Maiden, Mother, Crone
Solstice of the Moon
Inverurie, Scotland
15th-17th September 2017
The gently undulating and fertile landscape between the foothills of the Grampian Mountains and the North Sea proved an attractive place to settle for the early Neolithic peoples colonising the furthest reaches of the British Isles. Nowhere else contains a greater concentration of late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age remains; from the earliest recorded flint mines, through numerous burial mounds and cairns, to the highest density of stone circles in the country.
Yet, there is a mystery. Unique to the area, with the exception of a few examples in the South West of Ireland, the circles of the region are exclusively of the “recumbent” type; a form largely intended for monitoring the “solstices” of the moon, more 
commonly referred to as the lunar standstill, with specific interest in the major lunar standstill which occurs in an 18.5 year cycle.
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It’s going to be a wrench, leaving Australia.
We’ve been here nearly a month and that’s the longest time we have ever been away from the UK. It has been a wonderful time. The star of the show has been the little lady in the buggy, above, and in the photo, below – our Granddaughter, Alice.
We’ve had time to really get to know her and we’ve become friends, not just relatives. It will be a while before we see her, again, but we have the miracle of Facetime and Skype to renew the friendship across the miles.
We’ve one final trip to do. To celebrate a family birthday, we’re off to the Barossa wine region, a short drive from Adelaide. We have a final overnighter in a B&B, then it’s a short, return to the family home, then a taxi to the airport, to hang in the sky for an unreasonable length of time, while we, literally, travel to the other side of the world…
Alice has done the packing of her most important things, as you can see from the photo above – the blankie and the left shoe…
It’s been a wonderful trip. We’ve had time to get to know Adelaide and its nearby seaside resort of Glenalg, with its fine esplanade.
We’ve developed a great fondness for Stirling – the lovely small town just down the hill, in which we’ve had endless goes on the kiddie swings and done most of the family shopping, giving our two hard-working doctors a rest – and a hot meal when they come in from their long shifts in the A&E Department of the city’s hospital.
We managed to fit in a just-us anniversary weekend in Melbourne, a fascinating and eclectic city an hour away by plane.
We’ve spent a lot of time in airports and planes. By the time we get home we will have been on fifteen different flights. But that is the nature of travel in such a large country. To be honest, flying in Australia is so easy that you can’t really believe how big the land is…
My personal highlight was Urulu – the Aboriginal name for Ayers Rock, right in the middle of the red desert at the heart of the Australian continent. I’ve covered our experiences there in other posts. I won’t forget this harsh but magical place – nor its deep connections with the guardians of the land…
Another set of planes saw us arrive in Brisbane, a very vibrant and cosmopolitan city, where the Brisbane River dominates the landscape and offers transportation for both work and leisure.
Our farthest point was Fraser Island, just North of Brisbane and a forty-minute ferry ride from Hervy Bay, the nearest point on the mainland. We’ll never forget the uniqueness of this beautiful sub-tropical paradise – nor its challenging ‘roads’!
And then it was back to Adelaide to recover… to spend some time, at Bernie’s request, in the famous Botanical Gardens.
It’s a superb Botanical collection, spread over three locations, though, due to the high fire risk at this time of year, two were closed and we only got to see the main one, in Adelaide’s centre.
We’ve faced some challenges; not least of which has been life at forty-one degrees as the car instrumentation shows!
The ‘Birthday Barossa’ beckons. Then, all too soon, we’ll be at the airport, checking in and beginning the long journey home, to be reconciled with Misti and Tess, our cat and dog, and a freezing Cumbrian winter.
Thank you, Australia… we’ll be back.
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We thought we had misheard; sitting on the back row of the four-wheel drive bus – yes, I did write 4×4 bus! There’s a picture below, just to prove it. There are four of them on Fraser Island, which is just as well because the only ‘highway’ on this 125-kilometre strip of sand is a perfectly straight eighty-kilometre beach facing the Pacific ocean.
The rest of the roads, as you can see in the photo below, are sandy tracks the width of a single vehicle. There are passing places – and all traffic must give way to the buses – but, unless you are a regular off-road driver with a powerful four-wheel drive car, you won’t get more than a few hundred metres from the arrival jetty at the Kingfisher Resort. In very dry weather, our driver/guide told us, it’s not unusual to find five or six cars bogged down in the first mile of the eastward track. There is, I would imagine, a lucrative rescue trade…
The 4×4 bus and a typical ‘road’
Our guide, who was also driving the four-by-four bus, really had used the words ‘Central Station’. As a frequent traveller to cities which do have ‘central stations’ this was confusing since we were approaching the middle of the ridge that defines the backbone of the island. But to economies that have a proud history of logging, the idea of a central logging station is not unusual.
