eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781743435137 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Allen & Unwin Pty., Limited |
| Publication date: | 12/01/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 5 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Canberra Red
Stories from the Bush Capital
By David Headon, Andrew MacKenzie
Allen & Unwin
Copyright © 2013 David Headon and Andrew MacKenzieAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-74343-513-7
CHAPTER 1
LEARNING TO LIVE ON THE LIMESTONE PLAINS
Kate Rigby
Up Red Hill:
A story of stone and Sky
According to my trusty geological guidebook compiled by Douglas Finlayson, the stone that predominates on Red Hill itself is a type of 'hornfels', rock that was baked and recrystallised around 417 to 408 million years ago. Within the vast timescale of the Earth history of this area, however, Canberra's foundations began to be laid down around 470 million years ago with the formation of a continental crust along the eastern margin of the ancient mega-continent of Gondwana, long before Australia had separated from Antarctica. The deep ocean sediments that were deposited on this crust were compressed over time to create what geologists have termed the Adaminaby, Nungar and Foxlow beds (c. 470–440 million years ago), in which the fossilised remains of some of Earth's earliest life forms have been found. These ancient rock beds are still visible in the cutting at the Corin Dam carpark in Namadgi National Park, while the similarly primordial Pittman Formation (460–445 million years ago) peeks through near Queanbeyan at Molonglo Gorge. Two cycles of tectonic activity between about 443 and 430 million years ago caused these rock formations to be folded and faulted. Further sediments were later laid down, as various areas of the land surface rose and subsided, baked and eroded, and were, at various times, covered by water or volcanic lava. The layering that tells the story of these ancient transformations can be seen in many places around Canberra. One of the most fascinating in the city itself is the 'unconformity' that was revealed by the State Circle road cutting around Capital Hill. John Cameron has described his delight 'as a teenage rockhound' to behold in the 'divided rocks that dipped at such different angles from each other' a gap in geological time. This unconformity was formed, he explains:
when a layer of mud was deposited under the sea and compacted and heated to form the State Circle Slate around 440 million years ago. It was then raised up above the surface of the sea and eroded. About ten million years later, it sank down again below the surface of the sea and a layer of sand was deposited on top of it, but not parallel with, not on the same inclination or surface as the original sediments. These were later compacted to form the Camp Hill Sandstone.
Up until about 350 million years ago, the Canberra region continued to be highly volatile as its topography was remoulded many times over by powerful tectonic forces unleashed by the convergence of the Australian and Pacific plates. This prompted several cycles of volcanic activity, including the eruptions of Mount Pleasant around 425–424 million years ago, that formed the dactite that was used in combination with Black Mountain sandstone to such good effect by early European settlers in the building of St John's Church during the 1840s. It was also around 425 million years ago that the limestone was laid down that lent the Canberra region its first whitefella name: the Limestone Plains, so called for the outcrops on the Acton Peninsula that were encountered by the first British settler in this area, Joshua Moore, who, in 1824, adopted a local Aboriginal term, Ngambra, believed to mean 'meeting place', to name his property 'Canberry'. Looking down from the eroded hills that once spewed fire and ash and molten rock far and wide towards the lake that now lies in state upon the plains, you can discern the contours of the rift that was created by the alternation of tectonic movements and weatherborne erosion. It was this rift formation, bounded on all sides by fault lines, which lured the Molonglo River to make its way across what would become the first Australians' Ngambra, and which, much much later, also conditioned the Y-plan for the city of Canberra.
Turning to gaze upon the mountain ranges beyond the Canberra hills and plains, you can see the legacy of another weird phenomenon that took place between around 435 and 380 million years ago: the burbling up of molten rock from the mid to lower levels of the Earth's crust, probably guided by pre-existing deep faults and shear zones, to form mushroom-like 'plutons' as it cooled and hardened. The erosion of the softer rock into which these plutons had intruded subsequently exposed them, creating the spectacular granite outcrops that dominate the landscape of the Brindabellas and Tinderrys. Rock shelters in what is now Namadgi National Park provided seasonal accommodation for the Ngunnawal, Wolgal and Ngarigo peoples, whose long residence there, as evidenced by surviving stone artefacts, ceremonial stone circles and rock art, can be traced back at least 21 000 years, while narrow crevices in the weathered granite of the higher peaks continue to shelter the aestivating Bogong moths on which these peoples once feasted during large ceremonial gatherings in the warmer months. These days, if you go to Namadgi at the right time of year, during a good season you might be lucky enough to get a taste of roasted Bogong moth, suitably prepared by an Aboriginal guide — something that was unknown when I was growing up in Canberra at a time when knowledge of Aboriginal culture in this region, at least among white kids like me, let alone recognition of Aboriginal dispossession, was generally minimal, at best.
