Change has been the hallmark of my life, and I think my greatest "art" and ability has been the skill in which I have been able to adapt to change. My illness MS - teaches me this on a daily basis being predictable as the moody Tasmania weather! I never though a move overseas would be on the card again but isnt it great when life is full of delicious surprises. Life is indeed what you make it. This little poem I think wrings as true today as it did back in 92 when I wrote it. The image is "Gods Rays" over Marshall Bay Flinders Island where I am about to leave from......

It indeed has been 6 yrs since I added to this blog page... Big changes are a muck in my life. These windswept beautiful islands in Bass Strait that have I have called me home on on off for the last 8 years are soon to be no more. I never envisaged such a big change, yet life is so full of suprise and delight! Its a return to another place of childhood (I grew up partially in Invercargill NZ), as I did in Tasmania. Killiecrankie Flinders Island was a place I visited when i was first 12. Here is a photo of my Dad, brother and family friends (I am in the Red Tshirt) on their yacht "Moonbird" This is on that first trip to Killiecrankie in 1974! Seeing my old Friends Miff and John today here in Killiecrankie on their yacht ( I have known since 1981) o just brought so many memories back of what has happened in those 31 yrs! Cheers to 31 more or so.

Unconditonal Love

My Beloved Keeshond - Sigrid.

Unconditional Love

To live alone,
is to live behind the hollow prison wall,
cold and solitary,
shadowed as the land,
from loves warmth,
from the heat of the sun,

from your eyes,
the light may shine,
from your heart,
may our love grow strong,

my life rejoices,
from under,
....... every tree,
......every stream
...... and stone.

In my heart may I have given your love a worthy home

Why in a world full of people do so few want to fly ??? Rhuari.

The Vortex of Vertigo

The Storms Vortex - Flinders Island

I woke today after going to bed with a slight deadness and “full feeling” in my right ear with occasional and variable tinnitus. Nothing to unusual in the world of MS where symptoms come and go as quickly as the winter weather here in the mountains of Western Tasmania. When I raised my head above the pillow in the morning after a night of vivid dreams the whole world started to swirl, with my head crashing back onto the pillow. A nausea swept over me like a cold winter wave, so I just lay there for another 45 minutes dreading the though of moving out of bed. Sigrid was patiently lying on the end of the bed waiting to go and “water the flowers” outside.

Vertigo is a nasty dizzy sensation where the world spins uncontrollably and is often accompanied by nausea and sometimes vomiting. The sensation is similar to acute sea-sickness. Vertigo in multiple sclerosis is usually accompanied by partial or complete loss of balance which is aggravated by sudden movements or turning. Vertigo is often most acute when your senses are deprived of light specially when lying in bed at night. Vertigo is a relatively common symptom of multiple sclerosis and can be caused by damage to the area where the brain meets spine called the brainstem

The Balconord Chamonix de Mont Blanc French Alps

After being able to finally ensconce myself on the comfortable leather lounge, with my view of the lake, there ensued a day of drifting in and out of sleep. The day was spent with the occasional trip to have a cup of tea or go to the loo, or let Sigrid, patiently waiting again to go outside. The nausea was intense after just a minute of leaving the horizontal. My day was like a surreal dream of sleep, and semi consciousness watching the National Geographic channel. Looking back now it’s hard to envisage what was real and what was not. I was one moment skiing across the Greenland Icecap, then on the slopes of a boiling Hawaiian volcano, but then I was drifting onto a boiling ocean maelstrom with sweeping whirlpools of bottomless vortexes and then floating on the clouds paragliding from sheer Alpine peaks over glaciers of France. An amazing sensation. Who needs recreational drugs when you can have a day life this! In these periods of semi consciousness and near awekness I felt the sensation of ants crawling over my head, and tingle in my spine and an oscillating numbness over my scalp. Alas I think my MS is alive and well and making its prescense known to all. I have had some “seasick” pills that have eased the vertigo for now. I wait to see what the morning brings…. R

After the storm has past - Flinders Island

The Vortex

Each wave hits me like the ocean swell
Slowly dragging me out of my depth,
Swirling me with the stone and shells,
That pivoting powerful vortex
Pulling me under,
Out into the murky deep,
Threatening to crush the last living breath,
From my bruised lips,
To rise to the surface gasping,
To again be dragged down,
Into the bottomless deep again

The Mountains of the Mind

Mt Wellington Hobart

Hobart was now two weeks ago. As yet I have no real results of my MRI scan. However it is almost certain they have found now “white areas” on my scan. That is areas of demyelination in the nerves of the brain and spine. This is the stuff of MS. In the corresponding time since my last scan much has changed within my own body. I have endeavoured to live a life that is healthy as is possible for my condition. This means a lifestyle that pays attention to the things that aggravate or hastens its spread.

