Creative-i Issue 3: The Survival Issue

A MAGAZINE BY CREATIVE COWBOY. FEBRUARY 2013

The

Survival Issue

The road to

Pormpuraaw In Durrell’s footsteps

Shanghai moon city states No room

for me

A CREATIVE i ON A CREATIVE WORLD

A MAGAZINE BY CREATIVE COWBOY. JANUARY 2012 A MAGAZINE BY CREATIVE COWBOY. JANUARY 2012

A CREATIVE i ON A CREATIVE WORLD A CREATIVE i ON A CREATIVE WORLD

This issue’s theme:

Around The Survival the world Issue

Angelina Pwerle Bush plum

The road to Alick Tipoti Zugub, the mask, the Pormpuraaw spirits and the stars In Durrell’s Christopher footsteps

Green at the British Library Shanghai moon city states

Korean

No room International art fiar

for me

PREVIOUS ISSUE A MAGAZINE BY CREATIVE COWBOY. JANUARY 2012

A MAGAZINE BY CREATIVE COWBOY. JANUARY 2012

New documentaries from Africa, Australia, Europe and the USA Cairn’s launch - Ken Thaiday: Newsea, documentaries The the feather Africa fromthe and dance, Australia machine , Europe and the USA

Cairn’s launch - Ken Thaiday: The sea, the feather and the dance machine

A CREATIVE i ON A CREATIVE WORLD

A CREATIVE i ON A CREATIVE WORLD

This issue’s theme: The earth is precious and it needs our guardianship...

The earth is precious and it needsFrancis our guardianship...

Nkodidio Maasai recipient of the Creative cowboy tertiary scholarship

Art collecting can be dangerous: In search of Tongan Tapa

CURRENT ISSUE A CREATIVE i ON A CREATIVE WORLD

CURRENT ISSUE A MAGAZINE BY CREATIVE COWBOY. JANUARY 2012

A CREATIVE i ON A CREATIVE WORLD

The

Survival Issue

This issue’s theme:

Around the world

The road to

Pormpuraaw In Durrell’s footsteps

Angelina Pwerle Shanghai moon Bushstates plum city

No roomTipoti Alick for methe mask, the Zugub, spirits and the stars

Christopher Green

at the British Library Creative-i is published by Creative Cowboy Korean International fiar an e-magazine, and printed on Pty Ltd,artas demand. Editorial by Peter and Andrea Hylands. Photography by Andrea and Peter Creative-i is published Creative Cowboy Hylands. Design

by Kaiby Brethouwer.

Pty Ltd, as anElly e-magazine, and printed on Cover photo: Macumboy, Lockhart demand.

Editorial

by PeterHylands and Andrea River Dancers

by Andrea Hylands. Photography by Andrea and Peter Hylands.

Design by Kai Brethouwer.

ISSN 1839-9983

2

creative-i, a Creative cowboy films publication. creative-i provides news about Creative cowboy film projects around the world. creative-i includes images of the places, of the people and of the art, so important to making our projects a success.

creative-i includes articles that relate in some way to Creative cowboy film projects, articles about art and culture, about places, people and nature. In this issue we make another visit to North Queensland, Australia, and we visit the Cairns Indigenous Art Fair and spend five happy days with the community and artists in Pormpuraaw on the Cape York shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria.

This issue’s theme:

Art collecting can be dangerous: In search Nkodidio Maasai Francis TonganofTapa ofrecipient the Creative cowboy tertiary scholarship

A MAGAZINE BY CREATIVE COWBOY. JANUARY 2012

welcome

UPCOMING ISSUE PREVIOUS ISSUES

CIAF

Our travels also take us to China and Korea and the mega cities of Shanghai and Seoul.

In Greece we visit the world of naturalist Gerald Durrell on the Ionian island of Corfu. Inspired by Durrell’s writings about nature we look at what is happening to the natural world today.

We dedicate this issue to Australia’s Koala, placed on the threatened species list in the Australian States of New South Wales and Queensland in 2012.

Peter and Andrea Hylands

August 2012 Cairns Indigenous Art Fair In August 2012 we visited North Queensland for the third time that year. On this trip we were to stay for around a month, first at Clifton Beach, a village just to the North of Cairns, and then in the Aboriginal community of Pormpuraaw on the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria.

The Creative cowboy film ALICK TIPOTI: Zugub, the mask, the spirits and the stars

The major purpose of this trip was to launch the Creative cowboy film ALICK TIPOTI: Zugub, the mask, the spirits and the stars at the Centre of Contemporary Arts during the Cairns Indigenous Art Fair (CIAF).

CIAF, always a great experience, was the chance to catch up with old friends from Indigenous art centres across Queensland. We purchased two works

from the art centre stands located at CIAF’s main venue, the Cruise Liner Terminal on the Cairns waterfront.

Both works were constructed using ghost nets, the first a basket (2010) from Aurukun by Francisca Walmbeng and second work, a sculpture (2012) by Sid Bruce Short Joe from Pormpuraaw.

View a brief video clip of an Alick Tipoti performance: www.creativecowboyfilms.com/documentaries/alick-tipoti/

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CIAF

The Cairns Indigenous Art Fair The 2012 CIAF included the work of more than 300 Aboriginal and Torres Strait artists from Queensland, fourteen remote and regional art centres from Queensland and nine commercial galleries specialising in Indigenous art from around Australia.

Art sales during CIAF 2012 were approximately $600,000, bringing the total value of art sales since CIAF was established in 2009 to around $2.4 million. CIAF also hosts major art collectors from Australia and overseas including institutions, in 2012 curators from Australia, Holland, USA, Taiwan and Germany.

Acquisitions by major institutions included purchases by the National Gallery of Australia, Australia’s Art Bank, the University of Queensland Art Museum and the Sprengel Museum in Hannover. Around 16,500 people attended CIAF 2012. It is particularly rewarding to see this event flourish at a time when public interest in art and culture in nearby Asia is growing rapidly.

kilometres long, these nets continue to trap fish, birds, reptiles and mammals as they drift on through shallow seas.

Indigenous rangers estimate they have located and collected some 8,000 nets from those parts of North Queensland most impacted by this very terrible problem. The Gulf of Carpentaria is particularly vulnerable to the enormous damage caused by ghost nets.

