one thing leads to another
You can read a lot in the landscape. That's not the first time I've said that in this forum. And you know, for all of our efforts, the terrain still guides our travels, and the underlying geology shapes the terrain.
At the left, with its tower is Black Mountain, whose eponymous Sandstone has its scraps in Parliament House's undercroft. Over its shoulder is Mount Ainslie; the eroded core on an ancient volcano. The hard bits stick out, and stay like that for a long time.
Under that big wet patch is the Molonglo River which once meandered across the legendary Limestone Plains; a sheep farm spoiled by whatever it is that's down there now. Its water are held back by a barrage, down there in the right. It's unnatural. Before that, it guided feet here, onto that plain for the annual meet, greet and moth feast.
Whatever that thing on the plain is, it was planned, sort of. At about 1 o'clock there was a plan to construct a factory. A geophysical survey — wisely done as it would transpire — discovered a honeycomb of caves in that limestone. Banished further into the sheep paddock, that, ahem, planned factory site, remains as a grassy slope.
If we turned around — we won't, it's unattractive — we'd see another unavoidable reality of the terrain. The valleys of the Cotter, Molonglo and Murrumbidgee Rivers unite, as they do, in the low places. They follow joins between rock types; and great faults that pass this way too. Behind them are towering ridges, and between here and there valleys rise up and narrow inexorably onto the aforementioned plain. One thing leads to another.
This place ignores "being in the moment". Residing instead in deep time, its shoulder shrug off today. Sediment cores from Lake George/Weereewa are spiced with charcoal and the palynological evidence that the past climax, but fire sensitive, cover of Casuarina trees was replaced by more resilient Eucalyptus as the land dried and readied to burn.
Just a blink of an eye ago, in 1939, a lightning strike lit up the mountains; quite literally. The track that took me to Mount Aggie was then known as the Border Break. Of course, it was folly. The fire stepped over it like it was a chalk line on the pavement. Those tapering valleys funneled that conflagration in this direction. Not crowded then by people, and those people not cowed by the task to quell a blaze, it was stopped before it set alight to the nascent city.
Roll forward to 1952. It happened again, only this time they mobilised the public servants from their offices and beat the thing to death… As we have become more aware and enlightened, in 2003 they let the red steer have its head, burnt the forest, burnt the 'burbs and burnt this hill. Something happened to slow the fire: the hard structures of fences, roads and houses.
We aren't looking to the west, where the weather is created by the spin of our little rock and the rise of the land, because the forest is being replaced by the very things that society doesn't want to burn, but ironically, the very things that slow the rapid progress of fire.
You already know what comes next! The terrain, for all that building, remains unchanged. Fire will come again, the wind will come from the west and those suburbs, not there before, will be on the fire front so much earlier. I'm almost laughing out loud! The very thing that destroyed the forest and led to a new arboretum here at our feet, will bump into a more resistant foe. These trees will be safer from the human folly that will put the people closer to the threat; opposite to the policy that let it born in 2003! One thing leads to another!!
one thing leads to another
You can read a lot in the landscape. That's not the first time I've said that in this forum. And you know, for all of our efforts, the terrain still guides our travels, and the underlying geology shapes the terrain.
At the left, with its tower is Black Mountain, whose eponymous Sandstone has its scraps in Parliament House's undercroft. Over its shoulder is Mount Ainslie; the eroded core on an ancient volcano. The hard bits stick out, and stay like that for a long time.
Under that big wet patch is the Molonglo River which once meandered across the legendary Limestone Plains; a sheep farm spoiled by whatever it is that's down there now. Its water are held back by a barrage, down there in the right. It's unnatural. Before that, it guided feet here, onto that plain for the annual meet, greet and moth feast.
Whatever that thing on the plain is, it was planned, sort of. At about 1 o'clock there was a plan to construct a factory. A geophysical survey — wisely done as it would transpire — discovered a honeycomb of caves in that limestone. Banished further into the sheep paddock, that, ahem, planned factory site, remains as a grassy slope.
If we turned around — we won't, it's unattractive — we'd see another unavoidable reality of the terrain. The valleys of the Cotter, Molonglo and Murrumbidgee Rivers unite, as they do, in the low places. They follow joins between rock types; and great faults that pass this way too. Behind them are towering ridges, and between here and there valleys rise up and narrow inexorably onto the aforementioned plain. One thing leads to another.
This place ignores "being in the moment". Residing instead in deep time, its shoulder shrug off today. Sediment cores from Lake George/Weereewa are spiced with charcoal and the palynological evidence that the past climax, but fire sensitive, cover of Casuarina trees was replaced by more resilient Eucalyptus as the land dried and readied to burn.
Just a blink of an eye ago, in 1939, a lightning strike lit up the mountains; quite literally. The track that took me to Mount Aggie was then known as the Border Break. Of course, it was folly. The fire stepped over it like it was a chalk line on the pavement. Those tapering valleys funneled that conflagration in this direction. Not crowded then by people, and those people not cowed by the task to quell a blaze, it was stopped before it set alight to the nascent city.
Roll forward to 1952. It happened again, only this time they mobilised the public servants from their offices and beat the thing to death… As we have become more aware and enlightened, in 2003 they let the red steer have its head, burnt the forest, burnt the 'burbs and burnt this hill. Something happened to slow the fire: the hard structures of fences, roads and houses.
We aren't looking to the west, where the weather is created by the spin of our little rock and the rise of the land, because the forest is being replaced by the very things that society doesn't want to burn, but ironically, the very things that slow the rapid progress of fire.
You already know what comes next! The terrain, for all that building, remains unchanged. Fire will come again, the wind will come from the west and those suburbs, not there before, will be on the fire front so much earlier. I'm almost laughing out loud! The very thing that destroyed the forest and led to a new arboretum here at our feet, will bump into a more resistant foe. These trees will be safer from the human folly that will put the people closer to the threat; opposite to the policy that let it born in 2003! One thing leads to another!!