Durational Situation / Monmar is a guided audio walk through listening to the ecology, waters, and transformations of Monmar (Point Nepean) on Bunurong and Boon Wurrung Country. The piece focuses on the deep time and anthropogenic relations of the peninsula, traversing a remnant Moonah tree woodland valley from the bay side and moving through recent histories and interventions to the ocean side.
Featured in the audio walk are recordings of onsite performances from Carolyn Connors (voice, objects), Benjamin Woods (glass flutes, sculptural objects), Flora Carbo (saxophone), and members of the Southern Peninsula Concert Band; Allan Fenney (euphonium), Juliette Theobald (French horn), Paul Donnelly (trombone) & Tom Fagan (tuba). This project acknowledges the Bunurong and Boon Wurrung people as the Traditional Custodians of the land and waterways in which this project was made and pay respects to their Elders, past, present and emerging.
Durational Situation / Monmar was originally commissioned in 2022 as an audio walk and performance event at Monmar, Point Nepean National Park as a part of the Front Beach Back Beach project. Thank you to curator Danny Lacy and the Front Beach Back Beach team, Bunurong Land Council, and Parks Victoria for their assistance, insights, and support of this project.
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Durational Situation / Monmar
Geoff Robinson
TRANSCRIPT
Durational Situation / Monmar
An audio walk by Geoff Robinson
You are standing in a valley between two hills, 10,000 years ago. It is dawn, the sun is rising to the east. Throughout the surrounding Moonah tree woodland, you can hear the dawn calls of the grey shrike thrush, fairy wrens, honeyeaters, and magpies.
Begin walking down the track next to the bus stop named Happy Valley Walk, that winds down into the Moonah tree valley.
Where you are walking and the sounds you listen to, are in Monmar on Bunurong and Boon Wurrung Country, Monmar. As we walk, we pay respects to Elders past, present and emerging and acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded, this always was and always will be Bunurong and Boon Wurrung Country.
The surrounding Moonah trees extend inland, gradually intermingling with banksia and casuarina trees. This valley is situated on tertiary sandstone and limestone and formed during the last glacial period of the Pleistocene era. There have been many land and sea level transformations over the past one million years. Where you walk, 10,000 years ago, the peninsula is on the brink of several major sea level transformations that will change the relationship between the saltwater coastline and the nearby Birrarung river delta.
As the sun rises and begins to heat this warm summer day, crickets start to call and fill the valley with a multitude of ticking sounds that flow in and out of rhythm with each other.
The flute sounds that can be heard in the distance are glass sculptures played by artist Benjamin Woods. Ben made these sculptures based on the network of yabbie burrows close by in the bay. As you walk up the hill incline, Ben is playing the glass flutes in the Moonah woodland, relating the air flow of breath with the surrounding wind currents and bird calls.
As you ascend onto the hill you will start to see the bay to your left. 10,000 years ago, during the early Holocene era, you would see vast grassland plains with the Birrarung delta passing by not far from the current bay coastline. The grass plains were populated by kangaroos, emus and water birds. What are now known as the Werribee River, Kororoit Creek, Laverton Creek, Cherry Creek and Dandenong Creek were tributaries that flowed into the Birrarung. The Birrarung flowed from its present outlet towards current day Rosebud and then turned toward the bay heads, following the peninsula southeastern coastline.
The world was at the end the of last glacial maximum, the ice age. As the ice caps over Antarctica and the Arctic regions began to recede, the sea levels rose, flooding coastlines, estuaries inlets and bays. Around 7,000 years ago the sea levels reached their peak and the Birrarung Delta flooded with sea water 1-2meters above the current bay levels.
In N’arweet Caroline Briggs book The Journey Cycles of the Boon Wurrung she writes about Boon Wurrung stories that talk to the flooding event and its impacts on Boon Wurrung country and people.
Over the next few bends, you will come across a bench, when you arrive take a seat and have a rest for a while.
You can hear and see the waters across the vast bay. Let's zoom in to the sounds in the middle of the bay. Far out to your right, there is a small human made stone island known as Pope’s Eye. Here there is a colony of Australasian gannet perched on the rocks and platforms grooming their feathers and occasionally calling out to each other when a fellow gannet flies in. Nearby, east of Popes Eye there is a small wooden platform with an abundance of fur seals, grunting and bellowing to each other and basking in the sun.
