Bird City - A Fig Tree to Love

For years I lived next door to a giant fig in a park. It was a lot of tree to love.

That tree spread its branches across an area as large as two large suburban lots. Its roots meandered across the space to my garden where it clogged up the sewage pipe.

But I had no ill feelings. I really loved that tree.

Officially it was a Moreton Bay fig or, if it had lived closer to Sydney, a Port Jackson fig. It dominated the view from my kitchen window, and thus much of my life.

It was bird city. Life with these residents was always full of drama.

There was a family of magpies who lived there for years, with the male attacking all and sundry every breeding season. He swooped and dived for weeks on end so that everyone in the street wore stout hats before venturing out .

One year the little family had a tragedy and lost all of the babies (I think to butcher birds) and all of the magpies left the tree, never to return.

Many tiny birds flitted among the branches of the tree.

Noisy minors with orange beaks and big eyes have babies that are the greatest naggers in the universe, cheep cheeping until they are fed.

The tree came alive with fruit bats every evening at dusk. The black shapes swept in against the darkening sky to feed on the fruit and hang upside down. They didn’t nest there but left late after making a great mess.

I loved the puffy crested pigeons with their strutting and their deep chests and cooing. They had amazing mating rituals and it was a hoot to see the girls flirting with the males in hot pursuit.

The lorikeets, one of the many colourful Australian parrots, were the cheekiest pack of all. I made the mistake of leaving honey and bread out in a dish until I heard it was bad for them and withdrew the feast.

These arrogant little creatures used to knock on the kitchen window, screeching for more. I’d have probably thirty of them fly in suddenly, and leave all together without apparent reason. They were real characters – every one of them different.

The fig was such a majestic tree, planted in the first decade of the 20th century by the first landholder in the area.



Its bark reminded me of elephants’ skin, and the roots were something out of George Orwell.

Children loved to climb high into the canopy. Mothers and their toddlers came with strollers and explored and rested.

Council workers looked after the tree and its little park, mowing carefully to avoid the roots, and tree surgeons came now and then to guard it against borers.

The branches hid lots of crooks and crannies for little scurrying animals, but I never saw a snake, although I’m sure they would have been there somewhere.

When I first moved next door to the tree I could see the sunset and even Mount Warning, the tall plug of a volcano which is reputedly the first point in Eastern Australia to feel the warmth of the sun’s rays each morning. But as the years passed and branches spread, the view disappeared.

Occasionally I'd walk across and lay my head against the hard bark to feel its life within, and to be at peace. It was so cool under the tree, and seemingly so safe.

However, come a storm and wind, and the tree changed. It roared and swayed.

Sometimes I would be startled with a loud crack and crash and next morning a huge bough would be lying there on the ground beneath.

My fig tree sheltered many lives, but it could also be a widow maker – a term the old timber cutters used to describe a dreaded killer tree.

More pictures follow ...



That's my old house in the background - see how close I lived.
This week I made a little pilgrimage to see it all again.



The roots were something out of George Orwell ...



Crooks and crannies for scurrying animals



But the tree had a dark side ...

©June Saville 2009. Not to be reproduced without express written permission of the author.

Do you have a special tree in your life?

And by the way if you've read a few chapters of my novel 'Paternity' on Journeys in Creative Writing you'll be interested in Vikki North's great portrait of Pip our main character. See it now ...here

Homeless at Christmas?

Have you ever put yourselves in the shoes of a homeless person?
A homeless person at Christmas?
And in saying the above, I'm assuming that this person has shoes that you can put your feet into ...

You may never have thought about it, but there are thousands of people out there, just on the edge of our suburbs of plenty, who live on the streets or even in bushland, with never a roof over their heads.

They often go cold and they go hungry.

They are lonely and they are stigmatised.

Without thought we comfortable people attach labels such as 'useless' and 'no-hopers' to those who are different, when they're mostly just down on their luck, or ill.

How can a homeless person shower each day? How can they afford a hair cut or shaving gear?

By far the greatest percentage of homeless people have some type of mental illness, ranging from the dreaded schizophrenia to depression and anxiety.

