Footprints in the Forest

A visual exploration of the tall timber forests of Northern New South Wales.

Susan Coumbe B FA Hons (Newcastle)

An exegesis submitted in support of an exhibition of works of art for the degree Of Master of Philosophy (Fine Arts) At University of Newcastle, Australia January 2009

I hereby certify that the work embodied in this exegesis is the result of original research and has not been submitted for a higher degree to any other University or Institution.

Signed

I wish to acknowledge and thank my supervisors Brett Alexander and Anne Graham for their support, patience and assistance with this research. I would also like to thank ceramic artist Robyn Furner for her technical assistance with the ceramic works.

School of Drama, Fine Art and Music Faculty of Education and Arts The University of Newcastle

Supervisors Brett Alexander and Anne Graham.

Abstract

This exegesis is a supportive document to the Sculptural Installation works produced in response to a visual exploration of the tall timber forests of northern NSW. Personal lived experience of the forest environment underpins this investigation and adds to the final presentation of the creative works of art. This particular landscape in the valley of Tanban, Eungai Creek in the Nambucca Shire holds the marks and traces of past human endeavor and is one of many coastal forest sources of the magnificent timber tree – red cedar, and the mythic tales of cedar getters who worked the forests. This place of trees is imbued with memories deeply seated in the cultural identity of the region and is a site of conflict, survival and settlement. Past and present timber practices have left their mark and the landscape bears the scars. Today Indigenous peoples within the region are reclaiming once lost sacred sites within the forest landscape and the once contested forestry practices and blockades have made way for the preservation of old growth, rainforests and cultural sites of significance into reserves and national parks. The sculptural installation works presented here are a reflection of my personal connection to this landscape of trees and the deeply embedded histories the forest contains.

List of Contents

List of illustrations Page 1

Introduction Page 3

Chapter 1 Forests - An understanding of place, Page 8 history and culture of the Nambucca region of New South Wales

Chapter 11 Approaches to Nature, Culture and Place Page 27

Chapter III Contemporary Art Engagements Page 42

Chapter IV Arboreal – Footprints in the Forest: Page 60 Installation works, process, discourse and images

Conclusion Page 81

Source of illustrations Page 85

Bibliography Page 88

List of illustrations

Introduction

1 Views of Tanban from the summit of Mt Yarrahappinni 2 Views of Tanban 2008 Soozie Coumbe

Chapter 1

3 Aboriginal family displaying uses for paperbark Dailan Pugh 4 Aboriginal tribal boundaries 5 Cedar getters east of Armidale NSW 1890,s 6 Practice of ringbarking 1895 7 Dorrigo timber camp (undated) The state records authority of NSW. 8 Portable mill Tanban, (undated) The state records authority of NSW.

Chapter 2

9 Views of Australia (1824-1825) Joseph Lycett 10 Whelan on the log (1890) Arthur Streeton 11 Dance at the conclusion of the Cawarra ceremony, Yarrahappinni tribal group (1843) Clement Hodgkinson 1818-1893 12 Up in smoke (2006) Nambucca Guardian News

Chapter 3

13 Racoon (2000) Louise Weaver 14 Cell Culture (2001-2002) Fiona Hall 15 Understorey (1999-2004) Fiona Hall 16 River Leaf Stone (1999) 17 Clay Wall (1998) Andy Goldsworthy 18 Fall Creek (2000) Andy Goldsworthy 19 Raddle (1984) Antony Hamilton 20 Edge of the Trees (1995) Janet Laurence and Fiona Foley 21 Floating Island (1970) Robert Smithson 22 Monaro (1989) Rosalie Gascoigne 23 Set Up (1984) Rosalie Gascoigne

Chapter 4

24 Fragile Nature (2007) Soozie Coumbe 25 Arboreal (August 2008) Soozie Coumbe 26 Woodchop competition Bellingen, 27 Habitat - Arboreal (2008) Soozie Coumbe

Installation works

28 Blackbutt Horizon (2008) 29 Embedded (2007) 30 Nature - Culture (2008) 31 Habitat - Arboreal (2008) 32 Habitat - Arboreal (2008) 33 Fragile Nature (2007) 34 Going, Going, Gone! (2008) 35 Axes – proto types (2008) 36 Axes – proto types (2008)

Introduction

My aim in this research has been to produce a body of installation sculptural works that explore the boundaries and connections between nature art and culture through the physicality of the Australian Landscape, in particular the forested landscape of the north coast of NSW, within the regions of the Nambucca River. I am interested in the ideas of ‘place’ and connection, and in this instance, place being the forested environs which I call home. As I have lived in this region for a large part of my adult life my own ‘lived experience’1 of this physical environment underlies my investigation. My aims were not to add to Post Colonial discourse, but the work does touch upon this topic, especially in relation to the Indigenous connection to this landscape, and historical aspects in respect to material culture – the use of hand tools used in the Colonial forest environs. This particular landscape is the source of the iconic timber tree, red cedar (toona ciliate) which once flourished amongst the coastal rainforests of NSW, a natural resource that brought a culture and industry of timber harvesting, an industry that survives to this day.

1 View of Tanban, from the summit of Mt Yarrahapinni (Nambucca Shire)

The forest landscape holds the marks and traces of human endeavour, and is a site of conflict and survival; imbued with memories deeply seated in the cultural identity of the region. Traces of Indigenous and European culture are mixed with the soil here; European farming tools stone and metal axes,

4 grindstones and various cultural objects often appear as discards of past endeavours. Large scattered weathered tree stumps stand as sentinels to and memorials for the conflicts of settlers; and axe marks of age old timber cutting practices lay embedded in their surfaces. It is these marks and traces of connection that are physical reminders of past endeavours, metaphors of destruction and survival. Remnants of once old forest giants and the landscape they pervaded.

Discussions regarding nature seem outmoded and passé in today’s ever changing world, but contemporary modes of art discourse on this subject are still relevant and ever changing. Nature reflects humanity’s connections and with recent awareness of environmental destruction and global warming, pollution and scarcity of water, forests and trees are playing an ever-important role. No longer can we ignore nature and no longer can we see nature only as an economic aid to our civilization. With these installation sculptural works I am attempting to investigate the enigmatic space between nature, culture and place, a void of new interpretation through the engagement in the physicality of nature – the forest environment. I am interested in the balancing act of finding ones place of belonging, through the examination of the space between; an understanding of place and belonging. My previous research led me on an investigation of the space, the place we call home, a place of belonging. Seen through the eyes of the immigrant, the in- between cultural space – as artist and writer Paul Carter calls ‘the gap’2 many immigrants traverse in trying to find a new home a new sense of belonging. This Masters research builds on this investigation through the physicality of place, the forested valley I call home. As much of Australia was explored and developed with the aid of immigration, the Nambucca region was not immune to this thesis. From the early days of settlement influxes of population invigorated the economic and cultural life of the region, as it still does today, evidenced by influx of tree and sea – change urban immigrants.

The forest of tall timber eucalypts was the attraction when I moved from South Australia in the mid 1970’s. The contrast was huge, the bushy red green trees of the harsh South Australian landscape did not compare with the rich dark green towering giants of Northern NSW. The climate in this northern region was gentler, with a much higher rainfall than what I was used to in South Australia. Childhood memories of rich green English countryside came flooding back to me here, and for the first time since arriving in Australia as a child, I felt a connection, a pervading sense of belonging.

The chapters in this exegesis are divided into three areas of discussion: Nature, Culture and Place. Chapter I sets the grounding on Place in a description and discussion of the layered history of the region I call home. Chapters two, three and four widen the discussion and encompass the historical into a contemporary framework referencing various Artworks, Artists practices and my creative response to the research.

2. Views of Tanban – Soozie Coumbe

1 Lippard Lucy Lure of the Local, sense of place in a multicentered society, New York 1997, page 5. 2 Carter Paul Hossein Valamanesh, NSW 1996, page 7.

Chapter 1

Forests - an understanding of Place

History and culture of the Nambucca Region of Northern NSW

The Nambucca Valley on the North Coast of New South Wales lies half way between Sydney and Brisbane covering an area of approximately twenty- three kilometres long by twenty-three kilometres wide1. The rolling hills, river flats and forested terrain fan out from the escarpment of the New England Plateau of the Great Dividing Range, eastwards to the Pacific Ocean, and traversed by the Nambucca River and its tributaries. The valley has three major townships: Nambucca Heads situated at the mouth of the Nambucca River, Macksville, situated upstream, and Bowraville, which lies further up stream.

Today tourists play a large role in the culture and economic growth of the valley, alongside traditional agricultural industries of cattle, dairy, tropical fruit and nut farms. Over time, the valley has had its vicissitudes in economic growth. From early colonial days to the present, constant immigration and the influx of sea and tree change urban new comers have all added to the cultural and economic growth and development of the region.

8 The river and its tributaries have played a vital role in the development of the valley, and historically it was the main means of transportation and connection for the early cedar trade. The river was also the main means of contact and supply for the settlers, and aided in the formation of the initial settlement of the area.

The Nambucca Valley forms the junction of three Aboriginal language groupings; the Gumbaingyir from Macksville northwards to Grafton, the Dungatti to the southwest and the Ngaku south towards the coast, just north of Port Macquarie. As well as being renowned for its pristine beaches and surfing spots, numerous state forests and national parks also surround the Nambucca Valley. With the assistance of National Parks of New South Wales and Indigenous elders, many Aboriginal cultural sites of significance that still survive in the forests of the Nambucca have been preserved and recorded. Within the region, there are approximately five nature reserves, two national parks and ten state forests2.

3. Aboriginal family displaying uses for paperbark, Dailan Pugh.

The early European settlement and development relied heavily on the cedar trade, hardwood timber industry and shipbuilding, with one of the largest and earliest colonial vessels built in Australia the ‘Royal Tar’, constructed on the Nambucca River in 1879, at Copenhagen Mill, Nambucca Heads3.

Timber production from natural forest resources was the mainstay of colonial settlement and development in this region and to some extent still plays a large role in the culture and collective memories of the area today.

4. Tribal boundaries of language groups Daingatti, K (G) umbainggirr and Ngku.

Time and Place

In the early 1800’s, well before the discovery of timber resources in the Nambucca, the penal settlement at Newcastle lay 400km to the south.

10 Convict labour had reaped large harvests of timber from surrounding rainforests of Newcastle and the Hunter Valley. Cedar and rosewood, which were highly sought after had soon become scarce and it was not long before the valuable trees became scarce in surrounding forests.

By 1820 the township of Newcastle was open to free settlement and on the orders of Governor Macquarie, the penal colony was moved to Port Macquarie, and so too the convict timber getters. Macquarie noted in a correspondence to Earl Bathurst, the secretary of the colonies in 1819 that:

Port Macquarie will be of great advantage as a place of banishment, Newcastle being too near to Sydney as it enables criminals sent thither to affect their escape back to this place.

Port Macquarie will be further useful because of the good quality timber it will afford. This is most important consideration, the supplies from Newcastle having become very difficult to procure owing to the forests there being nearly exhausted4.

The convict labourers were again put to work, this time in the surrounding forests of Port Macquarie and the Hastings River, cutting and sawing timber for the colony’s needs. Many cedar getters had preceded this settlement in search of the ‘red gold’5 as the timber was described, and by the 1830’s the timber trade in red cedar had been well established northwards into the thick forested banks of the Macleay River, and by the early 1850’s the trade had moved north into the unsettled valleys surrounding the Nambucca River.

To put this into context, the era of the gold rush in Australia’s collective memory is a well established mythic image and just as the gold rush brought great wealth to the nation so too did the cedar trade. The timber was highly valued and in the beginnings of economic development, the trade of red cedar and rosewood were some of Australia’s highly exported products. Unlike the gold diggers who populated an area and built up towns and settlements, the cedar getters worked alone in isolated forest valleys, and more often than not it was the cedar traders and shippers based in the larger coastal towns and cities, that benefited financially.

11 Red Cedar: the role of the cedar getters

The tall deciduous tree commonly known as red cedar (Toona ciliata) can grow to heights of forty metres with a girth of three metres above the buttress6, a truly magnificent tree, still admired today for its rich brown timber, and distinctive grain. Toona ciliata or Toona australis, red cedar or ‘red gold’ as it was known in colonial times, was a prized timber for fine carpentry, joinery and boatbuilding, a most suitable timber, much needed for the furnishings of the new colony and as major trade goods, shipped back to England and her colonies7. Many examples of fine cedar joinery can be seen today in government and colonial buildings in Sydney and regional areas.

