Tuesday, December 18, 2007

What lies Underneath

Young Mangrove underwater in Westernport Bay, Victoria.

How do you know what lies beneath until you look.
And then when one looks under the turbid waters how does one interpret what one sees?

I am on a boat with many intrepid lookers, who don their wetsuits in all conditions and enter the water to gain an insight into the world beneath the surface. The data they collect will add to the always increasing store of knowledge about unseen worlds and help the people who are engaged to manage these places more effectively and sensitively.

I am diving too. But I do not have a wetsuit. All I have is deep curiosity and a wide open heart. And of these places underneath. I am finding spaces that I never dared dream existed.


photos by Thierry Rolland

Saturday, December 08, 2007

Two Bays


Boonerwrung Elder Carolyn Briggs - Welcome to Country - Two Bays Launch, Docklands, 2nd December, 2007.

Andrew Denton getting to know Weedy at the Launch.

Weedy Sea Dragon, photographed by Guillaume Martinez an EPA scintist on the project. Flinders Pier.

The Nerd Centre of the Project

Two Bays is now well underway. We launched last Sunday, almost a week ago now. The State Environment Minister, Gavin Jennings, helped launch as well as our patron, Andrew Denton and a Welcome to Country and Ceremony by Carolyn Briggs. The event ran incredibly smoothly and I think I finally relaxed about the whole deal the following day. It is amazing how much time and effort can go into 45 minutes!

Time for blogging has been very scarce as I have been frantically putting this project together and at the same time been in a period of personal crisis. Matters of the heart.

The project is falling into place and as I write I can hear the chirpy sounds of a bunch of volunteer divers who have just emerged from snorkling, studying and exploring the Yaringa Marine Park in Western Port Bay.
I hope to blog a bit more over the next few days, but just wanted to get up that Two Bays is up and running and we are finally out on the water doing fun things!

As for the matters of the heart I am learning a process of being able to sit with complex feelings and allow the body and heart time to absorb, meditate and hopefully clarify. It is all one can do besides travel with as much honesty and hopefully integrity as possible.

I wrote a poem to try and capture a bit of this called-

FEET ON COUNTRY

One foot in front of the other,
stumbling on loose rock,
reminding me of one foot in front of the other.

Warmth, light and shadows on the path,
a Currowong calls, and I pause to listen.
I hear up ahead the returning call, "I am here, I am here."

The trees stretch up into the heat of the first day of Summer,
the forest speckled with the fresh green crowns of fern trees,
flickering pale limbs scarcer amongst the Ironbark.

I find a place to pause, a road carved in the forest,
making a seat.
I sit.