Resonate Magazine | Australian Music Centre

Image: Hollis Taylor and Jon Rose at Woomera  

[Hollis and Jon at Woomera, SA.]

Excerpts from Post Impressions: A Travel Guide for Tragic Intellectuals by Hollis Taylor

The morning tiptoes in, all pastel except parrots whose plumage shocks in the rich hues of satin evening gowns. This pageant is of little interest to Jon, who is well on his way to becoming a fence nerd. He is anticipating Yalata and our arrival at the Dingo Fence, about an hour away as near as he can tell.

It's the world's longest man-made structure, he rattles off, traversing 3,300 miles across three states, well more than twice as long as the Great Wall of China.

I've been slow to warm to it. This Fence doesn't figure on most maps, and when it does, it's a vague dotted line progressing in fits and starts as if the unsure hand of its cartographer had erased the displeasing bits, or as if some parts of it flow through prohibited areas under state censorship. It's downright un-American, this subtlety. Where are the T-shirts, the bragging billboards? Who will write its tourist text? If the Dingo Fence does not command a sign, a shop, or a TV screen, I won't believe a word of it.

As we roll over a grid, Jon shouts, Back up! Back up!

Something clicked in his brain: grid=fence. Yes, it's here, well before we expected it. We pull down a steep gravel embankment and get out for an inspection. Its six feet of wire mesh conclude with six inches of rabbit netting embedded in the ground. Warning signs hang from it: Keep Out, Permission Required, Danger: Poison (1080 poison is used along the Fence for lacing dingo baits). Jon never bothers obtaining permission. This will not even slow him down.

The Fence spans both sides of the highway, not so much interrupted by as continued by the unusual grid, a massive framework of widely spaced, narrow metal bars about 10 feet long. I can barely walk on it; clearly it's meant to stop something more agile and wily than cattle. When the heavy trucks roll over it, the grid rings out like a symphonic gong. Jon records every truck for 20 minutes and then performs a drum solo on the grid with sticks and brushes. Next, he plays the attached fence, which the grid amplifies as well. Farther down, we improvise a double bow solo on the dusty, barbed Fence proper.

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[Sunset at Snowtown, SA.]

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We can't depart without bowing Milparinka's Dead Sheep Fence (as we name it). The plus: a great-sounding fence, God's own instrument; the price: there's a dead sheep here, its head wedged between two main posts right where we're bowing. We seem to specialize in playing for the dead of late. The sheep's final resting fence begins to groan and moan, whine and complain with the prompting of our bows. A frenzied saxophone/percussion duo you'd think to hear the recording, the all-hell-breaks-loose pandemonium of a spirit that cannot find rest. The sheep's eyes must be long gone but the illusion of their presence is fixed; they stare into eternity.

[Jon bowing at the Dead Sheep Fence, Milparinka, NSW.]

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[A classic corrugated iron fence, Winton, QLD.]

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The Coober Pedy dawn chorus is a rooster, a pigeon, and a drunk. Jon promises and promises an easy day, no extra projects, only the Dog Fence. But we turn around after 20 seconds to re-examine a fence on a high hill—could it be an abandoned mine? We stop a few minutes later at an opal field to “just test” the perimeter fence. It’s slack. I’m off the hook, I assume. But slack + wind = aeolian harp. We record and film the fence; then, he records a vibrating Deep Mine Shafts sign. Vibrating is probably the wrong word; it’s a wind-crazed, shaking metal spirit.

Red sand and gravel everywhere, sun in my eyes, driving blind on a bad road—if you’re unsure of your age, go to a nightclub or rent a four-wheel-drive vehicle. At the Dog Fence, he suggests that she will pound a large rock on the fence post—not a musical technique taught or imagined when I was at school. Then Jon does a walkin’ the fence routine with a stick bouncing along the wire. With the contact microphones in place and my headphones on, it’s a crescendo-descrescendo any drummer would be proud of. Jon improvises on violin with the fence behind him, then turns to the camera and speaks:

[Dingo Fence, Coober Pedy, SA.]

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Unbelievably flat and uninteresting …Herbert Hoover is quoted as saying, not of his own personality but of the Kalgoorlie area of Western Australia. He could have been here, at the remains of the Woomera Detention Centre. Looking out, it's bleak: flat, barren, isolated, and grey. Looking in, the fence borders a concrete floor the size of two football fields. The show has pulled out. Small canvas bags resembling pillows full of sand or dirt or hate are scattered about.

[Scattered prayer pillows at the Woomera Detention Centre, SA.]

Curious Aboriginal children flock to us as we design the where and how of our musical fence. Jon unpacks his bass bow.

He’s gonna use that stick to play the fence, says David.

You liar one, Kirin retorts.

The musical fence is three treated posts and several lengths of piano wire. The kids hang around the edges, just waiting to give the stretched wire a tug. Other than having to guard our instrument, it’s all going well—but then several women approach Jon with a concern.

You can’t play music with these. Them posts dead ones. We gotta bring ‘em back to life. We paint ‘em up.

Really? Yes, please.

Bernadette Tjingiling, Marita Sambono-Diyini and Christina Yambeing have never painted together before. Sharing a pie plate of yellow, red, green, blue, white, black, and magenta acrylics, they sit on the ground around a post and communally cover one at a time. The first has turtles, fish, snakes, and other animals climbing a pale blue post. The second features the bush yam with soft brushwork. The third is cram-full of bright flowers and dragonflies. It’s the time of year that dragonflies come out; they herald the beginning of the Dry, although they are late this year due to the weather.

There’s magic with ‘em, we’re told.

The three women work late into the night. The next day, after we perform on the fence, the kids can hardly wait to give it a good thrashing; then the painted posts get auctioned off along with the year’s best crop of paintings. Every available space on the vibrant posts celebrates some living thing.

[Bernadette Tjingiling, Marita Sambono-Diyini, and Christina Yambeing painting the musical fence for the 2004 Merrepen Arts Festival at Nauiyu, NT.]