Although Fraser Island should be just a strip of perfect sand, it’s not. The whole spine of the island comprises a sub-tropical rainforest that sits less than an hour’s trip from Hervy Bay (pronounced Harvy Bay), an hour’s plane ride North of Brisbane, but a different world…
This Central Station was the place to which the felled logs were brought for transportation down to the pier, near what is now Kingfisher Point, during the period of active logging on the island, which lasted from 1863 to 1991.
The sub-tropical forests of the island were and are, rich in species and host many of the tallest examples of their biological families.
Central Station, in its present form
But none of them should exist in this hostile place, at all. Fraser Island is essentially a vast enclave of what should be drifting sand dunes. The island is composed, entirely, of sand. In other words, it is a desert. Forests don’t grow in deserts…
Experience tells us that deserts are devoid of all but the most hardy of life-forms, such as sidewinder snakes and stag-beetles. But here, some of the world’s tallest trees sit within their own ecosystem fed by plentiful rainfall that not only builds significant and unexpected lakes but also overflows hundreds of gallons of pure water into the Pacific, every second…
There are two reasons for the lushness and fertility of this strange and exotic place: the first is the mixture of dry sand and organic matter, which forms a water-repellent barrier and leads to the formation of lakes and stream beds.
The second is something called mycorrhizal fungi and is the reason that Fraser Island does not have, nor needs, soil.
Image source: http://www.rootgrow.co.uk/mycorrhizal-fungi.html
Mycorrhizal fungi are an example of a symbiotic organism – a relationship (in this case) of plant and fungi which is wholly beneficial to the larger plant. They have been around since the fossil record began, around five hundred million years ago. They enable plants to extract nutrients and hold onto water in a way that allows sand to behave like soil. The roots of plants provide a home for the fungi; the fungi feed the roots…
They are the reason that Fraser Island is not one vast sand dune. Fraser Island is the only such example on the planet…
The only way to appreciate the full wonder of the forests, here, is to walk through them. Central Station is now an information centre and the base for a series of walks through the valleys and gulleys, below.
It is hard to believe that you are walking in the middle of a twenty-kilometer width of a tropical island made, entirely, of sand.
The sky is above you, somewhere, and sometimes puts in an appearance!
The water in the streams is so clear that you can’t see it from above. In the above image, the pure sand is at a depth of about a metre of water, but you wouldn’t know unless you were right over it!
Sadly, our tour ended too soon, and we boarded the remarkable bus for another serious bouncing and part two of the day… Lunch and an eighty-mile beach…
©Copyright Stephen Tanham 2017.
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Our trip to Uluru – Ayers Rock, had been a wonderful diversion from the modern – upon which so much of Australia is based. If you imagine the lower-right quadrant of a circle, our plans placed Urulu at the centre of an arc which began at Adelaide and swung clockwise (Eastward, then North) to Melbourne, Brisbane, Hervy Bay and then on to our final destination – the 125 kilometre-long Fraser Island.
Brisbane was the next destination on our ‘experience’ tour – something Medi, our daughter-in-law, had constructed in order to give us a flavour of several different parts of Australia in the limited time we (and they) had available.
From Urulu, we had to fly back to Sydney airport to make the connection to Brisbane. For the second time in the trip we looked out of the windows on what is clearly a spectacular city without being able to visit it – we simply did not have enough time to do it justice and so resolved to save it for our next trip.
Courtesy of Virgin Australia, we landed at Brisbane Airport in the early evening. The initial journey from Urulu to Sydney had been fraught, due to the small airport not being able to cope with the number of passengers. It brought back memories of Lanzarote in the 1980s…
We were only able to have a limited stay in Brisbane. The evening was taken up with Matt and Medi meeting some old friends from the medical profession – fellow emigrés. We joined them for dinner but left them all chatting at about eleven to get some much-needed sleep. We had the following morning and part of the afternoon to get to know a little of the city.
We woke, feeling refreshed. The view from the room’s balcony was spectacular.
Brisbane gets its name from the former Governor of New South Wales, the region to the south of Queensland. The name was bestowed, in 1823, by John Oxley, the first European to explore the huge river system. Incredibly, it was missed by all the previous explorers, including James Cook.
