Archive for category country
Tour de Snowy Mountains
The road from Tumbarumba to the Snowy Mountains Highway is called Elliot Way. It climbs and dips, climbs and dips, winding through pastoral land then tall forests, and over the Tumut River several times, before another steep climb to the winter-time snow fields above the tree line. It is a route that is apparently enjoyed by very fit cyclists. In summertime January it is hot and not very busy but, since I am not the hardy type at all, I chose to enjoy the scenery from my car. In the sun’s glare I almost missed these words of encouragement written, Tour de France-style, on the bitumen. All I can say is Vivent les amis d’Owen et Kathy for making the effort to cheer them on.
Tumbarumba tar
The first time we passed through Tumbarumba I loved the place. It had already started snowing higher up the mountains and in Tumbarumba the cold rain tinged the main street with a romantic grey patina. Icy water flowed down the gutters and the café where we ordered soup had books to read and a log fire burning.
This time we visit on New Year’s Eve and I am reminded that the midsummer sun is a great leveller, the glare off the asphalt erasing any architectural features of distinction. The main street of Tumbarumba might belong to any country town, with its mix of verandah post and IGA Supermarket aesthetics, the Lotto posters on the newsagency window, the racks of synthetic Made-in-China clothes standing outside once-glorious retail emporia, the same flies, the same listless teenagers flicking chips at each other as they suck Cokes at plastic tables outside the take-away. The cosy café we remember is closed for the Christmas-New Year period.
What perhaps distinguishes Tumbarumba are the dead, undecorated Christmas trees strapped to every verandah post and traffic sign – an odd civic nod to the festive season. In the heat they give off the nostalgic piney smell of Christmases past.
Sunset in Tumbarumba
And the pavements? The only embellishments I find are yellow stencilled shoe prints – perhaps the remnants of some heritage trail (you can just make out a pair of them in the photograph) – and one-inch square bathroom tiles, some red, some blue, randomly and very sparsely pressed into the concrete footpath.
As we squint at this streetscape a water truck trundles by sprinkling water, not to settle the dust (recent floods here have eliminated dust), but to cool the melting asphalt. Too late for us. We are standing in the shade of the pub awning, gouging tar and stones from the soles of our Crocs, collected mid-afternoon when we stepped out of the car in a side street.
Happy New Year to all.
Graffiti rocks
Posted by megan in country, personal notices, protest on 9 December 2010
Graffiti is usually spoken of as if it is an urban phenomenon, but of course people in non-urban areas do graffiti too. Often it is of the ‘I wuz here’ variety, some of which can be extremely elaborate. The graffiti on the Vee Wall at Nambucca Heads, painted by holidaying families, belongs to this category. But even this kind of folk-art graffiti is hated by people who dislike all graffiti on principle. They think it spoils the natural environment.
There are other people who use graffiti in campaigns to preserve the natural environment. For example, large messages painted on the road to Seal Rocks were made by locals protesting about a resort-style development proposed for the area.
I have written about how people see things in different ways in an article called Perceptions – Graffiti Rocks in Macquarie University’s Scan Magazine.
Hicks, M., 2010. Perceptions: Graffiti Rocks. Scan (Journal of media arts culture).
Writing on water – thoughts from Silverton (Guest spot)
Posted by megan in country, guest spots, signs & symbols on 24 October 2010
This week’s post was written by guest spotter Julian Holland, who is a science curator and historian. Julian has been travelling recently in far western New South Wales.
Water – and there is a steady insistent drizzle as I write – water remains the central conundrum of the European experiment in settling Australia. Water is invisible in most of the Australian landscape most of the time. But sometimes – at rare intervals – it appears in abundance, even excess. Much of the drive for Australia’s exploration in the nineteenth century was the search for water – for an inland sea around which agriculture could develop and for navigable rivers which could transport people and produce to markets.
But the explorers’ quest gave way to the reality of Goyder’s Line, the boundary in South Australia beyond which rainfall could not be relied on for agriculture. The disjunction is marked on the landscape by a sudden shift in the character of vegetation.
Yet the myth of water remains powerful. In the old school house museum in Silverton, beyond Broken Hill, plastic stencils of different states reminded me of this. Apart from their boundaries – coast lines and surveyors’ lines – the only features they could guide a child’s pencil along were the courses of rivers and boundaries of lakes, patterning impressionable brains with the idea of water in the landscape.
The river that runs through Silverton, Umberumberka Creek, most of the time doesn’t run anywhere. It is a river of sand. It is characteristic of Australia’s dry land rivers, visible in the landscape as a ribbon of larger trees, their roots embracing the invisible river below the sand.
Instead of the ephemeral ripples of wind or insect or falling leaf – or the splash of oars – these rivers of sand carry slightly more enduring inscriptions.
Heading back to Broken Hill, on the outskirts of Silverton, the road bows down in courtesy to a passing creek – a feeder to the Umberumberka – dry too much of the time to warrant a bridge, the possibility of water, or the probability of its absence, marked by lines and depth measures of 0.50 and 1.00 metres. We inscribe the landscape and the landscape is inscribed in us. The two landscapes do not always match.
Hot dawg
Posted by megan in country, personal notices, tags on 28 August 2010
On a wintry day in Orange (mid-western New South Wales) my graffiti-sensing camera picked up the ghost of a boastful hoon, faintly discernable through the sheen on the wet asphalt in the council car park. Street dawg 94 seems to be making a reappearance after being painted over years ago.
The dawg’s inscription is autobiographical. He has written himself into the landscape of Orange. I wonder if he revisits the site to remind himself of what he used to be?
Road romance
Posted by megan in country, personal notices on 3 July 2010
Bulli Pass, NSW
Pavement graffiti is not confined to the city. A drive further afield always turns up something good. I was heading to Sandon Point, north of Wollongong, to look for protest graffiti on the ground associated with locals’ action to prevent development of the site. But on the way, at the top of Bulli Pass right where cars veer off the main highway at 100 kph to take the twisting descent down the pass, I found declarations of love: DALE 4 SHELL and UM 4 JODEE.
Only fleetingly readable, surely these messages written at such a dangerous spot
are evidence of great gallantry.
Tim P
The label ‘gay’ remains a term of abuse in many situations. This piece of oversize graffiti is on Lakes Way, the road between Bulahdelah and Forster, a seaside holiday area on the central coast of NSW. It raises several questions. Is Tim P actually gay and is he being outed by the graffiti writer? Or is ‘gay’ the worst insult the writer could think of in retaliation for something Tim P has done? Why is it written on a road? Why this road? Why at this spot on the road? And by broadcasting the message to a wider audience and revealing its location, am I complicit in the vilification of Tim P?
Summertime memories
At Nambucca Heads, on the NSW mid north coast, one of the cultural attractions is graffiti – of the mum-and-dad-and-the-kids variety – applied in house paint to the twin breakwaters called the ‘Vee-Wall’. It all started in the 1960s and now photographs of the wall are featured on postcards and tourist brochures
Read the messages and you will find stories of people who have enjoyed their holiday at Nambucca and want others to know it. Honeymooners who have returned to find they still love the place (and each other). Families who come back year after year, adding the names of new babies to the family rock. Overseas tourists who want to leave their mark on Australia. Teenagers who reveal their current crushes. Names, dates, tributes to Nambucca and thanks to God are all here, many decorated with pictures of family members or the fish they caught.
Shity Road
There are city roads and there are shity roads. Pavement graffiti is not just an urban phenomenon. This was on the Castlereagh Highway near Walgett in far northern New South Wales.