Cape Grimm
Page 24
I sit here on the porch, the sky above me lit with a faint glow of indigo, and make notes and nod to my neighbours, calling out a greeting now and then. And it seems I can’t escape Scandinavians, for August, the man in the house next-door, is from Sweden and he is so homesick he is trying to plant a whole Scandinavian rock garden, but this is not working, and the place is reverting to a Florida jungle complete with tiny deadly coral snakes. August comes over sometimes and we discuss the gardening problems over a drink. We are both strangers in a strange land, and so we have mint juleps in an attempt to follow the local customs. He smokes Ritmeester cigars, and I am getting quite a taste for these. It could be that my old homeland is calling to me, August says in his rather ponderous way. He imagines he might find prehistoric remains in the garden, and he tells me about the huge skeleton some French palaeontologists are putting together in a remote place in Pakistan. It went extinct, August says, over twenty million years ago. I said if he digs in the right place perhaps he will find a little memento left behind by Ted Bundy, but August didn’t laugh when I said that.
Most of the gardening around our house is done by Golden, and she is very keen to grow the native plants that flourish here, as well as the traditional flowers that are dear to her heart. She says she hopes to grow the tallest sunflower in the world—the tallest one so far being, apparently, seven metres high. One day when she was digging in the earth at the back of the house, planting her arsenic green envy zinnias, and her tulips and pussycat pansies and sunflowers and marigolds and dahlias, she uncovered shards of old pottery and a little wooden statue. It was Spanish, El Niño in his hat with the cockle shells, probably a relic from the missionaries of the sixteenth century. His paint had almost disappeared, his face was pitted, and his little childish arm, which should have been raised in blessing, was broken off at the shoulder. Father Fox once told me that it was in Tallahassee in 1539 that the priests said the first Navidad mass ever to be celebrated in North America.
I held the sad and ancient object in my hands, and I sensed a power and a force within it, and I found myself very moved by it. I felt I was going to weep.
‘What’s the matter?’ Golden said.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It just seems really strange and sad—it’s so old, so full of messages and meanings.’
‘What is it though—is it El Niño?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it’s a very old statue of El Niño.’
‘Oh, isn’t it weird,’ Golden said in a voice that was gathering a Florida lilt, ‘how things like that can just lie there underneath the earth for so long, and then suddenly come to the surface.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘that is weird, but the past can throw out very long shadows.’
‘I suppose one day everything under the earth and everything under the sea will probably come up to the surface.’
‘Not everything,’ I said.
‘Yes. Everything.’
And she went on digging, searching for the arm, which she did not find.
‘That will be the end of the world,’ she said, smiling at me.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘the end of the world.’
Epilogue
‘People have found that as the climate shifts over time the distribution of butterfly populations changes as well. They are, in a sense, the litmus test of the environment.’
DUNCAN MACKAY, Flinders University
All is but fortune.
As for everything else, why, only time will tell.
India has won the toss and has sent Australia in to bat.
The Claudina has been declared extinct.
Time and Tide
The material in ‘Time and Tide’ is presented in linear chronological and alphabetical sequences for the convenience of readers. The meanings embedded in ‘Time and Tide’ are in fact non-linear, and they intersect and interact in many diverse patterns and manners with the material of the narrative of Cape Grimm. ‘Time and Tide’ is a tuning fork that hums and riffles back into the narrative. Readers are invited to strike it and listen to the sounds.
Paul Van Loon
Florida
Time
‘The sands of time are just around the corner. The winds of change are swiftly running out.’
CARRILLO MEAN, The Mining of Meaning
TIME
BC 1500 Introduction of the iris from Syria to Egypt.
BC 710-676 Lifetime of the Greek poet Archilochus, who invented iambic verse and to whom is attributed the saying: ‘The fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one great thing.’
AD 784 Death of the Irish Saint Virgil (Ferghil), an astronomer monk who taught the existence of the Antipodes, which was also the Fairy World of Irish folklore.
1170 Birth of Fibonacci (Leonardo of Pisa).
1182 Birth of Saint Francis of Assisi.
1202 Publication of Fibonacci’s Liber abaci which brought the Hindu-Arabic system of numerals to Western culture.
1404, 1421 AND 1424 The Saint Elisabeth floods which inundated and devastated vast areas of the Southern Netherlands.
