cataclysm

A sunny afternoon was smothered by a billowing black blanket this last Saturday. What a downpour ensued! Massive hailstones punched holes in cars, windows, roofs and smashed vegetable gardens across Melbourne. The wind drove torrents across the velodrome in pursuit of those who only seconds before had been dashing for the line... a sprint that was called to a halt as the canvas gazebo, uprooted by a violent gust, was sent collapsing across the finishing straight. Riders scampered clumsly from the track through the gate, shouldering their bikes and clambering in cleats for shelter.

This morning's ride down the bike path in the aftermath was something of an obstacle course. The icy canonballs have of course melted. Still the evidence of their visit is everywhere. Trees appear to have been whipped through a blender. Roads, gutters and paths are covered in a shredded litter of leaves and twigs. Drifts of mud set traps for narrow tyres and dam puddles of black. Riding through them creates artistic café latte patterns as the mud is stirred... and destroys them as the rear wheel follows the front. My bicycle needs a wash!

All this gave me cause to check the maps available on the Bureau of Meteorology website. Here I discovered a map type I hadn't seen previously (see above). This map indicates the percentage of the mean rainfall that has fallen in a particular month. Pretty good! It clearly depicts the areas of above and below mean rainfall. I am very pleased to see they didn't just run through the usual (ugly) range of hues available whilst maintaining a constant (usually full) saturation.

tindale's map of australian aboriginal tribal boundaries

Tindale's map of the boundaries of the tribal lands of Australia's aboriginal inhabitants is currently appearing on television sets across Australia as part of an advertisement for SBS's documentary, First Australians. The narrator for the advertisement announces that the early settlers arrived here to inhabit a land declared terra nullius... an empty land, belonging to nobody. Tindale's detailed map is convincing evidence of the arrogance and ignorance of the claim. The map lends weight, at least to my Western eyes, to the existence of a people and culture that occupied the space we are now claiming as ours. I knew and acknowledged this previously. But the map brings it home with alarming force. How could it be possible to go through an entire Australian school education "knowing" this fact without really understanding it? What I have seen of SBS's documentary so far is stunning. This would be great to show Australian school kids! I wish I could have seen it years ago.

It is more than a little discomforting to consider that "my" city and the house on the tiny suburban block of land where I live, have all been taken forcibly from people who belong here. What's worse is that in many cases these people weren't simply displaced, they were killed.

Just down the road from me is, by Melbourne's settler standards, an old cemetery. The oldest graves there are from the 1850s. Settlers living 10 or 15 kilometres from the central city set up orchards and market gardens in the hills now called Burwood. Their families are buried, looking away from the city towards the Dandenong Ranges. Some of the old weatherboard houses still remain. The oldest I've found has sat above the cemetery since 1905. The spaces between it and the graves have been subdivided and filled with rows of brick and timber houses and units. All of this suburban development is on land that was in the range of the Wurundjeri. I wonder, when was the last time an aboriginal family stood on the hill, looking towards the ranges? When was the last time an aboriginal family left their own dead in the region?

Thankfully the First Australians is not all glum. It includes fantastic archival film footage, spectacular photographs, fascinating readings from journals and field notes, interviews with historians and, thankfully, interviews with people who know a good deal more about native culture than the recent visitors. Terrific!

graffiti for butterflies - elliott malkin

BLDGBLOG has a link to Graffiti for Butterflies, a project that uses sunscreen and paint to post signs on walls for migrating Monarch butterflies. It's certainly out there! Why not just plant more Milkweed? Well, he did that too. I wonder if the signs painted in sunscreen are recognisable to a butterfly. It should be pretty easy to set up a controlled test to see their effect. I hope the butterflies don't come to a sticky end. At least they won't get sunburnt.

Signs that say "No Dogs on the Velodrome" in dog language would be really handy. Painting the city's statues with "No Pigeons" in pigeon-visible text would be another good application for this idea. Maybe we could protect Australia's borders from alien species in a similar way. OK, now I am being silly. The butterfly idea was cute and well-meaning. I should not be facetious. I have no idea though how you could present useful data to a butterfly or just about any other species. Route info.? This is beyond the comprehension of most taxi drivers.

space invaders - the new gargoyles

The Roman ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum sat with their fantastic mosaics under ash and rubble since 79 AD until they once again saw the light of day and the tourists descended. I am particularly fond of the minotaur in the maze at Conimbriga in Portugal also.

Its amusing to think that some of the mini-murals by Parisian street artist known as Invader may be around as long. When I first saw these in the streets of Paris I wasn't sure who had made them. They cropped up in so many places, sometimes obviously threatening you from prominent architectural facades, sometimes peeping down at you from a more hidden recess. I thought perhaps they were a group-art project or a new kind of tagging.

Well, now I know that the hundreds of invaders are the work of one person. This website has maps and photographs of the invasion of Paris. The official website also has details of the international invasion including an image of the arrival of a scout in Melbourne!

Part of the appeal of these works for me is that they are scattered around the city, that with a map you can find them, and that they are aesthetically to my taste. I suppose they are like contemporary gargoyles. As an avid gargoyle spotter I can only say this invasion is very cute!

wilderness: the edge of the map is in the middle

I've just read Shaun Tan's latest book, Tales From Outer Suburbia. Lovely! It is so strongly reminiscent of suburban Melbourne I can't help but feel Shaun was brought up down the street from me. One of my favourite stories tells of two young boys off to seek the end of the street-directory. What is beyond the edge of the map? After travelling for hours into outer, outer suburbia, past countless shopping plazas and endless suburban streets, as the sun sets they find out. I won't say what they find out, you can read the story yourself.

The edge of the map is a fascinating concept. Behind the cricket nets, the Antarctic, a secret passage, the ocean's depths. Maps don't reach everywhere. Has Google ruined this? Of course I am amazed at the technology that allows me to zoom in to satellite images from a computer anywhere in the world, or to trace a path I have followed through the wilderness or the alps. I am slightly unsettled by the view of suburban streets Google offers. It seems like every place is Google-able, even my front door and private (!?) back garden.

On more careful reflection, even Google stops somewhere. For instance, where are the web pages that a Google search doesn't find? When I search for a document using an English keyword millions of non-English pages are ignored. They lie in a document-wilderness, a hidden place or faraway space. This is true of all literature, all communication, and all ways of thinking that I am unable to interpret. All this information buzzes around my head but I am blind to it.

Whilst it may show the South Coast track in Tassie from above, Google is blind to the muddy creek crossings, the bountiful waterfalls, the massive towering gums. Google misses the subterranean drains, the hollow trees. In fact, Google Earth misses so much of the Earth. If its not on the map is it there? What is it? I'd say this is wilderness.

Wilderness then is all around us, especially under our noses. It is right in the middle of the maps we view. Wilderness lies in between things on the map, as well as off its edges. An evocative book by Robert MacFarlane, The Wild Places, travels the UK in search of local wilderness. These are places that have fallen off the daily map. As people become dependent on different maps, the places unmapped become wilderness left to discover. Wilderness lies between your home and your workplace... when was the last time you stopped your car, got out, and walked around out there? I bet you travel through this wilderness every day, never stopping. Can't see wilderness? Just take a look at the end of your street.

Afterthought: If something isn't mapped but it needs looking after, who will do so? Who will look out for the unclassified organisms? The unmapped forests? Will they die a lonely, quiet death under the developer's bulldozer?