In spring, the trees emerging tips appear as flushes of pinkish-red, which was one of the traits that made them so easy to identify for the early cedar getters. Red cedar today is a scarce tree; the giants of the past are no longer, and only small-scattered trees are still standing in isolated pockets of the forest. Historically, red cedar played a vital role in the identity of both the Nambucca and neighbouring regions of the Macleay and Bellingen Rivers. Many descendents of these skilled timber getters still reside in these regions. The iconic ‘bushman’ is not far below the surface, and this attractive tree can be seen displayed as street plantings along the main streets of Kempsey, on the Macleay River; a form of nostalgic pride and tribute to the legacy of the cedar getters. While in the Nambucca Shire, the Council celebrates the contribution of the cedar getters within its art collection; in the form of large cross sections of cedar roots proudly displayed as sculptural back drops to council business.

After the arrival of the Europeans to the shores of this nation in 1788 and the beginnings of the colony surrounding Sydney, the ongoing need for a reliable source of timber gained momentum. The cedar trade developed as an industry in the thick-forested brushes surrounding Sydney Cove early on in Australia’s colonial history. Red cedar had been found early on in the areas surrounding the Hawkesbury River8 and had proved to be a valuable timber, similar in character to the ‘Toons’ of the British Colony in India 9.

5. Cedar getters, early 1900,s East of Armidale NSW.

The establishment of Government sawpits operated by convict labour at Sydney Cove soon gave birth to the burgeoning timber industry.10 For Aboriginal people life in their forest home changed forever; a European footprint had left its mark.

The adventurous cedar getters, searching for timber resources and unintentionally opening areas up for later sites for settlement, advanced the early European engagement with the forests of the North Coast of New South Wales. These determined timber getters headed the march of advancement

13 north and south, up and down the coastal rivers of New South Wales, cutting and shipping their bounty back to Sydney. Etching out a living in harsh conditions, it was these early timber getters and their search for scattered stands of cedar that enticed cutters further into the unknown, in most instances well ahead of the pioneering families11. The typical cedar-getters working in the forests on the Nambucca River were hard working skilled labourers, more often ‘ticket of leave’12 convicts or immigrants trying to make the most of their situation; labourers who were willing to work in isolated and dangerous forest environments. On a daily basis these men (for this work was reserved for men, as history has left out many of the stories of women’s contributions) dealt with tropical humid conditions, insects and thick impenetrable rainforest brushes. Daily life was harsh and unpredictable.

Early on in the trade, the cedar getters generally earned a reasonable wage in comparison to the average colonial pastoral worker 13. However, as time went by and the sources of timber became scarce, the financial rewards for the cedar getter dwindled.

The process of felling the trees was an arduous task and could take days of hard work with the use of simple tools; brush hook and axe. The fallen logs were further broken down into smaller manageable sections by the use of cross cut saws. With the aid of a well-trained bullock team, tracks carved were through the thick rainforest, which enabled the movement of the logs to the river. Once at the river the logs were floated down to the often ‘unscrupulous dealers’14, who would further transport the logs onto Sydney on seagoing vessels.

On the Nambucca River, the logs took a long journey down the river by raft then by bullock cart to the mouth of the Macleay River, to be eventually shipped to Sydney and overseas.15 The reliance on the river for transport meant that the cedar getters could not venture too far into the thick often- impenetrable forest to gain the logs, and in the early years of the cedar trade, this was the only factor that protected the forest from total destruction16.

14 In the more isolated rivers of the Nambucca and the neighbouring Bellinger, the cedar getters relied heavily upon cedar dealers that operated on the rivers17 to transport their logs; in the mid 1800’s, up to seven dealers worked and handled logs on the Nambucca River alone18. Often unscrupulous and exploitative, the dealers took advantage of the isolation of the sawyers and paid wages in the form of highly inflated prices for alcohol, food and supplies19.

Over time, the cedar getters had earned themselves a bad reputation as ‘hard drinking men of most abandoned character’20. However, Norma Townsend in her discussion of the settlement of the Nambucca region portrays them in a more positive light, ‘many were married with children or in a permanent de facto relationship’21 which played a vital and supportive role in their day-today life. The cedar getters’ wife and family were his backup support, and assisted in the constant moving and maintenance of the sawyer’s camp. Moving from cedar stand to cedar stand the cedar getter’s and their families led an isolated existence, but an autonomous one.

The isolation of the brushes22 offered a retreat for many convicts and ticket of leave emancipists, as the society of the day offered little regard for these less fortunate hard-working men and women.

The cedar getter and his family were not settlers and formed minimal attachment or connection to their forest environment – survival was paramount. Their simple home tended to be a temporary structure, a small timber slab and bark hut deep in the forest, often for many months on end23. With simple tools and a well-trained bullock team, the cedar getters etched out a living, a daily life of monotony, hard work and survival. It is difficult to determine exactly how the cedar getters and their families felt about the forests they worked. In general, the cedar getters were not settlers but opportunists, workers moving with their families from resource to resource, from cedar stand to cedar stand, with portable ideas of ‘home’.

Alex Gaddes as a member of one of Nambucca’s historic family of timber workers was one of the last cedar getters to work up and down the Macleay and Nambucca Rivers in the late 1950’s. Gaddes portrays a romantic view of

15 the role of the cedar getters, when he states: with the coming of these frontier men the wild landscape drastically changed’24,

In hindsight, we can only imagine the forest landscape before the cedar getter arrived.

In 1840 Government Surveyor Clement Hodgkinson was the first to venture beyond the bounds of settlement and into the valleys north of Kempsey, a region known to the local Aboriginal dwellers as Nambuga (Nambucca). Cedar getters had made the odd incursions into these valleys but it was Hodgkinson’s descriptive diary notations and images he published in his book Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay (1845) that gives us the first glimpses of the culture within this forested region, and the descriptions of the disruption and violence incurred by Cedar getters and Aboriginal dwellers alike. Hodgkinson travelled from the mouth of the Macleay River through the thick-forested valleys of the Nambucca River, then northwards into the Bellingen valley. With the aid of local Tanban Aboriginal guides, he traversed the valley describing the vegetation and the terrain that I now call home.

By 1856, permanent European settlement had begun on the Nambucca (one of the last areas on the coast to do so, due to the difficulties with the entrance to the Nambucca river)25 this second wave of cedar getters, who had mostly migrated from the Macleay River, became the core of this new settlement26. The small up-river township of Bowraville had become a major centre for the cedar trade on the Nambucca, and as settlement progressed, timber getting and sawing became an important economic adjunct to farming and dairying. The river became the main artery of transport and the lifeline of the town.

John Vader describes the development of the cedar trade on the Nambucca and neighbouring rivers as typical of developments all along the coast, and in terms of three separate historical phases.

Phase 1:

Brought about the first colonial discoveries of cedar along the Nepean and Hawkesbury watercourses and surrounding rain-forested gullies. This led eventually to the exploration of scattered stands of the valuable timber further

16 a field with the opening up of unknown country ‘well ahead of pioneering farmers’27.

Phase 2:

Followed on from phase one with settler farmers cutting and selling cedar logs while clearing and developing their land for pasture, as an economic adjunct to settlement.

Phase 3:

As the need for timber increased due to post- war booms in industrial processes and mechanisation, powerful bulldozers and machinery entered the forests, into ‘previously inaccessible stands of cedar’ enabling access to untouched areas of forests 28.

Many small coastal towns owe their development to the early cedar getters and their quest for this valuable timber. All in all the trade in red cedar lasted a mere 100 years and the resilience of these early pioneers is evident today within the memories and vibrant historical museums within the region. Government lists of cedar licences held on the Nambucca can give us names but we can only imagine the destruction and change that came about by the cutting and logging of red cedar in the rainforest brushes of the North Coast. With survival comes a degree of destruction29. Marks and traces of the cedar getters in the forests of Nambucca valley are few if any, but the tracks and trails they left behind are most surely still in use today.

From cedar to settlement

Gradually the cedar getter had to give place to agriculture and the civilizing influence of a home loving population30.

The coastal valleys of the Nambucca and the Macleay (a landscape that had been tended by Aboriginal tribal groups for eons past) had given way to the cedar getters and settlers and by the end of the 1800’s the Nambucca River was supporting free settlement and small townships.

The first sawmill to be developed on the Nambucca River was undertaken by an emigrant sawyer, Jabez Buckman, after his subsequent bankruptcy and

17 move from the lower Myall River in 187931. Buckman assisted in the development of the Eucalypt hardwood industry and by the late 1800’s hardwood, milling and shipbuilding were well established.

Forest conservation and management: a new nation a new view

By the early 1900’s ‘there was an over-riding thrust to throw open as much land as possible for agriculture’32 and with farming settlement came new scars on the landscape and with wholesale land clearing came the practice of ‘ringbarking’33as noted in the half yearly report of the Australian Agricultural company 1874:

A discovery, however of considerable importance in reference to pastures has been made within the last few years and extensively applied with some success, and that is, that by destroying the forest timber they are greatly improved. The process is very simple – the removal of a narrow ring of bark; this kills the trees, and the result is a bare forest, no longer shedding its bitter leaves on the ground or excluding the action of the sun and wind upon the pasture34.

The removal of tree cover was seen as a measure of progress, enabling the development of useful pasture35. It was soon obvious that a large proportion of the Nation’s forests were being squandered, and various Government inquiries and commissions concluded that it was imperative to address this forest destruction.

The industry in the Nambucca and elsewhere, which was founded on the red cedar trade, had all but been depleted,

6. Practice of ring barking 1895

18 with uncontrolled land clearing threatening future hardwood forest reserves. Forest management became necessary and the development of State Forest Services came about with each state headed by a ‘chief conservator’36 heralding the beginning of an awareness of conservation and forest management.

7. Dorrigo logging camp (undated) State Records Authority of NSW.

According to Kevin Frawley, by 1920 all states had enacted Forestry Acts, with trained forestry staff, but there was no ‘National Vision’37. The mission of the Lands Department was to settle land with farmers and graziers38 and not to see potential farmland locked away as forest reserves.

The forest it seems had always had an uphill battle for survival, from the early convict sawpits and the need for timber for ship repairs, to the early colonial cedar trade and to the advancing settlements with their needs for pasture and agricultural lands. The large expanse of coastal forests gave way to the advancement of the nation and the forests were dwindling.

The coming of World War I had brought about the need for managed forest practices, timber was required for the war effort, and as mechanisation and transport entered the forests, it heralded the end of the romantic age of the

19 independent timber getter and his trusty bullock teams. Soldier settlement had opened up marginal land by the late 1950’s, and into the early 1960’s, but soon after, due to their marginal nature, many soldier settlement blocks were abandoned, and reverted to bush and regrowth.

Up until the 1970’s the idea of the forests not being a self-renewing source of timber, was never questioned. Early in the settlement, the forest had been a seemingly never-ending supply of timber, the idea of it ever ending did not enter the mindset, and this prevailed.

Why did the forests change so much in the post war period up until the 1970’s? Settlement and the quest for pasture had played its part, so had the post war building boom and industrialization. Neil Byron discusses the forester John Dargavel’s thoughts on this: ‘the demise of small scattered family run, labour intensive sawmills, which were often located on site in the forests’39 were replaced with large centralised timber mills in larger towns. New road construction had enabled timber crews to access logs in previously inaccessible areas, and road transport had created stockpiling of logs at mills sites. Government investments had also brought about large forest operations with employment for local workers. Previously the industry had serviced its local areas but with post-war mechanisation, contracts and quotas became the norm, putting pressure on limited resources, while larger more capital-intensive mills required security of log supplies40. Forestry was no longer an adjunct to settlement, for a fully-fledged industry was underway and the romantic era of the lonely bush worker with his axe and crosscut saw had given way to fully mechanised logging practices with the buzz of chainsaws. Settlement versus forestry had always been a contentious issue, from the early days of cedar licences to hardwood quotas.

The valley of the Nambucca River had struggled on after initial settlement, and Townsend noted that ‘economic development on the Nambucca was crippled from its earliest days’. Sawyers and those in the timber industry ‘lived from hand to mouth and dealers spent any profits outside of the valley’41 this was due in part to the lack of permanent land tenure and the subsequent absence of capital to encourage people and industry.

20 Agricultural developments of beef and dairy farming, vegetable and banana growing had been through their difficulties, and the small town’s populations were dwindling. The young tended to venture off to the cities in search of an easier life. Such was the fate of many small coastal valleys with their high rainfall and old leached soils.

