The Six Seasons: Shifting Australian Nature Writing Towards Ecological Time and Embodied Temporality

Abstract

When I first arrived in the biodiverse Southwest corner of Western Australia (W.A.) in 2008 from the temperate climes of the eastern United States, I was struck - as many visitors have been before me - by the seasonal differences between the hemispheres. Rather than resuming my familiar four-season consciousness, splicing up time according to significant plummets in temperature or the dramatic falling of deciduous leaves, I had to adjust to the subtle movements, sounds, smells and tastes rhythmically tracing the course of the solar year. My poem 'quandong kojonup djeran' concludes with a quatrain conveying a burgeoning awareness of Western Australian seasons and time: 'dispersion of nuts and the wind before/ winter marks the spaces between seasons/ soft here like sutures rather than ruptures/ and snake roots tangle in quorum below' (Ryan 45 lines 18-21). The title consists of Aboriginal words: quandong is the fruit of Santalum acuminatum, popular as a contemporary and traditional bush tucker food; kojonup can be translated to 'place of the stone axe' with the suffix -up denoting somewhere near water; and djeran is the Southwest Aboriginal season signified to the senses by cooler weather and known traditionally as a time of courtship and marriage. 'Dispersion of Seed' also concludes with references to Aboriginal seasons: 'habitats become habits – /all the shades of saffron and/sinopia signify the storm/ of spring as we know it, or/ Djilba as it has been called' (Ryan 13-14 lines 25-29). Heralding the second rains and during which conceptions occur, Djilba is the warming season in the Southwest of W.A.