This is a joyous time to be in Cairns.

Our ghost net purchases are worth talking about. Ghosts Nets are fishing nets that are discarded or snagged and lost at sea. The nets are also known as the walls of death, sometimes 4

The Gulf of Carpentaria is the body of shallow water in the North of Australia located between Eastern Arnhem Land and the West Coast of Cape York where its waters meet the Arafura Sea to the North. The Torres Strait lies to the North East. The region is a stronghold of indigenous culture, Aboriginal communities on the shores and the islands of the Gulf and to the North East the Torres Strait Islander culture.

The Gulf of Carpentaria and its communities are of global significance as are the extraordinary cultures that exist there. The region’s communities include many significant artists, a number of whom are involved in ghost net related projects.

A great deal of the marine debris in Northern Australian waters originates from the fishing industry and much of this comes from South East Asia.

Ghost nets tend to arrive in the

4

F

Gulf of Carpentaria during the Monsoon season but also during the dry season when the south east trade winds bring in yet more nets.

Once in the Gulf the nets are drawn into a circular current that has a particularly damaging impact on the regions environment and this is a matter of great concern to the regions Indigenous communities.

GhostNets Australia ran a workshop at the Cruise Liner Terminal during the duration of CIAF 2012 and this work helps bring attention to the ecological disaster that is ghost nets.

While in North Queensland we took the opportunity to make the long drive to Aboriginal community, Pormpuraaw, on the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria. There we stayed for five happy days and spent time with the community and its artists (see article page 6, The road to Pormpuraaw).

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Sid Bruce Short Joe

The road to Pormpuraaw Looking at the landscape from the air can tell you a lot but there is nothing better than driving on bush tracks and dirt roads if you really want to get to know a place.

SID BRUCE SHORT JOE and his friend and mentor, American artist and art centre manager PAUL JAKUBOWSKI, had invited ANDREA and I to visit the art centre at Pormpuraaw.

It was about a year later that the opportunity came and so we headed north from Clifton Beach, our base in North Queensland, for the long and dusty drive across Cape York and on to the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria.

Pormpuraaw, some 700 kilometres (much by unsealed road) north west of Cairns, is situated on the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria. This is 4WD country. The settlement is cut off for

many weeks each year as the roads flood during the wet season, during the wet the only ways to get there are by plane or boat.

August meant it was the dry season and ANDREA and I chose to drive north and then cut west on the track to Pormpuraaw.

We make a later start than we had planned, the sun is now high in the

Cape York

6

The road to Pormpuraaw

Emu

sky, we collect our Toyota 4WD from Sargent’s vehicle hire in Cairns. The vehicle now full of supplies, including large amounts of bottled water, it is 10am before we are heading out of Cairns on the 700 kilometre journey across Cape York and North West to Pormpuraaw.

Soon the larger settlements are behind us, a chance to top up our tanks at the

roadhouse at Lakeland, these are tiny settlements now.

Here the made road ends, all the roads to the north are open until the rains come again.

Cape York This is both Aboriginal country and cattle country, and we are now only

about 500 kilometres to the south of the Torres Strait and its Melanesian culture. The birds of Cape York, as so often in Australia, are a fantastic sight, all noisy, each and every one.

There is less and less traffic as we head west, only an occasional 4WD. We keep a hawk eye out for wildlife to make sure we don’t injure any mammals or reptiles or birds.

Here the made road ends, all the roads to the north are open until the rains come again

Road train thunders by

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Roadside bushfire

A Brolga sleeps

There in the distance the swirling clouds of dust that signal the approach of a road train, through a solid wall of churning dust all that is visible is the driver’s cabin.

Only one thing to do and that is to pull off the road, road trains can’t stop and can’t take evasive action.

I always think of this as a land of big machines, the road trains, the graders and the enormous bulldozers, all in stark contrast to the delicate environment of this place.

Mostly we are by ourselves and only with wildlife. Now a bush fire burns along the roadside, forty or so birds of prey are gathered here at the edge of the road waiting to pounce on the small mammals and reptiles, cover gone, trying to escape the fire. Here to runs a large Goanna, nearly two metres in length, his silhouette diplodocus like as he crosses the road in front of us.

ANDREA spots a Cuscus in the branch of a tree, snoozing in the heat of the afternoon. The termite mounds or termitaria scattered through the bush,

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some very large indeed, sculptures of distinction in the natural world.

Pormpuraaw is the home of two major Aboriginal language groups, Thaayorre and Mungkan. The Thaayorre people are the saltwater people, originally from Pormpuraaw.

The Mungkan people moved to the region in more recent times and were traditionally from the north including areas along the Edward and Holroyd rivers.

The Thaayorre people also had close relationships with the southern Wik, Olkolo, and northern Yir Yoront peoples, particularly after the establishment of the Edward River Mission, an Anglican mission established in 1938, the time when change and disruption to culture began in the region. Thaayorre people mainly speak Kuuk Thaayorre and related dialects.

The creative cowboy year

A Pelican grooms

The termite mounds or termitaria scattered through the bush, some very large indeed, sculptures of distinction in the natural world Termite mound

9

Sid Bruce Short Joe

Sid Bruce Short Joe at work in the art centre

Pormpuraaw resident and artist SID BRUCE SHORT JOE is a linguist.

He speaks nine languages, the ninth is English. His Aboriginal languages he learnt as a boy, not from school where only English was spoken, but from his relatives, his mother’s country and from his father’s country and grandmother’s country – salt water people, freshwater people and people from further inland.

“It is quite common for our people to be speakers of multiple languages, this occurs through marriage or because of mother’s or father’s language”.

SID says: “If I visited Central Australia I would not be able to understand the languages spoken there, we would have to speak English to each other. It would be like a German visiting Spain for the first time.

I did not know about these different languages in Europe.

When we are at home we speak our language, in schools kids are learning in English. My young nephews speak English much of the time but they all know language. When I babysit I speak to them in language, particularly when we are in camp. Older people tell traditional stories in language. Our traditional songs are sung in different languages, particularly when we are mourning, we share our sympathy and traditional dances”.

