The Spring Street Spider Affair… and other stories

Cataract Gorge Residency: Days 5 – 7.

Sun Dec 6, 2009

00:40 – In Bed.

Just finished my first night walk along the gorge path as far as the lookout. The moods and artificial colours from the floodlights were intense.

Fauna spotted: 1 x rat – ‘mmm, not quite what i was hoping for but fauna nonetheless!; 1 x brush-tail possum doin’ its thing in the tree branches; 1 x spider (huntsman-like but maybe it was the local trapdoor one – not sure yet).

At least this spider didn’t crawl up my leg like the one a few weeks ago on Spring St in Melbourne’s CBD. I was walking along when I noticed it, a decent sized huntsman, hangin’ out just below my knee on my left leg. I did what most standard humans would do – freaked out in an instant, jumping about a metre in the air with arms flailing as I tried to erratically swipe it off. Feeling just a little self-conscious after this epileptic-like performance in front of a dozen or so people I was at least hoping for a few smiles or laughs…but got nothing. It was as if nothing happened which made me feel even more self-conscious and I even began wondering if maybe I had imagined the spider. I sat down and waited for my tram but at regular intervals began ‘feeling’ creepy-crawly sensations on various parts of my body: at one moment in the hair on my head, the next on my neck, behind my shoulder, etc, etc.

Around this time I also started to wonder where the spider had ended up after I flicked it off. I began to look around. I was also hoping finding it would put to rest my slight concern that I had imagined its presence. I got up, looked under the seat, down in the tram tracks, in the gutter; nothing, nowhere to be seen. I sat down again and asked the lady next to me if she had seen the incident? No. So i described it to her and asked if she had seen a spider nearby. No.

Thirty seconds later, just as we stand to board the tram, a pained, alarmed cry, "Spider! Spider!" I look towards her and she is pointing back towards me, at my thigh. I look down and see the hairy bugger coming out of my shorts and trying to swing around to the front side in some sort of rock-climbing-like manoeuver. This time, without the acrobatics, and with one deliberate strike of my hand, I whisk the hairy fella off; maybe not so deliberately that I had thought about the trajectory of his flight path – he lands next to her foot, she squeals, and they both scurry away in different directions.

I find myself wondering how life in the concrete jungle is for a huntsman and whether he’ll make it safely across spring st. Or maybe he just hangs out round the tram stop for a bit of daily life-risking entertainment and adventure. I wish him well (but question his ethics of hangin’ out by my crotch uninvited) and board the tram. Life returns to relative normality.

16:17 – Atop the hill on the N side of the gorge, overlooking 1st basin below to the SW

This residency has brought me back to what i love – nature in all its simple, chaotic, wild, calm, frenzied, resorative beauty and glory.

The really unfortunate bit about Mr Funky Beetle, above, is that, see that yellow bit on the side of his back? ‘Mmm, well, that’s where I think I might have trod on him before even noticing his existence. Luckily, he was still getting about very well so I didn’t euthanase him, hoping instead that it was just a minor flesh wound and that he would be able to strut his funky stuff for some time to come! 😦

Sat Dec 5th

12:03 – KBC Balcony

The pool, the pool – it beckons; not for swimming but for photographing.

12:23 – KBC Balcony

Why is there this lone gum towering above the she-oaks on the south side hilltop. A sentinel and guardian, it takes the full force of the weather’s onslaught.

The swifts are doing their thing, diving and soaring, dipping and weaving, twisting and turning. What fun to be a swift. Meanwhile, in another part of the gorge galaxy not far away (about 50 metres), teenage boys do their thing, jumping from King’s Bridge into the South Esk River below. The first jumper yells from the murky water below, "Two top rails, Josh! Two top rails!" meaning Josh must jump from the two top rails if he is live up to some teenage challenge. I want to jump from the bridge.

While the boys drop from the bridge, I want to drop things, friendly things, surreptitiously from the balcony onto the passing folk below – notes or messages on leaves or ribbons. And secretly watch their response through the cracks in the balcony boards. Drop things that only some of them will notice because many are too busy talking or running, or because I design them so that they are made entirely from natural material, only noticed by the lucky or observant.

And ironically I feel conspicuous on this balcony. When people look up from the path or boat, or across from the bridge or the south face, I wonder how I, this watcher on the crafted-wood balcony, should respond,. As if there is a designated ‘appropriate’ response. I have waved a few times but have only succeed in generating a wave-response about 20% of the time. 🙂

13:14 – Stillwater cafe

My father always dreamed of living in a house in a forest by a river. I think I have found that house for him here at Kings Bridge Cottage where I stay in his place. I want to make a picture of it for him at least.

And here’s some local banter between concerned citizens…

So we’ve got the loggers, graffiti artists and greenies covered. How about one for the local monarchists perhaps…with King’s Bridge and King’s Bridge cottage in background.

I’d like to perhaps do some video/photographic vox pops with folk as they pass the old tollhouse at the beginning of the gorge path where they used to charge 4 pence to walk the path in days gone by. And I’d like to ask what is it they like most about the gorge…and whether it would be a good idea to have a McDonalds built at 1st Basin, or Coca-Cola vending machines at regular intervals along the path. Or condom vending machines perhaps? Reactions would be priceless on video.

21:00 Reclining on the couch at KBC

Mesmerising wave-like ripples moving across the wall above the fireplace. Caused by street light and car headlights passing through the old fashioned glass in balcony door. The static orange projection from the street light is overpowered from time to time by the moving, swimming bluish projection from the car headlights. They remind me of light reflecting off rippling water onto a rockface; or patterns projected on the sea floor through the water in the shallows.

Fri Dec 4

13:20 Stillwater Cafe

If I am aware that I can find beauty, wonder and peace in the smallest stone, is it simply greed that keeps me hungering for ongoing adventures and experiences?

Ha, it is true, not Coke machines but they did have lolly machines on the gorge path from the late 1890’s to 1935. p 213, ‘Launceston’s Cataract Gorge. Health, Wealth & Tribulation’, Richards, Paul A.C. & Johnson, M, Myola House of Publishing, South Launceston, Tasmania, 2007.

Some ‘sketches’ from today…