Tag Cloud

Aboriginal Aboriginal Art Alice Springs Alick Tipoti Andrea Hylands Angelina Pwerle Arnhem Land Art art in China Artlore Australian Galleries Barcelona Barrow Island Batik Berlin Biennale of Sydney billabong Bill Nuttall British Museum Burrup Bush plum CAAMA Cambridge Camel Camp Cane toad Canopy Artspace carboniferous Central Australia Ceramics China Christmas Island circumcision Clinton Nain Coral Sea creative-i creative cowboy Crocodile cultural destruction dance machines Dari Darwin Dennis Nona de Young Museum Dreaming Drought Dugong East Alligator River education Elephant Emily Kame Kngwarreye Emmanuel Parsimei Erub Erub Island figurative painting Film essays Finke River Fuping Gerald Durrell Ghost nets GhostNets Australia Glen Namundja Goanna Great Barrier Reef Gulumbu Yunupingu Gunbalanya Habitat history human rights Indigenous Injalak Jabiru Jacob Nayinggul Japan John Wolseley Jolika collection Jomo Kenyatta University Julie Gough Kakadu Ken Thaiday Kenya Kimberley Lake Eyre land rights Lion London Maasai Maasai jewellery Maasailand Maasai scholar Maasai warriors light a fire Mabo Maningrida Marc Gooch Marseille MCA Sydney Metapatterns Metropolitan Museum Murujuga Museum of Contemporary Art Niagara Galleries Northern Territory Oceanic art Paddy Bedford Papua New Guinea Paris Perentie Peter Churcher Peter Hylands poem Python Quai Branly Rift Valley River Cam rock art Rodney Gooch Roebourne Roslyn Oxley9 Saim Saltwater People Sand monitor San Francisco Saylor sea rights South East Asia Spain Stony Desert swamp Sydney Sydney Harbour Taiwan Tanzania The Great Artesian Basin Tiger shark Torres Strait Torres Strait Islands Trompe l'oeil Turtle UNESCO Utopia Wamud Namok war artist Warriors Western Arnhem Land Western Australia wetland We walked on a carpet of stars Xi'an

An ancient abstraction

Lake Eyre in flood

The metapatterns of nature, of science, of art and everything are down below. We are flying over Lake Eyre and then tracking north to Alice Springs, the final destination on this trip. The patterns that emerge could be an image from an electron microscope or a view of distant galaxies through the eye of the Hubble Space Telescope. The repeated patterns of nature are all clear in the dry air, a micro-organism, a leaf, in a galaxy, all in art and design.

It is not surprising that the art of Central Australia has become one of the world’s most significant contemporary art movements with its startling explosions of colour and form.

Down below are the ancient trading routes of Australia’s Aboriginal people. These ancient pathways of trade following the rivers and waterholes, routes that were also the paths of dreaming ancestors.

The patterns plants make

Rivers of sand

Down below are the ancient rivers of sand of the Lake Eyre Basin. Their names resonate in the European history of Australia, the rivers that flow when Queensland floods, the Georgina, Diamantina, Thomson and Barcoo Rivers, and Cooper Creek. Then there are the rivers of central Australia such as the Finke, all flowing into Lake Eyre where the water remains until once again it evaporates in the shimmering heat to reveal the dazzling salt pans once more.

Art or nature?

The rivers have flowed for consecutive seasons in Central Australia after years of drought and during a much needed wetter period have kicked started the nature of Australia. In these precious places nature responds to water in the most extraordinary ways allowing many species to breed and to increase dwindling numbers once more.

We are working down there in a place we have always loved. So what is it like? It is both a harsh land and a delicate land. To walk on the pristine untrodden river beds of sand seems a desecration of the patterns of nature, a hundred different impressions in the miniature sand dunes left there by the birds, marsupials and reptiles that inhabit this land.

An ancient pathway

What we are doing here is another story for another time. But in the blog The world we make I write about the impact of our actions on the traditional lives of indigenous peoples. Even the remotest parts of Central Australia are not immune from our actions.

A distant galaxy?

For now freshwater ecosystems may not be as damaged as those elsewhere in Australia but they are under threat from introduced species, from domestic herds destroying precious riverside vegetation and the thoughtless actions of introducing plant species into the delicate and arid environment.  These ancient and arid landscapes provide us with a sensitive record of environmental change. The Centre’s transverse and longitudinal dunes sensitive to small changes in both climate and hydrology.

Pollution over Alice

The recent great wets of Northern Australia have further distributed the introduced African species Buffel Grass. The Buffel Grass now covers large areas of the country around Alice Springs displacing native grasses. After the wet period the now dry Buffel Grass stands waste high covering the desert floor. When it burns it burns much hotter than the more delicate native grasses and when it burns the intense heat kills the native animals who cannot escape from it and the desert trees and shrubs adapted to lower intensity fire.

Once again this damages the traditional food supply of indigenous people who rely on the fruit and roots of native plants such as the Bush Plum.  The situation also represents a danger to people, particularly indigenous people living in remote places. During August much of the area around Alice Springs was on fire, by mid August 2011 more than 650 square kilometres of country surrounding Alice Springs had been burnt, destroying ecosystems and polluting the atmosphere.

Buffel Grass burns around Alice

And worst to come will be the danger posed to Australia’s Great Artesian Basin and the major river flows into the Lake Eyre Basin from coal seam gas extraction processes occurring in Queensland and the little understood impact of these activities on aquifers and natural water systems. The Lake Eyre Basin covers around 1,170,000 square kilometres of arid and semi-arid Central Australia. There is a lot to lose.

Rock Wallaby

The images in this blog were taken by ANDREA and PETER HYLANDS during the later stages of the Australian winter.