10

The sun sets over the Gulf of Carpentaria

SID BRUCE SHORT JOE was born at Aurum mission in 1964, this was before alcohol came to Cape York communities in the early 1970s. SID describes the times before alcohol came as the good days.

Here language is the vessel that nurtures culture, history, knowledge, education and ceremony.

Alcohol and welfare dependence on the Cape are the price paid by its indigenous people because of displacement from traditional land and destruction of traditional culture. This is why the art centre at Pormpuraaw is so important, it is one way back to culture and respect.

SID BRUCE SHORT JOE is also a peacemaker, welcomed by other tribes because of his language skills. He is a carer of old and young. He is a kind and thoughtful man, his freshwater totem, the blue tongue lizard.

In Pormpuraaw SID BRUCE SHORT JOE learnt to speak the Thaayorre language. In his teens SID lived with the Kugu, his grandmother’s people and he learnt those languages. He has told me often that these languages are very different from each other, sometimes the words are the same but they have a different meaning.

The art centre at Pormpuraaw

He is a freshwater man living in saltwater country.

“We believe our people were created with their totem, trees and animals from traditional lands can be totems”.

Like many Aboriginal people on Cape York in North Queensland, Australia, SID BRUCE SHORT JOE no longer lives on his land, his tribe long since displaced from their lands, now a cattle station.

Kite

Jabiru

Kookaburra

“At certain times of year we may go to stay with relatives in different country”.

His tribe’s country is north east and inland from Pormpuraaw. A chance to visit country, once more, negotiated as part of land rights, a visit to sacred sites and dreaming country. Still a difficult journey in a heart and in a soul, “they make it hard” – of course they do, as they hope the dust of all those years will cover their tracks.

SID BRUCE SHORT JOE’s days as an artist are centred on the Pormpuraaw Art Centre where the settlement’s artists gather each day to paint their canvases Artist Christine Holroyd inspects a newly delivered ghost net

or to make sculptures from found and purchased materials. The Aboriginal rangers bring in the ghost nets washed up in the mangroves or on the beaches.

The grim detritus of humanity, now given new purpose through art making.

The art centre is also a keeping place for artefacts and for film and sound archives of historic events and daily life of the people in the region.

serpent, part ghost net materials collected from the Pormpuraaw beach, and plastic twine from a hardware store down south.

SID and I go to sit by the beach, a beach of millions of bleached shells, piled high along the tides edge for as far as the eye can see. This too is Saltwater Crocodile territory. The Crocodiles sleep in the morning sun. It is here we stop to talk.

Today SID BRUCE SHORT JOE is working on a sculpture of a rainbow

To view the video visit creativecowboyfilms.com/sid-bruce-short-joe/

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Wildflower meadow, Corfu

skill at writing, his skill at describing the joy of the natural world and his skill at providing the world with strong messages about the conservation of habitats and species, sometimes grim messages packaged in a way that they sneak up on you. These communication skills are sorely missed.

In Durrell’s footsteps

“July had been blown out like a candle by a biting wind that ushered in a leaden August sky.

A sharp, stinging drizzle fell, billowing into opaque grey sheets when the wind caught it. Along the Bournemouth sea-front the beach huts turned blank wooden faces towards a greeny-grey, froth-chained sea that leaped eagerly at the cement bulwark of the shore. The gulls had been tumbled inland over the town, and they now drifted above the house-tops on taut wings, whining peevishly. It was the sort of weather calculated to try anyone’s endurance”.

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This paragraph is the very first by the naturalist GERALD DURRELL in the book My family and other animals. The book of course describes the DURRELL family’s escape from the all too often gloomy British climate as the family makes the decision to move to the Greek island of Corfu in the Ionian Sea and into the sunlight.

In this paradise of 1935 GERALD discovered the scorpions, geckos, toads, butterflies, snakes, tortoises and bats that still make Corfu their home today.

It was thus, and nearly 80 years later, that ANDREA and I left a chilly, wind and rain swept London in early May to follow in the DURRELL family’s footsteps. Like the DURRELLS before us, escaping the British weather seemed a very wise thing to do.

Our trip however had its purpose, and that was to explore GERRY DURRELL’s life on Corfu. It is GERRY DURRELL that I will focus on here but that is not to ignore the various talents of the rest of the DURRELL family. GERRY had remained an important figure in my life, as a publisher I recognise his great

Soon we were leaving the runway at Heathrow for the three and a half hour flight to Athens. The flight passed quickly and it was not long before the deep blanket of clouds faded to small puffs of cotton wool to reveal the Alps below, once my own home. Then tracking on across Greece, the snow capped mountains of the mainland sparkling in the bright sunlight. We spent a few happy days in the museums of Athens, a story for another time. Then back on the plane, this time a Dash 8-400, and so to Corfu.

A very different Corfu from 80 years ago when the place would truly have been a paradise, more cars and hotels than GERRY could have imagined all those years ago. But still beautiful, the mountainous landscape protecting its wildness and its flora and fauna from at least some unseemly developments.

Almost it seemed in touching distance the velvet hills of Albania. It was not so long ago that our friends would sit on their terrace in Northern Corfu and listen to the sound of machine gun fire echoing in the Albanian Hills, tragedies unfolding, so close, and yet so far from our new found paradise. We head north and away from Corfu Town with its twin fortresses to the small village of Perithia.

Hermanns Tortoise, Corfu

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The nature of Corfu

Nose-horned Viper

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Coastal Corfu

Things may sometimes seem to remain the same, as for the DURRELL family, we too had our SPIRO. In the DURRELL’s case, SPIRO was the fixer.

‘I’ll fixes it’ He was the taxi driver who helped the family negotiate the complications of Greek bureaucracy and daily life. In our case SPIRO was a cook, a waiter and owner of the local taverna who would mysteriously appear behind the counter of the local supermarket (which he also owned) whenever we wanted to buy food or wine, truly a man for all reasons.

Our SPIRO is similar in proportions to the one so perfectly described in My family and other animals.

It was so that we found ourselves in happy circumstances, in a beautiful place, with the best of Greek food and wine just as the DURRELL family had done all those years before.

we may think humanity’s conduct towards the natural world has become, there is no doubt that GERRY’s efforts at communicating the issues have had an enormous impact on attitudes about conservation, his impact on these things has echoed down the years.

