Camp Diary
Field Notes from Tessellations
October / I went to Goat Island camp and I gathered materials. I hadn’t been to the site since I moved to the barn in April of ’22. I brought the dogs for moral support. Most of the buildings and all the big trees have been taken down. The ground is torn up from diggers so you can hardly drive on it. It’s hard to put into words. The place felt smaller, the distance between where the old structures used to be seemed halved, shrunk. I couldn’t work out exactly where my caravan was, which flame tree I slept under for those nine months.
The landscape is still stunning of course, if you keep the felled and broken trees behind you. You can see the reserve from where the driveway was, the old camp kitchen. You can see the islands. The grass was as green as ever and it was hot, sizzling — the dogs and I barely lasted twenty minutes. I forgot how hot it gets up here, the blue and green so bright it almost hurts to look. The outlook sparkles, the breeze everywhere but where you stand, as you begin to smoulder and burn, to turn to ash.
I remember the day we set fire to eight or nine old mouldering double mattresses in lockdown, the column of black smoke, noxious and dark, towering up into the blue sky. I wrote a lot of poetry those months in my caravan about being set on fire or starting fires: we built a fire / threw everything we had at it / junk, boards / broken chairs. I wrote equally as much poetry about water: cool water is a balm / and look / everything you thought he gave you / is still yours. For a little while, it felt like the end of the world. But I’ve felt that on and off ever since we moved.
I thought I had been part of the disassembling of Goat Island campground — I helped fill dumpsters and load old, waterlogged mattresses onto piles and set them alight. I helped sort through what could be burnt or disposed of, what could be salvaged - but when the real end came, I wasn't there. When the usable, liveable structures were torn down or demolished, when the caravans and bungalows were sold off, when the trees were felled and left in broken piles along the rutted up road, made nearly impassable by the heavy machines, I wasn’t there. The land is overgrown now and empty, the Gulf and its islands glittering in the distance.
October / A materials walk kind of epitomises the artistic arc. You start out with nothing in hand, unsure of what you’ll find, but as you move around, you find everything you need. Not just the artist’s arc but the human one, if we’re lucky.
I gathered materials. Bamboo, jacaranda (wattle actually), arum lily (calla lily), canna lily and a small delicate flower that is kind of like a daffodil but in tiny clusters and without any yellow (onion weed). The jacaranda leaves have already curled to an unusable state. I found a cluster of pods on the same small tree that I hope will speak to the Kentucky Coffee tree pod from uncle Ron’s cabin. And the arum lily here will speak to the arum lily I made at oxbow, even though it’s a bit faded because I washed it in the sun.
November / I gathered from the campground and the loop walk on the same day. A lot of what I exposed was from the campground or the valley road below the campground. One of the plants, maybe the cape wattle, prefers ‘disturbed land’. The descriptions are so fitting and specific to place. I gathered and made exposures on the same day. Some of the plants don’t hold their robustness long after being picked — the lilies, the wattle, the oak leaf, the wild mint (which I didn’t use), the periwinkle, and the wisteria. L encouraged me in the making process. The sun came and went, I did bursts when it was out and patiently coaxed the exposures along when the sun went behind a cloud. I worked with three glass frames at a time which is a good rotation. Probably an average of five minutes per exposure, maybe more. There is some variation in blue in the fixed works. I don’t know yet if that is from over or under exposing, over-washing or light on the print while it’s washing and drying. I made exposures for three hours, I got through all of the paper I had prepared.
Eucalyptus
Cape wattle pods
Flame tree blooms