Tom M. Wilson

I’m looking to collaborate with a Nyoongar musician based in the Perth area on a new show called: Digging in the Sand: The Story of South-Western Australia.  If you, or somebody you know, would be interested please read on:

For the past two years I have been researching and writing this first single-volume environmental history of south-western Australia for the lay reader.  The project summarizes and presents the histories of change for the south-west’s natural environment from ancient geological history, through indigenous land use, through nineteenth century attitudes to WA, till today. Unlike purely scientific accounts of environmental change, the history is enlivened by the addition of human stories and a discussion of cultural attitudes towards nature.  I’ve put together a slide show and talk which summarizes the contents of the book. I want to present this slide show, and have a Nyoongar musician and cultural man tell the Aboriginal side of the story, and present this experience as a regular event.  The show would be aimed at the tourist market in Western Australia and would hopefully take place twice a week, Tues and Thurs, 2pm and last for 1.5 hours.  If you know anybody who would be suitable please ask them to email me on tom at tmwilson.org to discuss this further.

An owl winks in the shadow

A lizard lifts on tiptoe

breathing hard.

A robot in a suit peddles a mineral-rich delusion called “Western Australia”.

The head-heavy, power-hungry Government shuffles papers

Does it speak for the green of the leaf?

Does it speak for the soil?

In the city of Perth the front line expands

A bulldozer side-slips over the skinned-up bodies of still-live banksia trees.

In the pay of a man

From town.

Woylie, honey possum and chuditch are gone.

Super-stores and brick and tile shining hard in the sun.

Now is the time for solidarity

Between four-legged, two-legged people.

Flying people.

The paper-shufflers lose their mandate

The people turn towards the ancient land of the Bibbulman.

An owl winks in the shadow

A lizard lifts on tiptoe

breathing hard.

(My re-edit of lines from Gary Snyder’s poems ‘Mother Earth’ and ‘Front Lines’, 1969)

This is Warrup, an area of jarrah and marri forest in the south-west of Australia, south-east of Bridgetown.  Much of it is scheduled to be chopped down this year.  I was there recently, and can report that it is a beautiful, healthy and biodiverse ecosystem, far from the madding crowds.

Walking through the forest I and my friends found fungus growing from the sides of fallen forest giants, glowing orange against the brown of the fallen jarrah leaves.

The jarrah forests of the south-west of Australia have been overcut for the majority of the twentieth century.  At Warrup there are two areas of old-growth jarrah forest, something very hard to find in 2010.  These areas will not be logged, but anything around these areas will be.  This will open up the old-growth left to the effects of heat, wind and invasive weeds, as well as quite probably spreading die-back into the area.  It will also impact on threatened animals such as the woylie that are not unknown around here.  At Warrup we had found an area of Australia that deserves to be part of the national park system, but that, unless the Department of Environment and Conservation gets its act together, is going to be basically clear-felled.

Tune into RTR 92.1FM in Perth, or online, on 26 May, 11.30am, to hear me interviewing Russel Catomore, a representative from the Bridgetown-Greenbushes Friends of the Forest group, about the future of Warrup.

This forest has only been logged once back in the 1940s and today it contains massive trees and a rich understorey.

The sounds of quiet bird song fluting in the canopy in the areas adjoining the old-growth were an elegy in my ears.  Soon we won’t hear song in this old forest if the Department of Environment and Conservation gets its way.

Logging this forest will be a serious environmental injustice in Western Australia.  To find out why check out me and Rus on Understorey, 26 May, RTR FM, or podcast the show later on.