Rites of Passage: 2010

Brown is Omnipresent

Some time ago, whilst I was nearing the end of my time in a part of NSW that grows much greener pastures than where I am presently living, my mind turned to the landscape I would be returning to and I pondered the question: what colour will it be, back on the monaro, when I return? The general response and I presumed a pretty safe bet, was that the monaro landscape would be brown in colour. Brown! Brown!! Brown I thought!!! Yes, brown I hear you say. But what is brown? Is brown simply a colour or more of a condition? Or is brown a state, the result of a condition?

There are many common connotations around brown that imply a lot more than the primary meaning. Many of them are fairly disparaging with implications far from flattering. So when I posed the question, what colour will the Monaro be? and the response was brown, immediately I saw the colour brown and felt the implications, the conditions and the none too flattering connotations; drought: bare dry soil, erosion, browned off pastures, desperate farmers, desperate livestock, drab and dull run down farms, lonely depression and mission brown. These thoughts led to other thoughts. How would we feel if the ocean was brown and the sky was not blue, but brown, a dusky shade of brown? Would we be down for the early swim exclaiming what a beautiful day it is if this was the case? No, I think we would be a little less likely to be partaking and happily exclaiming. I think we would be feeling a little browned off and more than a little cautious before entering the water and pretty uneasy once we were in the water.

Water and Sky being so brown, we would be feeling a little browned-off.

A quick search and I find brown comes from the old English word, brun, which has Germanic origins and was used to refer to any dusky or dark shade of colour. Browned off, is idiomatic, slang, which does not put the colour brown in the group of happy, mood altering colours. To be browned off is a condition that tends to suggest a person is a little miffed, not particularly happy, bored, fed up, annoyed. Pissed off. Browned off does not imply the best of circumstances or that things are in prime condition. Browned off, be it used to describe a human condition or the state of the land and plants, spells trouble, spells trouble smoldering, slowly brewing, dull annoying trouble. Brown. O oh, the land is turning brown, the plants are browning off.

There are different shades of brown. Some I can think of are; practical brown, earthy brown and alluring brown, but these are not always the first shades of brown people associate with or think of and its seems that anything brown is to be avoided.

Where did such a weird word for a colour come from? That I have already answered, - but still?!, my mind boggles. On the land, brown is often perceived as a harbinger of lean and hard times, times without bounty or prospects. When I think about it, the colour brown is rarely used to colour the everyday appliances most people use. It seems brown objects are not that alluring, brown objects do not have much appeal. I don't think I have ever seen a brown car except for when it is dirty and then, despite these dry times, 'wash me' drawn on the dusty rear window becomes mandatory. I have seen some brown sunglasses and brown shoes but even these seem to be not so popular these days. A brown computer, laptop, widescreen TV, stereo; nuh. A brown refrigerator, brown washing machine, brown stove, brown microwave, brown dishwasher, brown ipod, brown phone; nuh. Brown fruit; yep; not so alluring or appealing. Brown shirt, brown tie, brown tongue; not particularly desirable. It appears that brown is unalluring. Brown is not sexy. Brown is to be avoided. Brown does not sell. We tend to avoid calling brown objects brown. We go for something more attractive. The horse outside my window is not a brown, it's a bay. We call a girl with brown hair a brunette, a suntanned australian a bronzed aussie. We make up all sorts of descriptive and attractive names for brown.... anything but brown. Even black conjures up far more lively and imaginative imagery. Black is alive and can be vibrant. Black is sexy. Strange associations are linked with brown.

Brown, huh, and brown is made from the mixing of 3 great colours: yellow, blue and black. These can be vibrant, varied, intense. Why is brown so dull, brown so muddy, brown so brown? Maybe because it is the result of mixing the 3 "subtractive" primary colours and because it only exists in the presence of bright colour contrasts, that is, things that are either yellow, orange, red or rose. I don't know. All I associate brown with at the moment is drought and a browned, waterless landscape; dry, dusty, bare ground, sparse windswept tinder, and to be honest, pretty shitty conditions for farming families, their crops and their livestock.

Will it be this way on the Monaro when I return as most people suggest it will be? A mere, 800km drive south, back to the monaro, in a couple of days will reveal what colour it is. Odds on it's brown, not brunette, not auburn, bay, bronze or buff. Not chestnut, not chocolate, ginger, hazel or tanned, simply brown; drab, unsexy, unalluring, plain old dry brown. Green it will not be.

I drive and drive and drive a little further. During the drive I play with some colours, not with paints or coloured pencils, but in my mind. I choose anything but brown. I travel south, first, for 8 hours down the Pacific Highway and then for another 7 hours, down the Hume Highway. As I drive I notice the landscape turning from green to yellow to another colour.

Yes you guessed it, the Monaro was brown, very brown and immediately the common connotations and implications began to swirl around my mind, swirl in the air, swirl around the landscape, swirl around the towns and span the land in all directions. Brown had set in. Brown was omnipresent. Brown was entrenched across the region as continued below average precipitation, strong winds and heat razed the monaro high plains. Damning conditions and for many on the land the "shit" had, or was about to, "hit the fan". For 17 or more years they had been forced to manage their farms; brown, dry, dusty patches of earth without water, without feed, without bounty or profit. The wide brown land, sunburnt and parched, stretched as far a I could see.