People with psychosis often live with demons in their head. These demons all seem very real and may swamp a person's life with threats and intimidation from insistent voices.

Other sufferers may be afraid of electricity, thinking it lethal or attached to entities they (and we) can't understand. Some KNOW that strangers from outer space are after them, or have implanted electronic tracking devices in their bodies.

Imagine it!

These hallucinations and delusions are often non stop and people with them must cope every day, combatting competing forces within their minds. No wonder they find it hard to keep a job, or be consistent enough to maintain the lease of a house. How could you even watch television? If there was one around!

It is thought that about one in four people suffer a mental illness in some time in their lives, and many more people (families, employers, neighbours, friends) are touched by it.

Many homeless people haven't seen their families for years and others have split up with their partners.

And what's more the pity, increasingly homeless people include parents with children. Whole families.

Yes, even in the most wealthy of countries families are losing their homes - and that's been going on long before the present global financial crisis. Ity could happen to any of us.

What would you do if that happened? How could you cope?

Homeless shelters are filled to overflowing these days. Rents are exhorbitant.

You're put out of your house because a month ago you lost your job which was only part time and casual anyway. Because of this family savings are non-existent.

Where do you put your bits and pieces? Where do you and yours lay your heads that night? And the next?



I'm sorry to be serious but the world must think of these things more often, especially in the months to come. Governments too. Primarily governments. But individuals can help by simply being aware and doing what we can.

As a volunteer, I run a support group for carers and families of people with a mental illness. We meet twice a month in the local library and the people who come to us often say the group has 'changed their lives'. We don't do much except be there and understand ...

It is huge when families discover that there are many others out there in the same boat. Carers swap their stories and their experiences, and the result is exciting.

Every year since 2004 we have been doing just a little to help mentally ill people who are homeless or down on their luck at Christmas.

Local service clubs help us with money and a Lions Club - the Lions Club of Terranora in Northern NSW Australia - gives us Christmas cakes. Members run sausage sizzles at local shopping centres through the year, to raise the funds.

We try to ferret out the most needy in our community to receive these small boxes of joy. Some we find literally on the streets or sleeping on the river bank. There are so many if you look.

So our Christmas cakes must go a long way. Local community organisations who care about these things are thrilled when we call with promises of the gifts. Last year the need was so great that some cakes were cut in half so they would go further ...

It's pretty special to know that at least some of our needy learn at Christmas that someone does care.

A happy and thoughtful pre-Christmas to all of my bloggy mates.

Sincerely
June in Oz

By the way I posted episode 9 of my Australian mystery novel 'Paternity' on Journeys in Creative Writing today. You can begin at the beginning by clicking here and scrolling down to November 16 Episode One.

Will a Dud Cheque Kill Our Community Symphony Orchestra?

Last night's concert at Tweed Heads


This is the story of Barry Singh, a banana farmer who became the conductor and artistic director of his own 70 piece symphony orchestra.

And of the threat that a dud cheque for $18,000 is posing to his dream.


Barry Singh - Source NRSO

The Northern Rivers Symphony began with just eighteen musicians fifteen years ago and is now renowned on the North Coast of New South Wales, drawing musicians from a huge regional/rural area stretching to Brisbane, Lismore and Toowoomba.

It has no government funding and depends on ticket sales for its existence.

The orchestra normally offers concerts on the Tweed and the Gold Coast but four years ago took a $38,000 risk to hire the Queensland Performing Arts Centre to hear themselves 'in a proper concert hall'. The venture was a big success, but ticket sales fell short, leaving a funding deficit.

It all began with this son of a violent father and a loving mother on a Tweed banana farm. The boy chipped weeds and cut bananas as soon as he could hold the necessary tools.

He told his mother at the age of six that one day he would play a violin and become the conductor of a symphony orchestra.

In high school in sleepy Murwillumbah Barry Singh got to play a violin for the first time - the only violin student there. He practiced in the packing shed against his father's wishes, but made his way via a scholarship to the Queensland Conservatorium of Music.

