Resonance VIII
The exact location
of Duffy"s Farm and the orchard had eluded us for sometime. But
I did remember Tommy Thompson (an old Brighton resident) saying
that although he knew where it was, it had taken him years to
find the location. We were grateful to Tommy who took us down
there one winter's day, as without his help we could never have
found the site. I knew the light would not be kind but there seemed
little else but to find the orchard and get the shot as the weather
was bound to turn worse in the next few weeks. We found the spot
where the old farm house stood and now stands a barn build by
Trevor Gordon, a victim of another kind, who was murdered by a
hit man for his wife. A clay road winds down past large gum trees
to the orchard which is completely overgrown and abandoned. It
seems it was planted by the Chinese in the late 1800s and there
are rock embankments and forgotten roads winding further off into
the hills. Positioned in a gully it looks down onto the Brighton
River and across towards Lawrence Jones' house. Initially it seemed
impossible to find the right image until we found this tree. It
was actually a pear tree and not an apple tree, but the peculiarity
of the ladder and the overturned tree stated clearly here was
the image that we were after.
 Map of Brighton indicating where the image Resonance VIII was taken from
enlarge map |
James K Baxter - Poem
references
Apple
Tree 1960 CP
from that high
tree, my love
that somehow bent in Eden----
undo the stubborn
bolts and enter
where none have gone before, your body
is my wild apple tree, my poor man's treasure.
A
View From Duffy's Farm 1966 CP
She died like a
bird
in the frost- No ghost no one will haunt here, because the door
is mercifully broken
as hearts, lives, rocks break
Down there under twisted apple trees
That bear no fruit, a river.
The
tiredness of me and Herakles CP
My troubles began
with an apple -
the apple that he plucked from the oldest tree
Burned in his hand like a sun.
The Farm CP
All
tracks led outward then. I did not see
How bones and apples rot under the tree
In cocksford grass,
or guess the size
Of the world, a manuka nut in the sun's gaze. |