In the middle to the late Holocene period, around 2-5,000 years ago the sea levels began to retreat. Low water levels and climatic aridity allowed sand movement and the formation of a large sand bar. This sand bar stretches from the west at Swan Bay across to Rosebud in the east. What is now known as Mud Island is situated in the middle of the sand bar. During this period the sand bar blocked the sea water from flowing into the bay, and a lake formed, just beyond Mud Island, between the Birrarung Delta and the sea. From where you sit you would see a small inlet and adjacent grassland plains.
1,000 years ago, the sea level rose once more and broke through the sand bar. Northern sections of the bay flooded, and current-day sea level equivalent occurred quickly.
We are now listening to current day sounds at the water’s edge down below. Listening to waters flowing in and out of rock pools, through sea plants and then down underneath the water. Under water we can hear the micro sounds of air bubbles, water rippling and crustaceans snapping and clicking.
Further to the East we can hear underwater sounds above what is known as the Portsea hole, situated 500 meters from Portsea and at a depth of 30meters is a vertical reef of aquatic plants and animals. This deep section of the bay is a part of the submerged canyon of the Birrarung river as it flowed alongside the current southeast coast of the bay.
Continue up the track behind you, leaving the bay waters behind for now.
As we re-enter the Moonah woodland, we can hear the sounds of vocalist and composer Carolyn Connors. Carolyn is performing in the woodland with voice and objects. The objects form an interface between her voice and the surrounding ecology, navigating possible sonic ways of relating with the woodlands from the position of a visitor. This woodland supports a unique ecosystem of remnant Moonah trees, grasses, and orchids, one of the few remaining Moonah woodlands on the peninsula.
Continue along the undulating path as the vocal and woodland sounds surround you.
Further ahead you will begin to see the remains of a building, we have now jumped ahead in time when the colonial settler and later military presences marked and infiltrated the ecology over the past 185 years.
Transitioning from the vocal sounds you can begin to hear the sounds of saxophonist, Flora Cabo. Flora is playing in the middle of the barracks ruins, sonically responding to the rectilinear concrete forms and the way the Moonah trees and ecology are slowly reclaiming the area.
Once you have walked down through the barracks ruin, you will soon arrive to the end of the track, turn right onto the Range Area Walk and follow this track over the next 5minutes until you arrive at the base of the Cheviot Hill path.
Ahead in the distance there is a rotating radar on a hill. This radar monitors and communicates to incoming and outgoing ships to and from the bay.
Whilst the radar provides navigational guidance for current day ships, for tens of thousands of years the constellation above has provided orientation for First Nations peoples, not just for navigation but also to point to particular seasonal events and stories that talk to the shifting cyclical conditions of place across time, from the one year cycle of the earth’s rotation around the sun to the 26 000 year precessional cycle of the earths shifting tilt. In the book Astronomy, Sky Country Karlie Noon and Krystal De Napoli talk to First Nations stories where the annual shifts of the constellation spatially and temporally point to particular times of the year for food harvesting and collection, creating a direct connection between sky and land.
You will soon approach the intersection of Range Area Walk track and the Cheviot hill path. Take the concrete path up the hill.
Halfway up the hill you’ll arrive at a fork in the path, take the right-hand path towards the ocean.
As you climb the hill you will begin to see the ocean to your left and the bay to you right, the threshold between accumulated waves and wind on one side and the protected shallow waters of the submerged delta on the other.
The trees of the remnant Moonah woodland valley in front of you bend towards the bay, leaning with the direction of the ocean winds. Small birds nestle and chirp within this threshold, tucked behind the protection of the hill and flying out into the gushing winds.
As you approach the first of four lookouts, walk out to the wooden platform. The full force of accumulated ocean winds will rush against you as you begin to sense the shape and scale of the point in relation to its surrounding waters.
At each lookout members of the Southern Peninsula Concert band perform shipping signals with brass instruments, calling out signals of position, warning, and relation. You can hear Tom Fagan perform the tuba, projecting signals toward the west.
Down below you can hear the more turbulent incoming ocean waters over intertidal rock pools. As we zoom in further to a particular rock pool below, we can hear the underwater clicking and snapping sounds of indeterminate aquatic animals and plants. Some research suggests these rhythmic oceanic sounds along the Australian coastline and estuaries are the sounds of the Pistol shrimp or Alpheidae. The sounds made are the sharp popping of air bubbles generated as the shrimp rapidly close their large claw, creating a sudden bursting bubble of air that stuns their prey.