8. Portable mill, Tanban (undated) State records authority of NSW. Culture of Change: 1970’s Back to Nature

By the 1970’s the development of ‘land and settlement’ versus ‘forests’ had given way to Conservationists versus Forestry.

Society was shifting. The 1960’s had brought about a huge cultural shift and a new relationship with ‘nature’ was emerging. In 1969, humankind had ventured out beyond our planet and walked on the moon, and shown us the first glimpses of our planet. In America, the Black Civil Rights Movement had brought about change for its black American population. Biologist Rachel Carson’s pivotal text Silent Spring (1962) had brought attention to the destructive human interventions in nature that had wrought widespread

21 attrition of wildlife, while the Vietnam War had brought to the Western world, questions of the futility of war and senseless destruction.

The Nambucca region was not immune to these changes. Nature in the forest had become part of an entire environment with the forests perceived, not only as trees and as timber of economic value, but habitats for wildlife and places of beauty, enjoyment and contemplation.

This idea of the aesthetic value of nature was by no means a new ideal. The 19th Century had brought about a romantic view of nature in all its sublime states. American writer and philosopher Henry David Thoreau’s writings on the American wilderness had assisted in the development of the world’s first National Park at Yellowstone USA and Australia followed suit with the establishment of the world’s second, the Royal National Park south of Sydney in 1879.

Not completely content with a truly Australian wilderness nature park, the Royal National Park South of Sydney was developed, and as a reflection of its English creators it was stocked with European deer, trout, rabbit and hare, conceived as a park for recreation and enjoyment. Nevertheless, it was a step to preserving parts of the landscape from future development42.

Immigrants to the north coast of New South Wales and to the Nambucca region had been arriving from the early times of settlement, but the influx of educated urban immigrants that arrived in the nineteen seventies brought with them a new romantic approach to the land and culture.

These new immigrants, as a refection of prevailing social trends, brought with them new lifestyles with a celebration of anti-establishment values43. The ‘Rainbow Region’, as the north coast has come to be known, became a haven for urban conservationists who bought up disused dairy farms and bush blocks and set up home, in a search for a simpler way of life. Re-appraisals of the forest environment brought about new values; the forest as a source of spiritual solace, but these new appraisals of the forest environment also brought about clashes with established logging practices and foresters. The fight to save the rainforest of Terania Creek – inland of Lismore, in 1979, was a pivotal juncture

22 in the nation’s appraisals of its forest environments and set the stage for the emerging conservation and environmental movements that followed.

The forest blockade at Terania Creek threatened the livelihoods and the way of life for many, and the ripples of this forest protest went far a field. This was the first forest blockade in Australia and was instrumental in the eventual protection of all rainforest on the North Coast. The politically and media savvy protesters helped to sway the nation’s attitude towards forest conservation, and politicians were put on notice by the media, regarding the state of our environment and the need to protect and reserve vulnerable forest environments beyond the single use strategies of the past.

Legislation eventually resulted in World Heritage Listing for the Northern coastal rainforest, and conservation groups strengthened and united, with the resulting formation of North East Forest Alliance (NEFA)44. Former Premier Bob Carr commented at the 20th anniversary of the blockade that ‘Terania Creek was a milestone in the history of conservation in Australia’45.

Gregg Summerville in the Heritage council of NSW 1985 report stated that:

The setting aside of the remaining rainforests as National Parks is a significant act of reparation for past environmental mistakes. The forests are some of the last tangible reminders of the landscape as it was before 1788 – their monumental trees pre-date the castles and cathedrals of modern Europe46.

The culture of the small towns of the North Coast was changing, conservation of the forest environments brought about new ventures of eco friendly tourism and awareness of forests as resources beyond economics.

Notably for the first time since Federation, the masses had challenged forestry practices and the burgeoning media had played a huge role.

In a review of Nigel Turvey’s book Terania Creek: Rainforest Wars (2006) Neil Byron stated that ‘I can safely say that the foresters and industry people had not realised that the world had changed considerably since the 1940’s and 50’s.

23 New world-wide appraisals of nature and the environment had brought about a collective green consciousness.

Terania Creek stands today as a symbol of change, and a beacon of responsibility for one’s collective environment. The rainforests of Terania Creek and the Border Ranges became part of a collective of protected smaller rainforest areas up and down the NSW coast, forming the Central Eastern Rainforest Reserves (CERRA) from north of Newcastle to the outskirts of Brisbane in Queensland. In addition, they ‘were inscribed on the World Heritage Listing for their outstanding natural universal values’47.

Hardwood logging persists today, and is ever- present in the Nambucca Valley. The landscape grows magnificent trees with valuable timber, and the establishment of private forest plantations are being encouraged and developed. A new future of timber plantation forestry heralds the way for conservation of rare and existing old growth and culturally loaded forest sites.

Forestry still sits uneasy alongside environmentalists but the days of strong conflict are in the past and many old growth and magnificent forest environments now lay in Nature Reserves and National Parks.

1 Townsend Norma Valley of the Crooked River, European settlement on the Nambucca, NSW University Press 1993, page VIII. 2 Guardian News Nambucca Visitor Guide 2006 / 2007 Regional map, page 10. 3 Ibid 4 McLachlan Ian Place of Banishment, from letters sent by Governor Macquarie to Earl Bathurst, Secretary of the State for the colonies, dated 19 July 1819. 5 Vader John, Red Gold, the tree that built a nation Sydney 1988. 6 Boland D J, Brooker M I H, Chippendale G M, Hall N, Hyland B P M, Johnston R D, Kleinig D A, Turner J D Forest Trees of Australia, Melbourne 1985, page 144. 7 Ibid page 5. 8 Jarvis James Cedar and the Cedar Industry, Forestry Commission of NSW Govt Printer, Abridged from Proc J C Royal Australian History Society 25, 20, 1940, page 1. 9 Boland D J, Brooker M I H, Chippendale G M, Hall N, Hyland B P M, Johnson R D, Kleinig D A, Turner J D Forest Trees of Australia Melbourne 1985 page 146.

10 Hudson Ian, Hemmingham Paul Gift of God, Friend of Man, a story of the timber industry in NSW 1788 – 1986. Sydney 1986, page 3. 11 Vader John Red Gold, the tree that built a nation, Sydney 1988, page 9. 12 Townsend Norma Valley of the Crooked River, European settlement on the Nambucca River, NSW University Press 1993, page 26. 13 Ibid 14 Townsend Norma Valley of the Crooked River, European settlement on the Nambucca River NSW University Press 1993, page 25. 15 Ibid page 4 (The mouth of the Macleay River was originally located near Grassy Head but later – due to storms, the river shifted to its present location north of South West Rocks on the lower Macleay). 16 Ibid 17 Ibid, page 24. 18 Ibid 19 Hodgkinson Clement Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay, London 1845 page 9. Mitchell Library Sydney. 20 Townsend Norma Valley of the Crooked River, European settlement on the Nambucca River. NSW University Press 1993 quoting Rudder Enoch’s letters to the Governor 24 October, Murders of and by Aborigines on the Northern Districts, Mitchell Library Sydney, page 26. 21 Ibid, page 27. 22 The isolation of the ‘Brushes’ Brushes used in a descriptive sense, a thick bushy, forest of rainforest vegetation. 23 Hodgkinson Clement Australia from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay, 1845 page 9. Mitchell Library Sydney. 24 Gaddes Alex Red Cedar our heritage, Sydney 1990, page 14. 25 Townsend Norma Valley of the Crooked River, European settlement on the Nambucca River, NSW University Press 1993, page 35. 26Ibid, page 32. 27 Vader, John Red Gold the tree that built a nation, Sydney 1988, page 9. 28 Ibid 29 To assist in the control of the cutting of cedar in crown land locations Governor King issued Cedar licences to cedar getters. 30 Hannah Helen Forest Giants, timber getting in the New South Wales Forests 1800-1950, forestry department of New South Wales. Sydney 1986 page 77. A report from Ballina, Sydney Morning Herald 1872. 31 Townsend, Norma Valley of the Crooked River, European settlement on the Nambucca River, NSW University Press 1993, page 41. 32 Frawley Kevin Visionaries, the rise and fall of the foresters, the Peoples forest, a living history of the Australian bush NSW 1999, page 38. 33 The ringbarking of trees became a passive form of clearing forested land, the bark of the tree being cut through with an axe, starving the tree of nutrients, causing eventual death. 34 Pemberton Pennie On Ringbarking, Australian Forest History Society Newsletter no 34, December 2002 page 10. As cited from the half-yearly report, 10th February 1874, Australian Agricultural Company, 35 Frawley Kevin Visionaries, the rise and fall of the foresters, Borschmann Gregg, The People’s Forest, a Living History of the Australian Bush, Blackheath NSW 1999, page 38. 36 Crane W J B Think Trees-Grow Trees, Canberra 1985, page 25. 37 Frawley Kevin Visionaries, the rise and fall of the foresters, Borschmann Gregg The People’s Forest, a Living History of the Australian Bush, Blackheath NSW 1999, page 40. 38 Ibid, page 40. 39 Dargavels John as cited by Byron Neil Forestry, Economics Mattered, Borschmann Gregg The People’s Forest, a living history of the Australian bush, Blackheath NSW 1999, page 52. 40 Ibid 41 Townsend Norma Valley of the Crooked River, European settlement on the Nambucca River, NSW University press 1993, page 35.

42 Low Tim The New Nature, winners and loosers in wild Australia, Victoria 2002, page 39 43 Caswell Tricia, Victorian Association of Forest Industries Melbourne launch speech 27th October 2006. Review of Terania Creek Rainforest Wars by Dr Nigel Turvey www.ipoz.biz/titles/tc.htm 22/12/2007 44 Flint Carmel The Story of the North East Forest Alliance (NEFA) Chain Reaction #95, Summer 2005/6, page 1. 45 Carr Bob Terania Creek 20th anniversary www.rainforestinfo.org.au/terania forest_blockade.html 24/10/2007 46 Sommerville G Saving the Rainforest, the NSW campaign 1973-1984, page 97. www.npansw.org.au/web/about/rainforest 16/05/07 47 Pugh Dailan Central Eastern Rainforest Reserves (Australia), page 1. www.nefa.org.au/oldsite/wh_cerra1.html 8/9/ 2007

Chapter II

Approaches to Nature, Culture and Place

Since the era of the Renaissance and the age of enlightenment, the natural world and ideas of nature have been through rapid transformation. The forest in the Western cultural sense was wrought with folklore and mythical presence, and ‘was a place with dark mysterious threatening qualities, and the home of demons, spirits and outlaws1’. In addition, by the 18th century, perceptions of nature and landscape brought about the belief ‘that human progress could be measured by the removal of primeval forest and replaced with an ordered garden. For some, nature was an allegory of the will of God, a long transition from the dark wood to the paradise garden’2.

Are our perceptions of the Australian forest landscape any different today?

Australian European history has perceived the forested landscape of this country as one of economic resource and as an aid to settlement, while early colonial artists portrayed it from the standpoint of the outsider, as seen through ‘filters of taste’ 3of the society of the time.

The artists accompanying the early colonists were there to observe and record their surroundings, as ‘data’ for the empire; scientific description, and souvenir

27 portrayals sent home to the Motherland, a form of postcard of one’s adventures. Convict artist Joseph Lycett's illustrated book of hand coloured engravings Views of Australia (1824-1825) was ‘calculated to present the most optimistic picture of the young colonies to an English audience’4. Colonial artists rendered the Australian landscape as an image of home, a place of recognition.

European society of the late 18th and early 19th Century perceived nature as directed by ‘man’ with God at the helm, and through the eyes of the early Australian settlers, nature and the Australian landscape was no different.

The imperative of the early colony was a determination to settle and to develop available resources – for God had created nature to benefit Man.

9. Views of Australia (1824-1825) Joseph Lycett

European settlers meanwhile, perceived the landscape as an untouched and unrecognisable virgin forest wilderness. From a colonial viewpoint this was a land that was open to colonisation, to mark and ‘imprint’ upon, a primitive land of exotic plants and animals; interpreted as a land devoid of any recognisable cultural markings, and perceived as empty - ‘Terra Nullius’5.

Sir James Edward Smith, the first president of the Linnaean Society of Britain, relays this point of view when he states:

28 When a botanist first enters on the investigation of so remote a country as New Holland, he finds himself visiting as it were on a new world. He can scarcely meet with any fixed point from whence to draw his analogies6.

The fact that the forested landscape was a home carefully cared for by its Aboriginal inhabitants for thousands of years, was an inconceivable concept, totally overlooked and misunderstood.

