in the pursuit of knowledge

I started writing this on my fathers's birthday, earlier this month, but have been waiting on some images which I now have. Dad's life has been spent absorbing knowledge and understanding of the world around us, particularly but not exclusively the natural world. It is his influence that has led me down the path of my love for the bush and work in revegetation as well as my passion for photography. Our early experiences of other cultures probably led me to be studying anthropology today, although it was not a conscious thing, it gradually evolved. We tend to absorb a lot of things by osmosis rather like the getting of our own version of 'culture'. Our path in life begins in tracks we walked down as youngsters with our family till we adventure off on our own: sometimes keeping close by and sometimes heading off far away from our beginnings.

Dad and my sister beside an enormous macrozamia palm
 in the Perth hills - note the bare feet

From a young age, probably as soon as we could walk, we spent time exploring the bush, learning about everything that walked, crawled and flew as well as all the plant life. Dad had done the same thing when he was a boy, exploring the swamps around Bassendean and Bayswater with his dog and canoe. Most of these swamps have long been filled in and covered with playing fields or housing. Many holidays were spent camping in the bush. Dad took us off for walks of discovery while Mum rested back at the campsite, taking a well earned rest from being pestered by four active children.

Early morning at Pigramunna Beach
no one up but me and the cockies

My favourite was the 'early morning walks', up with the first light, catching a beautiful sunrise, listening to the dawn chorus of birds, walking the beach at low tide with no one else around. In bare feet we could feel the crunch of fallen leaves, the roughness of rocks and cool splash as ocean waves washed in and sucked out the sand from under our toes.

This is a photo of Reid taken from the water tower by Dad in 1958. He had gone back out there in '58 while doing a thesis on Nullabor plants. In the foreground are water tanks for the steam engines that formerly had been in use along the trans-line. Immediately behind are the houses for the fettlers. It was their children that Dad taught. The road leads to the school in the mid-distance and to the left of that is the school house. 

I remember the stories Dad told us of his time teaching out at Reid in 1954 and Coonanna in 1955 on the trans-line before my parents married. Where other young teachers sent out there may have recoiled in horror, Dad thrived. He learnt to speak and write Greek so he could teach the children of the Greek immigrants who had the adventure/culture shock of working out on the Trans Australian Railway Line.  Dad rode his bicycle from  Coonanna to Cundeelee to Zanthus and back to Coonanna in a weekend. He visited the Wongi at Cundeelee several times and spent a lot of time with a Wongi man who lived on the outskirts of Coonanna learning a lot from them. Dad told us there were things he'd been told by the Wongi that we could not be told. We always wondered what the secrets were but knew he'd never tell us. He read us Aboriginal Dreamtime stories. We learnt to throw spears with a woomera and tried to throw boomerangs so that they would return - unsuccessfully as I recall.  Dad explored the caves on the Nullabor Plains, riding his bicycle from blow hole to blow hole, sometimes  tethering a rope to his bike as he clambered down. Funnily enough, in my late teens and early twenties I went caving whenever I had the opportunity, even doing some trips to the Nullabor.

Sing Sing dancers in Kokoda, 1969.

In 1969 we went to Papua New Guinea to live for four years. Dad was a patrol officer in the Northern Districts. We lived in Kokoda for three months and spent the rest of our time in Popondetta. For Dad it was an experience of a lifetime - being paid to do something he loved. For us, as kids, Kokoda was like paradise     an exciting new world to be explored, isolated from everywhere, green, lush, so much to learn. Even the odd WW2 relic to be found in the jungle, apart from the more obvious airstrip and bunker. Dad travelled throughout the district on foot, by boat, helicopter and plane. Meeting many people, tribal groups, learning new languages, a new environment full of fascinating plants and animals: all there with stories to be told.

Mum and Dad at Popondetta airport in 
the early 70's taken  as I was heading 
off to boarding school

Mum had the more mundane world of day to day life without the trips into the jungle, but that was still very different from our former life in the hills of Perth. There  were the colourful markets with an ever changing array of fresh and exotic (to our eyes) range of foods. For instance there were sugar bananas, orange fleshed bananas, short and long bananas and enormous plantains. Another delicacy was steamed pumpkin tips - down here they just not as sweet. Sugar cane - sweet and messy. Taro - fine if you peel it. I remember once Mum was away in Port Moresby and Dad did the cooking - taro with the skin on - as bitter as - yuk! We all tried to surreptitiously feed the dog - hungry dog is all I can say.

I should mention that small planes like Cessna's and Pilatus Porter's  used the grass airstrip - visible in the background - and the old wartime Girua airstrip was used whenever the occasional DC3 came in or in the wet season.

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Sing Sing dancers in Kokoda with Kundu drums. This Sing Sing was in celebration of the opening of the new building for the local government offices, 1970. 

We experienced several 'sing sings' with spectacular costumes of  feathers, fur, shells, flowers, tapa cloth and coloured banana grass skirts, the best singing voices we had ever heard, and big feasts of pig and taro. We learnt to do the dance steps for Sing Sings, learning to get the grass skirts swinging- although we were no match for the locals. My brothers went fishing in the streams for tiny fish with the local boys - and came home with sunburnt backsides. Ouch. I don't recall they ate the fish, probably the other boys took the strings of tiny fish to fry up whole - the fish were eaten bones and all. On weekends we swam in fast running mountain streams, cold and clear, or warm tropical ocean bays where the black beaches were plagued by sand flies. The adventures in PNG extended to climbing Mt Lamington, an active volcano that was hot and sulphurous at the summit. We camped the night on the rim of the crater before next morning first descending that rim and then ascending to the peak. Our Papuan guide, seen standing in the photo, was as fit as a fiddle, climbing (running really) up and down several times to our one exhausting climb up the mountain.

Our exhausted climbing party only half way to the top of Mt Lamington.
Dad is standing with his back to the photo. 

Dad still is busy giving talks to community groups, sharing his knowledge and enthusiasm for nature, places, people and ideas. Mum and Dad still go out in the bush but they no longer rough it. But you can be guaranteed Dad's camera will get a hammering taking photos, and all the birds will be identified by their calls.

Whenever we visit these days he is busy in his den cataloguing  his slides and identifying new lichens or insects he has come across in his travels.

So how does his influence filter down? There are various permutations of travelling, fishing, hunting feral animals, photography and love of the bush amongst my siblings. In the next generation down there are keen bow hunters (feral animals again) and fishers, and the youngest still love finding bugs to show 'Pop'. When talking to a past student of Dad's recently he remembers being taught yoga and how to kiss a bobtail goanna way back in 1959. I don't know about kissing goanna's - getting your nose bitten could be distinct possibility!

Mum and Dad in the Carnarvon Ranges just a few years ago