Mt Olypmpus Central Highlands Tasmania

Two of the greatest triggers I have found to my condition are stress and heat and to a lesser degree getting over-tired. Even a small increase in ambient body temperature assists in triggering a relapse in symptoms. Most classically in my case is pain and diminished vision in the eyes, greatly exacerbated fatigue and muscular spasticity. Simplistically put a rise in body temperature hinders the effective transmission of neurological signals through the many (multiple) scar tissues (sclerosis) produced as a “repair” to lesions. A simple experiment (something I don’t do!) is to have long hot showers/baths or saunas or even heavy exercise in warm temperatures. After a warm shower I can almost instantly feel the nerves misfire. As I obviously have an active lesion in my spine at present, I can feel an electric current tingle in my neck, especially if I move forward. Thermal stress as I have just explained can similarly trigger a relapse caused by emotional stress though this connection is not so unanimously understood or agreed upon

Frenchmans Cap Western Tasmania

Since my return from Hobart I have had a pretty horrendous ten days really with periods of savage fatigue (the fatigue is hard to describe, Its state of great sickness far more revolting than just merely being very tired). Most disturbingly there has been the development of a new series of muscle spasms around my mid trunk on the left side of my body, giving sensations ranging from severe backache to stomach cramps. Just to touch the muscles in this area gives a burning sensation as the muscles spasm and tense. Massage helps greatly but sadly sometimes its results are short lived. I also have had agonizing pain behind my right eye giving me tunnel vision and a painful sensation of a knife twisting in your brain and pressing on the sinuses. It’s possible that this is caused by the swelling of a brain lesion I have near my inner right ear.

Mt Rufus Western Tasmania

The combination of pain spasms and fatigue lead to a contraction in my world. I can feel myself emotionally turn in and close down. My world shrinks to the confines of the small walls of the room let alone the outer walls of the house. My mental landscape creates mountains in the mind of much great height and inaccessibility than the craggy peaks I see the winter rains from my window. Everything in life suddenly takes on an epic proportions and seemingly small tasks become a Mt Everest-of-the-mind. It’s not till the symptoms ease and the leaden tight grip of pain and fatigue begins to ease that one really realises how ill you have felt

Mt Pelion West Western Tasmania

I have learnt now with my MS when this “cloud descends” that I just have to ride with it. It’s pointless to play martyr to it, but just ride it out and be as kind to my body as I can. It’s a time to let go of notions of what one “should be doing”, and just try and live within ones own energy means. I have learnt in these times that the “sun will come out again to shine” that like all things it will pass. This is a difficult process of just being able to “let go” it very much runs against the whole psyche of our very interventionist world today. It is however not a process however of hopelessness, but of just realising that there is a certain process taking place that is difficult to stop, and to remain calm focused and not fight it is indeed the quickest way to recover. I use meditative powers of staying calm, centred and relaxed to ease my way through this storm.

The Sun is Rising at last! Mt Farrell Tullah from my window...

I now feel that again I have come out on the other side. Again the boundaries of my world and imagination spread again beyond these mere four walls and venture out into the world again. Time again now to re enter my creative world that I live in … and the sun has come out to shine!

Mans Webs across the Wilderness

The marching sentinels across the wilderness

Driving from my little haven Tullah, in the heart of the rainforest wilderness of Western Tasmania, one passes through a very diverse change in landscapes on the way to Launceston. Much of the first half of the journey is in land almost untouched by the modern world. Till only recently this journey was not possible, with a detour via the North West Coast adding almost an our and a half to the journey.

