Bad Banksia Woman

Yesterday I went walking along a trail I have never walked before, along a section of the five kilometre walking track within the Seaford Foreshore Reserve, which runs parallel to the beach through coastal dune vegetation from Keast Park to Mile Bridge.


I had travelled two morning train-stops from Bonbeach to Seaford, meandered my way through the small village of shops.  Engaging in genial and informative conversation with shopkeepers; the content of dialogue which alerts a seering person to recognise that this is a special day.  To release all notions of doing what I planned to do and to be as a thread in the Loom; to allow the Weaver to place me in the pattern.

Come in, come in, my dear.
It is lovely to have you here.
I see that you came in the back way.
Most people do 'though the best way
is to follow your dream
and come up the beam
from the smiling moon.

It had been a long time since I had stopped at Seaford - over a year, maybe two - yet the Hermit's spirit called, 'Come visit me' and so I did.  Back in the days, Capt. John Maddox was known as the Seaford Hermit.  The story goes he was captain of a ship that wrecked, killing many passengers and that Capt. Maddox retreated to a hermit's life within the ti-tree bush of Seaford foreshore. He built a camp decorated with shells, driftwood and the jetsam of people and frowned on blasphemers. He bartered for food and other items the tide didn't bring to him naturally. It was also said that a wealthy brother from Wales, came to Australia to persuade John to return to Swansea with him.

Some weeks ago, I tracked Capt. Maddox; learned that he was born 1846 in Fishguard, Pembroke, Wales.  I found an obituary placed by those that cared for this man who died so far from home.


The Argus, Monday 26 November 1917
FRANKSTON HERMIT'S DEATH.


FRANKSTON, Friday: - At the Homoeopathic Hospital, St Kilda road, yesterday morning, there passed away an eccentric man, John Maddox, who for 20 years has haunted the seashore. For eight years he occupied a primitive cabin near the beach at Elwood where he was well known amongst the yachtsmen.

He nexted camped on the Government reserve between the Nepean Road and the sea, about two miles out of Frankston. It is over 12 years since he first came to Frankston, and during that time his camp has been inspected by thousands of visitors. During his residence in Frankston he refused all monetary assistance.

Every day at 9 a.m and 4 p.m he used to call the birds, and hundreds of birds of all sort would fly around him, while he fed them. Maddox has left no relatives here but he is supposed to have a sister somewhere in Wales. He was receiving the old-age pension for some little time before his death, and the public are to be asked to contribute towards his funeral expenses. Donations may be sent to Mr. Mark Brody, Frankston.


As a child in the Sixties, my father would often take me to Elwood Beach in the middle of Winter. There is a photo of me,  dressed warmly, standing up to my knees in the water, holding my thick-itchy-fabric dress up so it wouldn't get wet. The day is Melbourne cloudy-grey with a chance of depression.   I remember that itchy-fabric felt icky-sticky against my skin when it got wet, so I was careful to keep it dry.  Such a fastidious child was I. 


My father was a pure-blood Englishman, an immigrant who came to Australia in 1945. He wouldn't have known about Capt. John Maddox - my father didn't know the Australian stories.  My mother, a native-born white Australian from bad-blood, hoarded whatever stories she might have known about the culture that existed beyond her self-inseminating laments.


It is not known whether Capt. John Maddox married or fathered children.  Perhaps he was one of those men whose vital spark is reabsorbed by the body and conveys no life to ovum.  Such men can embody the archetype of the Father.  Having no child of their flesh, they are free to enter the Wise Old Man, that aspect of Father that is sacred.  Timeless. Enduring.  Merlinesque.


Most do not, choosing Casanovian carnality.


The spirit of Capt Maddox dwells evermore in the ti-trees of the Seaford Foreshore, which is one of the oldest reserves in the Frankston area. The foreshore was set aside for public use in 1873 and re-reserved in 1987 for the purposes of conservation and recreation. In 1909 a small pier with a large pipe was built to pump seawater into Kananook Creek to flush through the polluted waters. The pipe was dismantled in 1953 but the pier still remains, a relic of times gone by.


Yesterday I had planned to walk along the Seaford pier, not minding the brisk wind and the cold sea air.  I will have to return to do so for the ingress to the pier was closed off by construction works, and had been since April.  A large flock of cormorants sat like barnacles at the end of the wooden projection and not presently disturbed by humans, they are for the time, the sole fisherfolk of Seaford Pier.


The daughter of my neighbour passed me then and as she did not expect to see me there; she did not see me at all.  So I had to call her name - see me now - and we chatted some moments, during which she told me she regularly walks along the beach from Seaford to Chelsea because she "needs it".


I thought "Yes, I need a long walk too", yet not along the sandy beach.  My juno desired to walk along the track in the midst of the greenery, where I have not walked before.  I set off not knowing where the track would come back out into concrete surburbia, only that the direction in which I was heading was homeward bound.

