‘Kulibibi. Baba yalu kurrkamala, jaja
(butterflies are flying everywhere)
Waanyi dictionary, 2012’
‘The haze swirled into s-bends, and made the whole sunrise madder. It whorled, reigned in, and tightened into a frenzied dance over Praisworthy, then exhaled a tinkling shower of vapour, dawn dew droplets dampened the town, settling everywhere, and creating a humidity mingled with slithers of negativity in pre-dawn story mutterings about what had been fed into the metaphorical stomach.’
- Alexis Wright, “Praiseworthy”, 2023 – pages 1 and 83
It took me six months to read Alexis Wright’s epic work Praiseworthy. More pages than not are dogeared or passages and words underlined. This cosmic and monumental work describes the violent and racist reality of colonialism. Beautifully. It’s ugly and magical poetry.
I imagine Praiseworthy is set in Wright’s ancestral Waanyi Country - a long way north on the Gulf of Carpentaria, from down here in Eltham on Wurundjeri Country where Alexis and I live (I met her in the Eltham Bookshop once). However, there’s no place you can really escape living in the time of environmental ecosystem collapse. Eltham roads are gridlocked with oversized utes and American-style pickup trucks like Rams and Ford F-150’s spewing slicks of toxic fumes and powering up pedestrian head injury trauma numbers like there’s no tomorrow. ‘The bush’ here is riddled with plastic bottles and bags layered and ingested by the flourishing growth of plants well-watered by the creek.
However, weirdly, getting closer to where the barbaric and aloof system of colonialism and capitalism literally touch the non-human world is strangely comforting for me. The humming of insects and birds harmonising with the deleterious drone of cars. There’s a bird call that sounds to me like crystalline glass chiming clearly over this symphonic churr. It calibrates my overstimulated and anxious mind.
Most days I walk our dog along the Diamond Creek past the local high school. It’s good to slip away from the peopled part of the world and get amongst the trees and other more-than-human beings. To leave the main asphalt paths for the less travelled clay and feel the soles of my feet pushing through my shoes toward the ground.
Apart from pleasing Benji, I am a proud ‘thing-finder’ (a la Pippi Longstocking) and am often excited by what treasure I might find along the way. My eye is as keen as any bird’s when it comes to locating shiny metallic junk food wrappers amongst the grey-green foliage. I collect discarded soy fish, bottle tops, pen lids and Extra chewing gum wrappers. If my eye is better than the birds on some days, I might find a dead moth or other insect. Often amongst the floral and faunal debris are brightly coloured feathers or interesting leaves and gumnuts. There was a high school hangout replete with discarded bongs and deodorant cans, deep in the bush and off the beaten track, that I used to find Eltham High ‘Toilet’ passes along the path to. These spaces are virulent and simultaneously vital. They feed my art materially and conceptually.
Traveling a little further out of Naarm and up into Taunarung Country, at Toolangi, I joined a BioBlitz run by Kinglake Friends of the Forest where I met Mengjie doing her post doc on Heliozelidae moths. They are tiny and have a symbiotic relationship with Coprosma quadrifida or Prickly Current Bush. I was excited to venture further afield and escape the depressing and destructive stranglehold of cruel everyday capitalism and move closer to the enchanting and magical ways of the more-than-humans. Paradoxically escapist but signed up to help record what will be lost if Fire Forestry Management Victoria continue their ruinous practices, unbeknownst to me, it was Mengjie’s nets that drew me in. I got caught up in her very close research. I too like to look closely but am a slightly different kind of moth-er.
The world is brutal, and magical.
With thanks to Alexis Wright for Praiseworthy and Mengjie Jin for her work with Heliozeldae day moths and for featuring in the artwork. Thanks to Kinglake Friends of the Forest for keeping me informed about what is going on and can be done about environmental destruction close to home. Thanks to Eugene Howard of InPlace who has provided inspired thought and space to think and create at Garambi Baanj for a long time now. Also, thanks to the Paradoxa Collective who care for Bunjil Reserve and collaborate, like InPlace, on projects that preface care for place through artistic practice. Thanks to the ongoing support of the VCA photo Department. Thanks to my family for practical and artistic support. And thanks to Storm for looking at my work and for concluding that net works.