Cradle Mountain and Little Horn over Middlesex Plains

In the 80’s Cradle Mountain was connected to the West Coast by the “Link” road in the name of progress. But for who? Now a thick dark grey tarmac ribbon pushes through the ancient forests of Godwanan Antarctic Myrtle and Celery Topy pine and peat bogs with its ancient Jurrasic roots. With the road comes the high voltage powerlines that gave Tullah a new lease of life from the 70’s from its hydro schemes. This link festoons the land with a criss-cross of human spider webs. This tarmac road and human “cobweb” pierce right through the land forever alienating one half from the other. Through this corridor now pass many man made objects and machines, but even more deadly are the diseases and invaders that piggyback with them.

Introduced feral animals, plants, viruses, bacteria and fungi can now readily enter the heart of this wilderness often completely unnoticed till its to late. Tasmania has been separated from Australia since the last Ice Age 9000 years ago and by many millions of years from the rest of the world. From this arterial entry these invaders can radiate into a pristine and almost untouched environment.

Man Cobwebs across the wilderness

Seeds of foreign plants and aggressive fungi can come in and invade in seemingly harmless loads of gravel and soil. The summer bloom of thistles in purple in places flags the invader. In places close to the edge of the road “Myrtle wilt” can be noticed. This is caused by disturbance to the roots of the Antarctic beech causing a deadly dieback. Even more worrying are fungal spores that can be carried in on car tyres on road tracks penetrating further into the wilderness for exploitation of its untapped timber and mineral resources bringing deadly cinnamon fungus.

Feral cats and now foxes have been confirmed to have been found in Tasmania will this be yet another invader to further push the Tasmanian Devil already under siege into extinction? This delicate spider web of roads and wires is sadly the very fine thin edge of a very thick wedge.

"Die Back" - Dead Eucalyptus paucifloras in the Tasmanian Highlands

MRI - and Multiple Sclerosis

An MRI Scan showing lesions on the brain

Monday will see me in Hobart to lay in a huge machine that takes in laymans terms, a series of very detailed xrays of my spine and brain. This MRI - Multi Resonance Imaging is a very new and wonderful tool that actually photographys slices of the central nervous system. The MS lesions are then reasonably easily identified by the WHITE areas as can be seen above. Often a contrasting die is injected in the patient and a contrast definition will be observed of those lesions that are presently active. These lesions are what causes the problems in multiple sclerosis. MS actually means multiple lesions. These lesions are the scar tissue when the nerve is attacked the fatty mylen sheath is removed. Its still very much a mystery to science and even Eastern Medicine why this disease occurs.

MS lesions result in either the loss, erroneous or poor transmission of electrical impulses along the nerves resulting in the myriad symptoms that makes up this disease. The impact of the lesions depends entirely on there position in the central nervous system.

An MRI Showing Lesion on Spinal Cord

A very critical area is the spine as the area is very small and even very tiny lesions can cause great problems in this area to function of the lower body. This spinal lesion here is almost identical to the one I have on my last scan. Since I had my last scan there have been a range of new symptoms in my lower body, and I am dearly hoping this doesnt mean a new lesion has developed or an older one grown more. In MS the worst result of spinal lesions is either paraplegia or quadraplegia but this if very rare. As with much of MS the disability can come and then go again back into a lengthy remission with little in the way of symptoms. Monday will indeed reveal what will may happen next.Much more can be seen at my site about MS at:

http://www.geocities.com/wanderingalbatross/ms/ms.html

ILLUSIONS .....

Lake Mackintosh Tullah - what is real and what is illusion?

Here we have the reflective waters of Lake Mackintosh. They are stained a rich tea-brown by the acid peat bogs and tea tree swamps of the wilderness of the Cradle Mountain National Park. The tannin in the waters gives it brilliant reflective qualities, giving the light a hint of glistening mercury and the sky a beautiful hue of indigo.

a shadow of an ancient gnarled tree?

They give the lie to illusions, distorting objects to contorted new “realities” that can appear to the naked eye a honest “reflection” of what seems obvious to our minds. Perceptions are always viewed again a background that gives them a context in which to compare. The background here is the oily calm of the lake surface, but minute ripples radiating out from several directions in layers over each other belie this. The eye is sure that its point of reference is indeed flat giving back a true reflected image of trees above. These tiny radiating wavelets in fact distort the image of the tree almost beyond recognition. One can notice the bleached tea tree branch that also pierces this background, this point of reference. It adds a further complexity and “layer” to this reality that is truly three-dimensional.