1440 Invention of moveable type by Johannes Gutenberg.
1485 Painting of The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli (1445–1510).
1525 Death of Thomas Münzer in the massacre of the faithful in Frankenhausen.
1531 Onset of El Niño in Peru.
1531 Franciso Pizarro began his conquest of Peru.
1539 First Christmas Mass in North America (at Tallahassee).
1642 Discovery of Van Diemen’s Land by Abel Janszoon Tasman.
1705 Publication of Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium by Maria Sybilla Merian.
1719 Publication of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe.
1726 Publication of Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift.
1766 Publication of The Aurelian by Moses Harris.
1776 Birth of E.T.A. Hoffmann.
1785 Birth of Jakob Grimm.
1786 Birth of Wilhelm Grimm.
1796 Zinnia seeds introduced from Mexico.
1798 Discovery of Bass Strait by Matthew Flinders and George Bass.
1801 First visit of John Franklin to Australia, travelling with his uncle by marriage, Matthew Flinders.
1803 Arrival of first convicts and soldiers at Risdon Cove in Van Diemen’s Land.
1805 Francis Beaufort devised the Beaufort Wind Force Scale.
1812 First publication of folk tales by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm.
1821 Introduction of European honeybee to Van Diemen’s Land.
1823 Publication of the first English translation of the Grimm Brothers’ German Popular Stories, translator Edgar Taylor.
1824 Sir George Arthur became Governor of Van Diemen’s Land (until 1836).
1828 English dogs (greyhounds, pointers, setters) and birds (thrushes, goldfinches, blackbirds, yellowhammers and bullfinches) imported to Van Diemen’s Land by Captain Langdon on the Wanstead.
1836 Sir John Franklin became Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen’s Land.
1837 Death of Mannaginna.
1841 Jane Franklin established a ‘Ladies’ Society for the Reformation of Female Prisoners’ in Hobart Town.
1844 Charles Sturt’s expedition, carrying a boat to the centre of Australia in search of inland water, discovered only a dry ocean of deep red sand whose ridges undulate like waves.
1845 Meeting of Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm with Hans Christian Andersen in Berlin.
1846 Publication of The Mabinogion, translated by Charlotte Guest.
1847 Death of Sir John Franklin in the Arctic.
1847 Establishment of Launceston Horticultural Society with an exhibition.
1847 Establishment of Aboriginal settlement at Oyster Cove.
1848 The young Fox sisters, Mary and Kate, first hear the ghostly rappings in their house in Hydesville, New York.
1850 The first thylacine exported from Van Diemen’s Land to Regent’s Park Zoo, London.
1850 Letter from Jakob Grimm to Jane Franklin.
1850 Invention of the perambulator.
1851 Final visit of George Augustus Robinson to Oyster Cove where only thirty Aborigines had survived.
1851 Wreck of the Iris off Puddingstone Island in Bass Strait.
1851 Discovery on Beechy Island by Captain Erasmus Ommaney of three graves and scattered relics of the Arctic expedition of Sir John Franklin.
1851 6 February: Black Thursday—fire in Port Phillip.
1851 Publication of London Labour and the London Poor by Henry Mayhew.
1851 First discovery of gold in Victoria.
1851 Opening of the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in London’s Hyde Park. From 8 August to 11 October copies of a weather map were produced and distributed (for a penny a copy) by Electric Telegraph Company. The map was based on weather observations telegraphed to the Exhibition’s printing press. This was the first time a weather map was available on the same day as the weather described. Samples of knitted woollen gloves, stockings, socks and shawls made by the children at the Queen’s Orphanage in Hobart Town were sent to the Great Exhibition.
1851 Death of Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein.
1851 El Niño event.
1852 Marriage of Minerva and Magnus Mean.
1852 Death of Ada Byron King (born 1815), daughter of Lord Byron. She was a mathematician. During her last illness Charles Dickens visited her and read to her extracts from Dombey and Son, which was the first of his novels adapted for public reading.
