Organ Pipes

Located 23 kilometres (14 miles) north-west of Melbourne is the site of Australia's smallest (in terms of land size) 121 hectare (299 acres) National Park called the 'Organ Pipes National Park'.

After yesterday's ramble into the CBD of Melbourne, albeit a photographer's delight with its vibrancy, colours and variety, I was in need of some R & R under a canopy of eucalypt and wattle surrounded by the geology of millenniums. To reach this National Park involved a short twenty minute train journey to a place called Diggers Rest. So named for it was a place during the gold rush periods of the 1850s & 1860s, that hopeful souls on their long footslog from Melbourne to the Goldfields of Bendigo and Castlemaine (131 & 120 kilometres/82 & 74 miles, respectively from Melbourne) would generally 'rest' on their first night on the road. The term 'Digger' is a purely Australian localism (and one often said with respect) to an everyman on such a journey. The 'digging' itself would involve removing large swathes of earth at the Goldfields in search of the elusive grains that offered a fortune that few drew. In the 20th Century it was affectionately adopted to describe Australian soldiers, particularly in the two major World Wars (who would be 'digging in' facing an enemy). It has continued reverently since for subsequent conflicts.

Diggers Rest now is a modestly sized town with a population of around 2,500. Importantly, tribes from the Wurundjeri peoples occupied the district for well over 40,000 years and continue to have custodianship of the land to the present. Being so close to the Melbourne sprawl (only 33 kilometres/21 miles from the CBD) it is considered almost an outer northern suburb. It has a claim to fame inasmuch as it was near this town that the first powered flight in Australia took place on 18th March 1910. The pilot being the famous magician/escape artist, Harry Houdini (1874-1926) who was aloft for 3 minutes 15 seconds reaching a height estimated to be 30 metres/98 feet, flying a French Voisin biplane. A week or so later he flew for 7 minutes and 37 seconds over a distance of 9.6 kilometres/6 miles - a feat that astonished hundreds of on-lookers, according to a local Newspaper report from the time. There is a memorial to this flight and the intrepid Mr. Houdini not far from the railway station that is worth a visit.

Alighting at Diggers Rest, I opted to plod the 8 kilometres/5 miles back to the National Park via some backroads and a short hair raising skirt along a section of the very busy Calder Freeway (the major route from Melbourne to central Victoria). This highway has its fair share of utter maniacs driving cars and trucks who clearly obtained their licence from a packet of Fruit Loops (no offence to Fruit Loops either). Then again, I suppose it's not your normal sight to see a plodder animatedly cussing those vehicles that have more a right to be on this mayhem of bitumen and line markers than a wobbler with a walking stick. Though I was a rather pleased lad when I arrived at the entrance to the Park, albeit a few years older in effect than when I set out due to the close encounters of the machine kind that I survived en-route. I assure you I used colourful language getting to the Park, littered with aggressive adjectives, impeachable verbs and the most uncomplimentary of nouns. All such utterances were populated by one item of punctuation: '!'

The Park itself only formed in 1972 on what previously was degraded farmland around a winding series of gullies formed by the actions of Jacksons Creek. This Creek, which rises further north in the Macedon Ranges (a bulky mountain Range located 64 kilometres/40 miles to the north of Melbourne and is readily seen from most suburbs) has slowly carved not only a series of striking gullies but some deep and broad valleys in the predominately lava plains. In places this plain is 70 meters/230 feet thick as a result, about one million years ago (a mere blink in geological time) of one of the world's largest lava flows from nearby volcanic activity. As readers may recall, from an earlier reportage, Victoria has the third largest volcanic field in the world, of which the volcanic plains around and in the Park are just one section. As a result of the lava flows, the actions of Jacksons Creek and the relentless impost of time a number of striking geographical features now present to us, fortunately! Amongst the features are the Organ Pipes, (after which the National Park is named), a striking series of vertical solidified lava tubes that look like, well Organ Pipes. You'll find the Tessellated Pavement, where the rock surface is split into regular tile shapes. There is also the Rosetta Stone, another set of solidified lava tubes that seem to rotate outwards from a central point. All are testament to a once violently dynamic landscape now in calm old age.

Curiously, the National Park sits right under one of the main flight paths into Melbourne's international & domestic airport at a place called Tullamarine. Accordingly, whilst the Park is a fortune trove of geology and life, it is quite noisy overhead. Too, the Highway I mentioned earlier, is only a kilometre or two away and its rushes of machines can at times be heard like a devil's thrash of modernity. But this aside. Following extensive rehabilitation works, where large numbers of native flora have been replanted, many Australian critters have made the Park a home making it a haven for visitors also. You will see many of the wonders of Australian fauna, such as Swamp Wallabies, the huge Eastern Grey Kangaroos, (and it is a Kangaroo along with an Emu that form a part of the Australian Coat of Arms). You will also see, along with the magnificent Sugar Gliders, those rascally but shy Echidnas and the pudgy Wombats who seem impervious to everyone such is their calm though wary demeanour. In some deep pools of the Creek are a number of Platypus habitats too. On past visits I have been thrilled to see these very timid creatures swimming about for food though they are very difficult to photograph.

As I spent my day - the Park was very quiet people wise, which surprised me a little as it is the first week of two in our winter school holidays - I came across this massive tree root from a sturdy, broad and long lived Manna Gum (a type of hardy eucalypt reasonably common in the district). The roots seem to be taking up the basalt rock as if in slow embrace, drawing from the basalt, which in turn had come from the within deep earth all those millions of years ago. I found this a near timeless scene and by this, an assurance of the near eternity of Nature. I recalled words from a fragment of series of Poems - 'Presence: Translations from the Natural World' by the Australian Poet, Les Murray (who should be awarded the Noble prize for literature in my very biased opinion as he is the great modern landscape Poet of my generation):

Present and still present don't yet add up to time
but oscillate at dew-flash speed, at distance speed. Me me me
a shower of firetail (me me) finches into seed grass
flickers feeding (me) in drabs and red pinches of rhyme.
All present is perfect: an eye on either side
of hard scarlet nipping the sexual biscuits of plants,
their rind and luscious flour. It is a heart-rate of instants,
life with no death, only terror, no results, just prudence -
all vacuumed back up, onto low boughs, by a shift in shimmer,
present and still-present bringing steps that mute crickets' simmer.

from 'MeMeMe'

I visit The Organ Pipes National Park often, exploring and learning with each visit, obtaining renewal in the cause of my life's discipline. This is because, despite my concrete, bitumen and fibro bound existence; I become very restless when not amongst the eucalypts or walking with the chime of earth underfoot. If I have been too long away from the Australian canopy or too long from the fluent rays of a Capricorn Sun soaking into my skin I go quiet and introspective. I readily declare that my heart belongs, by large degree, in the soils of the Australian landscape. Needing its grit to regulate my heart's beats and to be swooned with those rapturous emotions of awe that you find through this aspect of the Gaia miracle.