Ecology - James Darling

I'd like to begin with one of my favorite quotes, "imagination is more important than knowledge" by none other than Albert Einstein. The last session is to explore ecological and environmental issues which are critical in helping us gain "an understanding of how we perceive ourselves in the world around us". As a salt land farmer for 25 years at Duck Island (in the sand and water course country of the upper South East of South Australia between Keith and the Coorong) I find that statement aloof, distanced and slightly ridiculous.

Nature is not a background. Nature is us. Nature is everything from the inter-planetary song and dance of the Universe to what comes in under the back door in a cool wind and in particular, Nature for farmers is to do with management.

I've been an aspiring artist for far longer than I've been a farmer. Writing has been the most long term and consistent of my artworks, which include poetry, novels, short stories, also plays and journals as well experimental films, photography, drawing and installation sculpture. Indeed I'm going to put in a little plug and say tomorrow there's a book launch for the third book in the series of South Australian living artists called "James Darling, Instinct Imagination Physical Work".

I had a decision to make in 1976 when I was 29 years old to do with the South Australian Government wanting to take two thirds of my property because I wasn't clearing enough land, or perhaps for them any land. So when I was 29 I made the decision to make a farm of Duck Island conserving as much bush as possible. A significant part of that decision was my conviction that having failed to produce anything of consequence as a writer or artist I might as well be able to find some originality in the establishment of compatible conservation farming practices and to make economic sense out of farming salt. The vision was and still is that Australians need to learn to do both - but as I say 'vision is sight beyond boundaries' - as the crucial factor of determining the environmental destiny of this continent.

Vision is the essential tool for creating landscapes. It implies changes, improvements, greater understandings, wider uses - all the elements of a managed continent in action - a range of axioms which include that all raw materials that must be found locally.

You can't leave art out of anything. My farm is my largest work of art and there is not culture without agriculture. One of my particular interests is salt. I'm reminded of a book, a blank journal that I was given on the 15th January 1967 when I left Australia for eight and a half years and it was a quote from ?Man learns only from travel and misfortune".

This was a case of misfortune. In 1981 we had the largest floods in more than 30 years. I came back from Europe with my property devastated, drowned out from one end to another, all the pasture gone. The hills were overgrazed, the person who was managing for us might as well just walked away and we would have been better off. The result of that was an enormous increase in bringing the existing salt to the surface.

But there were other attributes of that flood. It spoke of the commonness of land, it spoke of the convergence of interests between land owners and it began a convergence of interest between land owners and scientists. In particular we had encouragement from the CSIRO.

The upper south east of South Australia became one of the five focus catchments for the National Dry Land Salinity Program. I began arguing that salt land agriculture was a vital component of Australian agriculture and it ought to be treated and funded as such. We began salt land trials on Duck Island through the 1990s and we gained a salt land Agricultural Officer at our local agriculture department in Keith. I became a contributor to the National Dry Land Salinity Program and then a member of the Productive Use and Rehabilitation of Saline Land - National Committee, one of only two land owners among nine scientists. I'm also a member of the Reserve Planning and Management Advisory Committee which advises the Minister for the Department of Environment and Heritage on management of parks, coastal marine parks and reserves throughout the state and on Wednesday I'll have my first state Dry Land Salinity Committee meeting.

This comes from the fact firstly that I'm a rare example of a successful salt land farmer and secondly because I can find the words to express salt's role in the Australian landscape. I say it's a question of culture, not agriculture. How we see, how we value, how we express and as an artist I might say to quote ??'Exiles At Home', "I'm a contemporary extension of the organic connection between culture, environment and national experience."

But my connection is as a farm manager, hands on. With a sense of design, art, agriculture and the environment being a dynamic balance. One of my obvious works of art that expresses that is on the Melbourne/Adelaide Highway, a water feature called 'Circle Work'. It's an environmentally sensitive sculpture based on a wind sensor that describes the cycle of water through the Australian landscape. It is a literal expression of the dynamic equilibrium of water table management and it gives a role and a place to salt. I've often said that the many and varied landscapes in Australia suffer from inadequate description and the component that is most ignored, neither given proper place nor due regard, is salt. Salt exists in huge deposits as a result of the geological heritage of this continent. We have to build an understanding of it's role in our landscape and see how our continent evolved to deal with it. As I said the change is a change in culture, how we see, how we value and how we communicate.

The context is that we have lost 3 million hectares in this continent to salt, another 1 million hectares will be lost to salination. It will be a heroic effort to stop and turn around four million hectares. The need is for more environmental scientists, more hydrogeologists, more hydrologists, more people trained in landscape processes and design because we need to be a managed continent. Neglect is no longer an option.

The entry point to the long term health of this land is the dynamic equilibrium of water table management. When you deal with the dynamics of water table management you must take into account the air, the trees, the plants, the ground and what goes on in and under the ground. The whole of the Australian landscape can be seen as the series of dynamic balances. Salinity activated salt is almost invariably the indicator of a water table out of balance. The salt giant is awakening, stretching, having one elbow scratched - he is a massive creature. What we must do entails landscape challenges and landscape creative opportunities. The giant must be cooled, calmed, shaded. His limbs must be deactivated, bedded down, reduced to minimum impact.

Minimum impact ?a principle that forms all my land management and is especially relevant to the management of marginal land not only in Australia but throughout the world. It also applies to the mallee fowl, that unsung hero of the Australian bush. Daniel Thomas in his essay in the book 'James Darling the Instinct, Imagination, Physical Work' calls the Mallee Fowl, 'Australian bird life's greatest wonder'.

Both Mallee Fowl and Mallee Roots have much to tell the world. Mallee Fowl existed in Mallee country in the outback of Southern NSW into Victoria, South Australian and Western Australia. They were classified as an endangered species and now certainly in our area they are classified as venerable. They are the only mound building bird in arid land on the planet. Of the twelve mound building species, all the rest live in tropical or sub tropical regions where there is lots of rainfall, organic matter, humus and the ability to manage the temperature inside the mound that incubates the eggs. A Mallee Fowl however works up to eleven months of the year in arid land and a nest is a massive physical expression of industry and partnership. Ultimately also the Mallee Fowl is a solar architect. Its life cycle is an image that exists from pre-human times and speaks to us. The land manages, especially in the arid zones of the world to show how particular, acute and sensitive we must be to the conditions in which we live and work. Mallee roots as part of our art work, were conserved long before the art world began, they are perhaps up to 200-300 years old and they have unique building properties as seen in the walls that we build. Not in the nests because their structure is hidden under the surface but they were used by early settlers for their transference of fuels across oceans and continents.

From a simple available surface to the worlds of depth and detail, Mallee Fowl nests do everything that can be asked of sculpture. To return to the convergence of artists, scientist and the broader community, I return to 'sight beyond boundaries' - the imagination and knowledge that Einstein referred to and repeat that vision is the crucial factor in determining the environmental destiny of this continent. The larger vision where all Australians have a part to play is in valuing the physical range of variety as a precious abundance and in being rewarded by working towards resuscitating, reinvigorating and recreating our landscapes.

As I said, the change is a change in culture - a change towards being custodians of the land - a sense that we hold the body of this land in common - a sense that Australians each have a share in the title 'Continent'. But we must read this land correctly. Culture and agriculture, imagination and knowledge, our health and growth are linked to the health and growth of this Continent. How we are as a nation and who we are as individual human beings.

Thank you.

© James Darling 2002