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Victoria Cooper+Doug Spowart Blog

Archive for December 2019

OUR 2019 FIELD STUDY Submission: Tidal fire debris

This has been a great yearly project for us for over 10 years. What follows is the story of our submission for 2019. At the end of the post there’s a brief story about Dellafiora’s Field Study Projects. David is also involved in many other mail art projects… LOOK HERE

Narrabri roadside PHOTO: © Doug Spowart

Surrounded by fire

Recently we drove through central western New South Wales and southern Queensland. The country was dry and hot with willy-willies and dust storms lifting and moving the precious soil across the landscape. There was little or no green and the dams were dry- even rivers that would normally have some water were just sand and dry dirt. Travelling on further we witnessed the great Brigalow forests of southern Queensland seemingly quivering under the heat of the summer sun.

Overall the country was brittle and broken from the endless dry. Not even summer there was a concern for the future as country towns not used to running out of water were in dire situations. Coastal areas where fire is a part of environmental regeneration there was also widespread concern for this now unusual extended periods of dry. This was not a normal cycle… The country was about to explode… all it takes is a dry thunderstorm with lightning, a careless smoker driving past or sadly a deliberate act from criminals.

So then the fires started so much earlier than expected… the many brave souls rallied to fight for their community. But these were not just the normal local bush fires… They grew and joined to form huge firestorms, the fighters used all they could find from buckets to the fire fighting trucks… But much of the land was inaccessible and many areas of forest could not be saved from the onslaught of wind and heat… Some forests that had survived through the millennia without fire in unique and protected ecosystems were now potentially changed forever.

Fired forest near New Italy, northern NSW PHOTO: Victoria Cooper ©

We then came to stay at a friend’s family retreat on the coast of Northern NSW… The road to this place passes through huge areas of swamp and eucalypt forest that rarely burns as it is usually has good rain. But now we drove past kilometres and kilometres of burnt and dry country… We soon found that the regional area where our destination is located was surrounded by blackened country. The atmosphere, as with most of the coast in NSW was chocking with smoke and dust.

Even though we were assured that our town was safe these were not usual times and we felt uneasy and depressed by the enormity of this disaster.

We decided to dedicate our field report work to record this devastation. Our dismay was deepened when we walked along the beach and witnessed lines of leaves and twigs and other blackened material washed up with the tide .. like the dead bodies of victims discarded by criminals. Down the length of the entire coast of NSW where other fires raged, these waves of blackened and broken forests were appearing – the sea has returned the evidence to the place of the crime.

We began by gathering small samples of the material as symbolic references to vast amount of evidence left behind from these black tides. This Field Report is our first response as part of future substantive work on the contemporary condition of indifference, arrogance and ignorance towards a deteriorating environment.

Victoria Cooper