Relation

“I relate, therefore I am.”

-Ruth Langford, Hope in Crises Forum

Eucalypts near Mersey River. Pentax MX, Kodak Image Pro 100, March 2025.

“The world that we know, that relates to us, that interests us, what we call ‘reality’ is the vast web of interacting entities, of which we are a part, that manifest themselves by interacting with each other…”

- Carlo Rovelli, Helgoland

Last light among the trees. Pentax MX, Kodak Image Pro 100, March 2025.

“The properties of an object are the way in which it acts upon other objects, reality is this web of interactions.”

-Carlo Rovelli, Helgoland

In the forest. Pentax MX, Kodak Image Pro, March 2025.

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe."

-John Muir

Canoe shaped scar in tree. Pentax MX, Kodak Image Pro 100, March 2025.

The choice is yours

“We are Nature. Long have we been absent, but now we return.”

- Walt Whitman

Hill above the Mersey. Pentax MX, Kodak Image Pro 100, March 2025.

I have been pretty depressed about the state of the world of late. In particular I have been appalled at the lack of good leadership both in Australia and abroad. With the federal election coming up, I was left with pondering the question of whether there is any chance of positive change, when so many elections in the past have failed us, the people. In particular, I fell into the trap of viewing the outcome as pre-determined: one of the two major parties were bound to take majority, in one way or another. And neither parties seem aware of the direction that our nation needs to take, for the health of people and for custodianship of country, the earth, the waters and air. What good will my vote really do, when there is bound to be no change for the better, when it comes to the things that matter to me?

Mersey above Rowallan. Pentax MX, Kodak Image Pro 100, March 2025.

I got my postal vote ballots in the mail the other day. I opened the envelope and found two ballots inside. One had five choices, this was for the house of representatives. The second ballot was for the senate, and on this I could either vote above or below the line. Above the line, I’d vote for parties, and below the line I’d vote for individuals who represent those parties. I chose to vote below the line, because I knew who would get my number one vote as an individual. This meant I had to place numbers from 1-12. I did a bit of reading up on the internet. And I was pleasantly surprised.

Oxley Falls, Mersey River. Pentax MX, Kodak Image Pro 100, March 2025.

Some of the minor parties had remarkably good policies. As did some of the independents. And I found myself thinking, herein lies the future of our nation, Australia. It lies in the leaders who listen to the people, and aren’t corrupted by greed or power.

Mersey River. Pentax MX, Kodak Image Pro 100, March 2025.

The outcome of the election is not pre-determined. There are people out there who have got their heads screwed on straight. And they are not robots. They are real people, dedicating their life to being good leaders. Leaders our country needs. Leaders the people need.

In one week’s time, our country will have voted, more or less. This is democracy. The people choose. And this time, I choose to believe in the people of Australia. May they choose well.

-A.S. 26/4/25, Brushy Creek.

Dreamy Days

“Real generosity toward the future lies in giving well to the present.” -Albert Camus

Waterfall Bay, Turrakana / Tasman Peninsula. Pentax MX, Kodak Pro Image 100, Feb 2025.

I have been rather busy of late. Busy with work, busy with all the demands that I place on myself, that my fellow humans place on me, busy, busy, busy. My days are scheduled, my weeks are planned and my months all tick away on the calendar, one event after the next. Boredom and spare time have disappeared over the last couple of years. Where did they go? I used to be able to muse, to have a lazy afternoon. These days, my routine consists of things I feel I must do as opposed to what I would like to do. Perhaps this is the life that most ‘grown-ups’ live, and I should be grateful that I have all my needs met. But to dream and to aspire, that is being human, and to imagine a better life than the one I see myself and my fellow humans living; surely this is important?

Waterfall Bay, Turrakana / Tasman Peninsula, Pentax MX, Kodak Pro Image 100, Feb 2025.