Image Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0
Brisbane is dominated by its river, which divides the city in two, though there are many, modern bridges. The river is simply named The Brisbane River and is the longest river in Queensland – of which Brisbane is the capital city. The river ends in Moreton Bay.
We needed to plan the day, carefully. We had young Alice with us, of course, and she had been a wonderful traveller so far. We thought it would be lovely to treat her to something special. Since we only had the day, we decided to take one of the many (free) boats down the river to a part of the riverbank which had an artificial ‘resort’, including a sandy beach, flowing waterways and fountains! Although we only saw this one resort, apparently Brisbane has many. Combined with the glorious sunshine, they are irresistible.
We had a light lunch in the lively district just behind the South Bank resort area, then gave Alice her treat.
We don’t get the weather in England, but I could just imagine the joy of Londoners if we had anything comparable…
Shortly thereafter, we had to leave to catch one of the water-buses, get back to our hotel and load our eight pieces of luggage (five of which are Alice-facing) into one of many oversized taxis we took on our varied travels.
Brisbane is a beautiful and confident city. I only wish I could write in more depth about it. Perhaps next time?
©Copyright Stephen Tanham 2017.
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And you may think I sail alone
That white elegance is paired for life
Once found
But there is a deeper love
Whose dancing visage
Plays more games of joy
Than any lover could.
In deeper pools, I look for you
Knowing the smiling ripples
To be your face…
For Sue Vincent’s #writephoto
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POSTCARD #243: New Delhi: A photo in the photo library of the mind got lost. I had it in a special place because I wanted to use it for this post, but now it’s gone and I didn’t make a note of file name, I’ve forgotten where I’d kept it and worse still, I’ve forgotten what it looks like. This is the problem. All I know is that it was a photo of sky that sent me off in the direction of thoughts like clouds drifting through the empty space of mind… blue sky, high altitude clarity – that’s all. So, how will I recognise it if I don’t know what it is? Hmmm I’ll know it when I see it, I suppose, hoping there’ll be some kind of familiarity about it, a pause before moving on to the next, thinking… that reminds me of something, what is it? And suddenly…
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The faded flower caught my eye as I was trimming the potted plants on the windowsill. The rich shades of its life and death were so striking they would make an amazing watercolour. Appropriate, really, as the flower was an Anthurium, the painter’s palette. The heart shaped bloom seemed too beautiful to simply add to the compost so I reached for the camera, thinking that really, I should have reached for the paints.
Then I realised that I haven’t painted once since I moved house several months ago. In fact, I haven’t even unpacked them. Granted, there is a problem of space. There is no longer a spare room to serve as a studio and storage area, but that excuse only works for the oils and the big easel. The watercolours would slip in a drawer.
I used to paint something every day, just to keep learning, even if it…
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It is, in the end, all about creation time. The meaning of this is not obvious to the Western psyche steeped in its causal logic, locked into this-to-that and the inevitable need, therefore to create this…. and the fear of not doing.
If you believe that we don’t create anything, that our role as a divinely inhabited observer is subtly different, then everything changes, and you can enter what the Aboriginal people called Dreamtime…
Only, they didn’t. What we call Dreamtime, meaning a kind of trance, is only a part of a way of harmonious living with the land and with others. This greater name is Tjukurpa.
Tjukurpa has little to do with dreaming. It does, though, have a lot to do with Ancestors. However, the dark-skinned gentlings of this place would say we don’t understand ancestors, either…
And then time shifts…
She showed me the gentling. On an old wooden floor where the pictures are made.
I had only been there for the shortest time when the understanding came. There was no single moment when it happened, just a sense, afterwards, of something profoundly present, where it had not been, before.
She knelt, perfectly at ease on the floor, as someone proficient in yoga might, her crossed and folded legs tucked under a thin blanket which acted as her artist’s table.
Before her, white-edged and black-centred, was her canvas, on which the Tjukurpa picture was emerging. It was the touch of her deft fingers on the simple brush that drew my attention, called my eyes to follow the circles…
If I really wanted to….
And time shifts…
The Urulu Ranger may have been related. I’ll never know. He had that tough bluster that marks out those men of the Anangu Aboriginal peoples whose home is the area around the Rock; the sacred rock, meeting of all paths, and as old as life on Earth.
The Rock. Her name is Uluru.
