Book Launch: 10.45, 8 June, Maam Gaduying Park
Bellingen Readers & Writers Festival
Suffering in the world never ends, but this journal celebrates the everyday during treatment for cancer.
Exploring the natural / cultural history of Gumbaynggirr Country each day nourishes optimism and health.
167 pages, 70 colour photographs. Available at all good book shops (in Coffs Harbour, Bellingen, Macksville) and more to come.
Wyn and I celebrated my last day of freedom with picnic lunch by the Nyambaga. A tree stood dead in the middle of the river and a strange yellow lifeform fed beside us. We almost exhaust contingency, surrounded by a medley of events accommodating life or death. For over 2 billion years, Slime Molds have been searching for sustenance at one millimetre an hour. These life forms have evolved receptors attuned to smell, moisture, pH and even light. They can negotiate a maze to a food source and recall the route. If they are dismembered, they can fuse back together and transfer knowledge between them. They have also created a designer range of colour schemes – yellow, black, orange, white and brown. Slime is a reminder that we are a very recent, random endpoint (for now) of hominid evolution. Our lives rely on bacteria, fish, Triassic vertebrate species that looked like mammals, and possibly Sahelanthropus tchadensis walking upright around Africa 7 million years ago. 8 Oct 2023.
Day 5
An electric unicycle passes. I’d no idea such machines
existed. The future is narrowing to A.I. Perhaps
our destiny is dusty, designer Koala ears optional.
Acknowledgements: A huge thank you to my love Wyn; Coffs North Coast Cancer Institute staff; my GP Dr. John Mulholland; my late parents; Gumbaynggirr custodians, past, present and future of this amazing region. Also, W.C. Röntgen, John Hall-Edwards, Dr. Ludlam and E. H. Grubb Co., and Marie Curie; Geoffrey Hill; Libby Feez, and the miracle of photosynthesis. And thanks to all bush regenerators, FEA, NVCA, NEFA and all the local groups fighting to preserve our natural heritage here in Gumbaynggirr Country.