So much of my everyday life consists of set routines. Doing a very similar thing over and over again. It’s almost like clockwork. It is predictable, safe and offers clear rewards. I earn money so I can buy food, clothing, petrol, and equipment that let me do the things I like to do. But there is a price to pay for this. “A man does not need to be in chains to be a slave”. I am a slave to this way of life. I am bound to my habits. I am stuck on a treadmill, repeating activities that constantly contribute to the great extinction of life on this planet. I use transport based on fossil fuels to undertake my trips. I use plastic products every day. I am contributing to catastrophic climate change that is threatening all life on Earth.

But I also ride my bike, whenever I can and use old things where I can. I try not to use more than I need and I am respectful to the places I visit. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I can see a world on a precipice, but I can also see a world that is wonderful and I am so grateful that I get to witness it all every day. Even if I am stuck in a loop, repeating the things I do every day, I can be inspired by all the little moments.

I am inspired by the way the way the ocean beats against the sea cliffs; the way light falls on the meadow and the morning dew glistens in the sun, the colours of the fagus as it turns and falls at the end of autumn. But I am also inspired by the human made things in my life. I am a little bit shocked my car starts (almost) every time I turn the key. When people are kind to me. These are the moments when I think ‘Well the world might still be okay’. All these little moments, they add up and make me feel blessed I am simply present.

And so, even if I have been busy of late, I have retained a sense of mental serenity. I guess I do not chose my life’s circumstances. Sometimes I have to work seven days a week. Sometimes I don’t get as much sleep as I would like. Sometimes I don’t eat the food that I want to eat, or have a chance to look after myself as I would like to.

Cape Hauy, Turrakana / Tasman Peninsula, Pentax MX, Kodak Pro Image 100, Feb 2025.

I choose to be present. To me, this means less and less thinking and more and more observing. I try to avoid getting stuck in thought loops as much as I can. Sometimes I do this thing in my mind, which I’ve learnt to do through years of meditation practice. It is hard to explain how I do it, but it is a sort of expansions of my awareness, upwards and outwards, to encompass everything outside of my own existence. It turns my sometimes dull every day into an inspiring dream. Instead of being ground down, I am lifted up; it reminds me that even if my experience is mundane, it is no less wonderful.

And perhaps sometime soon I will find a way to be less busy. To make more time for the things I like. Oh how I would love to read more. To write more. To go wondering through the bush so I can take more photos. To focus on my art, to bring more beauty into the world. To be able to go on more adventures, to explore the wild places that are dark, quiet and mysterious. . Oh, one day I am sure these things will come.

For now, I dream.

-A.S. 19/4/2025, Brushy Creek

The Monument, Turrakana / Tasman Peninsula, Pentax MX, Kodak Pro Image 100, Feb 2025.

Sea and rocks...

Time in Nature
Will turn
The mirror of reflection
Back toward its source,
The Perceiver.

-A.S, 18.11.2024

Fortescue, Feb 2024. Pentax MX, Kodak Pro Image 100.

Near the blowhole, Tasman Peninsula. Feb 2025. Pentax MX, Kodak Pro Image 100.

Breaking Wave, Rocks. Feb 2025. Pentax MX, Kodak Pro Image 100.

Baby in the Cradle

For many years I resisted the urge to take the classic photo of Tasmania’s most iconic landmark.

The Hole and the Crown, Feb 2025. Pentax MX, Kodak Pro Image 100.

It is a mountain that is over-photographed and over-visited. I can’t imagine taking a photo of this place and thinking I am doing something new here. As the most photographed mountain in Tasmania / Lutruwita, any photographer worth their silver would think twice before taking a shot of this mountain and ask, ‘What am I giving here that hasn’t been given before?’

Pandanni Grove, Cradle Valley. Feb 2025, Pentax MX, Kodak Pro Image 100.

It is a blessing and a curse, being bestowed with so much natural beauty.

The mountain’s quiet grace is interrupted daily by helicopters flying by it. Buses drive thousands of people back and forth day in, day out, who wish to behold this place. The tracks that have been worn into the rocks of these mountains can be seen from kilometres away, high up in the sky.

Open Valley, Glaciated Hillsides, Feb 2025. Pentax MX, Kodak Pro Image 100.

Recently, I visited the Reserve with my folks and we stayed at Waldheim Cabins.