Under these circumstances and misunderstandings, the colony advanced and developed, contributing to the displacement of Aboriginal cultural space, and in this re-historicising of space, a new layering of European culture was laid down and imprinted on the land. Artist and historian Paul Carter describes this imprinting as ‘ground clearing, a palmiset, a re writing; and as a means to erase the common ground of communication with the native Aboriginal inhabitants’7. Kevin Frawley proposes that ‘to eighteenth century European eyes, one of the aesthetic deficiencies of the Australian landscape was its apparent lack of evidence of the human past and ‘only slowly is the shift occurring that allows some broader acknowledgement that Australian biospheres on arrival of Europeans had been sculpted over millennium by the hunting and burning of traditional owners’8.

Nevertheless, was this re-historicising not the norm? Layer over layer of historical events and colonial interventions have left landscapes worldwide multilayered, with the most recent layer taking centre stage.

The arrival of European settlers to these shores brought about new cultural deposits that were hurriedly applied, making the landscape recognisable and the place of home for the newcomers.

Cleared, marked and mapped, the forested landscape made way for new cultural deposits, and according to Carter: ‘there is a direct connection between the clearing of land and the erasure of its natural histories’9.

Psychologically emptying the land of its indigenous owners and their cultural connections was (to the colonists) as imperative as clearing the disordered forests. In doing so, Nature made way for the ‘civilising’ order of productive

29 farms and agriculture, and as we can surmise by Carter’s statement, those through European eyes saw:

The opening of the woods, the clearing of the ground, these activities cognate with the process of intellectual enlightenment, the ideology of progress’10.

European ideals of nature and culture were in ignorance of the existence of Aboriginal social culture and spiritual connections; the forested landscape to Australian Aboriginal peoples was, and to a large part still is, more than just a place of abode. J E Malpas in his written work ‘Place and Experience’ states that:

So important is the tie of person to place that for Aboriginal peoples the land around them everywhere is filled with marks of individual and ancestral origins and is dense with story and myth.11’ In addition, ‘conceptions of human life and all life are inextricably bound up with the land’12.

European cultural layering on the land was believed to bring a civilising aspect to the landscape, but as Nikki Barrowclough states in her discussion of the work of Simon Schama, in his pivotal work Landscape and Memory, ‘any landscape is read and appreciated through the cultural and historical memory people bring to it’13.

Belonging and connecting to this new land had been an alien response for the early settlers, battling the forests and clearing a ‘space’. Their roots were elsewhere, belonging and connected to a far off homeland, a land of green pastures, manicured parks and sacred oaks; a nature of defined seasons.

In this new home the ethos was one of day to day survival and the new land of awkward evergreen eucalypts and thick strangling rainforest brushes was cleared, carved and altered to reflect the old, creating a ‘place’ to belong.

The British forested landscape had been continually re-written, and since the invasions by the Romans and successive invaders, the British landscape had become home to many cultures. By 1086, and with the writing of The

30 Doomsday Book (as noted by British theorist Oliver Rackham), Britain had been plundered and remodelled by human hand; ‘the bulk of the woodland, removed with as little as 15% remaining’14. The arrival of European settlers to Australian shores was no different; the forests of Australia were recognised as a wilderness, a clean slate to be marked, and soon came under these same developmental influences and forestry practices.

Australian Aboriginal cultural strategies of fire stick farming had aided in the moulding of the Australian forests for thousands of years before European arrival, and what had been perceived as pristine we now know is actually a well-worked cultural landscape, deeply embedded with spiritual connection.

In Europe the age of enlightenment and scientific discovery had brought about a twofold attitude to the interactions with nature and culture, and as a reflection, so too the forests of Australia. What prevailed was an attitude of exploration and scientific discovery, of classification systems and recording, mapping and the marking of boundaries. Nature perceived as subservient to human economic activity.

These cultural attitudes sat alongside an ordered Neo-Classical view of nature; nature perceived as paradise, as God intended, ordered and perfectly formed. While alongside, a romantic attitude to nature pervaded, an aesthetic approach, one of senses, emotions and feelings. However, in Art, nature became ‘a moral science elevated to a sublime statement of God’s creation’15.

Compared to the ordered and managed European forests, ‘the Australian forested landscape was the epitome of chaos and disorder’16 wild and untamed, with timber that was hard and unyielding under the hand tools of the day; the axe and cross cut saw. The prevailing European culture of the day saw the disordered and exotic landscape of the Colony as unnerving and alien, as an untouched and challenging wilderness.

In Europe, the understanding of Australia was one of an ancient assemblage that was caught up in empirical discoveries in the South Pacific. At this time in history, Europe was fascinated with the exotic nature of the South Pacific – its

31 lands and its people17. The age of the natural sciences had tweaked the consciousness of the Western psyche.

Bernard Smith has noted that Australia ‘can be counted upon as one of the factors contributing to the triumph of Romanticism and science in the 19th century world values.’18 Influential scientist Friedrich Von Humboldt (1769-1859) in his travels and explorations of South America, and later Charles Darwin’s explorations and writings, added to the curiosity of the Antipodes to the Western world. While the Australian antipodes was somewhat of a mystery to Westerners tucked up in Europe, the perceptions and realities of the early Australian settlers was one of harsh reality. Over time European settlers carved a new home from nature, a new place soon became evident; the tall timber forests on the coastal fringes of the new southern Colony were mostly cleared and removed to make way for the home loving population arriving on its shores.

The forests became picturesque parkland on one hand but obstacles to settlement and farming on the other.

Aesthetic depictions of the early colonial landscape portrayed the forested ‘parkland’ as a picturesque model of the English Arcadian dream.

It was not until the mid 1800’s that a growing nationalism brought about ‘aesthetic reappraisals as represented by painters of the Heidelberg School’19. In addition, the iconic gum tree ‘which embodied, literally and metaphorically the membrane of tensions, anxieties, misunderstandings and misconceptions underpinning settlement’20 took centre stage.

10. Whelan on the log (1890) Arthur Streeton

33 Place, a personal narrative

Concept of place, as seen from inside, is entwined with personal memories, and with marks made in the land that provoke and evoke21.

The ‘place’ I call home has been the source and inspiration for this investigation and this body of installation works; it is the physical and emotional place of daily life and lived experience. In addition, it is the stage for a personal memoir of interaction within a place of trees, an investigation of its past present and future. John Malpas in his discussion on Place and Experience states that:

The land around us is a reflection, not only of our practical and technological capabilities, but also of our culture and society – of our needs, our hopes, our preoccupations and dreams22.

Nestled in between Tanban State Forests and Ngambaa Nature Reserve, my ‘place’, surrounded by forest, is a place of re-growth rainforest and tall timber eucalypts. This place holds, embedded in its topography the ancient names of Indigenous places, which remain with us today – Anglicized names, such as Tanban, Unkya, Allgomera, Clybucca, Yarrahappini, Ngamba, Collombatti, and Eungai, to name a few.

Government surveyor Clement Hodgkinson was one of the first Europeans who ventured north of the Macleay River beyond the areas of settlement, to bring us a vivid description of the forested valleys of the Nambucca and Bellingen regions. It was due to Hodgkinson’s understanding of the Local Aboriginal inhabitants that many of the original names are still in use today.

The record of his journey From Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay (1845) details his encounters and assistance by the local Tanban and Yarrahappini Tribes, and Hodgkinson's images portray – this place of trees, as truly a home to its Aboriginal dwellers. The image of the ‘Cawarra’ initiation ceremony of the Yarrahapinni tribal group sets out an intimate gathering of ceremony and belonging. The dancing figures mirror the forked tree-limbs, as they seem to

34 sway in the fire light, at home in their forest clearing. Hodgkinson describes the ceremony in detail and notes:

Yarrahapinni tribe were so elaborately painted with white for the occasion, that even their very toes and fingers were carefully and regularly coloured in concentric rings, whilst their hair was drawn up in a close knot, and stuck all over with the snowy down of the white cockatoo23.

He also states:

The surrounding trees are minutely tattooed and carved to such a considerable altitude, that one cannot help feeling astonished at the labour bestowed upon this work24.

The descriptions of Hodgkinson’s travels through the valley of Eungai (oankihi) and Allgomera are still recognisable today; they are the valleys I call home.

11. Cawarra Ceremony – Yarrahapinni Tribal Group. Clement Hodgkinson 1845 National Library of Australia

In 1978 anthropologist, K.H. Lane undertook research into the Aboriginal carved trees on the Nambucca River, and described the ceremonial and

35 cultural significance of these sacred trees, the very trees that Hodgkinson had noted. Lane states in his essay that:

These sacred carved trees seem to be the only known trees left in situ within the Northern coastal region25.

By 2006 in such a short space of time fire had destroyed the last of these sacred trees in an area marked for development, enraging the community leaders, Indigenous and non- indigenous alike.

12. Up in smoke 2006 Nambucca Guardian News.

The Soldier Settler farming family that took up the original block of land (which I call home) early in the 20th century, worked hard and cleared the original forest to produce pasture for mixed farming and dairy but their hard struggles were short lived, and over time nature claimed back much of their endeavours.

There is not much physical evidence of the hard work that this first settler family put into the land and few remnants remain of their presence. Large tree stumps complete with axe marks of their demise act as boundary markers and ghostly tall ring-barked trees stand as memorials of a time since past. A few old post and rail fences lay hidden and half-buried in the rich re-growth rain

36 forested gullies, and if you look carefully you can still make out the original creek crossings.

Nature had reclaimed much of their endeavours by the time of my first contact and purchase in the mid 1970’s; lantana and wattle took up what were once dairy pastures. It is humbling to realise that my connection with this ‘place’ is the longest since European footprints left their mark.

A place is where time in its human modes takes place’ and ‘a place cannot come into being without human times intervention in Natures eternally self renewing cycles 26.

Robert Harrison discusses the idea of ‘place’ in reference to time and human lifespan, as that of a natural cycle of life and death, which continues in human collective thought as Memory. Harrison also states that ‘we dwell in space’27 and our interactions in this space over time – creates a place – a connection. Human interactions in nature, be it a dwelling, a clearing, ‘a monument or a fire’28, we leave as signs of our being, ‘a mortal sojourn on the earth’29. The gravestone, as Harrison suggests becomes a human marker, a ‘place’ marked in time, belonging through burial’30. While Lucy Lippard describes ‘landscape as space’ and when combined with memory becomes place’31. If we follow Lippard's thinking, place becomes culturally loaded and space is dehumanised and de-sentimentalised.

J. E. Malpas in his discussions on place and experience notes that the tie between place and human identity is quite widespread, it is a ‘basic notion’ in western thought and indigenous cultures32, and quotes the writings of Gaston Bachelard when he states that:

In Bachelard, the life of the mind is given form in the places and spaces which human beings dwell and those places themselves shape and influence human memories, feelings and thoughts33.

The early settlers of the Nambucca Valley and in particular the small valley of Tanban, cleared a space in the forest landscape to inhabit and built their humble homes, to become a ‘place’; the bush removed and boundaries

37 marked, a place, a home emerged, and in so doing, nature accommodated settlement.

Over time with interaction in this land, I have unearthed many objects and implements of material culture, from early European farming tools and machinery and boundary markers, through to Aboriginal stone tools, stone axes and flints. As if conduits through space and time, these objects trigger mixed feelings of excitement and awe; connecting with others who called this place home.

Peter Read in his discussions of place and belonging poses the question of whether white Australians can ever truly belong to this land34. European embedded memories are considerably short within this landscape; nevertheless, does this negate the question of one’s belonging?

Aboriginal peoples of Australia have always belonged; their ancestral connections go far back in time, enmeshed within the landscape.

Between the years 1973 to 1984, the National Parks and Wildlife Service of NSW undertook the NSW Sites of Significance Survey; this was one of the first such initiatives put in place to collect and revitalise Aboriginal cultural heritage as an act of recognition of Aboriginal connections within the landscape35. Local Indigenous Dunghutti man Ray Kelly and Anthropologist Howard Cramer conducted this survey of Aboriginal sites, and according to Jo Kijas:

The survey pioneered a process of site recording and assessment in NSW that recognised cultural continuity through stories and landscape, and contributed to a process of cultural revival in Aboriginal communities throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s that continues to inform Aboriginal cultural heritage work today.36

The forest landscape holds many sites of cultural significance for Aboriginal peoples, but due to past injustices, Aboriginal people are reluctant to acknowledge the sites, and prefer to keep them secret. The forests act as protective covers for the cultural sites and the very forests themselves are ‘seen to be part of Aboriginal cultural heritage because their appearance provides a link to a cultural landscape37.

