Kurulbrang — 'Kangaroo Paws' — in Kaarta Koomba

As we’ve been spending much more time down in the city/Boorloo this year than is usual for us, I manage to find some respite from traffic and unmitigated air pollution by wandering (often with our son Tim) in Kaarta Koomba (so-called ‘Kings Park’).

Avoiding the colonial statuary and the like, the bush trails offer the possibility of respectful and deep engagement with numerous species of birds, occasional reptiles (emerging over recent weeks) and even the marsupial quenda (‘southwest brown bandicoot’) among the incredible variety of plants.

 

Though profoundly affected by climate change and fire, a complex array of pollutions, by ‘infestations’ and pathogens, there are still significant ecologies around established trees (there are some glorious tuarts and marris), throughout the diversity of the park’s 400 or so hectares.

 

In fact, the poems below are responses to walking among the September flush of kurulbrang, also known as ‘kangaroo paws’... a colonial pareidolia/naming based on obvious resemblance which has been translated into Noongar language as yonga marr with yonga being the grey kangaroo. See this really interesting Wiki Incubator entry for more information.

Kurulbrang ('Kangaroo Paw')

In the broken shade around balga (native grass trees), she-oaks, parrot bush, mungyt (banksias), wattles and numerous other plants, the kurulbrang thrive. During the same walk out of which I wrote the poems below, we also saw a wonderful clutch of donkey orchids. The quenda mentioned in the second poem was digging in daylight on the Thomas Street side of the park before taking shelter in a small hollow log next to the path.... hoverflies zipping in and out of the space. Anyway, it all gives hope, even if there are always the bleak ironies of the ongoing colonialism of display and presentation... and the disturbing actions of electric scooters, electric bikes, and their riders. So, with much respect to Noongar boodja and its people...

 

Kurulbrang in Kaarta Koomba

 

Kurulbrang is omnipresent 

though it would be a cheek

to say rife when so reduced

from its expanse, sandy

beds of perennial aspirants 

to handle the conversion

into simile and declaration.

There's nothing healed

in saying Mangles’ Kangaroo

Paw, though the afterlives

of botanists are arts-

and-crafted into emblems

and patterns of occupation.

So much can be manipulated

in an era of selective discourses

when flags are defended

while all else around them burns.

So last year so last season 

so repetitive that we cease

to see them? Or highlighting

the imitations we set such store by,

the underworld of freesias

so perfumed as to occlude

the city's exhausts — not really 

like doused courtiers

in European courts

trying to impress

their sovereigns,

but so easily adapted

to sociological or scientific banter.

On red cabled stalks bending

around shade and micro-eddies,

the flower-heart’s reach

is multidimensional,

playing to attract and protect,

capable briefly of such dexterity

in alluring multi species interest,

rhizomes storing truths

and truisms.

 

 

Quenda and Hover Flies

 

Quenda edging against 

concrete pathway

            on the west side

            of Kaarta Koomba

knows electric scooters 

and thick-wheeled electric bikes

            will undo

            daylight

so squats semi-active

in bush-shade, hunches 

            before jolting

            and propelling 

into a short-form hollow —

section of tuart tree branch.

            Simultaneously,

            hoverflies

triangulate and deconstruct

the mockery of drone technology

            and those gigaquads

            of empathy

that equivocate across

different computer

            personalities

            while data

swirls in the over-

heating air.

 

 

            John Kinsella