When we started the Dove Lake Circuit, I couldn’t resist. I stood on Glacier Rock and I pulled out the old Pentax and looked through the viewfinder, across Dove Lake at the fabled Cradle.

Years of aversion disappeared in a second when I looked at the scene and thought, well, that’s pretty remarkable. I pushed the button and I heard the shutter. The time had come for me to take the classic angle. For better or worse, I took the shot.

Baby in the Cradle. Feb 2025. Pentax MX, Kodak Pro Image 100.

-A.S. 5/4/26, Brushy Creek.

The ever-quickening world

The world seems to be speeding up. It is time we learnt how to slow down.

Chessboard. Sep 2022, Pentax MX, Portra 800.

It seems to me that the world is speeding up. People seem obsessed with doing things faster and faster. We gotta be able to do more and more. We use more stuff than the previous generation. Stuff isn’t made to last, it’s made to sell. And to satisfy the global consumer’s needs and desires, all this stuff has to be moved around, from one end of the globe to the other. Continuously.

Despite knowing the solutions to the climate crises, ecological crises and cost of living crises, we fail to act out these solutions. We continue to barge ahead with our way of life that we know is killing the planet. As individuals we want to do better. As a collective society, we have been unable to alter the course of action that has brought us to our current predicament and we continue to hurtle us toward a precipice which looms on our horizon line.

Road along the Huon River. Sep 2022, Pentax MX, Portra 800.

We need to slow down. We need to stop moving mass around. Mass is the inherent quality of matter, of stuff. The greater the mass, the more energy it takes to move it around. At the moment, the primary mode of moving things around is through the burning of fossil fuels. Burning raw materials from the Earth that have accumulated over millions of years. Burning these materials, be it oil or coal, results in the emission of greenhouse gases, in particular carbon dioxide. The accumulation of these gases in our atmosphere trap heat from the sun. We live on a planet that is heating up from the billions of engines we turn on and run every day. This heating introduces more energy to the climactic system, resulting in catastrophic climate patterns which create living conditions vastly different to what life has evolved to cope with. In other words, homo sapiens, the human species is driving a change that is endangering the ongoing survival of all life on Earth.

Little boat, big river. Sep 2022, Pentax MX, Portra 800.

We need to turn the engines off. All the cars, all the ships, all the planes. We need to stop burning fossil fuels. We do not have time to transition. We need to stop the movement now. We need to heal the earth, starting immediately. This is the solution. We need to stop moving mass around through the use of fossil fuels.

But how to do this when we rely on fossil fuels to get our daily bread? How can we ask to not to drive or fly any more when we have built our way of life centred on these movement of things? Imagine the suffering of not moving food to where it needs to go. Imagine the chaos that would cause! So how do we turn the engines off without half the world starving to death!? I guess the elusive answer to this question is why we haven’t turned the engines off yet.

Bridge across Huon River, Sep 2022.. Pentax MX, Portra 800.

I don’t think looking to technology for the magic cure is the solution to our problems. Renewable energy isn’t going to solve the fundamental problem: exponential expansion of the human population on planet Earth and our increasing demand for more raw materials, transformed to suit our needs and desires.

We have exceeded the carrying capacity of the Earth. We want too much. I find it sad that this fact is ignored day to day. For our leaders to stand up and enact the solutions, we all must be willing to change the way we live our lives. Dramatically. We need to be able to give up all the things which we think we need in order to exist. It is going to be tough, but these changes will take place within a few generations whether we are willing to change our ways or not. We still have a choice. But if we fail to change our way now, that choice will be taken away from us.

The solution is incredibly difficult, but very simple at heart. Instead of speeding up, we need to slow down. Collectively. We all need to work together on this. All 8 billion of us people. It is in our best interest, after all.

-A.S. 28/3/25, Brushy Creek.

The Descent into the Underworld

“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” - Joseph Campbell

Folded Quartzite. Pentax MX, Nov 2020.

“The descent is a mythological term for the period during and after a powerful event in which the ego has been overwhelmed by the unconscious. Energy that is normally available to consciousness falls into the unconscious.” - Martin Shaw

Tilted Peak. Pentax MX, Nov 2020.