It doesn’t mean anything, it’s her name. The Anangu smile, amused that the minds of the pale folk must always find a reason to find meaning…
Time shifts…
The fingers painted the perfect circles on the black cloth canvas. There was no effort, simply harmony between finger, dark skin and white, softly-loaded brush. I leaned forward. Was she humming, faintly?
The Ranger took us to the teaching cave and pointed out the designs in crushed limestone and animal fat on the curved walls – walls that resemble the size and scale of the body of a whale, though no whales wandered here.
But perhaps they did? The Arkose rock, rich with Feldspar, itself the sedimentary attrition of millions of tons of old granite mountain forms the body of Urulu. It’s a body as old as the fossil record.
But she is not red from this sandstone.
She is red with the blood of iron.
Time shifts…
The brush paused between strokes; just for a second while the brown and gold flecked eyes flickered from their humble focus below to sweep across my watching.
I had joined her on the floor. Not doing as others had and staring down, but being with her as she created. The speckles of golden brown danced again before the white circle resumed its manifestation.
The Ranger had said:
When the boys grew hair on their faces they were deemed ready for the ceremony that would take them into manhood, said the Ranger. This is still used today. Their uncles would wash their faces and take turns in shaving a small area of the face until they were clean. Then, they would be presented to the tribe as young adults, ready to become hunters.
There would be feasting, crowned with the finest meat of the spiny ant-eater,, stuffed with leaves and baked in the burning soil, in a vessel made from wet clay so the spines could be removed with a single pull of the hot lid.
And eggs, half – but only half – of the eggs deposited in the Goanna lizard’s spiral birth tunnel, leaving enough for her and them, next year, to prosper.
The women would forage for succulent grubs, fresh berries and other bush-tucker.
All this would be laid before the freshly-shaved young men, the hope of the tribe as the greater wheels of life turned.
The older man, who may once have been a Ranger, but now teaches, in the community museum, is speaking.
“And then mother England poisoned our lands with their testing of atomic bombs. Land lost to us, forever.”
There is deep sadness that the land they love has been so hurt. I cringe at the arrogance of our history, but it is also the arrogance of the world’s history, and I am here to learn the gentling, not the hating… There is enough hating back home.
And then time shifts…
The way that her fingers paint the circles as she hums, speaks that Tjukurpa has a lot to do with gentleness and being taught by what’s really ‘out-there’. It’s a form of graphical tuition reserved for a special kind of canvas – the human body…
It’s a better way to capture true aliveness – the aliveness of Being.
And then time shifts for a final time and it is the morning.
It’s good to say thank you for gifts of understanding. A sacrifice, even a small one, can be a thank you.
Our day begins at 03:45 without breakfast so we can catch the first bus to greet the dawn at Urulu.
Eventually, we stand on the viewing platform with a growing number of others, but the chatter is not what we want.
We move down the trail to be lower, but nearer to the slowly brightening rock. It’s unusually cloudy and very little of the customary red-gold is coming through.
We find a place of aloneness and wait, hungry and unsure of success. It is not ours to make.
For a period of no more than ten seconds, the sun breaks through the clouds behind us. The body of the great lady of the rock is bathed in red gold… and, to the gasping amazement of those on the platform behind us, there is a rainbow.
My camera is poised. I’m lucky that the iPhone captures the shot, but it does. It’s a very English rainbow. Perhaps the sky knows how to forgive, too…
©copyrighted Stephen Tanham 2017.
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“Mama Mala, there is man missing – a tourist. He was last seen with you!”
“Yes, child, I know… the man who asked…”
Sigh…”Asked, Mama? What did he ask? How did he ask?”
“Water flows between the meeting places, child. He asked to see the waters flowing…”
“But he is not of the Anangu people, Mama Mala, he would not understand the ways…”
“He has a kind heart, child. Those with a kind heart can be taught. Our Elders spoke of this in the days when Uluru was young.”
“How do you know he has a kind heart, Mama Mala?”
“In the place where I paint the things of Dreamtime, and watch the world, he did not stand over me, as many do; he joined me on the floor and asked to watch.”
“What did you do with him, Mama Mala?”
“I took him to the teaching cave and showed him the hidden things.”
“The hidden things, Mama Mala! But the minds of the pale people cannot digest the hidden things!”
“Hush, child. He did well…”
“He is not ill, frightened?”
“No, child. He was well guided – through the field of light.”
“He sleeps?”
“No, child… he dreams…”
“Will he be found, soon?”
“He will be found when he wants to be found…”
©Copyright Stephen Tanham 2017.
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