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Natureloverswalks

menu_book picture_as_pdf bookLouise Fairfax Blog Resource Australia
Issue_2_Dec_2013-54

Have you ever just heard the name of something, or seen a single image, and really wanted that thing? I heard that a new teacher at my school was taking her class bushwalking: they were going to walk in the Grose River Valley and camp in a tent by a stream, and I was filled with the most terrible longing to be allowed to do that too. Just the very mention of it had me yearning to be there. I was not in her class, but so great was my longing that I persuaded the girls who went to take me there in a repeat edition. My new great hobby was born.

E-WALKING

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In an airline’s magazine I saw a single image of a girl orienteering, running through the bush wild and free as a native animal, and I wanted to do that sport. A second great hobby and a whole sporting career was born.

I don’t leave home to go to the bush: I come home. That is where I belong.

I am a person who likes to interact with nature, not just stare at it from the safety of a vehicle. As an athlete I was once driven through the Rockies and felt unmoved by them, as they were objects out there. I craved to be let out of the car and walk in them so that distance between me and them could be removed. For when I walk or run through nature, a relationship with that environment is established, often with a very

strong bond, and I want to express that in words or pictures.

It is thanks to my daughters, however, that I have a blogsite. They love my photographs and stories about the bush; my first born gave me the initial impetus, and my second born set it all up for me. I was away.

I have done a fair bit of research into the history of Australian bushwalking, and have concentrated in both my doctoral and post-doc research on our changing relationship to nature on the cusp of moder-nity (around 1800), examining in particular the works of Goethe and Blake as reflectors and catalysts of the changes in attitude during that era. I was well aware of the role that literature, paintings and photography played in alerting people to a beauty out there that

NATURELOVERSWALKS

by Louise Fairfaxhttp://natureloverswalks.blogspot.com/

BWA December 2013 | 55

I’ve only been blogging about two months (most entries have been backdated to when they occurred). In a short space of time, I’ve gar-nered readers from every continent except Africa, and from a large number of nations spread across the other continents. I have no idea how these people have found me, for, as I’m a new blogger, Google doesn’t automatically call me up (although nowadays you only have to get half my address right to find me). I don’t have contact with any of these people, and yet my optimistic self says that whoever they are, they’re enjoying it or otherwise they wouldn’t be there, and they’re being made aware of the stunning beauty that is to be found on this earth in general, and in the Tassie wilder-ness in particular – the predominant (but not exclusive) subject of my blogs. I hope when you visit my site you can share in my sense of wonder.

they may not have been aware of and, more im-portantly, a beauty that it is vitally important to save while we still have a chance. Paintings by Eugene von Guerard and Eccleston Du Faur helped make Australians more comfortable with a beauty that was to be found here rather than in the “mother country”. As wilderness photographers, Peter Dombrovskis and Olegas Truchanas have been instrumental in making the beauty that is worth saving in Tasmania evident to the wider public who don’t necessarily have the capability or knowledge required to reach our more remote places. Whilst not for a moment placing myself anywhere near these greats (I stand on a stone at lake level while they sit on Olympus), I nonetheless hope that my photos and some of my stories capture not just the grand adventure that is bushwalking, but also the beauty that is to be found in our wilderness areas. My photos are not so much depictions of mountain X or peak Y, but of the splendour of nature.

Quite separate from that (ie, my relationship with nature and a desire to depict it in photos and words), is my project that the blog also records, adventitiously as it were. I will never get to bag all the Tasmanian Abels or to collect all the peak baggers’ points. I don’t believe it’s possible (although I never say ‘never’). So, my immediate rather more conservative project is to climb as many peaks as I can, and to have at least one decent photo and a story connected to every peak I summit. That is a secondary motor for the blog.

(In addition, if anyone wants information on a mountain I have climbed, they can and do contact me for more help, and I give it. This is often done in the forum of Bushwalk Australia).

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