In the wake of Black Summer, rediscovering the beauty of unburnt and recovering bushland, became a way to heal our feelings of solastalgia. And to re-discover a sense of beauty once more.
With 81% of Eurobodalla burnt, for many locals and visitors, the Nature Coast’s beaches, forests, habitats, fauna and flora took on heightened significance. There was a deep need to nurture our love and need for nature.
Local photographer and school teacher, Jenni Knight
Jenni Knight shares some of the images she photographed on slow walks through Walbanga Country, part of the larger Yuin nation, re-absorbing herself into the unburnt landscape, and open to the vital healing life-force of local Country. And all just a fire’s hop skip and jump from the devastation of North Rosedale.
On this page, you’ll find gleanings from Jenni Knight’s creative writing pages, discover an early TED X talk from the Australian environmental philosopher who defined solastalgia, Glenn Albrecht.
And we’ll leave you with a clip from Back To Nature that much loved ABCTV series, a soothing panacea for the dislocations and stresses of Lockdown.
In the face of a global-scaled threat, it was to simplicity, and to connection, and to nature that we looked.
Take a listen, watch and feel: open your eyes, ears, senses, and spirit. And immerse yourself now!
Healing Lens – photography
by Jenni Knight
Our Sense of Home
Glenn Albrecht is Professor of Sustainability at Murdoch University in Perth. He is a transdisciplinary philosopher with a focus on the intersection of ecosystem and human health. His concepts of “solastalgia” and “solaphilia” are now widely applied in academic contexts and have also inspired creativity in art, literature and music.
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Creative lines
creative writing
What she knew…
by Jenni Knight
Gemma knew seagulls. She could read the hieroglyphic patterns of their feet; the time and tide and wind direction, flight paths, take offs, trajectories. So much so, she felt she knew each one. Especially the raucous ones who faked one leg syndrome for chips. Together they gathered on the hill at Rosedale beach and doused themselves in the tidal backwash of the creek. Huddled with furtive glances and no necks, when the wind blew cold off the snow. Fluffs of white clinging onto the grassy brown, tufts of occasional feathers borne by the wind. She loved the way they all lifted skywards for no apparent reason, moving as one down to the sand. There was safety in numbers, in not sticking out, in following someone in the raw screeching crowd.
The presence of sea eagles flying south on a calm day below wispy cirrus clouds meant rain. That she could read. She read the sand lines and flotsam and jetsam and driftwood line, the soldier’s fingers, those things that looked like flat bottom beginnings of blue bottles. Those sea rafts.
She knew the first day when the mutton birds washed up how many would die that year, give or take a few. She knew the purple stumped noodle sticks of anemone in rock pools and the white birdshit on the very top of both headlands where the shags dried their wings. From there they skirted across the ocean, necks stuck out, struggling. More at home in the water than the air, much like Gemma.
She knew bees and honey and their circuitous direction dance and flashing of wings and sun angles and pollen and nectar. She knew rats, ducks, chooks and strawberries and orange fungi. She knew the sepia and black of the after burn of spotted gums, patched trunks, camouflaged and wading through ash. She knew memorials along the cliff seats and outlooks, remembering loved ones and plaques on rocks at favourite fishing spots.
Sometimes the black cockatoos flew over Rosedale beach, screeching their plaintive cry. Two days of rain her Mum would say. All this she knew. But it wasn’t enough because today she’d had her own dice with danger.
So tonight she stayed till her shadow stretched the length of the sand from grass to shore. When the white birds swept across the top of the water in groups for their feeding session, she knew it was time. The cliffs of Jimmy’s Islet glowed orange as she turned away and the moon hardened to fingernail white.
Photography – Jenni Knight