What is the lake and what is the forest, where is the sky?

How life is like this photo! My perceptions are all based on my own experiences, often limited often deeply distorted or even completely wrong. Today we live in a world that is so literal. We live in an increasingly complex society so its natural to crave simplistic answers to very complex questions, as there are too many questions. What we have to question though is our “background”, our yardstick of comparison indeed correct and not also deeply distorted. Is our vision of the problem to narrowly focused and indeed missing the bigger picture? Its then hard to realise what is an illusion, as we have to judge everything in context of our own experiences or accept concepts we don’t always understand blindly. Its important to question always and not accept things in this way as many things we are fed as fact are merely others erroneous or distorted opinions. There is no easy solution to this, but what it does teach us, like this picture, is that we must surely question everything we hear and see. So much of our world is an illusion.

From Islands to the Mountains of the mind

Home: Tullah and Mt Murchison Western Tasmania

Well that’s the journey of the body… the mind is equally similar. There has been an amazing change of gear in lifestyle and purpose. My visit to Flinders Island was primarily to help my friend Marc through the after effects of a major spinal fusion operation. This rendered him unable to drive, lift or do many simple tasks, and then I helped him complete and move into his new home.

Since leaving in March for the island in the heat of summer, the world has gone from warm endless sunny days to the cold short reflective twilight of winter. Luxuriant emerald green and vibrant colours of summer have given way to sombre greys and browned frost nipped khakis of winter rains. The difficulties of summer have fallen like the leaves of the denude apple and silver birch out my window, seeming like a distant bad dream. There has been much time for quiet contemplation in the windswept empty wilds of Flinders Island. An isolated little bay gazed upon by the ancient granite peaks of Killiecrankie insight of the loom of the Craggy Island Light. On a remote island of the coast of a remote island Tasmania, in the southern tip of the habitable world.

Killiecrankie Bay Flinders Island Tasmania

The pervading sea breezes have swept through the streets of the soul a different mood, and a lighter clearer air. A growing depth of inner calm and contentment has permeated my being like the saline wind on those timeless wind-worn shores, and changed its pallet to a slightly different hue. There is a feeling of great inner liberation that my tiny world on that island-in-a-sea-of-storm has allowed an inner calm to grow and dwell. In those quiet moments of reflective solitude, momentarily the world stops and ceases to move, there reigns a moment of complete and timeless bliss. There was no one magic moment but many myriad moments linked now in the mind. They are indeed impossible to captivate or even describe, but moments of increasing realisation that give the perception of a whole.

I am intrigued now to see how these feelings will mellow and mature. It’s wise now to take the time to just carry on with my life here and see what kind of wine from them will be distilled.

Arrival

Well it’s been many days now since I last sat down and put thoughts to pixels. It’s been a long journey back from the islands of Bass Strait to the rainforests of Western Tasmania….. and home. Geographically the two places are some 300 km apart… not a great distance but the geography, flora, fauna and history could not be more different. Tasmania is a very diverse island. We are on the Western or windward side in the teeth of the Roaring Forties here, with nothing west of hear till one goes two thirds the way around the globe to hit the bleak shores of Patagonia!

Here we are subject to the full force of the endless prevailing lows and rain-bearing westerlies from the Indian and Great Southern Oceans. Flinders Island lies in the lee of this mountainous island and much of this easterly bound moisture is squeeze from the atmosphere leaving only a very drying wind. After only 260 mm of rain year-to-date precipitation on Flinders Island I come back to Tullah where such an amount he had in just the last month. The sun is hibernating and the frost has been biting deep while I have been away, leaving a very different aspect and mood over life. It creates much more a feeling of hibernation and deeper instrospection on a different level

I watch the tiny cloud....