So what is left of the DURRELL’s legacy in Corfu? Since 2002 The Durrell School of Corfu has conducted lectures and other events that concern the work of GERRY and LAWRENCE DURRELL covering literature, history, politics, the arts and of course natural sciences.

We must now also become the echo of this drum to ensure the message, about why habitat and species conservation is critical to the wellbeing and future health of human populations and everything else that lives on Planet Earth, continues to resonate across generations and around the world.

One highlight of the Durrell School’s annual programme is an event called GERALD DURRELL’s Corfu, an event which allows participants to spend a week reliving GERRY’s life on the island, once more visiting the locations so beautifully described in his trilogy of books centred on Corfu.

Coastal Corfu

What I think was so important about Corfu and GERRY’s time there was it triggered in him a lifelong and entirely focussed passion about the natural world. This passion in turn fired a vast array of creativity and content development, television programmes, radio and books and the famous Jersey Zoo (Durrell Wildlife Park) and the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust.

What this passion and talent for communication did was to ignite new interest about the natural world in Britain and beyond. However depressing

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Matt Wilson

These books are: My family and other animals; Birds, Beasts and Relatives; and The Garden of the Gods There are the places where GERRY looked for wildlife, the walks along the shoreline of Almiros and St Spyridon ‘the beach of white lilies’, trips to the interior and Old Perithia, and to Xanthes.

There are the caves at Loutses. Walks through carpets of flowers, along beaches were the sand and the sea is caught in an endless dance as the sunlight skips from the Ionian jade sea to yellow shore.

Marina at the Horta table

The welcome pauses at tavernas, one such Zepheros Taverna, where Marina sits at the horta table, sorting the wild greens collected earlier that morning from the groves and meadows. The wine and food here is exquisite.

light. Each day seemed precious, just as it must have done for GERRY all those years before. For ANDREA and I our stay here was for two weeks, I can only imagine what five years in a young life would have felt like.

There is the dead turtle on the beach nearby, its shell pierced by a speed boat or jet ski, its death no doubt long and painful.

There are the ancient olive groves from a time when Venetians dominated the economy of the island.

The evenings watching the sun set over the Albanian hills, the glass of wine on the patio, the walks through shady forests, the sunlight breaking through the woodland canopy to illuminate a carpet of wild flowers in the dappling

The trunks of the olive trees, like twisted rope with a thousand faces staring out from the hollows in the twisted wood.

In these habitats, and if you look closely, the lizards, scorpions, geckos, tortoises, amphibians, butterflies, snakes, and

An ancient olive grove

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David Bellamy OBE and Alison Worcester with yet another ancient olive tree

Four-lined snake

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The sun sets over Corfu, Albanian hills in background

bats, are all still here. Life for these animals has become far more hazardous as tourist developments and the number of cars increase, the testament to these changes, the ever increasing number of dead things along the narrow roadways of Corfu.

Here too are our friends from the Durrell School of Corfu, DAVID and ALEX ASHCROFT in their Venetian house in Perithia, DAVID and ROSEMARY BELLAMY whizzing up hillsides to view a flower in bloom, another botanist DAVID SHIMWELL and his gift of describing plants and their environs, I call it the poetry of plants, and MATT WILSON, dedicated herpetologist, a great source of knowledge of everything reptile and amphibian in the Greek and Mediterranean worlds.

“With one hand he held his pipe to his mouth, and in the other a number of lengths of cotton, to each of which was tied an almond size rose-beetle, glittering golden green in the sun, all of them flying round his hat with desperate, deep buzzing, trying to escape from the threads tied firmly round their waists.

Occasionally, tired of circling round and round without success, one of the beetles would settle for a moment on his hat, before launching itself off once

more on its endless merry-go-round”.

And so went GERRY’s rose-beetle man… and so went we, on our way back to London.

You can view a video clip on: creativecowboyfilms.com/in-durrells-footsteps/

There is a lot to explore in the DURRELL world, read the books (at last count I think GERRY wrote 37), visit Corfu and the Durrell School and support the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and take part in their events. It will all be time well spent.

The more we come to know about nature, be part of understanding the complexity of the natural world, the richer our lives become. And so it was on Corfu.

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The Durrell crew of Corfu

Corfu Town

Dr David Shimwell (Chunky) and Maria collecting horta

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Meadow, Corfu

“There is a rapid increase in the scope and scale of the plunder of the earth. This massive destruction of our environment, both land and sea, is occurring for the benefit of a very few and is very much against the interests of the majority of humanity.

The vast scale destruction of our forests, the most rapid destruction of plant cover in the history of the earth, the destruction of our species, the pollution, plasticisation and acidification of our oceans, significant changes to our atmosphere and the melting of the poles are all a very bad idea. These things do not signal some kind of economic improvement in the world but an impending economic, environmental and social disaster�.

PETER HYLANDS

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An Australian journey

Nature and culture: the world at our feet

The changes we have see in the last 25 years during our various trips to Central Australia and its deserts have shown us that even the remotest and wildest places are not safe from our actions. The way in which Buffel Grass had reshaped the ecology of large parts of Central Australia was so startling and the intellectual response to the vast fires that burned in Central Australia so muted and misunderstood, most unnoticed by the major population centres huddled to the coastline of the Australian mainland and this made us think about what is happening to species and the diversity of life in Australia. How does the decline in the natural world in Australia compare to that of other nations?

Grass fires Alice Springs

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Here are my own thoughts on this matter, while the numbers here can never be absolutely accurate I have used my own knowledge of the world and what I believe to be reasonable assessments of the situation from major research projects conducted internationally.

Andrea and I often sit in the cafe at the Natural History Museum in South Kensington, here there is a large sign that describes just how enormous the number of species still to be discovered is.

Smoke haze Alice Springs

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We go back to the other side of the earth and to the Australian winter of 2011. As the radio in our four wheel drive crackles, we can just hear a news reader reporting on the fires in Central Australia. The smoke from these fires is all around us.

“Fires are burning in large areas surrounding Alice Springs but no damage has been done”

Cane toad © Kai Brethouwer

Really?