Nature and Culture: Dialogue

Nature provides us with the essential metaphors for life and an understanding of our existence. The culture we have developed is essentially the sum product of humanity’s search for meaning and identity. Ultimately, nature is essential for both cultural blossoming and human survival38.

Nature and culture have been, and to some extent still are, understood in terms of two inseparable entities,39 however artists working in nature and with the systems of nature are demonstrating contemporary reassessment of this concept. Nature and culture, as Sally Caucaud suggests are ‘inextricably entwined'40. Nature’s natural systems, as we have witnessed in recent media reports are under threat from human intervention. In Australia, the River Murray system is rapidly dying – due in part to human intervention and the overstated need for water. In addition, in the forest region of my home the huge tall trees that the explorer Clement Hodgkinson described in 1845 - red cedars six feet in diameter and over ninety feet tall to the first branch are myths of the past. Continual logging of the region has diminished most of the old growth and the red cedar is all but gone.

These dilemmas provoke artists today, and they are responding. Bonita Ely in her essay Ancient History of Installation Art reminds us that ‘throughout the 20th Century the visual arts have been personalised and politicised'41 and that artists are reminding us of the need to place ourselves within nature, and question the state of our natural environment.

1Nash R Wilderness and the American Mind, Yale University Press New Haven 1974 Chapter 1. Cited by Frawley Kevin J An Ancient Assemblage, the Australian rainforests in European conceptions of nature www.mcc.murdoch.edu.au 16/05/2007. 2Smith Bernard European Visions and the South Pacific, London, page 168. As cited by Frawley Kevin, An Ancient Assemblage, the Australian rainforests in European conceptions of nature. Continuum: The Australian Journal of Media and Culture Vol 3, no 1. 1990. 3 Ibid, page 7.

4 Sayers Andrew New Worlds from Old, 19th century Australian and American landscapes, National Gallery of Australia ACT 2006, page 96. 5 The act of ‘terra nullius’ came into use via the proclamation by Governor Bourke on 10 October 1835. This historic document declared that and reinforced by law that the Australian lands were the sole possession of the British crown with no prior ownership. The proclamation document can be found in the collection of The National Archives of the United Kingdom, Kew, Richmond, Surrey UK.The law governing this proclamation was not changed until the Australian high court decision in the case brought by Aboriginal Australian Eddie Mabo in 1992. WWW.migrationheritage.nsw.gov.au 2/8/2008 6 Smith Bernard European Vision and the South Pacific, London,, 1985 page 5. 7 Carter Paul The Lie of the Land, London 1996, page 4. 8 Thomas Martin Uncertain Ground, essays between art and nature. Art Gallery of NSW 1997, page 13. 9 Ibid, page 11. 10 Ibid 11 Malpas J E Place and Experience, Cambridge University UK 1999, page 2. 12 Ibid, page 3. 13 Barrowclough Nikki The Sydney Morning Herald, The Good Weekend, July 1997. http://www.nicholasjose.com.au/works/goodweekend.html. Schama Simon Landscape and Memory, London 1995. 14 Frawley Kevin J An Ancient Assemblage, the Australian rainforests in European conceptions of nature, Continuum, The Australian Journal of Media and Culture, vol 3 no 1(1990), quoting Oliver Rackham Woodlands, London, page 2. 15 Eagle Mary and Jones John A Story of Australian Painting, Sydney 1994, page 1. 16 Frawley Kevin Visionaries, the rise and fall of the foresters, Borschmann Greg The Peoples forest, a living history of the Australian bush, Blackheath, NSW 1999, page 3. 17 Frawley Kevin An Ancient Assemblage; the Australian rainforests in European conceptions of nature. Continuum; The Australian Journal of Media and Culture vol 3 no 1 (1990), page 3. 18 Smith Bernard European Vision and the South Pacific, Yale University, USA 1985 page 1. 19 Frawley Kevin An Ancient Assemblage, the Australian rainforests in European conceptions of nature, Contiuum, The Australian Journal of Media and Culture vol 3 no 1 (1990), page 7. 20 Roberts Julie The Edge of the Trees at the End of the Millennium, Uncertain Ground, essays between art and nature, Art gallery of NSW 1997, page 126. 21 Lippard R Lucy The Lure of the Local, sense of place in a multi-centred society, New York 1997, page 7. 22 Malpas J E Place and Experience, a philosophical topography, Cambridge 1999, page 1. 23 Hodgkinson Clement From Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay, London 1845 Mitchell Library, page 233. 24 Ibid, page 231. 25 Lane K H, Carved Trees and Initiation ceremonies on the Nambucca River, McBryde Isobel Records of times past, ethno-historical essays on the culture and ecology of the New England Tribes – Institute of Aboriginal Studies Canberra 1978, page 223. 26 Harrison Robert Pogue Jac Hajet (essay), Mitchell W J E Landscape and Power, page 350. 27 Ibid 28 Ibid 29 Ibid, page 351. 30 Ibid, page 350. 31 Lippard Lucy The Lure of the Local, sense of place in a multi-centred society, New York, 1997 page 9. 32 Malpas J E Place and Experience, a philosophical topography, Cambridge 1999, page 4. 33 Ibid, page 5. 34 Read Peter Belonging, Australia’s place and Aboriginal ownership, Cambridge University Press 2000 page 1. 35 Kijas Jo Revival, Renewal and Return, Ray Kelly and the NSW sites of significance survey, Department of Environment and conservation NSW 2005, page XV.

36 Ibid 37 Ahoy Cheryl and Murphy Dee A Preliminary Investigation of Aboriginal Values in the North- East Forests, National Parks and Wildlife NSW 4.4.1 referencing Byrne 1987:109; Feary 1989; Hall and Lomax 1993a, page 11. 38 Matilsky Barbara Fragile Ecologies, contemporary artist’s interpretations and solutions, New York 2000 page 4. 39 Caucaud Sally After Nature, Lake Macquarie Gallery (exhibition catalogue) 2005, page 1. 40 Ibid 41 Ely Bonita The Ancient History of Installation Art, a paper presented at The Spatial Cultures Conference, University of Newcastle NSW 2001. http://home.iprimus.com.au/painless/space.bonita.html. 28/08/2007 page 1.

Chapter III Contemporary Art Engagements

There is no way to know anything we call nature, except through our own thoughts and perceptions and that these thoughts and perceptions are shaped by culture1.

Artists through time immemorial have related to nature through their environment, and the ‘place’ in which they inhabit; alongside the culture within which they dwell. In addition, contemporary artists today are no different; they are ‘looking around more and more to record what they see’2 and finding ways to interpret and relate their ideas and cultural visions within their art projects. Artists since the Romantic era of the 19th Century have brought about new appraisals and personal visions; art directed by the artist. In this chapter I will be discussing contemporary artists’ approaches to the thematic discourses of nature, culture and connection to place in relation to and in reflection of, my own body of installation works.

Nature

In the past, philosophies of nature served humanity’s needs: nature as resource and as aesthetic beauty. Now in our contemporary world nature has again

42 become the focus of artistic discourse and inspiration; notions of a nature that is explicitly entwined with culture, as we realise the uncertainties of human effects on our environment. Moreover, the appreciation of the aesthetics of nature has given way, to a large degree, to the concerns of the modern world around us; of global warming and pollution, concerns of ecology and restoration. Artists in this post modern world are interpreting nature in diverse ways, interacting in the very materials of nature, commenting on the destruction of nature and exploring ideas of human interaction and manipulation of natural process through scientific and medical intervention. Artists today are weaving their personal stories into and are reflecting on the everyday world around us. Australian artist Louise Weaver’s artistic interests have been ‘the physical and aesthetic fragility of the bio-diverse world and its specific ecological systems’3. Weaver presents us with her creatures of nature – transformed and preserved as glitzy froth of contemporary life. Weaver’s discourse is not one from within nature, but a discourse looking from the outside, an urban view of nature.

13 Racoon (2000) Louise Weaver

43 Since 1990, Weaver has produced ‘opulently crafted objects’4, animal forms covered in crochet skins of bright lurid colours. Jason Smith in an article published in Art and America (2007) referenced curator Lisa Gabrielle Mark when he commented:

Ours is a time in which, more than ever, nature is shaped and defined by culture. And Louise Weaver’s crocheted coverings for animal forms hint at the self conscious irony of a species torn between its capacity to make reality according to its own designs and the undeniable necessity of finding harmony with those already in existence5.

Like Weaver, one of Australia’s leading installation artists, Fiona Hall also transforms culturally loaded natural objects by the processes of fine craft skills. In the installation work Cell Culture, Hall utilises everyday domestic storage containers – ‘Tupperware’, which forms the basis for the creation of new creatures. The works are exquisitely beaded and presented as contemporary museum displays in copies of 19th Century ‘vitrine’6 cases. Hall remarks that ‘the work is based on and refers to contemporary experiments in genetics and human hubris in playing with natural order and we know that all living things share a common genetic ancestry’7. Hall has a continuing interest in the facets of nature, in all its interpretations, from the transformative systems of the scientific and the cycles of life and death to comments on the Post-Colonial.

14 Cell Culture (2001/ 2002) Fiona Hall

15 Understorey (1999-2004) Fiona Hall

45 The beaded installation work Understory (1999 -2004) was undertaken as a response to a residency Hall undertook in Sri Lanka; a country which at the time was under civil unrest. The work presents the viewer with an array of colour, a camouflage of nature’s beauty8 and as stated by Julie Ewington, ‘is a symbol of our time that transforms the patterns of nature into the fabric of conflict and hostility’9 Hall places these natural botanical beaded forms alongside beaded human body parts in a coded display of the interrelationship of nature and culture. Hall describes the work as: An exuberant yet shocking account of the inter-relationships of life and death, the work contrasts two views of the tropical environment: the eighteenth century European notion of the Equatorial forest, or jungle, as a site of luxuriance/fecundity/adventure (and also a zealous hunting for plant and animal specimens); and the contemporary reality of on-going civil unrest and the displacement of people from traditional territories due to land clearance, urbanisation and the political after effects of colonisation10. The title of this work is, as Ewington notes, ‘taken from the botanical term for the layer of vegetation that lies beneath the tallest trees in the forest’11; a layer that embraces the greatest bio-diversity within tropical forests12. In this work Hall is not only commenting upon the state of nature in war ravaged Sri Lanka, but also on the state of nature in many tropical countries that are under constant threat from overdevelopment and post colonial civil unrest13. Hall notes ‘that the coexistence of life and death everywhere is the fate that awaits all living things’14.

Transformations and interpretations of the materials of nature and culture are also of interest to British artist Andy Goldsworthy, whose personal works referencing nature use the very stuff of nature; ephemeral materials of leaves and twigs become bound into the landscape, snowballs melt leaving traces of their demise, while mud dries and cracks on gallery walls. His is an art-practice referencing place as much as nature, and the landscape surrounding Goldsworthy’s home in Dumfrieshire, Scotland, informs the large percentage of his creative output. Goldsworthy has a continuing interest in nature, layered by

46 the human histories embedded into the geology of the landscape, shaping nature over time. Goldsworthy describes his art as ‘rooted in the British landscape and this is the source to which I must return’15. Investigating the very material of a particular landscape is of great interest to Goldsworthy and, like Hall, with the natural processes of nature, death and decay, decomposition and metamorphoses16. Simon Schama describes Goldsworthy’s art as one of ‘anti-landscape, where the intervention of the artist is reduced to the most minimal mark on the earth, evoking nature without forcing it into museum-ready shape’17. The ephemeral works decay and fade but the record of the process; the decaying nature over time, is recorded by the photographic image. Although Goldsworthy works with nature and its materials, he is not as he puts it down, de-grading the use of modern technology, He states that:

My commitment to what are described as natural materials is often misunderstood as a stance against the man-made. I need the nourishment and clarity that working the land with my hands gives me, and I see no contradiction in the use of modern technology18.

The connection and binding of oneself within the land and within nature through highly crafted processes are central to the art practices of all three artists, Weaver, Hall and Goldsworthy, and are highly personal and aesthetically beautiful.

16 Leaf River Stone (1999) Andy Goldsworthy

17 Clay Wall (1998) Andy Goldsworthy

18 Fall Creek (2000) Andy Goldsworthy

49 Culture

Culture itself may be partially defined as an expression of that moment of tension when human intervention in, or collaboration with nature is recognised19.