The student was doing well when his father died in the second year of his course and Barry returned to the farm to help his mother. They laboured together for twenty years beginning early and often finishing at eleven at night.

Barry never lost hold of his dream, gradually growing the orchestra to its present phenominal size. The community was always supportive but finance was always a struggle.

Rehearsals were held among small groups of players in various parts of the region, with full blown practice sessions fairly rare.

Sometimes the brass section might be a bit thin but gradually the gaps filled and the group has gained respect from the profession.

Last night's concert was held in a Tweed Heads Rugby League football club auditorium in the NRSO heartland.



Fifty musicians and four singers performed before a good appreciative crowd, but there were still many seats empty in the 1000 seat theatre.

The standard was astonishing for a group that has never had government funding and pays its way with ticket sales.

The programme was mainly French, ranging from the pot boiler Ravel's Bolero to Camille Saint-Seans Dance Bacchanale. In between there were excerpts from Delibes' Coppelia and Chopin's Les Sylphides, and many others.

Overall the quality was high, but I did notice that the orchestra got away from Barry during a rollicking version of Offenbach's Can Can, and that Barry simply laughed at the head violionist and carried on.

He'd have to deal with things that way with the mixture of experience among his players, although I notice that professionals are flocking more and more to be part of the NRSO scene - a tribute certainly.

The Duet from The Pearl Fishers of Bizet was superb and so was the Quartet from Verdi's Rigoletto.

The audience loved it all. Sometimes they clapped in the wrong places and Barry used every opportunity to explain the music. The orchestra has done a lot to educate a normally unsophisticated community that otherwise has little access to classical works.

As the final applause died down Barry Singh came towards the audience and asked that the house lights be lit. He wanted to chat face-to-face he said.

He told how the orchestra had been asked recently to perform with 70 players at a Byron Bay festival, for a payment of $18,000. This would meet performers' fees, associated expenses and produce a small profit.

However, when the cheque came, Barry said it was dishonoured at the bank, and the matter was in the hands of solicitors. There was an audible gasp from every member of the audience.

Now, Barry said, the entire future of the orchestra was in the balance. He appealed to the community to fill the auditorium at a benefit concert being planned for February. If this wasn't a success the end was nigh.

We can't wait to get all of our friends there. It will be a corker of a night and the orchestra will surely live on.

Panic Over Money, or Community and Chocolate?

The condition of the global economy is no longer the elephant in the room. Not when your own Australian Prime Minister says the situation has entered a new and damaging phase and takes an unprecedented step to help fix it here.

Yesterday Kevin Rudd made the astonishing announcement that his government would guarantee for the next three years ALL deposits, every cent, in banks, building societies and credit unions. Banks' offshore borrowings and lending to each other would also be guaranteed.

Mr Rudd said he wasn't going to 'gild the lilly' and he didn't.

'We are in the economic equivalent of a rolling national security crisis and the challenges are great,' he said.

Ministers are saying that Australian banks themselves are not in crisis. The plan is a response to a lack of confidence globally.

Australia has four banks with a AAA rating - and the number of such institutions world wide is less than you could count using one person's fingers and toes.

The Government says it is highly unlikely that it will ever need to back these new guarantees. It wants to remove any disadvantage our banks could suffer in dealing throughout the world without such measures. It will charge the banks a fee or insurance premium for this arrangement.

The Australian share market lost it on Friday, panicing to produce the biggest drop since 1987. Our country had been drawn into the vortex of global problems.

Right now it's Monday morning in Australia and all over the week-end Mr Rudd met with his top Ministers and senior public servants. The Treasurer Wayne Swan was in the USA at the G20 meeting, also discussing the crisis.

Yesterday afternoon (Sunday) Mr Rudd announced his decision. He stated in unequivocal terms that the Australian economy would slow and jobs would be lost. And outlined his protection plan for banks as well as everyday people.

He didn't muck around. He said it the way it is, good and bad, and gave details immediately. The news was determined action.

That attitude in itself is a comfort and induces confidence and trust.

So - what can we do about this in our particular neck of the woods (wherever that is)?