Only very resilient grasses such as Hairy Spinifex and Blue Tussock-grass survive on the coastal fore dunes, which are exposed to the wind and salt spray. Their roots help bind the fragile dunes together, enabling other plants like Coast Tea-Tree, White Correa and Coast Daisy-Bush to survive. On the secondary dunes closer to the road we find a delightful Banksia Woodland dominated by Coast Banksia and Coast Beard Heath. [1]

It was through the Banksia Woodland that I walked and within fifty steps I had passed through the veil and the spirits knowing what I am, sent another to come alongside me.  Alas  this Woodland in modern times, is a known haunt for flashers and perverts who display their goods, hoping to receive services from unwary females.  Such an encounter is an unpleasant shock to younger women; to a female of my age, very little is surprising.  My usual defence is to comment "With such a small member, I am surprised you like to show it off!  That is nothing to be proud of!". 


I possess a ready wit with an emasculating tongue that only fools entice me to draw from it's scabbard of seeming feminine helplessness.  Men who lurk in secluded places do not expect to encounter females who are skilled in martial arts, so I walk in such places with the knowledge that I have abilities that can destroy the groin.


However, yesterday, the man who joined me was a Seaford local, undertaking the daily walking of his two gambolling joyful canines, which that looked as though a Dingo was their great-grandmother. As is custom amongst Melbourne folk, he commented negatively on the weather.  To which I replied, "It's a beautiful day for clearing out the cobwebs and can you tell me where this path will take me?"


We didn't exchange names yet  spoke of places we had lived, of things done, people loved, and about future journeys in the chartmaking.  He crowed that in a month's time he would leave Seaford to start a new life in a place south of where I had once lived.  A place that, of late, I have been journeying back to in my dreaming, tracing the topography of my past and diving through the landscape of my psyche. Remembering to unremember; storying to unstory; dreaming to dream anew. My juno-bird flying north to find warmth.


So - no great surprise to me to meet a man who flashed me with a glimpse of the Wise Woman, the archetype of Maiden-Mother-Crone, that I am becoming to embody, and regalia-ed me with stories from the North.the


In such ordinary ways, the Sacred Consort arrives to guide, protect and natter the way with a  female Seid who has walked alone along a deep green track some fourteen years.  Tempus fugit.


As a southern seid I recognise when a daimon oversouls a human man  - something in the eyes, the rhythm of speech, the absence of flirtatious inroads. The daimon knew that I knew the human man sort of knew his path. Was uprooting his life to search through illusion for that greener grass that is always in all ways right under your toes. I knew that the daimon knew that it was really I who came alongside this human man, to convey to him, things he would need to know about the community he was about to live within.  I detected in the man the same romantic idealism I once held of small-country town folks and a mythology of conviviality that reality tore asunder. The man's speech  bubbled with Neptune's hope and as I walked alongside his reality distortion field, I felt that I was watching over his sleep-walk.  The man told me he had two adult daughters, both Primary School teachers and I kept silence on the sharp observation I had made in 2008; that psychology will never be an endangered profession with Primary School teachers elephant-and-star stamping unworthiness and not-good-enoughness into the children-of-women.


In 2008, I was placed as a Teacher's Aide within a Frankston Primary School under the auspices of a now defunct Work For The Dole scheme, which is another term for community service, that service which individuals convicted and charged of criminal misdemeanours are forced to undertake. The parallel resonance was not lost on me.  It was educational for me to seer where, how and why human children are spoiled within the institution of learning.


I knew from the response the man gave to information I conveyed about my own circumstances, that he lived within a bubble of narcissistic parameters; that his understanding of other was walled with assumptions, that people take refuge behind when they can't imagine the difference.


Through the lightness of a Banksia Woodland, I walked alongside a rather dense man.  I am learning to know the difference between mirror, mask and man.

For over thirty years I have served the One who sent me.

I arrive wherever I am called to weave together the threads for another.

When I depart, I find myself further untangled from the cloth of confused men.

Images

1. Capt John Maddox c. 1909

2. The Hermit's Folly, Seaford Foreshore, Victoria, c. 1909

3. Bad Banksia Women, pen & ink drawing by Kay Craig, 2000.  More of Kay Craig's delightful botanical art can be viewed at Passionate Observers.

4.  Banksia Woodland is found on flat to gently undulating, sandy soils in near-coastal regions of southern and eastern Victoria. The altitude range is generally between 10 and 100 m above sea level and the rainfall varies from 700 to 1000 mm a year. About 65% of the area once supporting Banksia Woodland in Victoria falls on public land while about 40% is represented in conservation parks and reserves. About 25-30% of all Banksia Woodland has been permanently cleared for agriculture or urban development. There are two basic forms of Banksia Woodland one which is strictly coastal (Coast Banksia Woodland - CBW) and one which is near-coastal (NCBW) but occurs up to 30 km inland. In East Gippsland the two forms often grade into each other. Read more at Viridans - Victorian Ecosystems.

 

Notilia

[1] Extract from 2nd Edition Natural Reserves within Frankston City, published Jan 2010.