South Australian artist Antony Hamilton’s sculptural installations cross the boundaries of place and culture and delve into the ‘place’ of collective cultural memory. In his installation works of crafted and found objects, Hamilton often illustrates historic mythic explorers and travellers adventures. With the use of tools as signifiers of human endeavour and survival within the landscape, Hamilton uses everyday objects evoking memories through their very physicality. Raddle (1984) is a work Hamilton produced in reference to his own local area surrounding the Hawker Region in the Flinders Ranges of South Australia.20 The installation work is formed of folded hessian wool bales that have been soaked in red brown ‘raddle’ (red ochre mixed with grease) a mixture which was used widely in the sheep industry to mark bales of wool and to also mark sheep. Placed on top of this folded red hessian, are two claw-like hooks, which are also bound with hessian and stained with red raddle. The bale hooks evoke sinister motives but the hooks are actually agricultural tools, which are used to move the large wool bales. The work evokes an agricultural connection with a rural landscape; a layered land of red soils and a landscape of hard human toil. The use of the simple tools of the wool trade evokes embedded memories within this landscape, and of human endeavour and hard work. Christopher Chapman notes in his catalogue essay Project 7 (2005) how the red brown ochre has ‘evoked the referencing of indigenous cultural uses of ochre and used as a form of white fella ochre’21. So here, the use of the ochre acts as a signifier of belonging, one of crossing cultural boundaries, and laying side by side the Indigenous and European connections to this landscape, this country. Chapman also describes Hamilton’s installation works as ‘a dramatisation that brings to life events, both real and imagined, that symbolise the human experience of a specific kind of landscape’22.

50 19 Raddle (1984) Adelaide. Antony Hamilton, Australia, born 1955. Jute woolpack, dry raddle(red ochre), horse grease, steel pack hooks, jute binding 12.0 x 55.0 x 35.5 Father Owen Farrell bequest Fund 1987 Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide.

A form of cultural layering can also be perceived in the installation work of the Australian artists Janet Laurence and Fiona Foley, Edge of the Trees (1994) at the entrance to the Museum of Sydney. In this public art installation Laurence and Foley deal with collective histories and memory of place; the place of first contact, a powerful, permanent work, a work that was created in response to the thematic discourse on Art and Nature for inclusion in Perspecta 1997 23. According to writer Julie Roberts the work was inspired by the Anthropologist Rhys Jones for whom: The edge of the trees is the intermediary space between the magical sea washing up unknown beings and the darker, unknown dangerous place of the deeply wooded forest24. The twenty-nine pillars of wood, steel and sandstone form a small forest of memories, embedded with shells, hair, bones and ash, and accompanied by audio components of language in black and white voices. The wooden pillars are ‘inscribed with Latin botanical names of exotic flora, Anglo-Saxon

51 signatures of the first fleeter’s’25 and words from the local Aboriginal tribal grouping of the Eora people. The Edge of the Trees can be seen as an imagined space between two cultures, the deeply wooded forest to European eyes as described by Jones was seen as the unknown, the dark and dangerous other, while the same forest to Aboriginal eyes was home; a place of belonging and sustenance, materially and spiritually. The sighting of the work is a historically imagined one; a place of the Eora people at the edge of their forest home looking out onto the site of the first European arrival onto the shoreline. This place is ironically the exact spot were the first Government house was located26.

The Edge of the Trees is as Laurence points out a memorial site, marking the coming together of two cultures, two histories, and two dreamings27. This statement is made even stronger by the fact that Fiona Foley is Aboriginal and Laurence is Anglo-Saxon by descent. The large wooden poles used in the work were sourced from the deconstruction of an early Sydney wharf and add an extra loading to the work as Laurence states: The very fact that the wooden posts were recycled back into the ground from which they were originally felled fulfilled my desire to create an urban forest within which is housed layers of memory and meaning28. It is clear that for Laurence the work had an added environmental meaning, that of ‘the threatened relationship between nature and culture and a disturbed environment’ 29, the trees become metaphors of hope.

20 Edge of the Trees (1995), Janet Laurence and Fiona Foley. Museum of Sydney

53 Place

The understanding of ‘place’ and human connection to it has played a pivotal role in much contemporary art practice since the post-modern period of the 1960’s, and discourses on the subject of nature and culture have also fuelled the creative imaginings of many. In 1970, American artist Robert Smithson proposed a sculptural work Floating Island (1970) which was to consist of a floating barge containing a ‘miniature landscape’; his thematic discourse was the recreating of an ‘Indigenous place’ a Manhattan since lost. In essence, this was an imagined place of history, a connection30 and in Smithson’s vision, the city of ‘Manhattan becomes the art gallery’31 for all to see. The city was to have been confronted not only with the view of what it has displaced, but with the drifting image of a pastoral dream, luring one into the possibility of a recoverable world of beauty and natural simplicity32.

21 Floating Island (1970) Proposed work. Robert Smithson

54 Smithson’s work presented the landscape tradition in a new light, beyond the bounds of the Romantic ideals of nature; this was to be a floating glimpse into the past as a memorial to what has been lost. The intended sculpture did not eventuate but his ideas were to set in motion, future projects expressing similar concerns.

The late 1960’s view of ‘landscape’ and nature brought about new interpretations and investigations. Artists were no longer content to sit back and look through the frame on the gallery wall. There was an emerging interest in artwork placed out side of the gallery confines, and away from the idealised and economic constructs of picture frame and pedestal. The degradation of nature by human economic intervention into the landscape rang sounding bells for many artists and became a popular topic of investigation and expression in the sculptural field. Minimal Artist Carl Andre had re-configured the stature of sculpture, away from monumental figurative verticality to appreciations of the horizontal and had an interest in the way ‘places contribute to the meaning of sculpture’33. Away from the minimalist statements of Andre, ‘place’ and ‘site’ were areas of interest to various American Artists. As they ventured out into the deserts and dilapidated industrial sites, re-contextualising the landscape, and reshaping nature, as an art of reclamation; and in America, earning the title of’ Earth Art. At the same time, artists in Britain were taking a gentler approach to this topic. Modernist sculptor Henry Moore had set the tone in Britain for a re-appraisal of sculpture, by placing his monumental sculptural figures out into the landscape. As romantic voyeurs, these sculptures were placed overlooking the land that man had created. Meanwhile Richard Long created ‘sculptural walks' over the land, connecting with the very material of the earth, as a part of the systems of nature. Kim Levin concludes that the main difference between the American Artist’s approach to art in the landscape and the British approach was a cultural construct, one of historical loading. The United States; a former colony with a pioneering myth, conquering frontiers and taming of the land, while Britain, a former empire that,

55 along with its intrepid explorers and conquests of ancient cultures, cultivated a heritage of gardens and nature walks 34. Australian sculptors were also influenced and swept along by these discourses and new interpretations of sculpture, becoming apparent in the 1973 Mildura Sculpture Triennial. It was a bold decision to take the sculptural works out into the twenty-acre site of wasteland that lay between the Mildura gallery and the river, and to open the event to all. The result was a turning point in the interpretation of ‘Place’ and ‘Site’ in the Australian landscape, and set new creative agendas for many.

Australian artist Rosalie Gascoigne’s contribution to the reappraisals of nature and landscape through the physicality of her place, her home, should not be overlooked in this discussion on place as artistic inspiration. Edward Capon, in the preface to the catalogue Rosalie Gascoigne, Material as Landscape (1998), describes Gascoigne’s art as being ‘inspired by the surroundings of her immediate landscape’35. Gascoigne’s home on the summit of Mount Stromlo in ACT is central to her sculptural works. With the use of debris and discards of human past endeavours, Gascoigne interprets nature and landscape, with sawn and split wooden soft drink crates, combined in subtle references to landscape and the minimalist grid. In the work Monaro (1989), Gascoigne finds the history and memory in an object by way of the weathered surface and Deborah Edwards states that ‘some critics have claimed that Gascoigne’s materials- her faded things connote the regionally specific de- forested expanses and extremes of heat and light of the Canberra Monaro’36. As an immigrant, originally from New Zealand, Gascoigne found herself in a position of isolation and she states that ‘on Stromlo there was a feeling of emptiness and as an artist I found I was free to make another world’37. On her process, Gascoigne comments that: I look for things that have been somewhere, done something. Second hand materials are not deliberate: they have had sun and wind on them. The weathered grey look of the country gives me a great emotional upsurge. I am not making pictures I am making feelings. I want to make art without telling a story: it must be allusive, lyrical38.

22. Monaro (1989) (section) - Rosalie Gascoigne

23 Set up (1984) Rosalie Gascoigne

Gascoigne’s works are a personal reflection of her ‘place’ that are open to recognition by the viewer, as place is invoked.

57 There is a connectedness in these diverse works by artists from around the globe, and the ideas of the interaction of nature, culture and place are layered and evident within the works. Nature and culture no longer stand alone in these works but are influenced and reinforced by the contemporary world in which we live.

1 Bohm Germot Body Nature and Art, Natural Reality, artistic positions between nature and culture, (exhibition catalogue) Verlag Daco and the Ludwig Foundation for International Art, Aachen Stuttgard 1999, page 36. 2 Lippard R Lucy The Lure of the Local, Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society, New York 1997, page18. 3 Smith Jason Louise Weaver, an imaginary realm of post-natural beings. Art and Australia 44.3 (Autumn 2007): 404(8). Expanded Academic ASAP. Thomson Gale The University of Newcastle Library 19 Nov 2007. 4 Ibid 5 Ibid, As quoted by Lisa Gabrielle Mark, curator of the exhibition Wildlife: A field guide to the post-natural, 2000-1; Textile Museum of Canada Toronto. 6 Vitrines – A museum glass display cabinet, displaying scientific specimens or art objects. 7 Ewington Julie Fiona Hall, Annandale, Australia 2005, page 150. 8 Ewington Julie Fiona Hall, Annandale, Australia 2005, page 165. 9 Ibid. 10 Hall Fiona Unpublished notes 2001, Ewington, Julie, Fiona Hall Annandale, Australia, page 163. 11 Ewington, Julie Fiona Hall, Annandale, Australia 2005, page 165 12 Ibid 13 Ibid 14 Ibid 15 Goldsworthy Andy Landscape and Memory, Schama Simon London 1995, page 7. 16 Schama Simon Landscape and Memory, London 1995, page 12. 17 Ibid 18 Ibid, page 8. 19 Lippard Lucy Overlay, contemporary art and the art of pre-history, New York 1985, page 4. 20 Thomas Sarah Antony Hamilton, the mythology of landscape, Art Gallery of South Australia. Adelaide 1999, page 4. 21 Chapman Christopher Contemporary Visual Arts Projects S.A. 2005 – Project 7, Antony Hamilton's Dry Gulch Installation catalogue essay, page 1. 22 Ibid 23 Perspecta 1997 was held in 18 various locations in and around Sydney as a thematic art discourse on the topic of Art and Nature. 24 Roberts Julie The Edge of the Trees at the End of the Millennium, page 125 quoting Jones Rhys, Ordering the Landscape, In Ian Donaldson and Tamsin Donaldson, Seeing the first Australians, Sydney 1985). Uncertain Ground, essays between art and nature, Art Gallery of New South Wales 1999, page 185. 25 Ibid 26 Roberts Julie The Edge of the Trees at the End of the Millennium, Thomas Martin, Uncertain Ground, essays between art and nature, Art gallery of New South Wales 1999, page 125. 27 Laurence Janet Edge of the trees at the Museum of Sydney, Historic Houses Trust of NSW 2000, page101. 28 Ibid 29 Ibid

30 Andrews Malcolm Landscape and Western Art, Oxford University Press New York 1999, page 212. 31 Ibid 32 Ibid 33 Causey Andre Sculpture Since 1945, Oxford University Press 1998, page 17. 34 Levin Kim Gaining Ground, a retrospective view of art in nature and nature in art, Nemitz Barbara Transplant, living vegetation in contemporary Art, Germany 2000, page 13. 35 Capon Edmund Rosalie Gascoigne, material as landscape, (preface)Art Gallery of NSW Sydney 1998, page 5. 36 Edwards Deborah Rosalie Gascoigne, material as landscape, Art gallery of NSW Sydney 1998, page 12. 37 Gascoigne Rosalie In conversation with James Mollison and Steven Heath, Edwards Debra Material as Landscape-Rosalie Gascoigne, Art Gallery of NSW Sydney 1998, page 7. 38 Ibid

Chapter IV Arboreal - Footprints in the Forest Installation works - process and discourse

