Sandy Creek ponds – HVP plantations
Text by Louise Crisp | photograph by Lisa Roberts
Hexazinone
Police tape flickers in the sun undulations of dead cotton weed three kangaroos follow a
soft pad alongside spindly swamp gums coppiced before the pines were planted twenty-five
years ago in deep-walled encircling contours across the valley After harvest, glysophate and
replanting, pellatised hexazinone is thrown out of aeroplanes above the chain-of-ponds –
poison water scum eucalypt canopy scorch and a new plantation consumes ephemeral waters
Louise Crisp’s latest collection is Glide published by Puncher and Wattman (2021). A previous collection Yuiquimbiang (Cordite Books 2019) was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards and highly commended in the Wesley Michel Wright Poetry Prize. Her work focuses on specific regional environments of south-eastern Australia and experiments with the formal possibilities of integrating poetics and environmental activism. Crisp lives in East Gippsland on the unceded lands of the Gunaikurnai nation.
Lisa Roberts is a photographer who chases bats, blossom, disappearing trees and epic landscapes. She lives and works in Gippsland on unceded Gunnai Kurnai Country. Her current project is The future is a big sky. A survey of old forests scheduled for logging and burning. Her recent exhibition was Flying Foxes and Disappearing Trees at East Gippsland Art Gallery.
