Found Poem

Lost love...

Dec 06, 2024

I first included this photo as an add on to my earlier Simile post, and then I decided that it deserves its own space.

For the last 10 years we have lived in a tiny village by a gorgeous river in a quiet coastal valley far from any city. However….. for family reasons we have recently made arrangements to spend more time back in our old home town of Newcastle, about 2 hours drive North of Sydney.

Newcastle is quite a pretty city as cities go but, like all cities, it’s also pretty gritty too. When we are down there I like to get around by bicycle and I discovered - years ago - that one of the best ways to do that is to ride along the storm water drains. They are lined with smooth cement and they go under every road and railway - no intersections, no traffic lights, no traffic at all…. In dry weather - which is most of the time - they are my perfect private travel solution.

I say “private” because I never meet anyone else down there - but clearly I’m not the only inhabitant. These drains - really just the creeks and rivulets that always flowed through the valley - attract others too, and they leave art and messages - galleries of meaning for those who may become lost, and sometimes from those who already are.

Every now and then I find something which stops me dead - and this is one.

You have to look to see it….

So who knows…

but for me this is Nina Simone singing “I’m just a soul whose intentions are good, Oh Lord please don’t let me be misunderstood..”

A crowded city sure can feel like a lonely place...

Of course the truth is that these are not “drains” at all - they are the original arteries of the ecosystem - the creeks and rivulets that carried fresh clear water from the hills, down into the valleys and forests where the Awabakal and Worimi peoples lived, and hunted, and fished, and gathered, living off the plenty of this land for tens of thousands of years. Platypus, kangaroo, wombats, goannas and fish, and coastal rainforests rich with fruits and plants for food, medicine, shelter….

Then the Europeans came, and took that land, and cut down the forests and built permanent houses. They carved roads into the land and hardened them with gravel, and tar. They dug new arteries - pipelines for clean water from dams far away because the creeks were dirty now with runoff and effluent, and they straightened the creeks, removed the trees, sheeted the channels with concrete and turned them into drains.

The Awabakal and Worimi survived, and they live here still, and they hold the knowledge of the way the land was.

But strangely, the rivers do still have a beauty.

The land does not forget its knowledge.

A river will always be a river, doing what rivers do.