Serendipity Tribute

Introduction

Having just broken my ankle I was unable to attend our Word Play writing session in person this week. Facilitator, Claire Baker kindly sent me the Haibun* exercise they did for me to complete at home.

Write a haibun recording a recently experienced scene, or special moment, use a highly descriptive and objective manner. It may be factual, wholly fictional or dream-like in tone

Then write an accompanying haiku that has either a direct or subtle relationship with the prose and encompasses or hints at the gist of what is recorded in the prose section.

* A Haibun is a prosimetric literary form originating in Japan, combining prose and haiku. 

Prose

Like many people I often research what there is to see before taking a trip. Travelling to England and France in the 1980s I had a ring binder folder full of destinations and sights I planned to see. Among them were pre-Raphaelite murals in Oxford and a Lewis Carroll memorial stained glass window in Daresbury neither of which we could find. Often though, just happening upon somewhere, unplanned, can be incredibly rewarding. Like being in Windsor when Frogmore Gardens was open to the public and seeing Victoria and Albert’s lavish mausoleum.  Or visiting Versailles on the only day of the year the fountains were ‘playing’ (it drains the town’s water supply to have them on too often) their grandeur eclipsing the actual palace for me. Or, on a more modest scale,  arriving  at the little 15thC  church in my childhood village, at dusk  expecting to see it in ruin,  but instead a kindly onsite caretaker unlocking  the building and letting me look at the restored building as the sun set - an unanticipated and moving experience.

I recently discovered (see previous blog post) a local automotive business, the Swift Service Centre on Fitzmaurice Street, Wagga Wagga, which opened to much fanfare in 1954 as the Grand Garage, the epitome of (late) art deco modern convenience for travellers. It boasted fluorescent lighting, pastel décor, showers, a kitchenette and even a ball room. While interesting in its own right to a local history and architecture nut like me, I was more fascinated to discover that the building stands on the site of an 1860s Chinese settlement/camp that had included substantial buildings progressively demolished between the 1930s and 50s, one of which contained original art work still visible when the Grand Garage started operating.

An illustration from a Sydney Mail article of 10 July 1935 recounting the Lambing Flat riots  

Researching the Chinese presence in the Riverina and reading about the 1861 racist riots at Lambing Flat where white miners ran their Chinese counterparts off the gold fields, physically attacking and humiliating them, meant that when we drove through Young (as Lambing Flat is now known) recently my attention was particularly alerted to a sign post in the town pointing to ‘Chinese Tribute Garden’. We took the road four kilometres out of the town centre to investigate…

What an oasis of beauty we found. The gardens, constructed in 1992, incorporate the historic Chinaman’s Dam site and an additionally created artificial ‘placid lake’ supporting a wealth of diverse plant life and water fowl. An elegant gently curved bridge spans the lake leading to a pagoda-style green and red triple gateway guarded by a pair of handsome carved marble lions with cascading manes and eerily finger-like digits, one impassive and one with suitably bared fangs.

 
The marble lions and ex-Taronga Zoo gateways (photo Bob Erwin)

Beyond that is a further gateway, a circular opening in a sinuous cream symmetrical curved wall with matching discs featuring painted Chinese dancers flanking the opening on both sides. Reading the signage on arrival I discovered that these structures were part of the temporary panda exhibit at Taronga Zoo in Sydney in 1998. While they may have looked twee there, afforded sufficient curtilage (great word that another architecture buff introduced me to) and surrounded by sufficient plantings in the tribute gardens I think they work. But I love follies, gazebos and rotundas having grown up in the English park tradition.

Plantings include maples, yuccas, conifers and camellias and many other species I didn’t identify interspersed with stone quarried from nearby Boorowa. The paths and gardens hug the sides of a ‘Pool of Tranquility’ populated by water lilies and three sculptures of disparate style: a cairn-style structure of four piled boulders, a rustic waterwheel and a replica of a 1,600 year old Chinese bronze ‘Matafeiyan’ depicting a horse gliding on the back of a swallow and probably the park’s most authentic evocation of Chinese culture. The dimensions of this sculpture,  at 34 .5 cm x 45 cm it is quite small, means it is in danger of being overshadowed by its companion pieces but its wonderful verdigris and dynamic form draw the eye.

On one edge of the pond is a stone and red lacquered wood pavilion providing a vantage point for contemplating the water. There is also a stone mounted brass plaque under a ‘Peace and Prosperity Tree’ planted in 1997 to commemorate Young’s sister city relationship with Lanzhou. The path circles back to the dual gateways affording multiple glimpses of red and green foliage and plump ebony moorhens that seem to thrive in the gardens.

The 'Pool of Tranquility' (my photo)

It was a sunny autumn weekday when we visited and there were few other walkers. One young woman I passed several times seemed to be walking around the park for exercise carrying a take away coffee. A mother and three children sat in one of the picnic shelters adjacent to the carpark. The eldest boy, about six, ran after a bread bag that had blown from their table, retrieved and binned it. I praised him. Less laudable was the action of three flannelette-clad young men carrying fishing gear who emptied their unused bread and sausages onto the grass in front of a group of ducks. Admittedly there were no signs discouraging the practice and based on their builds and swagger I elected not to challenge them. Probably wise as when we stopped briefly to check the sat nav on the road out they hooted impatiently at us from their metallic blue Holden. So not a thoroughly Zen experience...

What remains with me though is that in roughly 140 years Lambing Flat has gone from assaulting and reviling Chinese miners to celebrating ‘the contribution of the Chinese community to the settlement of Young… and the ongoing contributions of the Chinese people to Australia as a nation’ and the means of acknowledging that has provided a calming and aesthetic experience for anyone who visits the gardens. 

 

The Matafeiyan - flying horse balanced on a swallow (source: https://www.goldtrails.com.au/article/youngs-chinese-heritage/)

Haikus

1.

eighteen sixty one

assault and persecution

today some recompense

 

2.

elevated tail

head and three hooves held high

speed on sleek bronze horse

 

3.

feeding sausages

to undiscerning waterfowl

is never okay

NOTE: This short video gives a good summary of the clash at Lambing Flat