1852 First discovery of gold in Van Diemen’s Land, at Fingal.
1853 End of convict transportation to Van Diemen’s Land.
1853 Invention of the hypodermic syringe.
1854 Cyrus Field began to lay the transatlantic telegraph cable linking America and Europe. In 1858 he invited Queen Victoria to send the first message to President Buchanan, but three months after that the cable broke. The project was completed successfully in 1866.
1856 Name of Van Diemen’s Land changed to ‘Tasmania’.
1856 Exhibition of A Primrose from England painted by Edward Hopley (1816–1869).
1856 Seeking a cure for malaria, William Perkin discovered synthetic dyes made from coal tar. He patented the dye for the colour mauve.
1857 The little yacht Fox was bought by Jane Franklin and sent, under the command of Francis McClintock, to seek her husband John in the Arctic. Captain McClintock discovered at Point Victoria the written record of the fate of John Franklin and his men, as well as such relics as five watches, books, a Bible, spoons, forks and the Franklin crest.
1859 Publication of Origin of Species by Charles Darwin.
1860 Prince of Wales introduces the American grey squirrel to England.
1867 Alaska sold by Russia to the United States of America.
1868 The first time an Australian cricket team travelled to England to play. This was an Aboriginal team from the Western District of Victoria.
1870 Death of Charles Dickens.
1871 Walter Douglas, an itinerant preacher, imprisoned at Circular Head for causing a disturbance by singing hymns in the street.
1871 Discovery of tin at Mount Bischoff by Philosopher Smith.
C. 1872 Birth of George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (d. 1949).
1874 Floods at Oyster Cove.
1876 Death of Trucanini.
1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London to celebrate Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria. Niña Mean sent a collection of Tasmanian butterflies as a contribution to the display.
1892 Publication in Boletines del Sociedad Geografico Lima of the ‘Disertation sobre las Corrientes Oceanicas y Estudios de la Corriente Peruana de Humboldt’ by Peruvian navy captain Camilo Carrillo. In this dissertation, which was first delivered at a Geographical Society meeting in Lima, Camilo Carrillo said: ‘Peruvian sailors from the port of Paita in northern Peru, who frequently navigate along the coast in small craft, either to the north or to the south of Paita, named this current “El Niño” without doubt because it is most noticeable and felt after the feast of the Holy Child.’
1898 First marketing of heroin (by Bayer) as a cough remedy.
1900 Birth of Minnie Mean (grandmother of Caleb).
1913 Publication of The Fall of the Dutch Republic by Hendrik Van Loon.
1937 Death of last Tasmanian Tiger.
1949 Death of Maurice Maeterlinck.
1959 Birth of Caleb Mean.
1959 Birth of Paul Van Loon.
1967 Hanging of Ronald Ryan, the last man to be executed by the state in Australia.
1967 Murder of Victoria Field at Mandala Clinic, Melbourne.
1975 Birth of Virginia Mean.
1977 Scattering of ashes of Trucanini at Oyster Cove.
1978 Deaths at Jonestown, Guyana, of the People’s Temple Cult.
1985 Marriage of Paul Van Loon and Paloma García.
1989 Execution of serial killer Ted Bundy.
1990 Birth of Golden Mean.
1992 Mabo decision on Native Title in High Court of Australia.
1992 Centenary of the publication in Lima of Camilo Carrillo’s first official naming of El Niño.
1992 Deaths of one hundred and forty-seven people in the fire at the Meeting Hall in Skye.
1997 Deaths of members of Heaven’s Gate sect near San Diego.
2001 Election of George W. Bush to presidency of USA.
2001 Death of Caleb Mean.
Tide
A
ALCYONE AND CEYX
Alcyone was the daughter of the King of the Winds. She was the wife of Ceyx, whose father was Lucifer after whom was named the star that heralds the day, the light-bringer, the morning star. Lucifer, the fallen angel. And Ceyx was the king of Thessaly, in Ancient Greece. Alcyone, fair of skin and with eyes as soft as moonstones, and Ceyx, high-browed and powerful, were devoted to each other. Yet there came a time when it was necessary for Ceyx to journey far across the seas to consult a mysterious distant oracle. Because Alcyone had grown up in the palace of the King of the Winds she knew the dangers that might be encountered by men who sail in ships at sea: the pirates, the storms, the shipwrecks, the sirens and the mermaids, the wars and the forgetfulness. The dreams. And she was very troubled at the thought of Ceyx, her husband, lover and friend, adrift atop the dark blue waves, at the mercy of wind and wave and all the fearful monsters of the deep. On the night when Ceyx put to sea a great black and jasper storm did in fact break, and the shining ship was thrown upon the mounting waters, flying through the wild air, and then sinking down into the lightless depths. All the men on board were drowned.