Personal narrative and lived experience of a familiar forested landscape underpins the creation of this body of installation works. It is the forested landscape of Tanban in the valley of Eungai creek that speaks to me through its ever changing physicality. It is a narrative of layered historical events, of interactions with nature and culture, underlying my studio practice and motivation to create these installation works. To an untrained eye the forested hills surrounding the place I call home – the valley of Tanban on Eungai Creek (a tributary of the Nambucca River) seems untouched and wild, but on closer inspection this ‘bush’ is marked with traces of human interaction and endeavour. European settlement arrived relatively late to this small valley; my own property of forty hectares is nestled in trees of varying species, from dry sclerophyll eucalypts to rainforest gully giants. This place of trees is surrounded on one side by Ngambaa Nature Reserve and on the other the Tanban State Forest. It forms a haven for a large population of birds, small mammals and a myriad of reptile species. This block was taken up for European settlement in 1905 approximately fifty years after Government Surveyor Clement

Hodgkinson had travelled through the region, surveying and documenting his findings, thus preparing the way for European settlement1. The cedar getters were the first Europeans to interact with this forest landscape, claiming a harvest of red cedar from the thick rain- forested gullies. Over time with successive incursions into the forests, timber getters reaped further resources of rainforest and hardwood timbers. Today the few physical remains that tell the tale are the large greying charred tree stumps marked with axe footholds, and the embedded footprints of forest giants, since burnt and decayed, sentinels of the past. As development proceeded, early settlers removed more of the forest for settlement and agriculture, and as time went by the forest landscape became a re-moulded and re-worked space. The early 1900’s established the remaining Crown Lands as State Forests and the harvesting of trees from these forests continues today. By human interaction the forest landscape is in a constant state of re-modelling and transformation, forming layer upon layer of cultural deposits. British artist Andy Goldsworthy describes his sculptural works in terms of layered landscape he states that: I work in a landscape made rich by the people who have worked and farmed it. I can feel the presence of those who have gone before me. This puts my own life into context. My touch is the most recent layer of many layers that are embedded in the landscape which in turn will be covered by future layers – hidden but always present2. My own installation work is enriched and informed by, as Goldsworthy aptly puts it, the many layers that are embedded in the landscape3: the historical, the cultural and the physicality of nature. Three narratives inform the presentation of these installation works; installed into the gallery space, providing a site of reflection on the forest environment. Contemporary art discourse has brought us an understanding of art ‘in that it can be perceived as not being vested in the ‘object’4. However, in this instance I have used the object of the axe as a ‘trigger of engagement in the experience of art’5. The axe becomes an object of reflection, bringing to mind the ‘forest’6 and its embedded histories. The axe is the archetypal tool of human 61

advancement, and also a cultural tool of Aboriginal attachment to country, and it is also the tool that assisted European settler’s in the development of and, destruction and survival within the forest landscape.

1. Transformation: Nature and Culture Blackbutt Horizon (2008) Fragile Nature (2007)

Nature is that thing, both elusive yet forceful in its presence; near at hand and yet unreachable as the horizon7.

24. Fragile Nature, close up section. (2007)

The idea of remodelling and transformation is the main thematic construct of the installation works Blackbutt Horizon (2008) and Fragile Nature (2007). These two installation works came about as a response to local timber logging in a logging coup of the Tanban State Forest. On walking through this vast tangle of fallen trees a week after the loggers had departed, my sense of destruction and disorientation was overwhelming. The horizon line, which is often not easy to view in a thick forest of tall trees, had changed; it had become a tangled mess of tree heads, lying prostrate. The scene was surreal.

The once tall straight vertical forest was now re-arranged and transformed into a submissive horizontal entanglement of dead branches. The nature of the eucalypt to stand erect with vertical branching is truly a signifier of the Australian landscape, and the V shaped forms of the tree branches inspired the work, so too did the did the engraved image created by Clement Hodgkinson Cawarra Ceremony of the Yarrahappinni Tribal Group 1845. Mt Yarrahappinni sits at the gateway to the Eungai valley (Tanban) and can be seen clearly from my front veranda. Hodgkinson’s image of an Aboriginal ceremony surrounded by tall trees that echo the form of the dancer’s limbs is an enthralling image, one of a people at home in their place of trees. A scene that I can imagine as I sit looking out at the distant mountain. The Nambucca valley is unique in that it has species of eucalypts that are indigenous only to this region. And from my personal observations, forestry practices encouraging the growth of the highly valued timber species Eucalyptus pilularis (Blackbutt) has played a role in the decline of these other unique eucalypt species. Moreover, the practice of encouraging the growth of Blackbutt over other species, as I have witnessed tends to encourage monoculture and reduces the biodiversity within the forest environs. These timber art works are a statement, and a reflection, on this dilemma of monoculture forests and loss of biodiversity. The very physicality of the timber tree limbs brings to mind nature’s diverse order and embedded histories.

Blackbutt Horizon (2008) In this work of salvaged tree limbs, the V shaped branches cut vertically create two exact halves mirroring each other. Placed end to end and dowelled together they form a mirror image. On the gallery wall the timber branch forms create an illusion of a new horizon line, a Blackbutt reflection. The tree limbs were salvaged quickly after tree felling as the insect borer (Lyctus) attacks the sapwood of this species as soon as it is in contact with the ground8. As a result, many tree limbs had to be selected to arrive at the final few. My intention for this work was that it would create for the viewer an illusion of reflective space, a new way of seeing the bones of the forest.

The timber was sanded, polished and sealed with oil to produce a uniform colour. The very action of sawing the tree limbs in half reflects the industrial processes of milling and splitting the logs. This mechanical intervention is the moment of transformation, from log to timber, from nature to culture.

Fragile Nature (2007) The second work in this installation also uses tree limbs salvaged from tree felling and harvesting operations. In this work the original timber forms were covered with plastic kitchen wrap as protection before being used as a former, or mould, enabling the creation of the mirror copies. Using heavy white cotton thread, a form of needle lace is worked around the original form following the contours of the timber. This time-consuming process of looping the thread and following the form acts as a meditation, an intimate binding of oneself with the nature of the object the tree. The application of fabric hardener stiffens and reinforces the needle lace forms and when cured the lace ‘casts’ are slit and removed, resulting in a fragile shell of the original. The original timber forms and the needle lace moulded shells placed opposite one another on the gallery wall create repetitive minimal statements, a transformation of the original form is created. The work reflects the fragility of the forest environment and the transparent fragile netted lace forms act as metaphors of loss. This lace netting process has been used historically, as a device for insulation and protection of ceramic and glass bottles and the application of this protective lace netting process can also be perceived as a signifier of protection: the protection and preservation of our natural forest environment.

2. Place: Axe as signifier Nature Culture (2008) Going, Going, Gone! (2008) Embedded (2007)

The axe form plays a large part in this body of works; it is the sole signifier of human interaction within the forest-landscape, it has a binary purpose as one of survival and of destruction. For the early settlers and Aboriginal tribes alike this was the tool that assisted in the creation of a home, a place of shelter and belonging, it was also the object of interaction between European settlers and Aboriginal tribal members.

25. Arboreal August 2008 Watt Space Gallery, Soozie Coumbe

Clement Hodgkinson in his travels through this region on the way to Bellingen was assisted by Aboriginal guides from the Yarrahappinni Tribal group, and the payment for persuading them to help him was as he states: ‘a tomahawk to each of them on my return, and plenty of tobacco whilst travelling with me’9. In this instance the axe signifies the space of cultural interaction; it is a space of transition, from the highly skilled creation of the Indigenous stone axe and the metal axe of the settlers. I have often stumbled across both stone axes and steel axes lying silently in the soil, and been in awe of their presence. The question posed is, are they discarded deliberately as cultural markers, or accidentally lost? Only the objects themselves know their history. These objects of material culture are loaded with meaning, as signifiers of belonging and

connection to ‘place’. Julie Roberts notes how explorer Thomas Mitchell in 1845 (ironically the same time period when Europeans were interacting with Aboriginal peoples in the Nambucca) ‘is surprised at the rapid integration of the white man’s axe along Aboriginal trade routes’10 and states: Even there, in the heart of the interior, on a river utterly unheard of by white men, an iron tomahawk glittered on high in the hand of a chief11. European and Indigenous footprints are bound up in these works, so too is the fragile nature of the forest environment. Memories of human endeavour are triggered by the physicality of the cultural object – the axe marking out a place of belonging. No longer usable as a tool, the axe in these works becomes a lace copy of its former self – an act of transgression. With the aid of the axe, the forest landscape was re-worked, and so too in this work, is the form of the axe reworked and transformed. As an art object the axe form is recognizable but rendered useless, much as the mythic axe wielding timber getter has been removed to museums and history books. The various axe types, re-created in this work, once held a multitude of practical everyday uses, which today have been lost. The skills of the axe wielding timber getter and settler are embedded into the landscape through the physicality of the axe and the memories evoked. Today the mythic axe wielding timber getter's skills, are re-enacted at local cultural shows in the form of the ‘wood chop’12 and have become a potent symbol and celebration of the endeavours of the ‘settler’.

26. Woodchop competition, Bellingen 2008

Nature Culture (2008) The previously described lace netting technique was also applied in the creation of this work. Various types of steel axes and hand tools were encased in lace netting and acted as the moulds for the eventual lace axe forms. The shelf support hung with its tools is the central metaphor of home; it is the support for the tools of human endeavour in the landscape. Collaged with discarded forestry maps, the shelf support is marked with a new appraisal of the landscape, a re-written forest of the imagination. The maps contain the marks and traces of human interaction within the forest landscape over time and space. As a memorial to human skills and endeavours, this work honours the place and the inhabitants of the forest landscape. Lucy Lippard describes place in terms of a map of connection to a location, and states that:

Place is latitudinal and longitudinal within the map of a persons life. It is temporal and special, personal and political. A layered location replete with human histories and memories, place has width as well as depth. It is about connections. What surrounds it, what formed it, what happened there, what will happen there13.

Going, Going, Gone! (2008) Three embroidered images depicting the mythic timber getter are captured in the form of embroidered cross-stitch on a white linen background. The images are formed from composites of historic photographs obtained through various historical museum collections and digital forest images I have taken within the forests of the Nambucca region. The intentions was to create hybrid images from the historic past and brought into the present. The scenes depicted act as snippets into the past, as an intimate observation of timber getters at work and of the forests, which they worked in. The digitally collaged images were simplified via a computer assisted software programme, enabling the images to be hand rendered in black embroidery thread.

This installation is a memorial to the lost forests of giant old growth, to the timber getters who worked amongst them, and also as a statement on the loss of the skills that made it possible. As Momenta Mori, the deeply recessed white boxes act as framing devices, for the black and white embroidered memorial images.

Embedded (2007) Sourced from a local timber miller as an off cut from a bridge girder, the large timber slabs of Blackbutt form the main material for this work. To overcome problems with the weight of the timber it became evident that the only solution was to re-work the timber and slice it in two. What had initially seemed a problem of size and weight turned out to be an asset, the timber cut in half was easier to manoeuvre. The work was enhanced by the action of slicing the timber in half, creating a presentation table, a reflective museum piece. The varying ceramic axe forms are incised with Latin names of various tree species and lay embedded into a layer of charcoal, referencing the practices of forest burning14. The practice of burning is ongoing in forest harvesting today, which is highly controversial considering contemporary alarm and heated discourse on the subject of global warming and the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The ceramic axes lay embedded into this layer of charcoal (which ironically once was timber) as an act of reunification of elements of the forest, and of the inter-connectedness of nature and culture.

3. Habitat - Arboreal (2008)

A work of art like ‘a painting, frames and distances through the eyes of the artist and like tourism painting formalizes place into landscape15.

27. Habitat Arboreal ( Section) 2008 Soozie Coumbe

The Oxford Dictionary describes the meaning of ‘arboreal’ as living in trees, and this installation work is a reflection of this statement. The bio-diverse nature of the forest environment is home to many living forms, it is a place of refuge and sustenance, and it is also an independent interactive system of nature. My personal interactions and experience of ‘living in trees’ is mixed. A forest environment can be a claustrophobic space, where towering trees can seem at first like bars of a wooden prison, and at other times like the welcoming arms of a loved one. Unwanted creatures invade one’s home and gardens, while others delight and excite with their beauty. Fauna and flora inter-relate within the forest environment and the cycles of nature bring forth constant change and transformation. Salvaged tree limbs are used in this work, inter-dispersed with woven nest forms; creating a hybrid forest suburb. Each nest form, consisting of salvaged copper telecommunication wire, becomes encoded with unreadable texts.

