A Treacherous Country

Now I look at the tree and it’s not just a quick flash of remembrance of the grave of a German monk, but I also know its toes touch a graveyard. Its roots wrap around graves from Hobart’s colonial past. I read A Treacherous Country on the weekend. Imagery of convicts and free settlers, the dirt and grime, the humanity of early Hobart. It touched on landscape as a reflection of yourself. Projecting Norfolk onto the tiger concealing countryside and hope onto a silk balloon. Walking through the graveyard under the tree the names of the dead could be from the novel. Although, probably not the inhabitants of Wapping, so I wandered around this area too. Bleak carparks and apartments over layers of dubious histories. A search for Ragged Lane only reveals real estate listings and very little information about the lives of those who lived there, who went to school there. Whose lives were lived and lost and remembered and forgotten. Might go look around in the museum again with more vivid images of the people who lived here. Search out an item of clothing, a piece of horse bridle, a sliver of scrimshaw.

The tree is possibly part of the same history. I wonder how long it has been here. 100 years? Did any of those people sit under a smaller version of the same? Less immutable, less permanent, maybe not thick enough yet to kill everything underneath it. It most certainly is not a part of any Indigenous history from any further back. It has displaced any native vegetation. Replaced it and poisoned the ground to ensure nothing at all grows back. The park itself is home to a small Indigenous camp. A claiming of space. A flag flies a couple of metres up a nearby lamppost. These men cannot be moved on – it says in the minutes of the Council meeting – as it seems to have been decided that this is the park in which they may stay – having been moved from Franklin square. They prefer it to the offered houses – I don’t know where they were or what they were, or if this is true. I avoid the park at night, scared by the yelling and swearing and arguing but in the mornings it’s quiet. 

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