Fluctuations in Landscape/Language/Lasagne - by Christine Howe
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Landscape
In early November 2019, fifteen writers, artists, designers and academics associated with the University of Wollongong’s Material Ecologies Research Network (MECO) gathered at Riversdale, a property run by the Bundanon Trust, on Yuin Country. Donated to the Australian government by Arthur and Yvonne Boyd, the Bundanon properties have been used for residencies, exhibitions, retreats and performances for nearly thirty years. Riversdale sits on a bend on the Shoalhaven River, surrounded by bush: there are small dormitories built into the hillside and a large common area that looks over the river. Massive sliding doors open out so the breeze from the river floats inside, carrying the rustling of leaves from the hill opposite and the sounds of wombats munching on the grassy slope. It also brings the flies and heat.
In chronological time, the four-day MECO retreat exists in the past: in 2019, before the multiple apocalypses of 2020. And yet, in my mind’s eye, here we are – writers, artists, geographers – on a bend in the river, talking about our shared coastlines. We tussle with the knowledge that the coastal areas we love are already experiencing the effects of climate change, and we brainstorm how we might create art that could help our communities envision a vastly different future. We talk, walk and write together. Other than breakfast, which we’ve all been asked to provide for ourselves, we also eat together, sitting on beanbags outside the common area, watching the rippling water easing downriver, towards the coast.
We talk about the effects of climate change, drawing on our different fields of knowledge to discuss fluctuations in temperature; fluctuations in freshness and saltiness in estuarine environments; fluctuations in wind strength and direction; fluctuations in population; fluctuations in mood. A river is dammed; dunes erode after being pummelled by storms; fresh water seeps through fractures in rock caused by generations of mining. As we talk, the wind ripples silver across the surface of the river. The glint of sunshine on water is eye-watering. Crows circle and call. A sea eagle rises on the updraft before swinging off in a long arc upriver.
At 5.30 one morning, my room-mate and I go walking. Along the river flats the wind is cold, but as we climb the hill we find pockets of sudden warmth, gusting through the spotted gums and burrawangs. The track is drought-dry. The leaves of young wattle are curling, brittle and thirsty. The smaller heathland plants are shrivelled and grey. Many have lost their spiky leaves. They seem to be shrinking into themselves. There is no smell of smoke. Not yet.
Language
The words we use to describe things fluctuate: take the word ‘weather’, for example. Mountains weather, faces weather, we are about to weather (or not) the sixth great extinction. There are attempts to mitigate fluctuations in weather: politicians talk of diverting coastal rivers inland; local councils drill for water in country towns; cotton fields and almond plantations are irrigated with river water bought and sold in a fluctuating market. Our language weathers with us. Daniel Findlay’s 2017 novel, Year of the Orphan, is set hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years in the future, on Pitjantjatjara lands, the same country that endured the mushroom clouds of Maralinga. In this novel, words themselves have weathered. The characters speak a truncated, tumorous dialect shaped by the harshness of the environment. There is very little water, even less kindness, and the language reflects this.
Or take the word ‘mask’. Last year saw fluctuations between shortages and stockpiles: P2/N95 masks, reusable masks, disposable masks. Friends of mine who were evacuated from Candelo to the Bega showground as the Border fire swept up from Victoria used wet tea-towels to avoid inhaling the thick smoke. Several months later, as NSW emerged from lockdown, another friend – a dressmaker – received orders for hundreds of face masks. Before COVID, most of her income came from sewing dresses for bridal parties. In 2020, when she wasn’t making masks, she was sewing zips on body bags. The question – what masks do you wear? – is now more likely to be taken literally than figuratively. The floral reusable, or the surgical disposable? Elaborate carnival masks are sold to tourists in Venice’s sinking streets. The imperative for economic recovery in Australia masks deals that undermine environmental protection laws.
Lasagne
On the final day of our MECO retreat, we gather around a length of tables, joined end-to-end and spread with butchers paper covered in handwritten notes from our discussions during the retreat. The person next to me reads out a point scrawled in green texta: ‘fluctuations in landscape’. ‘Oh,’ says someone across the table, ‘I read that as fluctuations in language.’ There’s a jostle and a burst of laughter as someone at the other end of the butchers paper chokes out, ‘I thought it said fluctuations in lasagne!’
We eat dinner together that final night of the retreat, looking out over the twilit river that in several months will be smothered in smoke from the Currowan fire. It’s not lasagne: it’s chickpea curry. It would be better with yoghurt. For a moment, I vacillate between the desire to retrieve the last of my creamy Tamar Valley yoghurt from the fridge and dollop it on my curry, and the knowledge that there are fourteen other people I would need to share it with. Too many to have any leftover yoghurt for breakfast. And I really like having yoghurt on my muesli. I decide to live without yoghurt on my curry. Then someone gets my yoghurt out of the fridge and dollops it on his curry. I watch as it passes from person to person up the table, and I’m reminded of another meal.
I’m in the back of a truck in a game park in Zambia during a severe drought. We are about to see elephants, lions, hippos – a brief tourist-moment in the middle of a work trip. The day before, our small hire-van had jolted through a dusty village, passing children with distended bellies and thin legs. Before we set off, we are offered hot sweet potatoes cooked in their jackets. I love mine so much that when they are offered around again, I take a second. As I start to peel the skin from the sweet, rich flesh, I realise, too late, that any potatoes we don’t claim are going to be given to people who are actually hungry. Years later, I still feel the shame stuck thick to my tongue. The greed of wanting more, when I already had enough. There is a line in Kate Liston-Mills’s recently published collection of short stories, Dear Ibis, that I can’t shake: ‘some fires come from the darker spaces of a human heart’.
Almost a year after the MECO retreat – in the wake of the Currowan fire, the flooding of the Shoalhaven and a COVID lockdown – my family and I drive through Morton National Park. From a distance, through the car window, the once-undulating forest is now a beige pincushion punctured by blackened sticks. The sense of devastation, the scale of what has been lost, is overwhelming. We pull over on a fire trail. To the right are the bare rocky outcrops of the Budawangs; ahead, the road rises towards Sassafras, and somewhere to the north-east of us, on the other side of the Shoalhaven, is Riversdale. Up close, the bush, after months of good rainfall, is like a nursery overlaid on a graveyard – spongy ground covered with bright green moss, lichen, tufts of grasses, tiny purple orchids. A perfect kangaroo print in the ashy soil, the pull of the wind through charred banksias, orange fungi nestled on blackened bark, the lone call of a frog.
The current fluctuations in our political, economic, health, education and social systems take place in physical, lived-in spaces. During those four days at Riversdale, we ate, talked, walked, laughed and slept. Ideas and people bumped up against each other, or sparked off each other, and carried us in new directions. Sometimes we misunderstood each other. Sometimes, from those misunderstandings something new emerged.
That final night of the retreat, after dinner, I realised yoghurt had been provided for dessert. For everyone. There was more than enough to go around. ▼
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