Tuesday, April 30, 2019

TASMANIA AS GONDWANALAND / LIESBET VERSTRAETEN HAPPY BIRTHDAY :)

LIESBET AT BOTTLE NECK BAY FLINDERS ISLAND TASMANIA

"Reading the country was once essential to Aboriginal people's survival. It has become something of a lost art, which is a great pity. Mostly natural processes are slow and subtle and remain unseen and ignored. The danger is that by failing to pay attention to the forces, large and small, which shape our landscapes, not only do the landscapes suffer but we are impoverished in spirit ourselves."

John Landy

PETER DOMBROVSKIS, LAKE OBERON

Welcome to On The Brink radio comin' atcha from the central highlands of Tasmania. This week's show is in honour of 'little Tassie' as not only the place where I've had some of my most powerful and amazing adventures and where some of the most interesting and coolest people I know live, but also as an extraordinarily unique land with some of the most beautiful and spectacular landscapes in all of Australia as well as endemic florae and faunae, some of whom have been alive since the 'break-up' of the ancient super-continent called Gondwana by geologist Edward Suess.

GONDWANA SUPER-CONTINENT (so we think!)

The first half of this show gives a run-down of my visits to Tasmania since 2001 and the truly legendary people I've met and places I've been honoured to be able to visit; the second half gives an overview of the unique plants, animals and landscape ancestors who comprise what is to me the real Tasmania.

 Tasmania was the birthplace of Australia's first wilderness photography as well as Australia's environmental movement. Olegas Truchenas and Peter Dombrovskis shared the beauty and power of Tasmanian landscapes, catalyzed resistance to the damming of Lake Pedder and stopped a subsequent project to dam the Franklin River.

LAKE PEDDER, MID-1950'S BEFORE DAMMING
PETER DOMBROVSKIS, COX BIGHT, SOUTH COAST

PETER DOMBROVSKIS PHOTOS
http://aniwaniwa-lokahi-renavigation.blogspot.com/2014/10/wild-island-tasmania-gallery-peter.html

Tasmania is just as maritime of an environment as New Zealand, but she lacks the oceanic awareness that most Kiwi's take for granted. Tasmania in no way needs the tourism gimmickry of the whale-watching business or the 'swim with sting-rays' mentality that would make Sir Peter Blake roll in his davey jone's locker...but she could use a bit of enhanced acknowledgement on the part of the people who live here that, yes, Tasmania is surrounded by a lot of ocean in every direction, an ocean teeming with myriad and wonderful life-forms.
AUSTRALIA'S OCEAN CURRENTS
TASMANIA'S OCEAN CURRENTS

 "NOWHERE ELSE ON EARTH:  TASMANIA'S MARINE NATURAL VALUES"
https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/marine/pages/609/attachments/original/1500603668/NowhereElseOnEarthReport.pdf?1500603668
 HUMPBACKS AND SOUTHERN RIGHTS
 BOTTLE-NOSED DOLPHINS
 RED HAND FISH
WEEDY SEA-DRAGON

 Tasmania also has on occasion two of the most awesomely magical and beautiful gifts Mother Nature has to share with us, bio-luminescence and the aurora, in this case, australis, both of which I've witnessed but not in Tasmania.



LISTEN AND/OR DOWN-LOAD ANYTIME ARCHIVE LINK FOR THIS SHOW
https://soundcloud.com/user-272031059/on-the-brink-radio-275-tasmania-today-gondwana-is-alive

 And I'd like to wish a beautiful happy birthday to Liesbet Verstraeten, with whom I was very lucky to share five amazing years. As far as I know, she is living somewhere in Tasmania, picking fruit when it's the season and hopefully painting rocks and playing her flute. Today when I sat down to send her a birthday email I looked out the window to see the first rainbow or 'aniwaniwa' I'd seen in months...a very symbolic synchronicity as Liesbet and I were always huge fans of rainbows. I can tell the ancestors and nature devas are smiling on us now as much as ever.

