Comments on: Dusk at Ylarra

By: Barbara

Barbara — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 21:16:50 +0000

Do you think it’s just city folks, Denise? It makes sense to be wary of environments we don’t understand.

Yvonne, that must be the tidal wave that killed the dinosaurs. Cool.

By: Denise

Denise — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 07:23:24 +0000

Oh, I see I am not alone in being scared in the deep Caribbean waters! I am fine in the brown coastal waters of the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico and the blue waters of the California coast, and Hawaiian waters. And I was fine on Grand Cayman where I could walk out into the turquoise waters. BUT, the immediate drop off from land to ocean floor on Cayman Brac freaked me out! I snorkeled there and what really got to me was seeing these monstrous pipes lying on the ocean floor going from land out to as far as the eye could see, and that was REALLY far since the water was crystal clear. They must have been sewage pipes. They were probably three feet in diameter. You’re right, it must have something to do with the vastness of the ocean and feeling like we are just part of the food chain in that environment. I saw lots of beautiful fish, nothing scary, yet it felt creepy to me.

I should mention that swimming underwater in the
deep end of a swimming pool also creeps me out because of the plumbing noises you hear. Doesn’t bother me where my feet touch the ground. And that is exactly what was going through my head in the Brac waters, even though there were no plumbing noises.

Cayman Brac has so few residents, about 2000 people,(we rented a litle house there right on the beach) and we saw only a handful of people unless we went to the grocery store. Being thousands of miles from home and on a tiny island with almost no people I had never felt so alone and lonely. I usually enjoy and even crave solitude at home and I didn’t expect to feel that way. The other thing that surprised me was that I was scared to walk on the beach by myself at night. I would tell myself, ‘there is no one lurking in the trees ready to attack you and nothing is going to rise up out of the ocean and ‘get you’, but I still wasn’t comfortable.

To me, there is also a theme of death on the island. The Brac is a place for people who like to entertain themselves…a fabulous place to dive, but not much to do on land. Lots of private family cemeteries (and public ones) and caves where people hide out during hurricanes, even today. The biggest thing that ever happened there was the Hurricane of ’32 (category 5)when most of the population was wiped out and it is still talked about today.

Interesting how city folks freak out in the wilds.

By: Yvonne Lindsay

Yvonne Lindsay — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 19:59:13 +0000

Barbara the stumps were all petrified wood (somewhat different to my brand of petrified ) And yes, I believe that kauri trees are nature’s survivors and those that do survive are giants, however, they didn’t withstand the tidal wave that is theorised to have taken down thousands of kauri trees in the Far North tens of thousands of years ago. The tidal wave is believed to have been caused by a meteorite hitting either Australia or the Tasman Sea and the resulting shockwave of water created extremely fertile digging grounds for kauri gum in the 1800s. Based on that, I’d hazard a guess that the trees in Lake Ohia were similarly snapped off at the base, leaving those eerie stumps to haunt people like me

Therese! You’ve just described exactly why I don’t scuba dive anymore. I had a total freak out at 50-60 feet in perfect visibility in the Bay of Islands (again in the north of NZ.) It was just so huge and I suddenly didn’t feel like I belonged there anymore so, to my husband’s horror, I ripped my reg out my mouth and did a free ascent to the surface and I couldn’t get back on the boat fast enough. Have never dived since.

By: Barbara

Barbara — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 02:39:42 +0000

Wonderful responses! Deb, I would like to return to Alice Springs and explore from there. Others have said it is a very powerful spot (and cool town).

Kathy, ooh, good one. Hard to not want to visit Stonehenge, just as it’s hard to resist the desire to see Uluru.

Yvonne, it sounds very atmospheric. And can’t kauri trees survive all that time and depth and waterlogging? The wood, I mean, not the tree.

Jill, you poor dear! I bet the trauma of the airport contributed to your sense of worldliness in Madrid. (Madrid! On my list.)

Therese, the ocean is a very vast place, too. I don’t know if I could scuba dive, though CR is hot to go to the Great Barrier Reef after my rhapsodizing.