From about 395 million years ago, tectonic activity moved away to the east and west of the Canberra region, and by 370 million years ago most crustal rocks were in place. Changes nonetheless continued, including three periods of uplift and erosion between the late Permian and the early Cenozoic era. During this period, the continent of Gondwana drifted south to far colder climes, and 'for about 100 million years in the late Paleozoic era the Canberra region and Namadgi National Park were in an elevated position and subjected to glaciation and large-scale denudation of the landscape' , devastating the plant and animal life that had in the meantime evolved and colonised this area: a reminder that the stories of stone and sky, geology and climate, and the fate of life, are intimately interlinked. More congenial conditions for living critters, among whom those charismatic dinosaurs were numbered, came with the Triassic and Jurassic eras, but it was not until the Australian continent broke away from Antarctica and began its slow but inexorable journey to the north around 55 million years ago that temperatures really began to heat up, while nonetheless oscillating between warmer and cooler periods as the pattern of glacials and interglacials set in. Although Earth was gradually growing more quiescent in this area, Australia's northward drift engendered new tectonic stresses, prompting a volcanic eruption in Namadgi around 18 million years ago and, between about 10 and 5 million years ago, bringing Lake George into being by cutting off the outlets of the streams that traversed the plain beneath the escarpment. Minor earthquakes still rattle the Canberra region from time to time, such as the one on 3 October 2003 measuring 1.4, which had its epicentre right under Red Hill. Erosional processes also continue to scour the land, especially in those areas where deforestation has exposed the thin and fragile soils of this geologically ancient land.
Up Red Hill is also a good place to look to the heavens and watch the moon rise. Friends of mine come here to do just that, with a picnic tea and a bottle of wine, whenever they can on the night of full moon. Out near Tidbinbilla, though, at the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex, opened in 1965 and the only NASA tracking station still in operation in Australia, astronomers peer into far more distant regions of the heavens, reconstructing the cosmic prehistory of the creation of this place by physical forces of immense power and enduring mystery. To lift your eyes from stone to sky is to reckon with timescales of even more mind-boggling magnitude, for deep space is also deep time, stretching back almost 14 billion years to when astronomers currently believe our universe was birthed. The realm of space remains no less dynamic than that of Earth, and our planet feels its impact in many ways: most dramatically so in occasional meteor strikes, such as that which is thought to have brought about the mass extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous era (around 65 million years ago) that did for the dinosaurs. In more quotidian ways, too, every place on Earth — including this young city — remains at the mercy of what comes to us, since time immemorial, from the sky. For instance, that wondrous sunshine, upon which the very emergence and survival of Earth's diverse organic life forms is dependent; the gracious alternation of day and night, to which the biorhythms of virtually all land creatures are attuned; and the pattern of the seasons and the vagaries of the weather, which govern seedtime and harvest, flourishing and withering, the world over — something that those who live cocooned in air-conditioned buildings forget at their peril.
Climate, too, has its history, and that history has at crucial moments been shaped by the dynamic interaction of Earth and sky. Among the factors that are now known to influence our climate are the 100 000-year cycle governed by Earth's elliptical orbit around the Sun; the 42 000 year cycle arising from the tilt of Earth's axis; the 22 000 year cycle pertaining to Earth's wobble on its axis; and, less predictably, irregularities in sunspot activity and alterations in the chemical make-up of the lower layers of Earth's atmosphere. Extending up to a mere 140 kilometres from the ground, this is the 'great aerial ocean' , by whose grace we live and breathe and have our being. In the past, Earth's atmosphere has primarily been affected by the mix of gases produced by plant and animal life and Earth's own exhalations, including periodic volcanic eruptions. While the particulates spewed into the atmosphere by major eruptions lower surface temperatures, the carbon dioxide that is released along with the magma and ash can subsequently raise them. This happened, for example, at the end of the Permian period, around 251 million years ago, when a spate of volcanic eruptions apparently precipitated a 6° Celsius rise in average global temperatures, which, in conjunction with the catastrophic immediate impact of these eruptions, resulted in the abrupt extinction of some 95 per cent of all species then in existence.
