Tamarisk

Extract from The Red Gown artists book by Claire Barber (Western Academy of Performing Arts 1998). "On the footpath to Geraldton, an old woman passed the hermitage once the home of the priest Father John Hawes. Then some ants started to bite her unsandalled feet and as she looked down she noticed a dead tamarisk branch lying beside the path. Some of its needles had been crushed by walkers causing a little colour to be released from them onto the grey paving slabs. She gathered up some of the dead tamarisk needles and took them home and crushed them for four days on an old plough disc until only vivid green dust remained. At dusk, she carried the dust back to the place of the dead tamarisk branch and scattered it onto the path. As it became dark she wandered home pausing for a moment at the Hermitage and thought of Father Hawes. He had arrived in Geraldton in 1915 when the diocese was probably the poorest in Australia but even so, she had found through him that splendours surrounded her if only she was willing to look. He had taught me to notice detail, she thought, as the image remained of the moment he had broken a stick in his hand and shown her the pith surrounded by a silky green casing and the dry bark outside. "You see, you never thought that a dry old stick could look so beautiful inside" " Evans, A.G. (1984). The Conscious Ston: A Biography of John C. Hawes. Melbourne: Polding Press, P.19.