I woke to day to see the mist curling around the peak of My Killiecrankie... in long lazy swirls pink-red swirls of dawn. The valley below layered in strips of mist giving it a very ethereal quality. I love to watch clouds, the beauty is so transient, forever evolving changing, and as quickly as they are formed they pass on.... to fall as rain, sleet or snow, or peter out into the blue of the heavens... It keeps me forever mindful of changes within my own life, and how the solidarity and permanency is so much of an illusion.

My own life will change again in just 3 days when I leave these wonderful islands in Bass Strait and head back to my own little paradise in the dark cool lush rainforests, lakes and mountains of Western Tasmania. Here in a very different wilderness life will take on a different hue, not only because of the radically different geography flora and fauna, but its a very different community that I live in. Back to old friends and familiarities that have long defined my own identity for me. These things though are never fixed, and must remain fluid to grow. There is a change in the wind, and I am hoping to return to these islands to live full time as soon as conditions will allow later in the year. The change will be good and I can see great new areas of growth for me. My heart will always have a fond home in the mountains of Western Tasmania, that chapter in my life is far from over, but simultaneously a new chapter has opened. There are many new powerful energies in my life and I deliciously wait to see where they will take me. Here are a few words of mine that I feel say it all. Rhuari

I WATCH THE TINY CLOUD......
I watch the tiny cloud,
take leave of the shrouded summit,
a wispy-white flowing mane,
liberated,
shedding tears of snow,
in untold joy,
into the shadowed darkness of the vale,
The ultimate state of freedom,
is to transcend from a mere moral state,
of earthly cyclic existence,
like the cloud,
............... break free,
of artificial concepts of ego,
and "What am I",
exist in pure essence of spirit,
to observe as part of the whole,
with a detachment of being everything,
everywhere,
yet being nothing at all ..................

An ancient land - Xanthorea australis and Mt Boyes Flinders Island

Flinders Island is an ancient landscape of time worn granite mountains and their alluvial silts and sands from way back into Devonian times in geological history. Much of the vegetation is Jurrasic in origin that has evolved little. Many of the life forms here, both flora and fauna are very primitive and seemingly trapped in a time warp. This "Yakka Gum" or "Grass Tree" is such an anomally that is common in the coastal heath of Flinders Island, dating back to Australians very ancient history as part of ancient Gondwanaland.

yet more shadows over shadows

Here in the cemetery of Wybalenna there are now few marked graves and even fewer with legible or known histories. On this head stone is the touching story of Margaret Monohan and here two tiny young children. As if taken from the pages of some pulpy Victorian melodrama, she and her 2 children drowned while disembarking the Colony of Van Diemans Land (Tasmania) on HM Brig the Tamar in 1840. Her petticoat was caught while boarding a dinghy to go ashore, capsizing the boat plunging her into the sea with here two young children, with none surviving.

Life in those days was extremely hard in a way we have little understanding of today, in the West at least. However what is truly sad is the thought of all the hundred of Aboriginals that died of disease and heart break at that very same graveyard in that same period, almost all their lives go unremember and marked. What was even worse was the way many of the bodies were desecrated after they were buried for the purposes of "science" and ghoulish curiosity. This antagonism to the aboriginal race has carried on into even very recent times. Its amazing to think then how selective we are about the value of life. Daily we hear of yet another bomb blast in Palestine or Iraq and tens of people killed and maimed, but should one Australian go missing the whole world will stop. Even very topically this last week with the terrorist bomb blasts of trains in Mumbai India, with a total of some nearly 200 deaths goes almost unnoticed by the media. While the blast some year ago in London with a fraction of the deaths the world seemed to stop. How is it we seemingly value human lives so differently depending on the race, creed or religious belief, aren't we all just one and the same?

An Echidna crossing the road today
oblivious to the world passing it by

Shadows over Shadows - Wybalenna Graveyard Flinders Island

Shadows over Shadows..
fleetingly appearing
growing swiflty to pass,
enigmatically disappearing,
a transient silhouette
of a once living distant past Rhuari

This rather hauntingly beautiful spot I have talked about previously I visited again yesterday, and everywhere one looked there were shadows, literal and figurative. Its always a solitary place bleak with a stiff breeze and the whisper of voices of the wind in the she-oak needles. Here rest the souls of many of the last of the Tasmanian Aboriginal race and many early settlers.