And as the cruel dark waters closed for the final time over Ceyx, the last word upon his noble lips was the sweetest word he knew: ‘Alcyone’.
Time passed, and Alcyone waited patiently for word of the expedition and for the return of her dear husband. She prayed to Hera to safeguard Ceyx. Now the goddess knew that Ceyx was already drowned, that already he lay at the bottom of the ocean, that his flesh had fed monsters large and small, and that his bones were but the architecture for a fleet of colourless fish whose fins and tails fanned lazily across the brow and through the jaw and in and out the ribs of the man so beloved by fair Alcyone. Hera was touched by Alcyone’s prayers for a man already dead, and so she sent the widow a dream that she might know the truth.
In this dream Morpheus, son of the god of sleep, assumed the shape of Alcyone’s beloved Ceyx, and he spoke to Alcyone saying, ‘Dearest Alcyone, look, your husband is here. I am here.’ And Alcyone’s soft eyes glistened with tears of joy. But then she heard the dream-vision say: ‘I am dead. I am your dead husband Ceyx. Is my face changed in death? I beg you to give me your tears, that I may not go down into the shadowy underworld unwept.’ Alcyone stretched out to touch her husband and cried aloud, begging him to wait for her that she might go with him, and her own voice awakened her from sleep, and she knew that Ceyx was dead.
In the morning, when the sun rose and the sky was streaked with salmon and pearl, Alcyone ran to
the seashore. As she stared out over the still and gleaming water she saw in the shining distance an object floating towards her. As it got closer she saw it was a body, and she knew in her heart that it was Ceyx, and before long she knew for certain that it was the body of her husband. She ran through the surf, splashing in the waves, and suddenly, as the gods looked on, she was flying, flying on winged feet over the water to her husband. The gods took pity on Alcyone and Ceyx, and they rewarded their love and constancy and changed them into two sorrowing birds of the sea. He was a kingfisher and she was a gannet.
Every winter there are seven whole days when the sea is perfectly calm, and these are the days when Alcyone, the gannet, broods over her nest floating on the sea, and when Ceyx, the kingfisher, accompanies her. These days of perfect peace are named after her, Alcyone. They are the halcyon days.
ALEUTIAN ISLANDS
The home of the Aleuts since 2000 BC, and the northern destination of the Bass Strait moonbirds. The Aleutian Islands are part of Alaska, which was bought by the United States from Russia in 1867. They are a chaplet of small islands separating the Bering Sea from the Pacific Ocean, and they form an arc-like segment of the chain of volcanoes called the Ring of Fire. Some of the volcanoes are active. There are fourteen larger islands and fifty-five smaller ones, as well as many fragments and islets. The principal groups are the Near Islands, the Rat Islands, the Fox Islands, the Islands of Four Mountains and the Andreanof Islands. The shores are wild and rocky and dangerous to ships, with the land rising abruptly from the shore to grim, steep, forbidding mountains. There is a persistent fog in the Aleutians, and there are few trees, but the islands are brilliant with green grasses, moody with sedge and, in the summer, ablaze with wildflowers such as pink and blue lupins, yellow saxifrage, delicate miniature orchids and chocolate lilies. The fauna includes the arctic blue fox, sea lions, whales, reindeer, fur seals, an abundance of fish and hundreds of species of birds; for the music of their names, there’s the red-faced cormorant, the red-legged kittiwake, the crested auklet, not forgetting the restless, roaming moonbird, the aerial wanderer that linked the indigenous peoples of Van Diemen’s Land with the people of the Aleutian Islands, who wove fine grass baskets not unlike those of the Tasmanians. It was the Northwest Passage between the Fish River and the Bering Strait that John Franklin was seeking when his ships became trapped in ice, the whole expedition dying from starvation, exposure and lead poisoning.