“Saying things, in words before words”
In the overhead canopy, soft release meets World Book Night
Tell The Trees (Listen to the Trees)
Bower Ashton Library, University of the West of England (UWE), Bristol, UK
Thursday 3rd April – Wednesday 30th July, 2025
World of the Book
Dome Galleries, State Library Victoria
Saturday 25th May, 2024 – Sunday 18th May, 2025
As I looked at the clouds in the sky, I thought of ‘our’ now wild possums at Staughton Vale. Through the window, one cloud looked like a rabbit on their hind legs, running Alice in Wonderland late. Another, like a tortoise, in profile. My section of sky, a small wedge visible through the glass panes, linked to the sky above the heads of Rose, Constance and Harry. And what a part of the sky they will see and scamper and harvest and feast and sniff beneath. Stars, aplenty, too.
Farewell, Rose, Constance and Harry. You’re in the safe enfold of the forest now, and we’re delighted for you. From September to now, we’ve loved being in your company, learning from you, and stepping back to let you grow into those magnificent tail tips and tufty ears.
Rose, Constance, and Harry are the 13th, 14th, and 15th possums to be released at the property since 2023. They join Celeste, Linus, Lute, Sylvie, Ernestine, Hen, Beryl, Bernie, Dante, Kitri, Norris, and Norbert (some of whom are pictured below, alongside nesting boxes which may or may not be on their rotation of safe places to hunker down in). Paws crossed, for all.
Since opening the soft release enclosure, it has been an absolute joy to see Harry and Constance squeeze through the hatch, like Pop Goes The Weasel clockwork. Though Rose still called by, Constance and Harry appear to have paired off, and can oft be seen grooming one another, and all three, recognisable by their white tail tip lengths (Rose has the longest tip; Constance, the shortest) look wonderfully healthy and alert to the night and their wild futures.
(The footage, harvested over several nights, was recorded by the infrared night trail cam. Strapped to the tallest tree, no flash is used either, so as not to disturb any wildlife, budding or fully fledged.)
“Overhead, in the communal crown — could it be, quite unlikely — a critically endangered Leadbeater’s possum (Gymnobelideus leadbeateri)? The canopy overhead, so high, we cannot fully see, and below the surface, the roots which hold the tree in place, we cannot see those either. So much is beyond our sight, and so much, too, is beyond our comprehension. With heads tipped back, we grow dizzy. We lumbersome, two. We operate in a different time, and this is keenly felt.”
In treetops elsewhere, though we almost missed it, we fluttered in swiftly with a zine, (Imagined) field notes, created especially for this year’s World Book Night 2025 exhibition and mail art swap, Tell The Trees (Listen to the Trees). Our contribution, a single-sided A4 sized celebration of trees in the form of a zine that can be printed, folded (to A7), and cut upon receipt, and read, features another type of possum, the Leadbeater’s possum, which by specimen is the only way we’ve ever actually seen one.
Tell The Trees (Listen to the Trees)
Bower Ashton Library, University of the West of England (UWE), Bristol, UK
Thursday 3rd April – Wednesday 30th July, 2025
Copies of (Imagined) field notes are available at the Bower Ashton Library, for those who swing by. And it will also be made into a zine, of the same name, especially for the 2025 NGV Melbourne Art Book Fair.
Closer to home, and with tails in mind, our artists’ books Something reverberated and With wings outstretched and quivering, alongside some exquisite original source material featured within their pages, can be seen as part of World of the Book, until the exhibition changeover at the tail end of May.
Our Looped tale, beneath the dome, of five artists’ books installed in 2017, remains in place.
World of the Book
Dome Galleries, State Library Victoria
Saturday 25th May, 2024 – Sunday 18th May, 2025
As Clark, a Little forest microbat from Altona Meadows, recently in our care, flew home, one fast streak, the varied vantage points tree canopies or flight afford is ever on my mind. Watching the Yarra Bend colony fly-in, from the vantage of the overpass, is little short of magical as one by one, through the cloud cover, the night gardeners appear, returning to their roost, as the stream of human traffic below builds on the freeway. Knowing that various Grey-headed flying foxes we have cared for will be among them soon is restorative.
Our time with them changes from the day-to-day to a different kind of connection. The felt memory of them is our way to forever be in the canopy or high up in the clouds. It stretches out like a map, with the appearance of a hand-coloured rare book.
The title of this post, “saying things, in words before words”, plucked from page 3 of The Overstory.
“WBN United Artists invited responses to The Overstory by Richard Powers for an exhibition and mail art swap at Bower Ashton Library, Bristol, UK. We received over 200 works by artists from countries around the world including: Australia, Austria, Belarus, Brazil, Canada, China, Cyprus, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, UK, USA.”
As ever, please note: you need to be a qualified, vaccinated carer to handle bats.
Image credit: Mountain ash, Cumberland Valley, ca. 1945–ca. 1954, glass negative, Victorian Railways collection, State Library Victoria