 FIRST ANIWANIWA I'VE SEEN IN MONTHS :)
 LIESBET WITH CUPPA and HUNDERTWASSER CARD,
BALARNIA, FLINDERS ISLAND, 2011

"We must strive for a peace treaty with nature, the only superior creative power on which man depends. This peace treaty with nature would have to contain at least the following points:

1) We must learn the language of nature in order to reach an understanding of her.

2) We must give back territories to nature which we have misappropriated and devastated. For example, according to the principle:  everything which is horizontal, under the open sky, belongs to nature, including, for example, roof, roads.

3) Tolerance of spontaneous vegetation.

4) The creation of man and the creation of nature must be reunited. The schism of these creations has had catastrophic consequences for nature and man.

5) Life in harmony with the laws of nature.

6) We are only the guests of nature and must behave accordingly. Man is the most dangerous pest ever to devastate the Earth. Man must put himself behind ecological barriers so the Earth can regenerate.

7) Human society must again become a waste-free society. For only he who honours his own waste and re-uses it in a waste-free society transforms death into Life and has the right to live on this Earth. Because he respects the cycle, and allows the rebirth of life to occur."

FRIEDRICH HUNDERTWASSER, "PEACE TREATY WITH NATURE"

 OUR 'CHICKEN ROCK', FLINDERS ISLAND
SHADOWS OF TOGETHERNESS :)
GIFT FOR LIESBET FROM ME, 2012
 "HUNAB HIKU", PAINTING FOR ROB ALLISTON, HOBART, 2007
"S'AHA DJED", MURAL FOR BRUCE ROBERTS, HOBART, 2003
ROB ALLISTON AND ME HITCHING TO CRADLE, 2015

Rob Alliston was (and is) a true spiritual brother, a genuine legendary Tasmanian and one of the loveliest people I have known here. I'd known him since 2001 until he passed away in November 2018, from complications of his Parkinson's syndrome.  He was an avid environmentalist and had a great respect for the indigenous people of Australia, and he was a great supporter of me and my work, especially concerning the whales and dolphins and my art, and was also a great supporter of Liesbet and I when we were together.

Here is a link to listen to an interview I did with him on my radio show:

And a blog post in his honour:

LIESBET'S GIFT TO ROB :)


LIESBET'S VERY FIRST PAINTING, BELGIUM, 2007
MANAPOURI NZ MURAL, JEFF AND LIESBET, 2011
SOME OF LIESBET'S ROCKS, 2015

 See my main site for more of our work together
https://dolphinmatrix.com/Jeff

Tasmania in general and Flinders Island in particular have some of the most beautiful and unique landscapes in all of the Australia that I've come to know and love since 2000.

OLD MAN'S HEAD, FLINDERS ISLAND, 2011

Here are some selections of my Flinders Island photos. Note that Google has been threatening to take down their awesome Picasaweb platform, so these photos could disappear at any time. I am currently in the process of looking for a new photo-sharing platform to put my work on.

"NOSE ROCK", FLINDERS ISLAND



MOTHER EARTH TEMPLE, FLINDERS ISLAND 2011
(facing east from crown chakra medicine wheel)

In 2011 Liesbet and I lived at our friend's remote property on Flinders Island for over four months, during which time we conceived, embarked on and completed what is still the biggest and most comprehensive art project I've ever undertaken. We called it our 'Mother Earth Temple.' It contains, among other things, over 1000 rocks, 100+ of them painted; a metric ton or more of sand; symbols, designs and  motifs honouring several indigenous spiritual traditions and cosmologies; and over 1200 person-hours of exclusively manual labour.


This is the story of the freakiest thing not only that ever happened to me in Tasmania, and not only in Australia, but maybe in my whole life.

"THE GHOULEST AND THE COOLEST: A REAL HITCH-HIKING ADVENTURE" JEFF PHILLIPS
http://synthaissance.blogspot.com/2009/07/ghoulest-and-coolest-real-hitch-hiking.html

CUSHION PLANT WITH LOT'S WIFE,
PETER DOMBROVSKIS
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