Category: Fremantle

Noel Nannup at Tedx Freo

Elder Noel Nannup loves Wireless Hill. On any given day you can find him there, strolling, looking after the place, in the same way Noongar people have for 80,000 years. A softly spoken, gentle man, Noel has spent his life piecing together his culture and sharing that culture through talks, and fireside chats. A welcome to country is an initiation ceremony for people who have come from overseas, who were not born in Australia. For those of us who were born here, Noel tells me, as we walked through Wireless Hill, we have a spirit child, a responsibility to look after the land. 

“My people have known this land, this place, for 80,000 years,” Noel says. “In the old way you knew exactly why you were here, you knew exactly why you were born; you carried on a role that someone else lived before you. you also carried on the knowledge and totems, and when you start to learn that and understand that, and it sits in your psyche, you’re well and truly on your way to knowing why you’re here.”

We walk. We walk and stop, and Noel points. 

“You see that tree there? It’s a jarrah. Our placenta is buried under jarrah trees, so our DNA is in that tree; the same DNA that’s in me is in that tree, via the placenta; when you tell the same story from the side of science; that’s when people start to understand. We never knew that was science, we knew that the same thing that nurtured us, nurtured us in the womb, when you learn these thing early in life, these teachings become innate.”

We are facing one another, and he looks me in the eyes. Noel is a natural story teller, and he quickly gathers a sense of where you’re at, what he thinks you can understand. 

“The word ‘jarrah’ means to spread out, the canopy is spread out, but also the root system under the ground is spread out; any word that has that sound jar-rah, means spreading out; the Canning River comes out of the hills and runs onto the coastal plain, but it spreads right across; the local name, the aboriginal word is Jarulah, and the last thing you learn about is that the jarrah, you can sit under that tree on a full moon, and you can talk to someone else who is the same kinship as yours, they could be 200k’s away; you can’t mistake a full moon, the tree becomes a transmitter and a receiver, like an antenna, and that’s called mental telepathy in science, that’s the power of the mind spreading out across the land, because you can have multiples of people at different locations all on the same wave length, and this went on for 80,000 years, and when you know that and when you’ve got that down pat, you get some incredible understandings; and we didn’t have a mortgage on that because other cultures had it as well, and they wrote about it, and it says that when you understand those things it produces people who can perform what we call miracles; our people performed those miracles all of the time, because we were so close, and when the tall ships came our people knew what was coming and they sang, and they sang the spirit into the ground, and the spirit is in the land, and we all know the crow, they’re never far away, they’re always watching, wondering what’s going on, or the cockatoo, big billed, strong beaks like vices crunch the nuts and use their tongues to take the seed out; it’s innate; those plant sense you’re here, we eat it, we sleep it, and we drink it, it doesn’t own us, and we don’t own it, and that’s what I’m hoping to get across in a few fleeting moments during a Ted talk.”

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Power Ledger Sparks up Tedx Freo

James Eggelston, a Fremantle boy, flies around the world about twice a month. That’s a big carbon footprint. A footprint he’s aware of, but one he hopes to make up for. 

James is on a mission to de-carbonise the world. He speaks quickly and excitedly about a decentralised renewable energy future. He’ll chew the ear off anyone who’ll listen, from the Prime Minister of Thailand to diehard coal power plant enthusiasts.  

He wants everyone to become what he calls ‘prosumers’ of electricity. That’s a hybrid producer and consumer. But unlike the current process of selling your excess power back to a big centralised company like Synergy, James and his friends at Power Ledger believe people will want to use a digital wallet on their phone or computer and make money from the grid. 

“Traditionally the way we monitor our electricity use is through a centralised database, born out of a physical meter reading system. Even now your meter is read by someone who physically reads the meter, and they enter that into a centralised list,” says James. 

“Based on those readings invoices are sent out and payments are chased up. The problem with that approach is you’re bringing more problems to the person with solar panels and a battery because you’re paying for that service.”

The Power Ledger software takes a reading from your meter, calculates your surplus power, and then sells that power instantaneously to other people on your network. The network can be ten or ten million people, depending on the size of grid. 

The trick is not merely decentralised electricity itself, but the ledger that automates the payments is decentralised and digital as well, by using a public blockchain. 

“The promise of blockchain is an automated digitised system in the same way telephone calls were once run through an operator, but now they’re run through a digital protocol,” James tells me. “Blockchain allows us to send value digitally without a go-between like bank or a broker.”

With a more efficient network, the savings go to the prosumers. It’s this aspect that motivates James the most, because the implications are monumental. 

“If you are one of the one and half billion people in the world without electricity, already we are seeing single solar panels on houses, and most people have a mobile phone,” James tells me, checking his phone for a message. 

“By slinging an extension cable between the panels, Power Ledger’s software can automatically manage those transactions.” 

It’s here that the democratisation of Power Ledger’s vision becomes apparent. People can chip in ten dollars each to set up a micro-grid. 

In W.A., the software is being used in a Lifestyle Village in Busselton, the new development in White Gum Valley and is soon to rolled out in the centre of Fremantle as part of the Smart Cities project. 

James will interrupt his hectic flight schedule to be one of the key speakers at this years inaugural Tedx Fremantle, to be held on the 16th of September at the Drill Hall Notre Dame. 

The Fremantle Press Anthology of Western Australian Poetry

Was lucky enough to have two poems (Little River, and Ode to C.Y. O’Connor) included in The Fremantle Press Anthology of Western Australian Poetry.

The Fremantle Press Anthology of Western Australian Poetry is a comprehensive survey of the state’s poets from the 19th century to today.

Featuring work from 134 poets, and including the work of many WA Indigenous poets, this watershed anthology brings together the poems that have contributed to and defined the ways that Western Australians see themselves.