There are so many stories in that small piece of land. My mind wanders to bring of vision of what the might be. Most of the graves are unmarked, only noticeable as a shadow on an archaeologists scan, or as a shadows over Tasmania's colonial past. A place of quiet contemplation that I return to again and again.....

living within our means

These ancient granite boulders are the hallmark for the Furneaux Islands and part of the East Coast of Tasmania. With their time-worn rounded appearance, and in coastal positions vibrant orange and pastel green lichens. These lichens live within a very narrow ecosystem, an extremely challenging environment just above high water mark, drenched by waves or salt spray, baked by ferocious sun and ultraviolet light in summer and often encrusted in salt crystals. In winter they are lashed by the icy waters of Bass Strait and savage gales. They live in a very narrow margin, just above the hig water mark in an intertidal zone very hostile to life. Lichens are a truly ancient life form, a very simple organism but extremely hardy. This brilliant orange is almost iconic to these islands and naturally provides a brilliant contrast to the the aquamarine and turquoise blues of the sea.

The brilliant lichens scream at me of the delicate balance of nature, of how we must endeavor to live with our own means and in harmony within the greater environment that we are a part of. The effects of global warming and rising sea levels even by a few centimetres, could wipe these organisms away, or force them to higher ground. Many of the Furneaux Islands are low lying and any change in mean sea level will have a very marked effect with shallow seas and low lying land. This can be seen in times of severe gales with rogue waves penetrating the dunes or over washing over some islands. As humans today, we live in a increasingly frantic world driven by consumerism. We have a quenchless thirst for energy, minerals, land and indeed the habitat and livelihood of many of the organisms that we share the planet with, and intern help to sustain us. When will we, like the orange lichen learn to live sustainably within our means?

the golden path in a moment of bliss and ecstacy

Then end of a perfect day over Emita, and many hours of labour over a paint brush but with this kind of view and inspiration .. who cares!

Lazy clouds above Castle Rock

What an ideal day to just relax and meditate upon the last remaining lazy clouds day-dreaming there way across a warm-winter turquoise sky. After the storm it has left a different mood and aspect upon my world. My time on Flinders Island is up for now, in one week I will be leaving these wonderful islands in Bass Strait to return to my old life in the mountains and lakes of Tasmania's West Coast. I am so lucky from one paradise to another. There winter is in full swing, the mountains very pensive and moody, often snow capped or drenched in cloud, the vegetation lush and vibrant rainforest dripping with water everywhere you look.

There are many new adventures about to unfold and where they take me I will be delighted to find. I have discovered a new energy within in the last few weeks, a new creative outlet for my passions and this blog has been all part of that. I have for a long time had several "books" and "stories" in my head that I wish commit to the written word. Its is now indeed time to make that happen. How truly delicious life can be! Rhuari

I WATCH THE TINY CLOUD......

I watch the tiny cloud,
take leave of the shrouded summit,
a wispy-white flowing mane,
liberated,
shedding tears of snow,
in untold joy,
into the shadowed darkness of the vale,
The ultimate state of freedom,
is to transcend from a mere moral state,
of earthly cyclic existence,
like the cloud,
............... break free,
of artificial concepts of ego,
and "What am I",
exist in pure essence of spirit,
to observe as part of the whole,
with a detachment of being everything,
everywhere,
yet being nothing at all ..................
Rhuari Hannan

...... a storm out of the East.

The storm raged out of the East last night , bringing with it gales in gusty squalls, at last the rain. We have had a total of some 85 mm in one nice soaking go, its really been not since freak storms in January we have had any quantity like this. I can almost hear the trees sigh withe relief, and hear the soft gurgle as the water tanks overflow.

The energy it brought with it was very different, even a little unsettling in this area where westerlies contstantly howl and all before it bows to the East in reverence to it. The wind from the east brought also a stranged flattened sea to Marshall Bay, in the lee of the wind and only small wavelets where dancing on the beaches edge in this wavy line ..... Yet another day with the paint brush and tomorrow a rest and chance to really walk the beach and enjoy the stillness and contemplative quiet alone and hear the roar of the big Easterly swell.

......rain fell upon the sea,
like wasted
untasted joy..........
upon the land it was welcomed
quenching deliciously
with earthy jubulilant hands