The hidden world of Ted Trainer…
Not your usual swamp
TAKE a riverside home, take the wetland along the river banks and convert it to demonstrate appropriate technologies and other structures connected by a foot track.
That is what Ted Trainer, retired UNSW lecturer in the limits to growth model of resource and environmental management has done. Working with the wetland’s waterways, Ted has made an intriguing path connected by bridges and tracks. To step onto the trail is to step into Ted’s imaginative mind and his hard work in constructing this land-and-waterscape here in the riverine forest on the shore of south-western Sydney’s Georges River.
Let’s take a journey into Ted’s sometimes fanciful waterworks and structures.
Into the swamp…
The trail starts at a bridge. The visitors cross over into they know not what. What hides in that forest beyond? What lurks unseen? Is it watching them?
Where will the trail lead them? Deep into the swamp is where.
They push on. Something gives them the idea that this is no ordinary swamp. There’s a structure out on a small island, a structure of unknown use. A tiny bridge joins it to the nearby shore. Are they supposed to cross the water on that rickety-looking flying fox?
Here the forest is dank and moist. It is still. No birds call. No lizards scurry through the undergrowth, nothing that slithers, none that can be seen, anyway. The track is soft underfoot as if it doesn’t rest on solid ground. Mosses grow on tree trunks.
The visitors cross a bridge only to come to a dead end. Parhaps not, however, for when they look around they will discover that the track continues on, that it continues deeper into this brown-water swamp.
Then, there is this. A pavilion. A very small pavilion. What tiny lifeform made use of it and where is it now? Questions without answer.
Another bridge. And another mysterious pavilion in the forest. Who were these pavilion builders? One of the travellers turns and smiles, but will she still be smiling as she moves deeper into this strange casuarina forest?
What’s this ahead, across the creek? It’s another pavilion, but it’s larger than those they have so far encountered. What is its meaning? Why is it here?
They cross the bridge. It is a larger structure, for sure… here, deep in the swamp.
The pavilion is empty. No one, or anything else, has used it for some time. Deserted.
It is time to move further into the still, swampy forest. They move quietly and watchfully, glancing behind now and then, just in case. Who knows what lies around the next turn of the track?
An island of giant fungi, that is what. Bulking, large, solid fruiting bodies of some unknown underground mycellium that look like someone has cast them out of concrete.
Then, another bridge. They watch. There is no sign of movement in the forest on the other side so they scurry across to find the unexpected.
Who’s work is this? There’s nobody home. Where are they? What are they, these inhabitants hidden in this deep dark swampy forest? Have they slunk away at the approach of the visitors?
They will ever know because their need now is this: how do we get out of here?