 

 

The Other Report: Poems Against the Destruction of the Beeliar Wetlands

John Kinsella and I have written a book of poems in non-violent protest against the 100 hectares of bulldozing happening at the Beeliar Wetlands. Please feel free to share this as widely as possible. About 5 hectares has been cleared already. Clearing is set to resume any day now. Please click on the image below to read/download the poems.

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Inside View: Save Beeliar Wetlands

In June of 2014, I took two buses and a train from my home in Fremantle to the trail head of the Bibbulmun Track in Kalamunda. In rain and a leaky jacket I walked for three hours to Hewitt’s Hut, arriving in the dark. Already at the hut was my friend, his brother and two friends of theirs I had never met before. My friend was walking the entire track. His mates had driven in as close they could to the hut. They had brought eskys full of alcohol, meat for the bbq and mobile phones to watch AFL on.

Read the rest of this article here.

Malvolio Road

In Marginata shade, with the depleted ozone
at Malvolio Road, the sandy verge is compacted
by sandals and sneakers, citizens sing
get up stand up, stand up for your rights
and a mum tells her son off for breaking black boy fronds,
and the patrolling police ask us to stay off the street
and the Federal Member for Fremantle stands with us, getting grey sand in his shoes
with his Ray Bans in his back pocket.  Meanwhile architects
and planners present their proposals to Barnett government
ministers their most important work, the Roe8
Highway Extension. The images projected on the screen
are so realistic you might think the project is already built,
the families in the photos appear so happy,
the cockatoos in the sky plentiful, the cars few
and freewheeling and the diagrams so convincing:
arrows show traffic flow and hydrology flow
and mitigation movements and meanwhile in Coolbellup
Janet works at the IGA to pay her rent, cutting open
cardboard boxes and stacking shelves. Janet knows
where every single item in the entire store goes.
On the eighth of December 2016 the temporary fence
went up across the road from her house,
and on that day, for the first time in twenty years
the family of bandicoots Janet has fed and watered and loved
stopped visiting. Two years earlier, on Kings Park Road
The Premier Colin Barnett had an idea, at the meeting table
The Premier Colin Barnett had an idea,
his idea and his alone, out of his own head Colin had an idea
where the idea came from no one present knew where,
but they heard him out, Colin was so moved by his idea
he had to borrow the architects’ notebook and make sketches;
if the people of East Fremantle don’t want Roe highway
straight through their suburb, we’ll build a tunnel,
a five kilometre tunnel underneath White Gum Valley,
that’ll show ’em, said Colin. The Premier himself was so impressed
with his ingenuity he had a sip of water from the small tumbler
in front of him. The idea was so spontaneous that those present
at the polished jarrah table didn’t know what to say,
a junior engineer was sent to draw up some plans.
That day, at Coolbellup IGA, Janet helped her neighbour
Kate find some polenta in aisle three and got a special
treat for the bandicoots’ breakfast.

 

J. P. Quinton – Malvolio Road 12th Dec 2016

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After Heat

This story appeared in Rumble Strip. 

Sorcha told me that whenever she walks in the wind blown streets of Fremantle, she always tends to think of the place underwater. She said she doesn’t know exactly how the buildings will change, but some will have a permanent watermark and their basements and ground floor will become fish tanks. The warming air is warming the oceans and melting icesheets and sea levels are predicted to rise as much as one point one metres over the coming decades and if the seas rise a salt water triangle beginning at the northern end of Packenham street, to Bathers beach, to Little Creatures and then up to South Terrace will all be inundated, the waters rising and falling with the tide each day. The skatepark that runs south-east along the line of the train tracks within the grounds of the Esplanade park will have water rising half way up the half pipes and filling the bowls. This, she said, as if she had been pondering the image for some time, will be an unexpected reversal, as swimming pools are usually drained to make bowls for skateboarding.

Sorcha said you can feel the planet getting hotter and nowadays nobody goes out during the middle of the day and just last night, the temperature rose two point five degrees from 11pm to 1am and has continued to rise all morning until only the brave or those with air-conditioning venture out. The heat, especially standing in direct sunlight, is hot enough to burn the dash board of cars and many arguments have erupted about the apparent ownership of shaded parking bays closest to the markets or to the Woolstores shopping centre. These violent outbursts directed at complete strangers occur daily and onlookers are seen filming the incidents on their mobile phones to upload on social media. I too, began Sorcha, witnessed one of these outbursts, when a woman with black hair and black clothing had been attempting to reverse into a parking bay and a man snuck into her spot near a paperbark tree. When the passengers of the mans car opened their doors they were ambushed by the woman, speaking in Cantonese, which they understood, except for the driver who instructed the woman to get lost, before making his way through the steaming vehicles to the food court. The irate woman who missed her spot left her car stationary in the middle of the car park causing a traffic jam and all kinds of honking from other drivers. As the passengers were following the man to the food court they spotted another car leaving and stood at the entrance of the bay until the angry woman was able to slowly reverse her late model Mercedes into the spot and hastily throw her foil sun protection screen inside the windscreen and secured it with the visors. I often wonder, said Sorcha, if people suddenly find themselves at a breaking point and lose their shit one day or live their lives going from one confrontation to another without realising.

Allan Handelman and Bon Scott interview

In all of the hundreds of AC/DC books, videos and interviews, one of the best is an interview between legendary music man Allan Handelman and Bon Scott. This was recorded just a month or so before Bon’s death, in early 1980. An excerpt from the interview is included at the end of Bad Boy Boogie: The Adventures of Bon Scott, but you can listen to the entire interview at the link below. The interview proper begins after about a minute or two.

Click this LINK to listen to the interview. What are your thoughts?