I suppose when the early settlers bashed their way through Victorian bushland and forests to establish train lines- an important marker of colonial conquest over an untamed, unchartered land- they would never have suspected that centuries later we would enjoy these routes as tranquil paths for the humble bicycle.

As, lets face it, an amateur cyclist, I love the idea of a beautiful meandering track through bushland, especially when I know that the route was specifically chosen for the train’s inability to cope with hills- I can certainly relate!

So to celebrate my 25th birthday we plan to cycle the Murray to Mountains Rail Trail route from Wangaratta to Bright with a detour to Beechworth. What better way to celebrate a quarter of a century of life, health and happiness?

Our trip will be a low-key affair with camping in caravan parks etc. My main disappointment so far is that it looks as though we’ll need to take the car rather than taking public transport. I was really hoping to make it a low-carbon trip but after a call to Vline, it was confirmed that they no longer carry bikes on their coaches. Bicycle Victoria’s website seemed to suggest that bikes may be possible on this route during track-upgrades when trains are not available, but even then the clause is “Whenever possible”- and I doubt that a long weekend counts as a probable possibility! On this subject most websites seem outdated but the response from Vline was decisive. But Bicycle Victoria continues its campaign so we can cope that things will eventually change.

Our plan is:

Day 1: Drive to Wangaratta, ride 42km to Beechworth

Day 2: Beechworth to Myrtleford (42km)

Day 3: Myrtleford to Bright (30km)

Day 4: Bright to Wangaratta (84km).
I haven’t figured out the mode of transport yet but it looks likely that if our legs are up to it, it will be a big ride down the mountain to the finish line!

So the weather looks good, the views look amazing and with only a few things left of my checklist we look ready to go!

Plenty of stories, photos and perhaps even a podcast on our return…

P.S. For Melbourne bike paths this google map is a winner

I’ve just spotted a facinating looking conference being held in Melbourne later this week called Transformations in Cultural and Scientific Communication. It appears to focus on the new and possible uses and releationships bewteen Web2 technologies and online platforms and Museum story telling.

Swinburne Uni also has some more info about it.

I feel I can’t write without some mention of the awful tragedy which has befallen my state of Victoria. Everyone knows someone who has been affected and in that respect we have all been affected. But even as I sit here to write I feel there are very few words to say.

At work we have struggled to find a way to describe the way we all feel: flat was the closest we came. But all week there have been snippets of news coming in. Some of it throws us back into sadness and depression; the loss of a home, a friend’s family. Other stories form the lifeblood that keeps us living and growing together as a community; the way a foster carer I know has spent her days and nights serving tea, coffee and snacks, colleuges who are volunteering through giving grief counselling to victims and families, not to mention the CFA.

And the question on all our lips, “How could this happen?” What would move someone to cause such devastation and how could such an illness go unnoticed and untreated? How could we be so poorly prepared after two hundred years of living on this country? What should we learn from this, or from our Indigenous brothers and sisters who have a level of sophisication in their knowledge of this kind of management that I can’t begin to grasp? What in the world can we do about it now.

It seems bad taste to think about what could have been done but I did hear an interesting interview on the radio which promoted the use of dug-outs which is attributed to saving many lives in the 1939 Black Friday fires. Certainly I would suggest it sounds like a far smarter idea than the fire-corridors suggested by Brumby. If there is one thing I believe strongly in it’s that we as inhabitants of this land must learn how to adapt to nature, not try to shape nature to fit in with us. Nature will always win that battle.

Linda has found a youtube video which talks about a lot of the things we discuss in Transient Spaces. It’s interesting and daunting at the same time… the line that struck a cord with me was the idea that everyone is a prosumer (producer + consumer). So what then is the future role of media professionals? It’s so cliche to mark out your ground on a dying trade, but seriously… did we choose the wrong profession?!

The concept of Songlines is a really difficult concept for people of text/linear oriented cultures and thinking. A lecture this week looked at what’s often called ‘pre-literate’ or pre-print notions of authorship. I think pre-literate is an incorrect term to use as it assumes that there is a natural linear progression, even superiority from oral literacy to written literacy rather than an understanding this mode of communication and knowledge as simply alternative. This linearity ideology is probably related to the advent of print itself. We discussed mnemonics as a memory tool, where knowledge is ’pegged’ on objects in a room, and also Homer’s Odyssey and Illiad as an examples of a shared authorship which was malleable to different audiences and which was mostly sung, with the entire play being completely memorised. Both these examples for me showed striking resemlances to my ever growing understanding of Songlines. 

The closer I feel I get to wrapping my head around this single concept, the more other aspects come into closer vision. Ownership, and rights to knowledge, and responsibility to knowlegdge is so in-twined that Indigenous Intellectual Property rights become common sense rather than isolated guidelines and extra forms to fill out. Furthermore, it adds new complications to a question I tried answer in a research essay last year about the effect of mediatising Oral History.

Below is a quote from a book called Australian Bats by Sue Churchill. A friend shared this unlikely hiding spot for a penny dropping, ‘ah-ha’ moment, and we both agreed that it was possibly the best description of Songlines we’d heard/ read.      

We traveled, different old men from different communities, and ourselves in an old Landcruiser. There were no maps and most of the caves had not been visited for many years. One involved a 100km drive crosscountry through sand dunes to a cave that couldn’t be seen if you stood  more than 3 metres from its small vertical entrance, The old men who guided us were navigating by the shape of the sand dunes. They would stop every now and then and sing a long song to help them remember the landmarks of the journey. At each new locality the old men would try to tell us (there were some serious language barriers) the Dreamtime story of the Ghost bat, or explain some of the standing stones that were in rings not far from the cave mouths, and sing songs they had learned a young men. They even pointed out the woman in the story, a large rock on one of the ridges above a cave.
Each cave we visited was barren of Ghost bats, although there was ample evidence of previous occupation. Even the caves of Uluru are a metre deep in dried mummified Ghost bat droppings. But the Ghost bats had left. With each disappointment our Aboriginal mentors became more distressed and more anxious to check the next site. As we ran out of caves a great sadness overtook the men, and some of these dignified old gentlemen were in tears. It was a humbling experience and we wished there was something we could do.
These man had grown up in the traditional life of the desert Aborigine. So much had changed. We sensed that much of what they were showing us was part of a mourning and a final goodbye to parts of that earlier life.

Melburnians were told to prepare for  a hurricane on the radio yesterday- updates on traffic, traffic lights out, electricity faults, train disruptions, Cuboree at Gembrook- are our cubs/scouts kiddies ok?!

Ok so it didn’t really arrive at 5pm like we were told to expect however our back fence at home was blown down and it did take me 3 hours to get home by train following a train being struck by lightening on my line.

Still, I came home adrenalised because I’d been listening to 3 hours of frantic emergency radio coverage with people calling in from all over Victoria with their experiences of the storm, sending photos in from their phones of the wreckage and giving advice to fellow commuters about which roads to avoid and alternative routes via calls and texts. In fact, i sent a text myself asking to be updated on the train situation from Connex since it had been over an hour since I’d last heard word.

It was live, it was collaborative and it was exciting and it reminded me why I love the medium. Even though I know all this can happen on the Internet, you know what, our Internet service was down last night due to the storms!   

So even though no hurricane hit, radio created an eventful day.

Libby McDonald is doing research into ABC’s role in emergency communications so keep an eye on her blog if you’re interested in her findings.