What was actually going on here? What do these fires mean for the natural world in Central Australia? The damage being done is of course colossal, even when the scale of such events in Australia are taken into account, at the end of that fire season an area of arid Australia substantially larger than Germany had been burnt.

The now intense nature of these fires fuelled by the dense and introduced and waist high Buffel Grass which burns fiercely and at far higher temperatures than the natural vegetation or the array of desert species can tolerate.

The Buffel Grass, as it burns, disgorging vast amounts of greenhouse gas into the desert air, all so much in contrast to the delicate nature of this place. A place, where once, small clumps of plants, provided shelter, food and habitat for the native species of insects, mammals, birds and reptiles.

Twenty significant cattle stations have been burnt leaving cattle without feed.

Now to the north of Australia, by the end of 2012 fires in the Queensland Gulf Savannah had burnt out a vast area of bush and grassland, much of it now cattle country. Twenty significant cattle stations have been burnt leaving cattle without feed.

The impact on wildlife, again given little attention, must be very serious and yet another major blow to species survival following the devastating impact of Cane Toads in this region.

Weather events that have led to the catastrophic situation for wildlife include the very wet period in the Gulf Country during 2011 because of the significant rains delivered by Cyclone Yassi, followed by an above average hotter and dryer period in the later parts of 2012. Stronger winds have also contributed to the fire danger. Because of the significant changes to vegetation in the region the fires have been unstoppable.

What is happening to nature? It is worth looking at the numbers here. Since the European settlement of Australia there have been more than 60 known extinctions of animal species (there are likely to be far more as many animal species unknown to science may have been exterminated before they were discovered and classified). Marsupials have proved to be particularly vulnerable and Australia leads the world in mammal extinctions.

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What has happened in Australia in the last decade or so is that the pattern of extinctions and endangerment, having engulfed Southern and Central Australia, have headed north and done so with a vengeance. There has been little research, given the enormity of the problem, as to why this is occurring. This means there is little understanding of what is going on and an even smaller effort to turn the situation around. There are now 44 threatened mammal species in Northern Australia. This new wave of species endangerment is likely to be caused by a combination of factors now interacting with each other. These threatening factors include introduced species such as grasses, increasing numbers of cattle, cats and foxes, changes in land use and significant changes to fire patterns (the once small early fires are now vast late fires), fire intensity and fire management.

New kinds of introduced vegetation cover are starving out populations of animals. An example is what is happening to Southern Hairy-nosed Wombat in the Murraylands where in places onion weed has taken over from the native grasses, an important food source for Wombats. What happens in this situation is animals may be poisoned by these introduced species of plants or they starve as not enough natural food (vegetation remains). In the case of large area scale fires in Central and Northern Australia those native animals that do survive the fire are quickly picked off by birds of prey, by cats and foxes (often flocking in large numbers around edges of fires or recently burnt places) as all shelter, because of the intensity of these fires, is now gone.

Cane toads have created a new layer of complexity when it comes to managing endangered animals across Northern Australia and for some species may prove to be the final straw. The delicate Golden Bandicoot, the Golden-backed Tree-rat, the Northern Quoll are all in increasing trouble and recently common species such as the Brush-tailed Possum are in rapid decline. The most shocking thing for me is the lack of knowledge about what is happening, how to repair what is now broken and the general lack of public awareness and responsibility in Australia about these matters.

The next issue of Creative-i magazine will explore the culture and attitudes that create the conditions that allow for the destruction of habitats and species. We will also explore the ethical considerations and responsibilities of nations such as Australia as guardians to the natural world. It remains clear from my own knowledge of Australia’s natural history that both habitats and species need to be cared for, the two must go together.

01: ECUADOR

2211 <-1% endagered species

07: BRAZIL

769

endagered species

rate of change

-4.2% rate of change

02: USA

03: MALAYSIA

1203 -1% endagered species

1166 -2.0%

rate of change

05: MEXICO

900

endagered species

endagered species

rate of change

<-1% rate of change

2500 2000 1500 1000 500

04: INDONESIA

1126 -3.6% endagered species

rate of change

06: AUSTRALIA

804

endagered species

-2.0% rate of change

0

Around the world Extinction hots spots on earth, and no regions are immune, appear to be the South East Asian region and south to Australasia and then the Americas. South American species are now particularly vulnerable. Small states such as Madagascar also have bleak results. Africa faces significant challenges from development, conflict and the increasing demand for animal parts from Asia driving a new wave of callous and brutal poaching of major species such as Rhinos and Elephants. China and India need to look carefully at what is going on in their own back yards.

Looking at every country on earth, Australia (and its region) is not faring well, at number six on the scale of the greatest number of endangered species, the position changes again to number five when endangered mammals are considered, and even

Australia: Young Crimson Rosella and cats donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t mix, Chewton, Central Victoria, Australia

more of a concern is that Australia ranks at number three when it comes to the rate of acceleration of increase in the number of endangered species in this list of seven top endangered species nations. These numbers are particularly concerning as Australia is a vast continent surrounded by numerous islands and its human population is relatively small and concentrated in large cities. This suggests that Australia is punching well above its weight when it comes to species extinction.

Ecuador tops the world list of endangered species and of the countries listed here, Brazil and Indonesia are endangering species at the greatest rate, Australia and Malaysia are close behind.

Sadly no country in the list has managed to reverse the overall circumstances of their endangered species (the fate of species remains a national responsibility).

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So how many species exist on planet earth?

Looking at this list of countries it is not hard to understand that habitat destruction is a major reason for the increasing vulnerability of species.

Destroying the earth’s natural systems at such a rate is a very dangerous path for all of humanity. The big question is how do we make the citizens of these countries understand what is happening and how do we stop an otherwise inevitable catastrophe.

So how many species exist on planet earth? There have been many estimates so let us pick a likely number, say around 9 million eukaryotic species (that is living things made up of cells with complex structures). Of these less than 2 million species have been described, so conservatively that is likely to be a little above 20 per cent of what lives around us.

