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| Factor of Ten > Creative Writing > Ten Green Bottles |  |
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An Interview in the TV Environment Series, TEN GREEN BOTTLES
Voice-over: ‘Tonight to present our discussion and documentary, we are very fortunate to have the grand old lady, Dame Mary Gilmore. (Quieter) Some of you know Mary from the Drysdale portrait, an old bird-human outraged in a bolt of green cloth and a white winding-sheet. The Riverina, also known as southwest slopes and plains, backlights her understanding. Example: ‘A word is a precious possession. To those who know how to hold it to the mind’s eye and turn it to the light, long vistas lie in it, and fields of space and colour.’ In her profession (difficult, precarious), her poetry, essays, and letters were equally for birds, light, people, the world outside house, outside town. Her motto: Go hard or go home. Lived alone though married. Not interested in love offered over the fence, with conditions, she said. Interviewer: Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, please give a very warm welcome to our special Guest, MARY GILMORE. Dame Mary, thank you for coming in to talk about this little piece of Australia. G: It’s a pleasure. I: I hope you’re comfortable? G: Comfort not a high priority. I: You look rather thin in your portrait, forgive me for saying. Could you tell us what work you see as relevant to environmental change? G: Poetry, especially poetry. I: In our own time, we need facts, which, forgive me, poetry is not, or am I mistaken? G: … flat but space is divided vertically. 1) Ridges: Gravelly red, unplowable. Timber survives best here, iron-barks and callitrus. 2) Main areas: the large paddocks, used to be grey eucalyptus and multiple understorey. 3) Invisible water courses: signified by large red box trees. When it rains you see their reasoning. A yabby passed me on the road in a downpour..… find myself there still, except for occasional calls, such as yours. Why was I asked to come here? I: Connect the this with the that and make the occasion memorable for our live audience. (To audience) Everybody: “Hello Mary”. (Audience obliges.) Let’s turn to you first. You were born in country; have credentials in form of husband, son, both farmed in Qld. while you lived and wrote in Sydney? Official recognition as public nuisance, later Dame of the Empire, May Queen of socialists aged 90, state funeral at 97… Childhood? G: Poetry changes people’s souls. I: Their what? G: As children of the bush and in the bush we wandered miles and miles from home, through scrub and box and stringy-bark, setting out early with our dinners and only coming home when hunger drove us, or the slanting sun warned us, yet never got lost and never failed to locate home-direction (which usually was exactly home). We swam in life as the nude swim in water. …. I: (To camera) Put simply, as Mary no doubt intends, tonight we are in grain-land. Flat as. Cropping and grazing country in the gap between Murray, Murrumbidgee and Lachlan rivers many ks away. Your mind was somehow shaped by being out there in the bush? G: Thought goes wimpling through the brain Like little winds in seeding grass … The first flour mill I remember was at North Wagga Wagga. It was of stone in the lower part and logs in the upper. It was a windmill and we once lived in it while father replaced the arms and sail with newer and stronger material… later on machinery and steam. But by that time, Chapman (or was it Nixon?) long had a mill steam driven in South Wagga. At Junee the organic farmers have bought Fielder’s mill and it’s working again. Electricity, not wind, I must admit. Yet. I: So it’s the place inspires you? Is that why, since your death, you’ve returned to Ariah Park, sorry, Broken Dam? G: Thanowring, Pucawan, Quandary, Mirrool, Broken Dam, Trungley Hall, Barmedman, Ardlethan. I: I see. (To someone off-camera) I actually said that agronomist would have had a better grip. Tell us about your slide? G: Simple. Life spat me out near Broken Dam. These are stills from a short documentary I made there after zoom-school.  This first one; darkness of various sorts gathers inside the silos in the bare country. During the day, especially in summer. That’s a shadow urging its way in. Nowhere else to go.  I: And this? G: An interesting shot See the Chinese men in the middle there? Hired in teams to ringbark, cut and burn the tree and bush cover for the new farms. At the far back, centre, the Pucawan silos, built 1920s. After my family moved. I: How would you summarise this evening’s topic? G: I have grown past hate and
bitterness, All men at God’s round
