culture and landscape
Earth
Sea
star
Western Australia
Fisherman’s Catch
Angus looked at the fish flopped lifeless in the floor of the dinghy. It wasn’t the most gourmet offering for Claire on her first weekend at the Bay, but it was a good feed just for the two of them. He tucked his rod away under the seats and hauled in the anchor. He pushed a button and the outboard sputtered to life. He revved it up, and headed back towards the Bay.He was just picking up speed, when a white flash caught the corner of his eye. He jerked on the… Read More
Forests for Industry or Forests for Life? Timber History in Western Australia.
Forestry is one of the oldest professions in Western Australia. Blessed with a bounteous supply of hardwood timber, the industry set the State on the road to prosperity. Now, in the twenty-first century, the environment is under pressure from declining rainfall and over-exploitation. Faced with a climate emergency and ecological collapse, the time has come to stop logging native forests. Western Australia is home to some of the most biodiverse biospheres in the world. The red continent has been stable for aeons, and in the south-west evolution has continued uninterrupted for 270… Read More
Return of the Fire Spirits: a review of ‘Fire Country’ by Victor Steffensen.
Fire Country is a masterpiece of Indigenous storytelling. Part autobiography, part landcare manual, it fans the flames of a cultural revival transforming contemporary Australia. Cultural burning is at the heart of Indigenous land care practices. After two centuries of suppression and misunderstanding it’s making a comeback. Faced with a landscape plagued by wildfires, public interest in fire as a tool for regeneration is gaining momentum. Steffensen plays a major role in the revival. We follow his journey as he finds his path with elders Tommy and George (Poppy) Musgrove. They feel that… Read More
Storms at Ningaloo: a personal essay
I was heading north along the coastline of Western Australia, immersed in expectations of Ningaloo dreaming. Turquoise ocean, white limestone, red earth and intense blue skies. Instead, as I approached Cape Range waves of dense mist rolled over the desert landscape. Termite mounds loomed out of the darkness, flashing by in a vista shrunk to a mere stage. We were being tailed on the remote and lonely road by another vehicle. Unnerved, I stopped to let it pass only to have it pull in behind me. Feeling edgy, I slid out of… Read More
The Stewart Karri: Western Australia’s tallest tree
At 85 metres high, the Stewart Karri is Western Australia’s tallest known tree, and one of the twenty tallest in the world. Hidden away in a remote valley near Manjimup, it is now under threat from a water harvesting proposal. The Stewart Tree was first named and measured in the 1940s during a search for tall Karris to turn into fire lookout towers. Other giants, like the Gloucester and the Dave Evans trees, eventually had spikes driven in and platforms built on top. But the Stewart remained pristine, left to grow in… Read More
Lake Ballard: Sculpture and Stars
Lake Ballard glimmers pinkly at the sky. For most of the year, the surface of the lake is not water, but salt. It’s just one of a series of relict water features dating back to the Cretaceous, when Australia was part of Gondwana. The drainage ran south-east through Lake Marmion and Lake Rebecca, and then towards the Eucla Basin, once an inland sea. Now, after millions of years of declining rainfall, the water evaporates before it runs away, leaving behind the salts from aeons upon aeons of rain. The lake is Wongatha… Read More
The Sculpted Shore
A photo essay on the limestone at the mouth of the Margaret River. The Margaret River empties into a sandy bay sheltered from the north by a limestone Cape. It is a complex liminal space, where fresh and salt water, land and sea meet. The delicate sculptures along the shoreline are easy to overlook. Margaret River has a spectacular coastline, and it’s easy to miss the small-scale beauty in the landscape in favour of those famous grand ocean vistas. The present Rivermouth was not always the shore. The sea has been at… Read More
Wisdom Walking: the Augusta to Busselton Heritage Trail
In October 2020 I’m planning to walk the Augusta to Busselton Heritage Trail, as a gesture of respect for Wadandi-Pibelmun people and their connection with country. The far south-west of Western Australia is a remote and wild corner of the continent, well forested and bounded on two sides by the sea. Traditional owners have lived here for over 48 000 years, building up a sophisticated cultural relationship with the landscape. But then, just a few centuries ago, everything changed. Tall ships began to appear along the coast, and before long newcomers moved… Read More
Lake Cave and the Magic Lantern
On the first images of Lake Cave, Margaret River In November 1900 three men descended into a crater in the far south-west of Western Australia. Abseiling down into a sunken forest and scrambling over rubble, they found the entrance to a stream cave draped with exquisite crystal formations. One of the men was budding explorer and photographer Charles Price Conigrave, and the images he took are the first ever taken in Lake Cave. The suspended table by Charles Conigrave 22 Nov, 1900. Reproduced from a print copy of The Windsor Magazine, date… Read More
The Giant Tingles of Walpole
The forest of the giant tingles is a jumble of shifting shadows and passing light. They stand tall, cloaked in undergrowth, huge boles and shallow roots grounding them into the ancient granite soils of southern Western Australia. Tingles grow only in a tiny area of forest around Walpole, a small town on an inlet to the southern ocean. The Walpole-Nornalup forests are thought to be relict descendants from ecosystems millions of years ago, when Australia was wetter with a more constant rainfall. The forests are unique: there are even recently discovered invertebrates… Read More