These days, of course, it is primarily industrial pollutants that are messing with Earth's atmosphere. Fluorocarbon pollution, for instance, has thinned Earth's protective ozone layer, allowing increased levels of ultraviolet radiation to beam down upon vulnerable organic life forms, especially at higher latitudes (including southern Australia). Chlorofluorocarbons have now been phased out by governmental legislation, and the ozone layer is expected to recover in time, while particulate pollution, which tends to lower temperatures, is also being brought under control in many places. The latter is a mixed blessing, however, as it means that 'global dimming' will no longer act as a moderating influence on the current increase in global temperatures, which, as we know with as much certainty as science can ever provide, is largely being driven by industrialised humanity's ever-increasing combustion of fossil fuels, combined with ongoing destruction of the forests that we now need more than ever to soak up the excess carbon dioxide that we are producing and to sustain Earth's threatened biodiversity. Despite their relatively high uptake of alternative energy sources and the readiness of many to recycle, ride bikes and vote Green, Canberrans, with their literally high-powered lifestyle and predominant car culture, are contributing considerably more per capita than most people around the world to anthropogenic climate change. In some respects, they might also be especially vulnerable to its impacts. While much of Australia is likely to see an intensification of the extreme weather events that this 'land of droughts and flooding rains' has long been prone to, there are indications that the Canberra region, along with other major cities in the mid latitudes (Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney), might heat up more rapidly and dramatically than elsewhere in Australia. This, at any rate, is what happened at the end of the last Ice Age, around 20 000 years ago. According to the International Panel on Climate Change, predicting the regional impacts of global warming remains an uncertain affair. But if this historical pattern is repeated, it is likely to make events like the firestorm of 2003, and the intense dry period that led up to it, a more common occurrence.
If Canberrans are to learn to live more sustainably in a perilously warming world, I believe they would do well to look to the example of those peoples who succeeded in weathering several major climate changes in the past to craft a flourishing modus vivendi in this place.
Down by the river:
the making and taking of Kamberri country
Pialligo is where my mother and I used to come on summer Saturdays to buy the kinds of fruit, fresh from the orchard, that didn't grow on the trees in our garden. Some fruit and vegetables are still cultivated here, and there are nurseries in abundance as well. For, as the Chinese who established the first market gardens here discovered, this is where you will find the most fertile soil in Canberra. This is largely thanks to the river that started flowing this way after the rift was formed, making these plains a welcoming place, flush with tucker, for the Aboriginal peoples who gave it one of the names by which it is still known: Molonglo, 'the thunderer'; so called, perhaps, for its boisterous behaviour in full spate, a tributary of the Murrumbidgee, and so part of the hard-pressed Murray–Darling system that waters so much of south-eastern Australia.
The generations of stone tools found on a sandy rise above the river at Pialligo indicate that this was an especially important seasonal camping ground, where many people stayed for long periods. 'They can only have done so,' as Bill Gammage observes, 'if their food supply was certain and convenient. Within a few hundred metres, a shorter distance than most of us travel to the supermarket, swamp, river, plain, hill and forest were handy' , each well stocked with a distinctive range of comestibles. On the basis of descriptions provided by explorers, settlers and early land surveyors, backed up by recent research into Aboriginal land-use practices from other parts of Australia, Gammage has reconstructed a picture of the heartland of Ngambra, 'meeting place' of the various peoples that the new settlers referred to collectively as the Kamberri , as it might have been in the early nineteenth century. Tracing a path from the campus of the Australian National University at Acton along Sullivans Creek to the Molonglo, then upriver to where the airport is now situated, Gammage maps a mixed landscape of swampy flats and flowing water, grassy paddocks with woodland on the ridges, encircled by the forested hillsides of Black Mountain, Mount Pleasant and Mount Ainslie, opening out onto a broad plain reaching to undulating open forest, and forming a patchwork with discrete places for hunting, collecting, celebrating and camping. Among the foods provided by this eminently 'nourishing terrain', Gammage lists typha reeds, yams, native artichokes, grass orchid bulbs, swans, ducks and other waterbirds, eggs, fish, crayfish, shellfish, water rats, snakes, goannas, platypus, emu, plains turkey, quail, kangaroos, wallabies, possums, small marsupials and the lerp insect manna found on ribbon gum. In addition, there were numerous medicines to be found here, and abundant materials for making tools, weapons, clothing, dilly bags and shelters, and, as already mentioned, in the rocky upper reaches of the Brindabellas, the tasty moths that drew together large numbers of people from neighbouring countries for trade and talk and ceremony and feasting.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Canberra Red by David Headon, Andrew MacKenzie. Copyright © 2013 David Headon and Andrew MacKenzie. Excerpted by permission of Allen & Unwin.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Preface,1 Learning to Live on the Limestone Plains Kate Rigby,
2 The Long Dinner Party Frank Moorhouse,
3 A City of the Mind Marion Halligan,
4 An Ideal City David Headon,
5 'A Chosen City': Americans in the Capital Christopher Vernon,
6 The View from Mount Ainslie Andrew Sayers,
7 A Great Place to Raise (Australian) Kids Shanti Sumartojo,
8 Cultural Capital David Nichols,
9 Belconnen Mall P. Harness,
10 When Our Ethos Sings Glenda Cloughley,
11 Made in Canberra Susan Boden and Nicholas Brown,
12 Recovery Stories Andrew MacKenzie,
13 Representing the National Capital at Regatta Point Robert Freestone and Margaret Park,
14 Decompacting the City Jack Lydiard,
15 Still Settling the Limestone Plains Stephen Dovers,
Contributor biographies,
Picture credits,