The eucalypt-dyed blankets lay folded on a presentation plinth which doubles as the support frame for the timber pieces. The war-time woollen blankets were rescued from a second hand centre, destined to be converted into dog blankets. Loaded with symbolism these blankets talk to us of war time sacrifice, of protection of nation and self and of the soldier settlement schemes that flourished after the war(s). As an integral part of the work, the shelf signifies the political and economic support needed to conserve and protect sustainable biodiversity of our forested landscapes.

As a collective body of works, the three installations are presented as an environmental statement of sustainability. The works are also a memorial to human endeavours involved with creating a home, a place of belonging; celebrating the skills of the timber getters and the tenacity of the settlers work, alongside the recognition of the Indigenous footprints within this country; past, present and future.

1 Hodgkinson Clement From Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay, London 1845, Mitchell Library Sydney, page 9. 2 Goldsworthy Andy and Friedman Terry Time, London 2004, page 8. 3 Ibid 4 De Oliveina Nicolas, Oxley Nicola and Petry Michael Installation Art, London 1994, page 28. 5 Ibid 6 Forest, in this instance being a landscape of large trees, a complete environment. 7 Thomas Martin Uncertain Ground, essays between art and nature, Sydney 1999, page 8. 8 Boland D J, Brooker M I H, Chippendale G M, Hall N, Hyland B P M, Johnson R D, Kleinig D A, Turner J D Forest Trees of Australia, Melbourne 1984, page 292. 9 Hodgkinson Clement From Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay, London 1845, (held in Mitchell Library Sydney), page 13. 10 Roberts Julie The Edge of the Trees at the end of the millennium, Martin Thomas Uncertain Ground, essays between art and nature, Art Gallery of NSW, page 132. 11 Mitchell Thomas Lt. Col Sir Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia, New York 1848 1969, page 325. 12 The Woodchop is an iconic sport Australia wide, and the sport today started in Tasmania in 1870 as a wager between two timber worker’s. The sport is world wide with Australian woodchoppers regarded as some of the best at tackling hard woods. In NSW competitions are held around the state in city and rural areas alike. An Introduction to Woodchopping, the New South Wales Axemen’s association web site www.nswaxemen.asn.au/Introduction/Introduction .html

13 Lippard Lucy The Lure of the Local, sense of place in a multicenterd society, New York 1997, page7. 14 The ceramic ‘axe forms’ were created with the assistance of ceramic artist Robyn Furner, by the use of her kiln and expertise. I am much indebted to Robin for her assistance with the firing of the kiln and the final finish of the ceramic axe pieces. 15 Lippard Lucy The Lure of the Local, sense of place in a multi-centred society, New York 1997, page 19.

28 Blackbutt Horizon (2008)

29 Embedded (2007)

30 Nature - Culture (2008)

31 Habitat – Arboreal (2008)

32 Habitat- Arboreal (2008) 76

33 Fragile Nature (2007)

34 Going! Going! Gone (2008)

35 Axes (2006 -2008)

35 Axes (2006 - 2008)

Conclusion

The Australian experience of forests and their history is an important part of this country’s ethos. The saga is not only a dismal tale of forests and land taken and exploited, and exhausted by yoking it to the great capitalist forces of the market place. It is also of the land and the people who tried to use it; it has a tension between nature and culture, how the understanding has grown about the trees and the ecology of the forest and how it might be used in the future’1.

In previous chapters, I have discussed the perceptions of the forested landscape, past and present, alongside the responses artists have made in relating to Nature Culture and Place, which reinforces while underpinning my body of installation works. To a large degree, the appreciations of the aesthetics of nature today have given way to the concerns of the contemporary world we live in and mostly from an urban perspective. Issues of global warming and environmental destruction loom large in contemporary media with a realization that humankind has been a destructive master to a subservient ‘Nature’. Nature and Culture have become dependent on each other, entwined, inseparable, and as Lippard comments:

81 A reestablishment of a coherent relationship between Nature and Culture is a critical element in any progressive view of the future’2

Why are artists today looking at this topic of Nature, Culture? Could it be a form of nostalgia for a nature unspoilt by human economic and political interaction, or a need to interpret and connect to a place of belonging? On the other hand, as I surmise, it could partially be a look towards and a refuge in the future, by recognizing and acknowledging the past. The Installation works I have presented here address these issues; the works are a form of nostalgia, but a nostalgia that brings to mind the past to reinforce and inform the path towards a sustainable future, as a reflection and memorial on Place. In these works, the space of my dwelling, my home of trees has become the signifier of my belonging. The forested valley of my home, as previously discussed, is and always has been under a constant state of transformation; influenced by human interaction and by the natural cyclic processes of nature. Nothing stays static in this interconnected environment, seasons come and go with varying degrees of rainfall, while fauna and flora respond. A constant movement is taking place and it is this movement and transformation of nature that speaks to me in this body of works. As a child brought up in rural England, surrounded by the ancient past, of old stone cairns, and churchyards, history was with me everyday and seem to seep from within the landscape, it was encompassing. Here in my Australian home, the forested landscape histories are quiet and embedded in the land; Aboriginal cultural tools lay beneath the soil amongst the marks and traces of European farming and logging practices. A need to recognise these marks and traces, and re-awaken this past, became evident and eventuated in this research and in the creation of this body of installation works – Footprints in the forest. The forest landscape is more than a view to behold, it is a multifaceted environment, and it is the home of many living forces, interdependent on one another.

82 According to the 1991 Australian Resource Assessment Commission, approximately Half of Australia’s forests have been cleared and an estimated projection, at the same rate would see the forest estate destroyed within 200 years with deleterious affects on many native species3.

Until fairly recently the forests of northern NSW yielded the millions of hardwood sleepers, needed to carry the nations rolling railway stocks, and the forests also provided the building timbers for the post war housing boom. During the first and second world wars the rainforests of NSW provided valued timber for rifle butts of fighting troops, and as previously mentioned, early settlement was aided by the harvesting of red cedar manufactured and exported as fine furniture, and fittings and as paneling and fittings for rail carriages. The need for quality hardwood timbers is ongoing and in the Valley of Eungai, Tanban in the region of The Nambucca Shire the forests are still reasonably plentiful. As previously, noted the region grows magnificent trees and with the increase of renewably sustainable private forest plantations, the continuing preservation of culturally sensitive old growth forest reserves will remain protected for all to enjoy and be inspired by.

The need to conserve and protect our forest environments had been noted in the past and is still relevant today. As long ago as 1871 botanist Ferdinand Von Mueller stated in a lecture on the subject of the management of trees, that:

I regard the forest as a heritage given to us by nature, not for spoil or to devastate, but to be wisely used, reverently honoured, and carefully maintained. I regard the forest as a gift, entrusted to us only for transient care during a small space of time, to be surrendered to prosperity again as an unimpaired property with increased riches and augmented blessings, to pass as a sacred patrimony from generation to generation. 4.

83 The installation sculptural works produced alongside this research are a reflection of a personal connection to the ever changing forest environment of the Tanban and Eungai valley, a valley steeped in a history connected with trees, it is a place were the boundaries of nature and culture are tightly bound.

1 Bickford Anne, Brayshaw Helen, Proudfoot Helen, Thematic Forest History and Heritage Assessment (non-indigenous), UNE/LNE CRA Regions. A report undertaken for the NSW CRA/RFA Steering Committee, Project No. NA 29/EH September 1998, page 75 2Lippard Lucy Sense of place in a multicentered society, New York 1997 page 12 3Lunnay Daniel Conservation of Australia’s forest fauna page 5 Degraaf M and, Miller I Ronald Conservation of forested landscape London 1996 4 Mueller Von Ferdinand Forest Culture, page 27,52 Bonyhady Tim The Colonial Earth, Sydney 2000 page 257-8

84 Source of images

Introduction

1 Views of Tanban from the Summit of Mt Yarrahappinni 2008, image Soozie Coumbe

2 Views of Tanban 2008, image Soozie Coumbe

Chapter 1

3 Aboriginal family displaying uses for paperbark, Dialan Pugh: An investigation of Aboriginal values in North East Forests; NSW National Parks and Wildlife, Ahoy Cheryl and Murphy Dee (undated).

4 Aboriginal Tribal boundaries, (map 5): Valley of the Crooked River, European settlement on the Nambucca 1993 Norma Townsend UNSW Press.

5 Cedar getters east of Armidale, Forest Trees of Australia 1985 Boland D J, Brooker M I H, Chippendale Gm, Hall N, Hyland BPM, Johnston R D, Kleining D A, Turner J D. © Department of Primary industries, NSW formerly The NSW forestry commission.

6 Practice of ringbarking, Cassells Picturesque Australasia, edited by E.E. Morris. Cassell and Co Ltd London, Paris NY and Melbourne 1889

7 Timber getting, Dorrigo early 1900,s State of NSW through the State records authority of NSW. Digital ID: 12932_a012_a012x2441000116

8 Portable Mill Tanban 1960,s State of NSW through the State Records Authority of NSW Digital ID: 12932_a012_a012x2441000146

Chapter 2

9 Views of Australia (1824-1825), book of engravings, hand coloured, National Gallery of Australia, Joseph Lycett. New Worlds from Old, 19th century Australian and American landscapes, National Gallery of Victoria Canberra: Johns Elizabeth, Sayers Andrew and Kornhauser Elizabeth Mankin 1998. (image withheld)

10 Whelan on the log (1890) Arthur Streeton, Heidelberg and beyond, golden summer’s exhibition catalogue: Pauline Green 1995. (Image withheld).

85 11 Dance at the conclusion of the Cawarra Ceremony Yarrahappinni Tribal Group (1845) Clement Hodgkinson, From Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay: Clement Hodgkinson (1818-1893) National Library Canberra

12 Up in smoke 2006, Outrage: Sacred tree up in smoke, Nambucca Guardian News June 29, 2006

Chapter 3

13 Racoon (2000) Louise Weaver, http://johncurtingallery.curtain.edu.au/local/images/2004/mw_weaver.j pg mozilla firefox 30/10/2008 (Image withheld)

14 Cell Culture (2001-2002) Fiona Hall, Fiona Hall: Julie Ewington Annandale 2005. (Image withheld)

15 Understorey (1999-2004) Fiona Hall, Fiona Hall: Ewington Julie Annandale 2005. (Image withheld)

16 River Leaf Stone (1999) Andy Goldsworthy, Time: Andy Goldsworthy and Terry Friedman 2004. (Image withheld)

17 Clay Wall (1998) Andy Goldsworthy, Time: Andy Goldsworthy and Terry Friedman 2004. (Image withheld)

18 Fall Creek (2000) Andy Goldsworthy, Time: Andy Goldsworthy and Terry Friedman 2004. (Image withheld)

19 Raddle (1984 Adelaide) jute woolpack, dry raddle (red ochre), horse grease, steel pack hooks, jute binding 12.0 x 55.0 x 35.0 cm. Father Owen Farrell bequest Fund 1987, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; Antony Hamilton, born 1955. Antony Hamilton the mythology of landscape: Sarah Thomas 1999.

20 Edge of the Trees (1995) a sculptural installation by Janet Laurence and Fiona Foley, from the concept by Peter Emmett, photograph © Patrick Bingham-Hall courtesy of the Museum of Sydney on the site of the first Government house, Historic Houses Trust of NSW: Edge of the Trees at the museum of Sydney Peter Emmett 2000

21 Floating Island (1970) Robert Smithson, Trans-plant, vegetation in contemporary art: Germany 2000 Nemitz Barbara. (Image withheld)

22 Monaro (1989 section) Rosalie Gascoigne, Rosalie Gascoigne, material as landscape: Edwards Debra 1998 © Viscopy. (Image withheld)

86 23 Set Up (1984) Rosalie Gascoigne, Rosalie Gascoigne, material as landscape: Edwards Debra 1998 © Viscopy. (Image withheld)

Chapter 4

24 Fragile Nature (2007) image Soozie Coumbe 2008

25 Arboreal (August 2008) Watt Space Gallery Newcastle image Soozie Coumbe 2008

26 Woodchop competition Bellingen (2008) image Soozie Coumbe

27 Habitat Arboreal (2008) image Soozie Coumbe

Installation works – photographic images Soozie Coumbe

28 Blackbutt Horizon (2008)

29 Embedded (2007)

30 Nature Culture (2008)

31 Habitat Arboreal (2008)

32 Habitat Arboreal (2008) Close up

33 Fragile Nature(2007)

34 Going Going Gone!(2008)

35 Axes – proto types(2006-2008)

36 Axes – proto types(2006-2008)

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