table sit, I: Your father was a difficult man? G: My father was a loving man I wrote up as the mouthpiece for nature-conservation of the time. I: Do we have a slide of him?  G:You get a glimpse of him here, or maybe that’s my husband. In my childhood, and til maybe twenty years ago, bronze-wings, brolgas, duck, killed for food. And for fun. Not now.  I: Why do we have this paddock of (squinting) hay bales? G: I taught here. That’s the school in the middle, the pub on the right, a store, a handful of houses. I: As you know, we’re looking for ecological directions from a wiser, more natural time. G: Ecological. I don’t think we had a word ecological. Eco for economy, plus logic? The mouth is the gate of commercial expansion and national extension. I: rolling eyes to audience. There appear to be a lot of crops, a flat lot of the same crop. This is surely the monoculture we hear about … G: Not quite. This is a paddock with barley round a block of tritikale, and inside again, a centre of wheat. If there’s a late frost, or rain fails, we get something off the paddock, each type of grain responding, ripening, at a slightly different time. Perhaps I should say a few general words? Wheat, barley, oats, wheat, canola, tritikale, lupins, wheat. Advice is less ploughing. Less ploughing and less burning, keep the stubble as long as possible, the dust storms include. The earth cracks way down when the topsoil dries out, which it does, it’s not a sign of emergency in itself. The subsoil cracks, far below. Quail, plovers, even the stone curlew, in spite of foxes. So far, salinity is not an issue, salts in the subsoil, not being brought up. Yet.  Ants, every size and sort, along the lanes among the weeds. Ants, mice lizards, hawks, mice goannas mice and snakes mice. The parrots in Joseph’s Coats. Undergrowth, burnt as fire hazard, eaten by stock. So few of the little birds. A willy wagtail is a treat. In my time, the birds, the birds, the finches. I: You would not agree we have to abandon Western agriculture to preserve the fragile … G: A city thought. I had it myself once. Balance? People eat, governments play. I still hear the scythe in the barley, listen to the sickle in the wheat, and follow the bodies of the reapers bent under a blazing sun, and there I see the cruel particles of the cut straw and the dust of the earth rise in the reapers’ faces, the flies and constant torment, and the sweat in sour streams and salty runnels, marking their arms and cheeks.  During harvest, thirst is extreme. Drinking too much of the buckets of cold water brought on colic. So we took rice water, flour and water, oat-meal-water Water with a cup of vinegar in it Treacle water with oat-meal in it, very sickly. Hop beer. Black tea thick with sugar only at meal times. Here’s a recipe for oat-meal-water. One cupful oats, one gallon water, add ground ginger, cream of tartar, sugar. Chilies instead of ginger if poss, lemons very dear. We have air-conditioning of course. Fanta, coke, cordial.  Here is my son with his friends. Bundy Worship. Their poetry, as you see there, is brief, rude, and public. (She leans in to interviewer, whispering) I must say monoculture or should I say monochrome crowds seem very strange to me, unnatural. The Anzac in his pride Adown his endless age shall ride … (Leans back again) They’re very kind to an old lady, I must admit, they diesel me into town, and anywhere else, any time I want. Costs, machinery, fertilisers, herbicides, taxes.  There are empty houses.  I: I’m afraid we need to wind up. Would you like to end with a more recent poem? G: I only write lyrics these days. Here’s one called “Paraquat Label.” Pan to audience. She recites. FOR USE ONLY AS AN AGRICULTURAL HERBICIDE. THIS PRODUCT IS TOO HAZARDOUS TO BE USED IN THE HOME GARDEN Product is poisonous if absorbed by skin contact, inhaled or swallowed. — Will irritate the nose, throat and skin. — Protect eyes while using. — Do not inhale spray mist. Obtain an emergency supply of Ipecac Syrup APF. When opening the container, preparing product for use and using the prepared spray wear cotton overalls buttoned to the neck and wrist, a washable hat, elbow length PVC gloves, face shield or goggles, half face-piece respirator or disposable respirator. — Avoid contact with spray mist. After use and before eating drinking or smoking, wash hands, arms and face thoroughly with soap and water. After each day’s use, wash gloves and respirator if rubber in detergent and warm water, wash face shield or goggles and contaminated clothing. — Do not work in spray mist. I: (in panic) Thankyou, Mary. We have absolutely no time. Please thank our ... G: (unhurried) Here’s another short one: Revolve with the Ibis
 ReferencesProse from Old Days Old Ways qtd in Dymphna Cusack, T. Inglis Moorre, Barry Ovenden, Mary Gilmore: A Tribute. Australasian Book Society, Sydney, 1965, (p.31). The poems quoted are from Selected Verse. Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1948. |
Factor of Ten was a collaboration between National
Institute for Environment, National
Institute of the Arts and ANUgreen. |