By: Therese Walsh

Therese Walsh — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 00:47:33 +0000

This may seem a strange place to point at, but I feel unsettled in the ocean. Most recently, my husband and I were snorkeling in the Caribbean and came upon some manta rays and enormous sea turtles. While part of me hungered to see these things, another part screamed to get out. I think I might suggest the same reasons you did, Barbara. The sea is “so very, very vast and ancient and overwhelming on so many levels. I don’t know how to hold it all in my mind all at once, and I don’t know how to survive in that landscape.”

Ancient things can be nerve trying, maybe because they put us in our (inconsequential, in the grand scheme of things) place.

Wonderful post, as always, Barbara.

By: Jill

Jill — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 22:18:03 +0000

Charles DeGaulle airport at age 20. Not the first time I had traveled by myself and not the first time I was abroad, but it was the first time I had to do both at the same time. It had been 8 years since I had visited Europe, everyone and everything seemed so foreign after having been away so long. I didn’t speak a lick of French and yes, I’m afraid that not everyone I asked for help was exactly kind
I had to dash to another terminal to catch my connecting flight to Madrid and onto the adventure of my Junior Year abroad. I was (and am) a slightly smothered only child and my parents weren’t a 100% confident I could do this. Dealing with this huge monstrosity of an airport on no sleep and sheer nerves was the only time I really doubted I could do it either.
I made it. I plopped myself into a cab in Madrid by siesta time and promptly started chatting in Spanish, feeling worldly and comfortable all the sudden. When I got to the hotel I slept for 12 hours and woke up at approximately 2 a.m., wired and ready for the next step, but I never felt that nervous again for the whole year.

By: Katherine Garbera

Katherine Garbera — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 22:10:11 +0000

Yvonne;

That sounds so cool. I read a book about Australia one time that said that there were places that were dry for most of the year and then flooded the rest. So that it was either drown or die of thirst. I thought that was so fascinating that there would be a place where life would be almost impossible for most people.

Kathy

By: Yvonne Lindsay

Yvonne Lindsay — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 20:51:22 +0000

Kathy, I hear you on not venturing out of comfort zones. I’m the original fraidy cat. Mind you, once, when in the Far North (in NZ) my husband and I happened across a lake, except it wasn’t any ordinary lake. It was completely dried up and the entire lake floor was punctuated with broken petrified tree stumps. We were the only people there and it was a fiercely hot day but I remember feeling distinctly chilled by the devastation and I couldn’t wait to get back to our car. I had the overwhelming feeling of being observed while we were there, too. Which made me very anxious to be away.

Hmm, just googled the lake, which is Lake Ohia, and this is the official spiel:

Lake Ohia has been drained earlier this century for gum-digging (Y-I’m picking they mean last century i.e. early 1900s.) On the former lakebed you can now see exposed remains of the fossilised kauri forest that was drowned about 30,000 years ago, before the lake was formed.

Water is present for approximately two months of the year. Classified as a gum-field wetland, this former lake now provides important habitat for rare ferns, mosses and orchids. The surrounding swamps and shrub land contain threatened fish and bird species.

By: Katherine Garbera

Katherine Garbera — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 14:18:58 +0000

I’ve never visited a place that scared me but I have visited places I expected to be spiritual but found to be too touristy. Most recently was Stonehenge. I wanted to be moved or feel the past around me but instead there was just the trampling of feet and the throng of people.

So I turned away from the ring of stones and looked instead to this little valley (very little) below and the sheep grazing on the green fields and found some of that peace I’d been searching for.

I was trying to think why I didn’t have a place that was overwhelming to me and I think it’s because I never venture out of my comfort zone.

Kathy

By: Deb Allen

Deb Allen — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 10:28:52 +0000

The first time I visited Alice Springs, which is about 400k from Uluru, I went with a world weary view that everyone who talked of the inherent spiritual connection they had with the Centre were really, in the Australian vernacular, wankers. But when I got there, the vastness and the ancientness of the landscape pulled me right in. I was driving back from Glen Helen Gorge on my own and a blue cattle dog, which would have belonged to one of the Aboriginal town camps, ran out onto the road in front of me. I wasn’t in any danger of hitting it, but it seemed to look at me as if to say, “Who do you think you are girly?” It’s an amazing place. My friends in AS tell me that people have such a strong reaction to it because the indigenous people have such a strong and unbroken spiritual connection to the land. They still sing the land and the land is alive because of that.