But brown? What of brown, besides the common connotations? I decided to go and have a look around this brown bit of parchment a little more closely to see how things were fairing, specifically with colours in mind.

Again I drive and drive and drive a little further. Everywhere, everything seeped brown: brown shades, brown colours, brown hues and brown tones. Fully saturated browns. Dusky, transparent browns. Rich, earthy browns. Soft, airy browns. Browns in varying combinations; fading, mixing, blending with every other colour, giving backbone, timbre and a tectonic resonance to this land. It carried through the earth, through the stones, though the trees, through the leaves. It lived in the grasshoppers, the lizards, the birds and the butterflies. It lived in everything. I found that brown was in fact alive, healthy, resilient, strong, accountable, resounding from the minutest detail to the widest point of this land. Brown reigned supreme.

As far as the common connotations of the colour brown for farming communities goes, these were clearly evident everywhere, but as I drove and walked amongst the landscape my eyes and mind warmed to new connotations coloured in brown. Brown is earthy, brown is wholesome, brown is timeless, brown is universal.

I drive further across the landscape into its heartland of sheep and the long paddock and get out to stare over a bare, brown, patch of ground to a brown, rusting, piece of farm equipment lying idle in the field some distance away, a fragile stick-like creature silhouetted against the skyline.

An old dusty ute, white, beneath a layer of brown dust pulls up to where I stand.
"You ok mate?", the driver asks; a weathered, sharp-eyed old farmer. Strong, fit looking, the earth revealed in his features and talk.
"Yeah I'm ok. I've just stopped to look at the landscape and take some photos. Looks like rain."
He wore an equally weathered, earthy, akubra hat; sweat stained, soaked in the brown of the land and honest toil. He sat in the ute and looked at me and then out across the land.
Slowly he answered after pondering the scene before us; the bare, brown, piece of land: furrowed, waiting lifeless, but with life held within its bones.
"Rain?!. Huh. Yeah maybe but not likely. We see about as much rain as we see people out here. Hardly ever see anyone stopped out here unless they've broken down. No-one comes out here much at all unless they're lost".

He motioned forwards in his seat to look out over the bonnet at the clouds ahead. "I'll be seeing ya then. You're right, looks like rain. I've got fences to fix and sheep to get. Watch the brown snakes. "
"Thanks. I will".

Now alone, I stood looking out over the land. In this brown scene stretching in every direction I felt an essence of this land and its people.
I felt a wholesomeness, earthiness and timelessness: strong, patient and resilient. And, I saw, that it was brown. Brown, simply a colour. A varied colour the result of the mixing of 3 great colours: yellow, blue and black, and I saw that it was brown, a state, the result of the mixing of 3 precious conditions: wholesomeness, earthiness, and timelessness. Brown sits more comfortably with me now even though I know conditions for farmers and their families is unrelentingly tough and that they pray and hope for rain every day and the green pastures and crops it will bring. Everyone wishes this for the farmers; some respite from this long and wearying drought. But brown, this wide brown land, is, what it is and beyond the brown common connotations it is a land of timeless, wholesome beauty.

Questions need to be asked about the appropriateness of current standard farming practices and of the way we see and honour the land. Our relationship with the land and nature needs to be reappraised. We need to hear and listen to and know the ways of this wide brown land. The politics of land stewardship needs to change. A political will that supports the small organic local farmer and protects the environment needs to be implemented. Community support and input is vital. Maybe we shouldn't be farming this land at all. Maybe we should be letting this land go, letting it go to wild again. It is costing more to produce whatever is produced than what is made anyway and that does not include the cost of environmental degradation. These things I ponder.

I turn the car around after venturing far into the landscape and back-blocks of the Monaro; after seeing the brown earth, smelling it, feeling it and touching the trees, rocks and grasses tinged brown. As I drive I see the beauty in the brown. I do not feel apprehensive or anxious about the land. I know it is in a bad way and that things on the land must change but in terms of colour, the colour I came to observe, I now find the colour brown calming and warming, wholesome, earthy, resilient and rich.

As I drift along my thoughts turn from farming and the landscape and again I play with colours, in my mind, mostly rich, varied, intense browns and I wonder if brown could catch on. I have seen the beauty in the brown and strangely I begin to wonder about all the discarded whitegoods. It gives me an idea. Tomorrow, I'm thinking that I might create a thing of timeless beauty myself and paint the body of an old washing machine brown, fill it with compost and plant out its inside. That makes me think again. Why stop at one. There are millions of these things. I can see a field of discarded whitegoods painted, patterned in varied shades of brown, filled with compost and planted out with a profusion of crops. Those grassed green slopes of power in Canberra would be the perfect place for such an installation. I'm sure it would be a very elegant, sophisticated and very productive living machine then. In fact I think it may even be the most productive thing to ever come out of those hallowed chambers. In-the-mean-time however, I think I'll just start with a couple in my yard and see if it catches on. I'll let you know. Cheers