The Truth of Isolation: response to a Ziln question.

Thsu in Furillin, wearing Vampire slayer boots and Caterpillar socks in S.L. (which can be reached on a sealed road).

“Why did you write, ‘Korda is isolated?’ What is so special about Korda? What is so special about Wyalkatchem? Wyalkatchem is just another ordinary wheatbelt town!” He threw these words out like a man on bitch-fodder. One of the local kids had a rash and I wanted a GP to quickly have a look because I had advised he shouldn’t go to a birthday party. I didn’t want to say so, but this looked like a light dose of chicken pox. 

The stories behind the gold rush towns are fascinating and colorful but we also have to remember that they were rife with hardship and disease. Many a poor barstard  spent weeks and months walking with a wheelbarrow to the goldfields hoping for wealth and just as many died from typhus and venereal disease. Before the railways reached the tent cities and before planned townships were settled, the bakers were usually the most vital business during the gold rush. In hindsight, wheat and water were  worth more than gold. 

In response to response to that particular doctor’s question, I humbly reply:

1. Well, you cannot purchase a pair of socks in Wyalkatchem. I had to drive to another town to purchase 3 pairs of Caterpillar socks in Dowerin for the princely sum of $34.00. I have to admit that they are bl**dy nice socks. 

2. You can’t purchase a pair of shoes in Wyalkatchem; in fact, I wear ‘ Rocko’ thongs that I bought in a petrol station in Harvey, a few hundred km away.

3. You can’t purchase a pair of underpants in Wyalkatchem and Korda but you can get them from Northam or have them shipped in by Australia Post. 

4. Korda and Wyalkatchem are isolated. Laverton is, I agree, m o r e  isolated  but you have to own a four-wheel drive or be rich to get to Laverton. Our communities are built on the bones of hard working farmers that feed the nation and we have sealed roads so you can get here in a cheap car. Our Nyoongar families are beautiful and share their stories with us. 

5.And…we give the kids the best stickers.

Urgent notice: Kings Park Skyworks for Australia Day 2017

The Skyworks have been cancelled tonight due to a tragic accident on the Perth Swan River involving a light plane. Two people have died in the river crash. Prepare for traffic delays. 3 hour delays between the north side and south side of the river are normal on Australia Day, but there is still traffic coming into Perth. Take your time. Go & have a coffee or a beer in the city and leave a bit later. It's too hot to lose your cool.

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.