There are estimates that suggest a far higher percentage of unclassified / undiscovered species. Of the total of all species that live on earth it is likely that 75 per cent of these live on

Elephant frenzy, more than 40,000 Elephants are being butchered in Africa each year for their ivory and the number is rising

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Wombat Photo © Robyn Butler

land, and 25 per cent in our oceans and waterways. Even our most visible companions, birds, are not faring well, of around 10,000 species of birds some 2,200 are in some sort of trouble, from vulnerable to highly endangered.

Even the great international icons of biodiversity such as Australia’s barrier reef are not immune from mindless destruction, half of the reef has vanished in the last thirty years or so and predictions suggest that the reef cover will half again in the next 10 years. Flying over the reef and swimming on the reef as we have done for nearly 40 years tells us that these changes are obvious.

... and the pace of new species discovery is increasing as we gain greater access to the remotest places on earth and so will the pace of known extinction of species.

American natural history and science author BRUCE STUTZ writes: A 2008 study by the Arizona State University International Institute for Species Exploration reported 16,969 new species of plants and animals described in 2006 alone (not including new species of microbial life), which amounts to some 1 percent of Earth’s 1.8 million known species.

Orang-utan Photo Š Kai Brethouwer

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BRUCE goes on to say The recent mammal discoveries range in size from a 3-gram shrew-tenrec to a 100-kilogram antelope. They include a hundred new bat species, a rodent species thought extinct for 11 million years, a pygmy deer from Bhutan, a macaque from the Himalayan foothills, a white titi monkey from Brazil, and a pygmy sloth from Panama. While most of the finds come from the world’s still underexplored tropical forests, discoveries have been made in mountains, deserts, and even in well-surveyed temperate regions.

The number of newly discovered species in 2011 was even higher.

In the ten years to 2008 well over 1,000 new species were discovered in Papua New Guinea, again like so many species in the region, many of these newly discovered species are at grave risk from exploitation of the natural environment. The World Wildlife fund states that these new species include: “218 new kinds of plants (of which around 100 are orchids), 580 invertebrates, 134 amphibians, 2 birds, 71 fish (including an extremely rare 8-foot-long river shark), 43 reptiles and 12 mammals”.

When the Birds of Paradise display no more In Papua New Guinea, particularly in the Western Province, special licenses (99 years) called SAVLS are being issued, now over a vast area of rainforest some 5 million hectares, and a rapid expansion of logging is taking place.

We are talking here about some of the most precious rainforest on earth, it is where indigenous cultures have lived sustainably for thousands of years, it is a place rich in endemic species and a place where Birds of Paradise dance.

Along with the Congo and Amazon forests the Papua New Guinea rainforest is the world’s greatest remaining tropical rainforest. Australian shareholders are significant players in the clearing of these forests and in this extraordinary ecological and cultural disaster. To understand the scale of this destruction one lease alone covers an area which is roughly equivalent to one quarter of the size of Tasmania.

Papua New Guinea is now the world’s second largest exporter, after Malaysia (also a major player in the logging of New Guinea rainforests), of raw rainforest logs.

In this cultural and ecological landscape where the Kwila Tree once stood, and as the forests vanish, so will the species and the art and culture of the tribes of Papua New Guinea, and where to then?

When the Birds of Paradise display no more, the really big question for us all to answer will be how will humans survive all this?

Koala

When the Birds of Paradise display no more, the really big question for us all to answer will be how will humans survive all this?

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Lesser Bird of Paradise or Paradisaea minor.

Photo Š Szefei

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Ships on the Huangpu River, Shanghai

Design in mind

City states

PETER HYLANDS reflects upon the city state Photography by ANDREA HYLANDS

What cities are, how they imagine themselves, how their cultures devolve or merge, how they contribute to the world, is changing. It is worth stopping for one moment to consider the growing importance of design in the development of increasingly large cities. Â This growth fuelled by rapid urbanisation around the world. As cities grow these centres of human population will continue to increase their influence, both nationally and internationally, and we see the rise of the city state once more.

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In terms of the city as a state, Italians started it all one thousand years or so ago with the rise of their city states, Florence, Milan, Venice and Sienna to name a few. These cities became wealthy from trade and intellectual and cultural life flourished. These were places of ideas and the cities that played a significant role in shaping our current economic and social structures. The Italian city states also had populations, although they would be regarded as small today, that were large by the standards of their time with populations in the major centres exceeding 100,000 people. As they remain, these were intelligent communities that embodied

a sophisticated approach to art and design, all cultured places of great beauty that we still enjoy today.

Numbers are important here. Move on to the 21st century where cities around the world are attracting more and more people from surrounding rural areas as human populations head for the vision of an improved economic life.

These trends are foremost in the rapidly growing economies where the pace of change is forcing people to reconsider their place in the world.

These mega cities make me contemplate the future of humanity.

Shanghai moon

Shanghai, with its official metropolitan population of around 24 million, with growth of around half a million people each year, is forecast to grow to some 30 million people by 2020. Shanghai’s population is more or less, particularly if unofficial estimates are taken into account, the combined population of Australia and New Zealand.

View over Shanghai

Shanghai is China’s most populous city.

In the case of China these population figures are driven largely by economic restructuring, for Chinese authorities the growth of these global mega cities creates a vast set of challenges.

Now we travel North East across the Yellow Sea to Seoul, with an actual city population of around 10 million people, include the surrounding and close by areas of Incheon and Gyeonggi, then the metropolitan area rivals the population of Shanghai.

Nanjing Road, Shanghai

Roughly 50 per cent of Koreans live in the metropolitan area, a reflection of the total human population of earth as today more than half of the world’s population lives an urban life.

Now South to Japan, Tokyo’s actual city metropolis population is around 13 million, the larger metropolitan

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Han River Seoul

area population of Tokyo (employment catchment area population of around 32 million) is greater than that of Shanghai or Seoul. Tokyoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s population is currently forecast to undergo significant decline over the next century.

Rather than considering the differences I would like to concentrate on, letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s call them global issues, which are similar issues facing these three mega cities.

I have concentrated on mega cities here that are relatively close in proximity, each from a different culture, each with different approaches to and a differing set of problems in managing the changes occurring within their city boundaries. Each city is at a different stage, in their cycle of economic and social development. We enjoy our visits to each of these places.