We can turn to community that's what! Crisis is a time for families and neighbours to pull together, helping the less well prepared and taking advantage of the increased sense of security that will come as a result.

My plan for me:

Get on with life.

Get out there and say g'day to everyone I come across. Smile.

Visit someone who lives alone.

Don't panic.

Play my happiest music.

Smell the flowers in the garden, and plant some more veggies of my own.

It's almost summer here, so I will get to a beach and wash my troubles away with a swim.

Have a bike ride or a long walk.

And when all this is done - break out a new bar of chocolate!

Love to everyone from

June

STOP PRESS: 12.15pm Australian Eastern Time the Australian Stock Market has so far today gained five percent across the board.

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By the way there's a new blogging community out there for Aussies - Where the Blog Are You?. Check it out through the cockie link on my sidebar. Our mate Lilly is featured blogger this week.

Swell Sculpture - A Community Event on the Beach

Believe it or not, these shoes are a giant sculpture exhibited last week by Australian artist Gregory Roy Cope as part of the Swell Sculpture Festival at Currumbin Beach on the southern Gold Coast, Queensland.

The event is held each year over ten days and draws thousands of families who meander from art work to art work - all set up along the beach. It's great fun and a serious contribution to the wonderful community spirit in the town.

You may remember that my daughter and son-in-law are building at Currumbin EcoVillage, seven kilometres up the valley (see post of September 6). We make the festival a fixture in our annual calendar.



Brian Sandstrom fashioned a 16th century style gold frame to 'mount' a distant view of the Gold Coast high rises across the bay. This was a cloudy/windy day and it's hard to see them, which is probably a good thing!



These young men thought they were by far a better subject



Frederic Berjot's self portrait had a more serious theme. He asks us if we will look away from the world's global problems as they mount, or will we face and deal with them? There is quite an impact when one first discovers this figure, sitting in a bed of ashes beside the sand.



Lynne Adams' Sunlight Flowers are made from recycled materials such as PET bottles to emphasise our responsibility towards waste and proper use of energy resources.



Creator Monte Lupo says his soldier crabs bear beautiful ceramic impressions of cityscapes because they are doing their best to co-exist with the challenges of natural and urban environments.



These little guys aren't real seagulls ... they're sculptures by Su Brown.



Leisa Russell called this My Throne. It's coated in ceramics with many depictions of her favourite animal: the horse.



The stunning lines of Frank Miles' work are a perfect foil for their environment ...



Which is the sculpture? This pose seemed to capture the fun of a day at Swell. This bikini clad work in bronze was purchased by Gold Coast Council when it was entered into the festival a couple of years back. She's lived on Currumbin Beach ever since, and has even made an appearance on the front page of the Gold Coast telephone directory.



This beautiful piece has been placed near the local bus stop - giving the passengers a lot of enjoyment! By Ruth Park, it's called The Foreigner Within.



You'll be amazed when I tell you that this bust of Sir Edmund Hillary, first to Mount Everest, is made from chicken wire! The exquisite detail has to be seen to be believed. Artist Ian Lovatt says in the festival booklet that 'achievement evokes a great sense of joy'. He must be a very happy man.



These kids had empathy for this young surfer who'd broken his board ...



Joe Stark called his surfer's dog 'Scooter'. He'd keep anyone at bay ...



Col Henry's group of surf life savers captured a time when rescues were made with rope and reel.



Victims of Fashion was the name Frank Malerba gave to his group of four figures depicting the pressure on women to have the right look, the perfect body and all of the required accessories ...



This personification of a tree was more than two metres tall. Clyde Watts and Dean Nikijuluw wanted him to evoke a new perspective, understanding and respect for our sacred living earth.



It didn't matter that it was sprinkling with rain - the show went on.



I snap this picture and I am reflected in a cube of perspex that captures a square of permanently green grass. Artist Shelly Kelly wanted the viewer to be seen as part of the work which she hopes would encourage thought about the now utopian ideal that green grass is the norm.



There were many other sculptures at the Swell Festival - all of them wonderful. But me, I'd give the People's Choice Award to the entry from Nature herself.