Speaking for the Jarrah Forests and Celebrating Noongar Boodja

I am reading poetry at the wonderful Mandoon Bilya Festival run by the Bibbul Ngarma Aboriginal Association tomorrow and have specifically written the protest poem below for the occasion. The festival celebrates Noongar boodja — the river, wetlands, forest and earth... a sacredness that should not be under constant threat from the ecocidal activities of companies like Alcoa and South 32:

Let’s Talk About the Shining Future of the Jarrah Forests

 

Alcoa and South 32

wish to carve up

thousands upon

thousands of hectares

of jarrah forest

to extend their already

devastating mining operations.

This is the bauxite

gambit which seems

a fait accompli —

the complete package

of ‘jobs’ (an immediacy),

‘rehabilitation’ (employment

for graduates of conscience credits),

and ‘growth’ (the state, like dieback,

clinging to the roots of the companies).

 

Alcoa and South 32

wish to carve up

thousands upon

thousands of hectares

of jarrah forest.

This is an adjunct to being

‘waterwise’ (who needs

a water catchment when

there are desal plants

excoriating the coast?);

to ‘preserving the state’s

heritage’ (on boodja

there are prisons and smelters);

and the ‘green future’

meltdown that even AI

has trouble over.

 

Alcoa and South 32

wish to carve up

thousands upon

thousands of hectares

of jarrah forest.

It’s worth tracing

what precisely those

company profits

end up doing,

but even if we don’t bother,

then simply bandy around

the word ‘security’

and count the millions

of animal deaths the process

will incur, inflict, and spin

as a positive outcome

for the entire state,

country, traditional owners,

planet, solar system, universe,

mirror universes.

 

Alcoa and South 32

wish to carve up

thousands upon

thousands of hectares

of jarrah forest.

Let’s name every species,

then every member of that species,

of plant and animal that will be

annihilated in this process.

We’re all too busy for that.

We all have lives to lead.

Let’s talk about country.

Let’s talk about what has

already gone and how

its existence in spirit

is not enough, how it needs

to be present in all states

of being, part of all stories.

How a forest needs

to remain a forest —

leaf, wing, paw, air, water

and earth.

 

 

            John Kinsella

 

 

Poem in Memory of 'CPG'

Eradu

            in memory of ‘CPG’

 

1.

 

It’s not what’s written

on a sign to mark

 

where a town was.

And it’s not the railway

 

gleaming, or the bridge

that carries it over the river.

 

It’s not the vast acreage

under crop nor the twisted

 

metal uprights of a forgotten

tennis court. Nor, across

 

the line, the single mandarin

tree with its startling fruit

 

in a bed of dried mud

and herbicided grass.

 

Nor is there a space

within the space for litotes,

 

a trick of colonial expression.

It’s not this then that —

 

it’s not permission to walk

your own country,

 

your own birth. And this

is not the explanation

 

you don’t need, but a way

of remembering. It’s loss. Loss.

 

 

(ii)

 

We are before the explosive wattle

with rabbit diggings at its base.

 

We are descending the steep

gravel road towards the river crossing.

 

We hesitate. We walk under the railway

bridge with its sensors, its elevation.

 

Gambusia are darting in shallow,

algal waters and sand speaks imprint.

 

Saltbush and river redgum utter

their true names and the sun

 

questions photographs. This your

birthplace, this our presence.

 

Water over the road. Water fading.

Honeyeaters define renewal.

 

 

(iii)

 

Divided by the road of quadruple

trailered mineral-carrying trucks,

 

Eradu North and South, nature reserve

and broadacre farming, outcrops

 

and river bed, blue lupin flowers

wavering in bush enclave, on paddock edges.

 

Listen closely to vocalisations of insects

across the fringed lilies’ stereocilia.

 

I know the red-capped robin is angry

while excited, is hyped up on other matters

 

but also letting me know where I do

or don’t stand. In the biblical incursion,

 

it might be imitating a jeremiad. An

old campfire at the lookout, the river

 

working wet and dry towards

its ocean mouth, the sandbar.

 

Between ‘Greenough’ and Mullewa.

Not between country and ‘explorer’.

 

Out of time, I will stand before

the cathedral altar under stolen

 

sacred stone and silently ask,

‘Will you hear my friend’s call

 

for justice? Will you undo yourself

into the sacred, the ancient country?’

 

 

            John Kinsella