todays view from the Monaro - Richard Adam's Watership Down

watership down

A little part of the book goes like this:

Blackberry: Men have always hated us.

Holly: No. They just destroyed the warren because we were in their way.

Fiver: They'll never rest until they've spoiled the earth.


Vague visions and recollections of Richard Adams's Watership Down blur with the landscape in front of me. I trek across the Monaro, a quest to find the Watership Down, a place of refuge, safety, community. Rabbits scatter, tails disappear, he is near. I see the story - rabbits, humans, dogs, sheep, old homesteads, farm machinery, struggles and bloody confrontations between their own and others: ancient trees, ancient tracks, ancient timelines, ancient song -ancient movements across the landscape and the search for a peaceful place, food and shelter - Watership Downs. New trees, new homes, new people, new humans. Tired still. Drought and limited employment. The landscape shimmers. I find myself asking, today, am I the human or the rabbit? Yongar and his mob become anxious, they eye me, scatter into the woodland, beyond distant fence. I move. Today I must be human.

Return to the warren, traipse back home, I think back to last nights meal, and the afternoon before: the poor, frightened, little creature, the look in his eye. Cars!!! Fiver caught by the car, my car, maimed, back legs broken. Cuddle it, soothe it, soft, warm, speak gently, quietly, forever clasped, I say goodbye.

Sleep, try to sleep, but no sleep comes. I toss. I turn. It must be done. Barely able, I work in the dull night light.

The skin comes away cleanly. I clean him out. Lay him bare. Poor little creature, legs broken beyond repair.

Tomorrow I'll cook him, respect him, little creature, a little life.

Today I'm human.

Blackberry: Men have always hated us.
Holly: No. They just destroyed the warren because we were in their way.
Fiver: They'll never rest until they've spoiled the earth.

We search for Watership Down.

Alone Looking at the Mountain

Alone Looking at a Mountain, I Wonder Why?

Recently I moved to southern NSW, to a district known as the Cooma Monaro Region. It is an elevated plateau, a landscape approximately 700m to 1200m above sea level. Cold in winter, dry and moderately hot in summer. Frosts are common. It is in the rainshadow of the mountains to the west, where cold winter weather systems are drained of their moisture and snow often falls. To the east, moisture, coming in off the coast, falls, as the air rises over the eastern escarpment, feeding the tall eucalypt forests of the southeast. Occassionally the moisture from these different directions makes it onto the plateau, sometimes as snow in winter and sometimes as decent rain. But generally it has been dry, the Monaro has been in drought, severe drought for quite a long time. Dry winds sweep across this landscape and have sapped the moisture, raised the dust out of the ground. Clear, blue, sky air sits above. Rounded, undulating hills. Gentle valleys, long frost hollows, rocky outcrops, short, steep-sided ravines, interpersed open woodland, tussock grasslands, dry intermittent creeklines, eroded.

The Monaro is an evocative landscape. It has a long pastoral history associated with European settlement. Gold, timber getting and sheep raising are its history and have largely shaped what we see today. But prior to European settlement this land had a long history of indigenous occupation.

It is no coincidence that I came here. It is all part of a plan.

I arrived here at the end of winter. I have come here for a number of reasons. It has warmed up which makes it better for the renovation work I am doing and I am closer to the mountains I love, the Australian Alps, where snow is still plentiful but in thaw and the weather is good. Spring is also a good time to commence a year long mission to understand this landscape, its history, its seasons, its plants and its people. But still there are other reasons, more important, more significant, more purposeful. There is more as to why I have come. Intuition, an urge, a desire, a dream. It is all part of the plan and dream, a plan and dream that will be lived out as the seasons pass. But for now, today, the view from the Monaro is looking pretty damn good. Li Po, chinese poet, traveller, sage of another age, I think would have liked it.

Alone Looking at the Mountain

All the birds have flown up and gone;
A lonely cloud floats leisurely by.
We never tire of looking at each other -
Only the mountain and I.

Li Po (701-762)