic flies on Halloween. The pumpkins took about 24 hours to dry. I used 'monte mate'  air hardening modelling clay, which I picked up from Red Dot for less than five dollars, for the little pumpkins. I happened to have a bag of stick-on polystyrene eyeballs. An hour after I placed the tray outside, I caught a crow picking up the tiniest pumpkin, trying to escape with it in its beak. He put it down but a tiny detail got broken. The crow later left me a dirty old piece of bone (3 ribs from someone's spare rib dinner) jammed in my outdoor bench. I took that as an apology.

Western Australia: Aboriginal Cave paintings.

photograph taken by dheborah.

Aboriginal art on the rock of the cave roof at Mulcha's cave. A few minutes drive from Wave Rock, on a side road leading off a well-maintained dirt road, is Mulcha's cave. The turn-off is well marked  and the cave is only a short walk from the parking area. This is a significant place and contains a solid, traditional story that has been passed down by the ancestors. To get into the small cave, you do have to bend over and almost crawl in. Once inside, the rock will speak to you.

Western Australia: The Traditional land-owners 'Sharing the stories'.

photograph taken at the Beelier Wetlands in 2015 by dheborah.

Kwinana residents wait patiently to listen to listen to stories told by one of the Aboriginal elders. The Aboriginal people shared these tales on a beautiful summer afternoon, at their fire-pit. They also shared their food and invited us to take part in the smoking ceremony. The sensational stewed kangaroo and  vegetables will go down in history. The local Noongars have invited the local Kwinana people each year, to share this place. Unbelievably, the government has approved and  is about to rip through the wetlands with a highway for trucks to Fremantle harbour.