In terms of population â&#x20AC;&#x201C; ageing of urban based populations is a major issue, in Tokyo we can, half jokingly say, that the biggest issue in the lives of 80 year old residents is the likelihood that they are looking after their parents. We might think about how increasing urbanisation is changing the relationships between old and young people, are old people still being looked after in the traditional Asian way? Things are changing and what does this mean for society?

Each of these three cities is an economic powerhouse, with significance and influence in the global economy.

Each of these cities has the capacity to educate its populations to an increasingly high standard, that is in culture and the arts, the environment, science, maths, ethics, economics, law and management and more.

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What are these?

There are the issues of transport and communications, how people and goods can move efficiently in and around these mega cities. There are the issues of urban growth.

Employment and education, making these cities interesting and stimulating places to call home through cultural,

social and environmental opportunities and developments. There are the most significant environmental issues of clean air and water and how to feed these populations with a degree of food security. These things go on to include how to maintain the health of urban populations, particularly as they age, and how to pay for all of this.

How future cities engage with the environment that surrounds them is by

Relaxing Seoul style

far the most important of these things. It is the intellectual challenge of the age.

The big question is where to from here?

A question that I want to answer in this article is how can design and the idea of culture more generally improve the prospects, not only of our three mega cities, but of all urban populations?

What is the role of education here?

View from Incheon

To answer this it is important to understand some of the things that will make the rapid growth of urban life more acceptable to the populations who find themselves living in large cities.

By design I mean urban design, graphic design, architecture, engineering, the idea of creating a sophisticated visual language in a city and most importantly environmental design.

Design is increasingly important to and must be at the core of modern city growth and development. This is both in the sense of creating a visual language that is acceptable to a cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s inhabitants, that is buildings and streetscapes that look good and whose designs can endure the passage of time without looking terrible or even kitsch in 5 years (once built these buildings will remain for a very long time); it is also about creating cities that are efficient in terms of their energy use, transport systems, communications and IT and democratic in terms of their educational and employment prospects. In the case of urban design this means educational and job opportunities close to where people live.

What is not understood well enough is how good design can influence the future competitiveness of cities (and do so on a grand scale). That is the way people and their goods (things like food and manufactures, imports and exports) move around a city, how efficient of energy and time are these processes. Inefficient cities will rapidly add billions of dollars to their costs and significantly increase their demand for energy, making them increasingly less competitive as time passes and in doing so increasingly difficult places for their residents to live in.

Questions of future competitiveness extend to many things, here at least are some of these: How efficient are the new buildings in their energy use? How is the city being planned in terms of environmental changes such as the super heating of cities or sea level rise? Where are the jobs located and what are people doing? What is happening to historic buildings and the entire fabric of built form across the city? The idea of preserving culture is both important to body and soul. What is happening to city boundaries (are there endless extensions of these)?

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Relaxing Seoul style

What is happening to green spaces and green wedges? What is happening to waste and water systems, how much capture is there of rain water from urban environments? How much water is recycled? How energy efficient is potable water production? How is the city’s waste disposed of and what is the impact of this on our global environment? How clean are the city’s manufacturing plants? How efficient is their energy generation? Do cities have the slightest hope of growing at least some of their food supply locally? Are there efficient and rapid public transport systems to major airports to allow cities to be efficiently connected to the world?

All these things are telling aspects of design competency within a city and whether or not there is an understanding of the future or a total lack of it. All these things are part of the challenge for contemporary design and what its future role must be.

Harsh, inefficient and unpleasant living conditions in any city anywhere in the world can only result in poor productivity and unhappy people.

Future cities will need to tread lightly on the earth, in the case of Seoul, planners

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are trying to create a ‘lighter city’ and to move away from the idea that the place has evolved from a heavy industrial landscape. There is a lot of work to do but at least there is a consciousness about these things.

The idea of extensive development of passive buildings (these are buildings that are largely self sufficient in their energy needs with a very low environmental impact and carbon footprint) and the greening of mega cities will continue to grow in importance. As cities continue to warm the use of vegetation in design in ways and to an extent not considered before will become essential. I think Berlin provides some answers about these things.

Then there is design that takes into account the changing demographics of urban populations, how are changes such as an ageing population, smaller family sizes, more people living by themselves, an increasing need for public transport systems because of urban congestion and population growth. How are these demands being factored in to design processes within the city state?

Of all these things what stands centre for me are: Maintaining culture and identity is important, in terms of built form, this means looking after a city’s historic building stock and not demolishing it, rather thinking of ways that old buildings can sit within and add greatly to the city’s environment. This is about avoiding a tendency towards sameness of the major cities on earth. We want to be able to look out of our windows and know which city we are in, we want to go to the local shops and markets and know where we are. There is also pride and well being in maintaining culture.

Why should we worry about preserving old buildings? There are many reasons, here might be a few of them. Destroying old buildings, that is destroying the past cuts us adrift from our own cultures. Historic buildings are a reference point to the past, these buildings allow us to understand what our cultures looked like and how previous generations lived. There is a detailed architectural language of form and detail that comes to us through the past but describes each culture today.

Market scenes Seoul

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An important match

Preparing Kimchi, Seoul

PETER HYLANDS says

“The more you know about the past the better equipped you are to deal with the future”.

In turn maintaining culture and identity allows us to build on the skills and knowledge of the past, all of which has accumulated through many generations. In China, Korea and Japan this idea can be expressed through the hands of the potter. All three cultures have extremely sophisticated ceramic cultures and there are many works of great beauty, some recognised as national treasures. The potter today relies on many hundreds of years of tradition, skill, technical knowhow and philosophy, without these things what we see today would not be possible.

By destroying the past we are in some ways having to start again, to reinvent ourselves once more.

Above all is the idea of enabling large urban populations the opportunity to maintain at least some connection to

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the natural world. An urban population increasingly disconnected from the natural world is a very dangerous idea. Urban populations, as major consumers of the earth’s resources will need to understand the nature of food production and where food comes from and the absolute importance of maintaining the health of the earth’s natural systems (which is not where we are heading now).