As you listen to the underwater sounds continue up the hill and enter the concrete corridor further up to your right.
As you enter the former military gun emplacement tunnel you can hear the ship signaling sounds made by Allen Fenny on the euphonium.
The military presence that you stand in has a strange haunting quality. The remains of a colonial and military intervention from the 1830’s onwards, with all its violence and exclusion, that somehow through its very presence preserved the surrounding ecology from the severe transformations and erasures that occurred across the majority of the peninsula over that past 185 years.
Looking out to sea, the submerged Birrarung canyon continues out the heads of the bay. This turbulent channel of water where the bay meets the ocean is the deepest part of the canyon. The ships follow the former course of the Birrarung. The submerged river valley forms a suitable depth for the ships arriving into to the shallow bay. A parallel course of water flow and transportation across different durations in time. The ship horn you can hear is passing through the heads.
Continue back out the tunnel and up the hill to the next wooden lookout.
At the lookout you are facing the bay again, now from a higher position. Juliette Theobald is performing shipping signals with the French Horn; the interplay and call and response of the other brass players can be heard in the distance.
Looking out across the bay towards your left you can see a strip of land with a body of water behind it. This large bay is known as Swan Bay on the Bellarine Peninsula. This is Wada-wurrung Country and the area is called Bella Wiyn in Wada-wurrung language.
We can hear the sounds of black swans eating the sea grass rhizomes in the bay and the insects of the nearby saltwater marshes, and gulls and cormorants flying over a school of fish in the greater bay.
The bay is a large intertidal wetland with an extensive ecology of sea grass meadows and bird habitats. The bay and the adjacent mud island are recognised as a wetland of international significance under the Ramsar Convention. In October each year thousands of migratory shorebirds fly in from Alaska, Siberia and the Arctic to rest and feed in the bay, including the Red-necked Stint, Curlew Sandpiper, Sharp-tailed Sandpiper, Bar-tailed Godwit, Eastern Curlew and Grey Plover. Swan bay has a sister wetland site in Nagoya Japan where both countries have signed an agreement to protect the migratory flight paths of these shorebirds.
Continue walking up to the to the wooden lookout at the top of the hill. Here the fourth brass player, Paul Donnelly is signaling to the other brass players with the trombone.
We are now on the top of the highest hill on the point with views to the north of the entire bay reaching from the trail of mountain peaks at Wonga, Mt Martha and Mount Eliza, to the current Birrarung delta at Narrm and Melbourne city round to Swan Bay. And to the south reaching from Cape Schank at the second bay (Western Port Bay), along the ocean coastline, across the peninsula heads and down to Cape Otway to the west.
It is now dusk 2022, the birds are preparing to nest for the night as the crickets start to slow and quieten. People park their cars by the ocean beach and play dance music, taking in the sunset set with the sounds of electronic beats and rhythms.
Monmar is at the intersection of multiple durational layers and flows that span across millennia. From the transitioning course of the Birrarung Delta, to the flooding and retreat of waters, to the cyclical shifts of the constellation, to the cross-hemisphere bird migrations, to the journey cycles of the Bunurong and Boon Wurrung, to the migrations of European explorers, colonial settlers, and migrants, to the shipping routes, to the temporary visitors, artists and holidaying peoples to the point. All these courses and movements are embedded in the surrounding land, waters, and skies, coming in and out of focus as time passes and different events occur. Amongst these movements, flows, ruptures and interventions the animal and plant ecology continue to thrive and re-establish its roots across time.
It is the preservation of this overarching ecological system that speaks to what our contemporary culture can learn from in facing our current issues from anthropogenic climate change to the ongoing colonial and extractivist violence.
Learning to listen to the ecology, to the First Peoples stories and knowledge of Country and learning to tread lightly on these land, waters and skies.
Feel free to make you way down the hill and continue to the Cheviot Hill bus stop or to continue wandering around and absorbing the sounds of Monmar.
Thank you to Danny Lacy and Celia Mallard from the Front Beach Back Beach curatorial and production team, to Manda Henderson and Rick Sissons from Parks Victoria, the Bunurong Land Council, Lionel Lauch and the Living Culture team, and to the performers Benjamin Woods, Carolyn Connors, Flora Carbo and Allan Fenny, Juliette Theobald, Tom Fagan and Paul Donnelly from the Southern Peninsula Concert Band.