“This is known as journeying to the underworld, a state in which creative energies are going through transformations that the unaware ego may know nothing about.” -Martin Shaw

Chaotic Jumble. Pentax MX, Nov 2020.

-A.S. 22/3/2025, Nipaluna / Hobart.

Getting along with Nature

“The survival of wilderness, of places we do not change, where we allow the existence even of creatures we perceive as dangerous- is necessary. Our sanity probably requests it. Whether we go to those places or not, we need to know they exist.”

Wendell Berry, ‘The World Ending Fire’. All quotes in this post are from the short essay ‘Getting Along with Nature (1982)’.

Grazing Land, NE Tasmania. Pentax MX, 2021.

“But unlike other creatures, humans must make a choice as to the kind and scale of the difference they make. If they choose too small a difference, they diminish their humanity. If they choose to make too great a difference, they diminish nature, and narrow their subsequent choices, ultimately, they diminish or destroy themselves.”

St Columba Falls, Pyengana, Tasmania. Pentax MX 2021.

In the middle. NE Tasmania. Pentax MX, 2021.

“I think there is a bad reason to go to the wilderness. We must not go there to escape the ugliness and the dangers of the present human economy. We must not let ourselves feel that to go there is to escape… There can be continuity between them and there must be.”

Rainbow Valley, NE Tasmania. Pentax MX, 2021.

“To make this continuity between the natural and the human, we have only two sources of instruction: nature herself and our cultural tradition.”

Old Stuff

A summer moment

Bob Dylan sang
like only he can
and the happiness
flooded me as I sat
and drank beer
on our verandah
in the realm of
the setting sun.

-A.S. Jan 2021, South Hobart.

The old tent and Barn Bluff. Hasselblad 500CM, Delta 100, Apr 2023.

Birth Mother

The streetlight burns yellow
Brings the dancing rain into focus
The mountain behind, she glows
There stands kunanyi, the birth mother.

Wrangling with all kinds of bulls,
The cowboy tips his hat,
Perfect teeth in the break of that smile,
Before he begins his life or death dance
With the horned animal that is much bigger
Than himself.

Ride the devil, ride the wind
Ride the bull, as it sees red, red, red.
Grab it by the horns and spread your legs
Ride the bandit till there is no red left.

Justice is a dangerous thing
It makes us believe we are right
In whatever we choose to deliver.
It’s the second edge to the sword
We call Liberty, it’s the ability
To wound as well as to lift,
To counter it, we need a shield,
One that defends against fear.

The streetlight burns yellow,
Accentuates the smudge on the
Sunroom’s window, as I stare out
To the street, the street that starts
At the foot of the mountain,

Great Kunanyi,
The birth mother.

-A.S. Jan 2021, South Hobart.

Echo Point Hut, Lake St Clair. Hasselblad 500CM, Delta 100, July 23.

Forgetfulness

Where do the memories go?
One minute they are there
Then they are gone
Slipped down to the abyss.

I wonder if there is a
Collective pool of memories
Where they swim like
Little fish in a big pond,

And whether some
Memories act like big fish
That want to swallow
The little ones.

When our deeds are done
What will remain?
When our consciousness is done,
Will our memories dissipate?

-AS. Jan 2021, South Hobart.

See through canvas- nearly waterproof! Hasselblad 500CM, Delta 100, Apr 2023.

Hidden Places

Hidden places may be visible; but in order to see them, they must be found.

Tree Skeletons and Mist. Pentax MX, Ilford 50 BW, Dec 2019.

Once a place is found, it is no longer hidden.

Tree Silhouette, Dolerite Skyline. Pentax MX, Ilford 50 BW, Dec 2019.

A place that’s been found may be forgotten.

Lake ‘Whose Name Shall Never Be Spoken’. Pentax MX, Ilford 50 BW, Dec 2019.

Once a place is forgotten, it becomes hidden once more.

Accidental double exposure Pentax MX, Ilford 50 BW, Dec 2019.

-A.S. 1/3/25, Brushy Creek.