That means managing pollution and climate change, maintaining large areas of wilderness to balance urban growth and to help maintain and moderate the natural systems of weather, the chemistry of the oceans, and the very atmosphere we breathe. Then to allow the plants and animals and birds with which we share this world to continue to have a place in it and to bring wonder to future generations.

These things are not a distant utopia, they are absolutely central to the future of our human population, no matter where it is.

High standards of education and design stand at the very centre of these matters. We must now add environmental and design education in all its forms as core subjects in schools and universities around the world.

…and in design we consider young people and how they will live and prosper in the city state.

From Korea I will leave you with this quote from KIM GU (Korean leader, politician and educator 1876-1949) The nation that I desire, Baekbeom ilji (Diary of Baekbeom).

“I want our nation to be the most beautiful nation in the world. The only thing that I desire in infinite quantity is the power of a highly developed culture.

This is because the power of culture both makes ourselves happy and gives happiness to others. I desire that a true world peace is fulfilled in, and because, of our nation”.

Future cities will need to tread lightly on the earth, in the case of Seoul, planners are trying to create a ‘lighter city’

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NURTURE NATURE

No room for me

Photography by ANDREA HYLANDS

In the vast continent of Australia with its population of 23 million there is no longer room for the Koala, its habitat ever shrinking, its number ever decreasing.

Soon, will they all be gone?

A koala sits in its eucalypt tree, her joey clings to her back. Then the bulldozer comes, crash, smashes the tree to the ground flinging the joey into the dust, a falling branch crushes the joey, it moves in agony, then no more. The mother is left on the ground, no food, no shelter. That night the dogs come and rip the mother to pieces. She also dies in agony.

In the first half of 2012 Koalas in New South Wales and Queensland were added to Australia’s endangered species list. In the last 20 years Koala numbers in New South Wales have declined by some 35 per cent and in Queensland by around 40 per cent through a combination of habitat loss (land clearing), environmental stress from climate change and other factors including disease. Disease caused by environmental stress is an increasing concern for a range of marsupial species in Australia.

At the time of the listing Australia’s Federal Environment Minister TONY BURKE stated: “It is not a national listing because there were large Koala populations in South Australia and Victoria. In Victoria and

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South Australia, Koalas have actually been in such high numbers they’ve been eating themselves out of habitat.

There’s what you call population control measures going on there ...”

PETER HYLANDS says that: “Australian Governments are kidding themselves if they believe the Koala is not threatened in the two remaining states where it occurs but is not listed, true there are clusters of higher populations in Victoria and South Australia, but these populations may be diseased and highly vulnerable, because of a severe narrowing of genetic diversity and environmental stress.

These animals also exist in pockets and as a result are highly vulnerable to bushfires. These are States of denial and there is little evidence that

Our very big thanks to Healesville environmental behaviours in either of them are any different to those in Queensland and New South Wales.

Higher temperatures and a significant increase in the practice of ‘burning off’ are adding to the Koalas difficulties”.

To understand the full extent of the destruction of the Koala population in Australia it is worth considering the history of what has occurred there.

Koalas were hunted for their fur until the late 1920s. During this period of hunting (Koalas tend to sit still for lengthy periods of time so are easy game) hundreds of thousands of Koalas were killed and in total more than two million skins were exported. In what was known as Black August (1927) around 600,000 koalas were killed in that month for their fur, include the death of joeys and this number would be far greater.

Australia describes the Koala as a national icon but the wild population in 2012 is only a small fraction of the number of animals that would have existed a couple of hundred years ago.

Today the entire population of Koalas in the wild may be as little as 10 per

Since the time of my Koala rescue the new Calder Freeway has been completed and this new road which, sensibly, is fenced to stop wildlife entering the road reserve, adds further to the difficulties faced by Koalas in this part of Victoria by further segmenting habitat and isolating populations of Koalas as there are extensive lengths of fencing without animal crossing points.

Sanctuary for allowing us to photograph their Koalaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

I swerved the car off the road as quickly as I could and ran back to the Koalaâ&#x20AC;Ś cent (including joeys) of the number slaughtered in the August of 1927.

PETER HYLANDS recalls an experience with a Koala that goes part way to describing the problems these beautiful animals are facing in Victoria.

In Australia of course and some years ago now I was driving from Melbourne to Central Victoria, it was a Friday evening and it was getting dark. I was on business and wearing a dark blue pinstriped suit.

The road (the old Calder Highway) was very busy, no street lights and now entering bushland, the Eucalypts of the Macedon Ranges on both sides of the

road. In the headlights and sitting just at the edge of the road an unmistakable silhouette, a Koala, cars and trucks (lorries) rushing past within centimetres of what was obviously an already wounded animal.

I swerved the car off the road as quickly as I could and ran back to the Koala, my first thought was to get it away from the traffic and the edge of the road. I grabbed the Koala and moved it a few metres into the surrounding forest. It had been wounded, hit by a vehicle and had a large hole punched into its rear which was bleeding badly.

What now? I remembered that I had a travel / sports bag in the boot of the car so I ran back to fetch it. I emptied my bag and within a couple of minutes I was back to where the Koala had been.

But where was it? I looked up and yes you guessed it, the Koala had managed to climb up a close by gum tree and was now sitting on a branch above the road.

Nothing for it but to climb up the tree.

Highway in darkness and in my blue pinstriped suit doing battle with a wounded Koala, and Koalas, with very large claws, can be fierce. I am not sure how, but I managed, with one hand, the other clinging for dear life to the tree, to extract the Koala from its branch and sliding down the tree, stuffed my new found friend into my travel bag.

Covered in Koala blood and scratches I staggered back to the car. I then drove to the nearest town to find a vet and then on to a rehabilitation centre.

That night my Koala had been lucky, but this story is repeated over and over again in all the parts of Australia where Koalas occur and the end of the story is often a very unhappy one.

Here in Victoria we can see firsthand what the loss of habitat, roads through ever diminishing forests, the claiming of Koala habitat for housing construction, shopping centres and the like does to struggling and increasingly cut off and rapidly declining populations of Koalas.

There can only be one outcome.

So there I found myself, high up a gum tree, hanging over the Calder

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Detail of the Bell Pavilion, Bongeunsa, Seoul

CREATIVECOWBOYFILMS.COM

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