Red Gums

Readers and friends probably expect me to blog about food in some way or another. Well, I am going to disappoint, because this time I am going to share with you my joy at the NSW government decision a little while back to push on with legislation to protect the Murray River Red gums on the NSW side of the river. It is not often that we get positive news on the environment from any government, so this decision is even more pleasing.

If you want to know more, go the National Parks Association of both Victoria and NSW and you will find out more about these important changes along the river. You can also undertake a simple search under Stefano de Pieri – Red Gums and an awful lot of historical stuff pops up.

In essence, NSW has joined Victoria with specific measures designed to extend protection to sensitive areas of red gums. Logging will be progressively eliminated in over 110.000 hectares in NSW and 140 hectares in Victoria.

When a small article appeared in The Sun some years ago announcing that I was going to be the face of the campaign to protect the red gums, all hell broke lose in some quarters. I received some pretty heavy pressure from loggers to desist from my efforts and some politicians were very aggressive towards me.

The point is that these measures will be gradual and assistance will be provided in the form of various grants to ease people out of the logging industry. I sincerely believe that in the long term communities will be better off without logging. They will have to look at hospitality and various forms of eco-tourism as alternatives. I know it is hard to change from one job to another. I have done that myself three times in my life, and each time was difficult. However, survival in regional areas depends a lot on our ability to embrace new narratives of place and these include the story of change from one condition to another. There is no manual for it, but neither does it help when people in positions of responsibility, like some members of local governments along the rivers, put up a barrage of negativity when they know all too well that the past practices cannot continue.

In the years to come the real challenge will be to find some water to flood these sensitive areas, especially if rainfall continues to elude us. But we some effort we could see a line of trees from the mountains to the sea, a corridor for flora and fauna reserved for the future generations. Not a bad thought, is it. To my way of seeing, it beats Master Chef hands down!

Writers festival

The Mildura Writers Festival is upon us again. Maggie Beer will come back for the occasion. We had kind of run out of chefs there for a while, as it is increasingly harder to get people to come and work for nothing, as this is a non for profit event run on a show string. There will be two dinners and a luncheon during the festival. Book now, particularly for the Maggie Beer Saturday night dinner.

I met Stephen Edgar at the Goolwa poetry festival a few weeks ago and I was reminded of a poem he wrote called The Grand Hotel, which is seemingly about the thing on 7th Street, by in reality, I think, may allude to the mind of Les Murray, who is the “you” in the second line of the poem. It is a good one to remind us of all the good stuff ahead.

The Grand Hotel

Apart from that, I recall

Something you said about the place:

That you could never see it all,

It seems to propagate with space;

Always another stair to climb,

Always another corridor

With other rooms to count like time,

The end of which is always more;

A sort of Tardis made immense

That somehow manages to flout

The laws of sense and common sense

By being larger in than out,

The three dimensions’ mean constriction

Opened, unfolded and unpacked:

A building out of science fiction.

Or, come to think of it, science fact.

For don’t they say if we could shatter

Their unshackled forces we should find

Dimensions at the heart of matter,

Immensities wound up, that mind

Cannot conceive? That’s some hotel,

And just the place to take to heart

And contemplate the parallel

World that this world is made by art,

Whose finite limits charge and prime

The senses they unpack, and store

Dimensions beyond space and time,

The end of which is always more.