Margaret River: a Portrait in Trees
Trees hold a very special role in the genus loci, or spirit of place. Margaret River lies in the far south-west of Australia, in the Leeuwin-Naturaliste region. A limestone ridge runs along the coast, and fades away inland to a sand plain cloaked with forests and swamp. There are a diverse range of habitats and unique ecosystems, which combine to create one of the worlds rare biodiversity hotspots. The Leeuwin-Naturaliste region is Wadandi Noongar country. Before European colonisation, it was heavily timbered. Noongar people rarely or never felt the need to fell… Read More
The Wild Campsites
For a sense of the real Margaret River, you can’t beat sleeping out under the stars with the rest of the wildlife! Our campgrounds are all unique natural environments with a history and sense of place all their own. There are private camping options available, but here I focus on government campgrounds in the National Park and State Forests. There’s already plenty of information online about facilities: travelers these days are generous with sharing their experiences! This article aims to provide more of an insider view. Some have been campsites for many… Read More
Chasing the Winter Blues
Around mid-year in Margaret River we all start feeling the winter blues: cold short days, gusty winds, endless rain. But for those who brave the elements and head out to the coast the blues are edged with gold and silver. Walking the beach in winter is a different story to the lazy sun soakings available for most of the year. Indoor lethargy is blown away by the roaring sea and chill wind. Walking becomes an artform; leaning into the wave- carved sandy slopes, dodging showers, and waves that leap up the beach… Read More
Hamelin Bay: King Karri and the Tempest
Hamelin is a peaceful looking bay in the far south-west of Australia. For most of the year, its shores are sheltered from the swell by limestone reefs. Stingrays sweep the shallows feeding on scraps, people line-fish from the beach, and small children play in the wavelets. But the bay has a dramatic history. For a few short decades Hamelin was the harbour for the timber industry based at Karridale and Boranup. Many ships lie wrecked in the bay. The safety of the anchorage was deceptive, for the south-west coast lies in the… Read More
Tales From the Earth: the Palaeoclimates of Boranup
There’s no denying that climate change will have a massive impact on Margaret River. Over the past 50 000 years, locals have witnessed dramatic changes to landscape and ecology, and there are likely many more to come. Within the caves of the Leeuwin-Naturaliste Ridge, Margaret River holds a record of climate change spanning over a million years. There is a fossil record that includes the arrival of the first Australians, the onset of the last ice-age, and the current warm period known as the Holocene. Scientists have studied the extinctions of megafauna;… Read More
Melangata Station: reviving the great Outback
Farming one of the most ancient landscapes in the world has never been easy. Over the years, many of the sheep and cattle stations in the West Australian outback have been abandoned due to land degradation and drought. These stations are a major part of the States’ heritage, and rather than see them disappear back into the desert, innovative landholders are reinventing land management, and opening up country to visitors. Melangata is a sheep station in the upper Murchison, nestled between the old goldrush towns of Yalgoo and Cue. The station is… Read More
The Darnell Oak, Margaret River
In the heart of a small town in Western Australia there grows an oak. Not a very big oak, just a young tree with a short history, but potentially a very long future. When Elizabeth was crowned Queen of England in 1953, Margaret River chose to plant a tree at Memorial Park in her honour. The task of planting the tree fell to Bill Darnell, then Chairman of the Road Board (the Shire). When the time came he realised that no-one had thought to supply the tree, so he raced home and… Read More
Wallcliffe – People and Place
A selection of profiles of historical characters born or resident at Wallcliffe House. Wallcliffe Estate overlooks the Margaret River, at the final meander before it opens to the sea. Across the black waters lie a stand of brilliant white paperbarks, and the property is sheltered from the ocean winds by ancient dunes and a towering cliff of soft tamala limestone. The cliff is shrouded in vegetation and pitted with caves. The cliff faces north over a small, but high quality and undegraded esturine system. The natural landscape features of river and cliff,… Read More
Wooditch – or the Margaret River
The Margaret River was first encountered by European immigrants not as a defined channel, but as a confusing network of streams and tributaries. In 1832 John Bussell published his account of an exploration from Augusta to Vasse. Four men and a few dogs spent a week walking through dense forest and scrubland, surveying as they went. Hunting, drinking from the streams, sleeping wet in shelters made from sticks. There and back again. Bussells’ account is deeply observant; rocks, soil, herbaceous plants and trees, tracks of animals and people, but most particularly the… Read More
Wooditjup Jarrah Gallery
Documenting old and significant jarrah trees in the forests of Margaret River. Jarrah forest is one of the major ecological niches in the wet south-west corner of Australia. It is endemic to the area, growing nowhere else in the world. Since the arrival of Europeans in 1829, vast areas of forest have been cleared for timber, agriculture or urban development. What is left is suffering from the effects of disease, changing groundwater systems, fragmentation by roads and infrastructure, and climate change. Jarrah is a hardwood timber, beautiful and durable. By the 1870s… Read More
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