A collection of essays on the town of Bellingen on the NSW north coast.
Bellingen is a small town on the Bellinger River on the North Coast
of NSW. All the essays are either on Bellingen, or are set there or
see the world from there, but I hope they are not as limited in their
themes and ideas as they are in their geography.
There
is a series of short essays on particular places and names familiar
to people who know Bellingen, written by someone who is not all that
taken by the notion of Spirit of Place. These essays form a
setting for the other, longer essays in the book.
“The
Bellingen Biennale” is about the 2012 Bellingen Art Prize and the
predicament of art in a small town.
“Interesting
Verbs” is about 'nature writing' in Australia, and was first given
as a talk at the 2012 Readers and Writers Festival during a short
walk on The Scotchman Ridge.
“The
Gleaner and Me”
is about the pleasures and rewards of gleaning and foraging for food.
“A
Kind of Crummy Rainforest” is the third of three essays on
Bellingen Island. The subtitles of the first two, published a number
of years ago, were The
first time as tragedy
and The
second as farce.
This one could be subtitled Three
times proves it.
All three of these essays are about the ecological restoration of a
rainforest that is in the geographical centre of Bellingen, only a
few hundred metres from the main street.
“Contrarian
Ecology” is about novel
ecosystem theory, which
challenges the notion that we should be restoring native ecosystems
and . It appeared in 2012 in the Newsletter of The Australian
Association of Bush Regenerators.
“Heritage
Weeds in Latteland” is about the politics of drinking coffee under
camphor laurel trees. It came out in zine form in 2001and it is the
only essay here that more than a handful of readers will already be
familiar with it.
“Under
the Rose Myrtle”, the longest essay, is a journal of a trip to
nowhere and what happened there. Beyond that it will have to speak
for itself.
Like
Charles Lamb I wonder 'who will take these papers as they are meant;
not understanding everything perversely in the absolute and literal
sense, but giving fair construction as to an after-dinner
conversation; allowing for rashness and necessary incompleteness of
first thoughts?'
