A fleeting summer break
The school holidays are over, a little too quickly, and my not-so-baby baby starts Grade 4 tomorrow.
Pictured are our camping reads. Mine is Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut (making official my now 2-years-in accidental-tradition of reading a Popular Penguin on camp), and Ruben’s is Matt Stanton’s Fluff.
I am easing my way back into routine, which includes a semester of ‘leave of absence’ from my course. As part of my easing in, this is a light-on-new-content edition, although for most readers, it will all be new and really only means that for a large chunk of it, I am using words written a while ago (but IMO worth sharing, particularly in the context of a key development).
The piece below was originally published in May 2021 on the now defunct RMIT professional writing and editing website. I hear the site’s vanishing is to do with a lapsed payment for the domain, a relatively small stakes sign of decay that is indicative of broader issues at the university whose leadership do not value this vital, industry-focused, exceptionally programmed course and its qualified, knowledgeable and generous teaching staff.
Yesterday, on a whim, and to shake things up a little, I took the Newstead turnoff rather than continuing via the direct route home from a chiropractic session in Daylesford. Well whaddaya know? It meant driving through Franklinford and then getting the idea to visit the site that inspired my portrait of place, which I’d decided the day before to publish in this issue of The Raptorial.
I will let the piece do the work (and stop writing these new-to-me-words) of painting this portrait, but I’ll add that yesterday, the creek was flowing with clarity and mellifluence and the bridge, I noted, had decayed further and a new bridge had still, three years on, not been built. The most significant change, however, is that on 11 May 2023 (incidentally my brother’s birthday and days from the first anniversary of his death), the creek was triumphantly renamed Larni Barramal Yaluk, restoring the language of the Traditional Owners of the land, the Dja Dja Wurrung people, and taking a stance against the anti-black racism in its post-colonial name.
Creek-side ephemera
A portrait of place
In a hairpin bend of what was once part of the Loddon Aboriginal Protectorate, a blip in the 26 km stretch of an ephemeral creek makes its home, and moments add up to centuries of settlement. An industrious din rings out in the tradition of rearing cattle and sheep that’s been passed down the Clarke family: Jim to Geoff to Ian, and is expected to continue to the next generation. Here, Jim Crow Creek—not to be confused with Jim Clarke: farmer, father, grandfather—curves through Franklinford, Victoria.
In winter, Jim Crow’s been known to flood and keep the Clarkes in, or out, depending on which bank they find themselves when the creek swells and jumps beyond the upper limits of safe crossing over the bridge built by Geoff and Jim in July 1979—as inscribed on the underside of their monolith—while a then 12-year-old Ian stood watching, learning.
Long before the Clarkes’s 70-year history of farming here, in 1830s US, a minstrel hit ‘Jump Jim Crow’ was performed in black-face. With the help of seafaring colonialists, the catchy song crossed oceans and cultures, and in this corner of the world, inspired the renaming of Lalgambook (present day Mount Franklin) to Jim Crow Hill, which in turn caught on as a name for other landmarks in the area, the protectorate, the creek, and the Dja Dja Warrung ‘tribe’ and its men [1].
At the apex of the bend in Clarkes Road, the creek carves an aqueous path between Franklinford Streamside Reserve and the Clarkes’s property. The sky is blue, and at just after midday, the sun is due south, on its daily journey towards the homestead, where it sets. Soothing sounds of free-flowing water assert the creek’s presence despite its being hidden by a dense cluster of foliage and having to compete against the roaring engine of a red tractor rushing over pastures. The tractor pulls an orange trailer that rattles over the undulating land. Minutes later, exhaust fumes puff across the horizon like a learned response to machine activity.
Close to water level are shrubs in lilac bloom. Sunlight bounces off their edges, giving them a silver aura; their beauty lulling my thoughts of danger in accessing the creek. Loose rocks make it hard to get a footing but all the easier to make contact with the prickly gorse that thrives. It is a threat not only to this scrambler’s flesh but also the creek—that and stock access where barriers are non-existent or permeable between creek and farmland.
Beyond the apex, on the straight, the creek widens and deepens. The expansive terrain absorbs the creek’s upstream energy; its once sonorous flow is languid, silent. Carrying on in stealth, it passes more gorse on the reserve side and a steep, jagged cliff on the other. Making the home stretch to the Clarkes’s driveway, it passes under the dilapidated bridge before stopping— abruptly—at a second crossing to the farm where it is siphoned, in finite quantities, through a concrete pipe and spat out the other side.
A ute approaches at snail’s pace. Ian lowers the window closest to where I stand, on the right side of two ‘keep out’ signs that dangle on a taut belt across the bridge. We talk, briefly. Of plans to change the creek’s name, he says, ‘Not being political about it, hopefully it stays the same. I don’t think there’s any right or wrong—’ then switches mid-sentence to the creek’s renown for trout fishing. Like his forebears, he too will build a bridge—bigger, better, before next winter—to weather future inundations without pause.
Golding, B. 2019. Brief overview of Evidence about the Name ‘Jim Crow’ Creek. Retrieved from https://barrygoanna.com/2019/09/09/jim-crow-information/
Comic workshops
Have you booked your place in a comic workshop yet?
If not, what are you waiting for?
They’re fun.
But don’t take my word for it!
Here’s what participants have said:
'It was so good!!!'
'Highlight of my day, Mek. I have told everyone today about this workshop and showed them my comic! 😁🙏'
'Loved this! Thank you for the wisdom, the encouragement, the cake, the coffee, the good times! ❤️'
'Where's the bathroom?'
‘Yesterday was really great, Mek. Broke me out of a creativity dry spell!'
'Where'd I park my car?'
'Cake!'
'Terrific workshop Mek. Loved it!'
Make time for creativity and flow. Book your place at one or more of my comic workshops at Sac’O’Suds Launderette in Castlemaine.
If cost is a barrier, get in touch and I can save you a spot at no charge.
I hope to see you soon!
Raptorial Writes
A monthly writing prompt
Take at least 30 minutes (hours if possible) out of your day to make a solo visit to a place you are not familiar with. Take a notebook and pen. Once there, sit and observe — colours, textures, quality of light, movement, animal or human presence (real or implied) etc. Sketch things of note, write down your impressions. How does the place make you feel?
That, friend, is now material for you to write your very own portrait of place, which you can enrich with research to add context of history, culture, and interesting factoids. Key is being open and curious and allowing the story to find you.
Note, this is my take on teachings from Fiona Scott-Norman, teacher extraordinaire, who taught the Writing Non Fiction class in which I wrote ‘Creek-side ephemera’.
I’d love to know how you go! Post your writing to Instagram using #RaptorialWrites, or feel free to share it in the comments here. Happy writing!
Raptorial Bites
A monthly short story book club
This month’s read is Kurt Vonnegut’s The Drone King, from his short story collection, Complete Stories (2017). The story was published in The Atlantic in October 2017.
This selection was inspired by my current book club read, Cat’s Cradle (1963), my first foray into Vonnegut. Eleven out of five! I am a fan! More Vonnegut!