Blue

 

It’s curious, isn’t it, living across the street from our local topiarist. On fair days he steps out along the footpath, setting out secateurs, small saws, pruners, and so forth near the fence where no one will put their foot on them. That would be a nasty accident. His desire to turn the stretching branches of the trees and shrubs in his garden into figures of geometry is one of nature’s paradoxes. It’s hard to imagine when clipping a tree went from the need to produce more fruit to an interest in how round to make a tree that was already fairly round. Perhaps I should google it. Sometimes we sit with our Spode teacups on the verandah bemused, watching him getting rounder and rounder with the various excellent exotics he planted equidistant from each other, presumably for this very purpose, too long ago to recall. He makes hand measurements from the nature strip against the sky, artist of all he surveys, before setting to at a fair clip. This, we observe, nibbling anzacs, is a Sisyphean task when it comes to the cootamundra, which no sooner is rendered round than it redoubles efforts at shooting fresh fronds of blue in all directions, geysers of turquoise, impossibly disinterested in the spherical or polygonal. We ponder also the eucalypt, another tree that goes to extraordinary lengths to escape the rigours of topiary, being more accustomed to the rigours of intense heat and cold. Living in the Heidelberg District, we question if our neighbour is not trying to return his trees to the European forms of artists before Withers and Streeton. If so, then clearly with only partial success. Blue, though what blue, becomes the subject as we marvel in our minds at how Roberts and McCubbin paid proper attention to the blue of blue gums, a dusty blue the same more or less on certain days as the Blue Dandenongs we observe most days from the ridge, a blue shared with the imported cootamundras that many locals call weeds. The frilly leaves may be pale green and soft blue and edged with purple in the light, blue being the shade we agree upon, though dissenters say more greenish, others a mauve at certain times and in a certain mood. A book probably has some technical word. Our neighbour certainly sees the form beneath the foliage, we agree, he smooths it all out with scissor precision, but for how long? Much longer than tea time? Fairly surely we are not expecting a patch of forever England, are we then, given the native tree’s race against time means streaking out in all directions. Not that this ever deters our neighbour for a moment. He will be out again on the next fair day, beautifying the view with his latest renderings of the conical conifer, undulant hedge, and right-angled variegated. He collects his implements till then, even as we take inside the remains of our tea things and our snip-snap chit-chat.

Blue (August)

This August I went in search of Blue. Oxford says Red and Yellow are Old English, while Blue first shows up in Middle English, i.e. after say 1100. Wikipedia, however, says Blao is Old Saxon. This does not prove Blao was a common vocal sound being made across the Atlantic Archipelago before the Battle of Hastings, and probably was peculiar to the Low Lands. All of this plays into our modern perception that the Ancients thought of Blue as a type of Green. Green is Old English. We will never know if the English saw woad as Blue or Green.

Blue (January)

Galleries derelict, towns countrified, alphabets disintegrated, fire turns blue into black. Shiva destroys every fabric: wall, bark, paper, skin. Colour returns to dust and sky. We who are gone never see the extent of loss. A thin blue line runs down the middle. When it opens Vishnu strides out, making from unmade, time again. Ocean erupts, beings team with life, music comes together, sky is a matrix of water. The anonymous nineteenth century Calcutta artist who painted this watercolour image (‘Blue: Alchemy of a Colour’, NGV January 2016) of the dual person Harihara operated through the realm of the senses.

Blue

Blue

The eye of the female bowerbird noticing a dark grape on the verandah.

The agapanthus in the ditch and up the slopes and over the road faraway.

The worn watertanks, their tin turned grey-blue after so many summers.

The fairy wrens.

The wide blue yonder when the car rounds the bend.

The extensive sky above horizon, one little container vessel.

The Kennett River roadsign, two T’s or one T make up your mind

The overhanging roundleafed almost turquoisey bluegum at the rockpile road turn.

The aqua shirt upsidedown caravan park clothesline.

The rippling ocean meeting the inlet rockshelves, seen through treeline gaps.

The navyblue surfboard on the packrack.

The sky in the rockpool.

The darkblue of the cloud shadow on ocean, always changing, always the same.

The sticker on our front window registration rectangle.

The gravel between road and guard rails cliff.

The entirety of blue to the left of the driver.

The tee-shirts of two cyclists yawing up the incline.

The jeans of the camera-clicking koala tourists too near the road.

The silverblue netting holding the cliff back from collapsing onto the scenic lookout.

The scribbled badge on the back of an arrow yellow sign diamond.

The powder-blue marijuana-green campervan.

The protest sticker on a roadsign: Ruin Another Coastal View.

The snapshots of ocean as we round a landfall bend.

The micro cerulean beach tributaries of Carisbrook Creek.

The bluish white mirage lines above the hot road.

The cobalt van.

The black-blue solar panels on the pale blue Sugarloaf holiday house.

The royal blue verandah railings.

The sky above farm.

The azure Honda.

The Whitecrest entry sign across from the whitecap ocean.

The B&B signs at Kookaburra Cottages, Petticoat  Creek.

The blue-striped bus.

The blue graffiti bridge.

The iron inside the cracked boulder at cliff base.

The blue knitting over the Petticoat Creek fir trees.

The greenstone water over the lapis lazuli rockpool waters, recedes again.

The blue hat of the lawn cutter.

The blue glossy bubble car inside the speed limit.

The grey shale slope.

The blue under the curve of the wave when the foam builds.

The Australian flag on a garden flagpole in a picking-up breeze.

The bushfire reflector for water availability nailed to a fence.

The blue grassblades at Browns Creek.

The blue book of Bridget.

The blue Stage 2 Water Restrictions sign.

The wedgewood blue curtains.

The Skenes Creek Lodge 300 m. sign.

The denim shorts.

The sign High Risk Area Police Enforcing Speed.

The washed-out hydrangeas.

The pearl blue bathers drying on the verandah wires.

The peacock blue beach tent.

The sapphire sea wherever the eye gazes.

The roundy blue skies over the roundy green hills of Wild Dog Creek.

Carol’s stylish blue and brown and black scarf.

The ultramarine roof of the fleeting restaurant.

The worn indigo jacket of the forlorn hitchhiker.

The blue Octopus Apollo Bay Music Festival sign.

The lavender.

The blue ground cover.

The blue bags.

The Prussian blue Pisces.

The slate-blue Mitsubishi.

The blue-grey tint windows.

The blue skeleton hanging from a rearvision mirror.

The blue Café 153.

The six blue bins.

The discarded blue icecream wrappers near the bins.

The Blue Heaven milkshake.

The blue fish in the old fish shop trays.

Wye River to Apollo Bay

on the Great Ocean Road, 

early summer 2012-2013