The Writing Experiment by Hazel Smith

Writing as recycling 69

Extensive plains

gently undulating

destitute of timber

extend, with interruption

to Maniroon Plains

south of Lake George,

large portions

occupied in grazing.

The silence and

solitude that reign in these wide spreading untenanted

wastes, are indescribable.

No traces of the works or

even the existence of man are here to be met with,

except perhaps the ashes of a fire on the banks of

some river.

From the contemplation of this vacancy

and solitude the mind recoils with weariness.

Near Mr Rose’s station is a lofty table-mountain,

forming the commencement of a mountainous range,

extending in a south-west direction,

named ‘Bugong’,

from the circumstance of multitudes of small moths

congregating at certain months of the year about

masses of granite. November, December and January

the native blacks assemble to collect the Bugong; the

bodies of these insects contain a quantity of oil, and

they are sought after as a luscious and fattening

food.

12th of December, at dawn, accompanied by a

stock-keeper and some of the blacks, I commenced my

excursion.

The view from the second summit of

Bugong was open to the southward.

From The Ash Range (Duggan 1987, pp. 33–4)

The texts in The Ash Range are mainly structured by the passage of time,
and particular periods, such as the Gold Rush. However, collage can often
be effective when it involves texts which are radically different, and are
thrown into unexpected relationships with each other. The following

James

Atkinson

1826

George

Bennett

1834