REVERB10: EVERYTHING is OK: ReEnvisioning Reality through the Stories We Tell in Science and Art!

Hallelujah for REVERB10 challenging me to remember a symbolic moment of OKAYNESS in 2010! Based on NOTHING and EVERYTHING, I chose to recall Lark Quarry, a famous dinosaur trackway in central Queensland, Australia. This “hotspot” along the Dinosaur Trail illustrates beautifully how SCIENCE, ART, IDEA, and STORY TELLING collide to create a REALITY we can understand.

Okay…it all begins about 95 million years ago with a high-pitched roar and thunderous footsteps along a riverside! A monstrous two-legged carnivorous dinosaur approaches a large flock of small two-legged herbivorous dinosaurs, causing them to scatter in a chaotic frenzy. Who would be dinner? More than 3,000 of their fleeing tracks were preserved in the muddy soil, leaving an intriguing puzzle to be pieced together by 20^th century SCIENTISTS.

Based on evidence and the understanding of that evidence in 1979, Tony Thulborn and Mary Wade explained the predation story above. (Click on this link to see a short video of this tracksite and hear my Chibogamoo narrate this now-well known story.) To sum it up again: There was a meat eating theropod, close to the size of a Tyrannosaurus rex, that was in search of a meal and went to the river to pick up a small ornithopod or two. A stampede ensued.

This 95-million year old story has been repeated and illuminated by ART. Hearsay is that when Steven Spielberg was making the movie, “Jurassic Park,” his consultant, celebrity paleontologist Jack Horner, referenced Lark Quarry. Another example is the movable metal dinosaur sculpture in the exhibit at the Lark Quarry Interpretative Centre. Exhibit viewers can push a button which causes the mechanical sculpture to open its toothy carnivorous jaws—jaws convincingly capable of consuming a dinner of small dinosaurs. Other art illustrating the story are the wooden cutouts representing fleeing two-legged dinosaurs the size of chickens. The educational material at the centre even goes so far as to give one of the vulnerable ornithopods a name, “Ollie.”

ART is wonderful for holding ideas—until these ideas change. Welcome to the 21^st century and a different way of interpreting the evidence! Based on measurements and complex calculations, paleontologists can now better determine if the fossilized tracks are those of an ornithopod (a plant eater) or a theropod (a meat eater).

Last July, when we saw Anthony Romilio, a PhD candidate at the University of Queensland, standing on the Lark Quarry floor in his stocking feet with measuring tools, little did we know that he was about to TRANSFORM the long-standing predation story. And he has!

Using current methods of calculation, he has startling evidence that the large dinosaur, which caused the stampede at the riverside, was not a carnivorous theropod! It was a large herbivorous ornithopod, which was not looking for a meaty meal. (Read the news story at this link, to learn more.)

The Lark Quarry site most be RE-STORIED in ART. What will the new images look like? Will the large moving metal dinosaur sculpture have to be removed? Will the educational images on the signage at the interpretative centre change? Will the dinosaur museum at the Corfield and Fitzmaurice building on Winton’s mainstreet have to change its dramatic Lark Quarry diorama showing a victimized ornithopod?

SCIENCE and ART! IDEAS and STORIES! REALITY! I am OKAY now and forever as long as ALL of us PILGRIMS travel with open minds and hearts—changing our stories as we need to in order to reflect REALITY as we understand it NOW! Hallelujah Truth!

Hallelujah welcomes all PILGRIMS to soul blog with her on December 24^th’s REVERB10 PROMPT for today! Everything's OK. What was the best moment that could serve as proof that everything is going to be all right? And how will you incorporate that discovery into the year ahead?

Chiboogamoo has written about Winton and paleontology in his blog, The Great Cretaceous Walk, and has an upcoming blog specifically on Lark Quarry, so stay tuned!
Hallelujah Truth right outside the Lark Quarry Interpretative Centre in Queensland, Australia

IMAGES THAT EMERGE from the SOUL: WINTON, QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA

HALLELUJAH PILGRIMS! Hallelujah to this PRECIOUS EARTH and to our JOURNEYS whilst we are here! How are you feeding YOUR CREATIVITY? I am CURIOUS because my deepest LOVE (other than my Chiboogamoo) is the IMAGE that EMERGES from the SOULS of each and every PILGRIM. I keep an urgent question close to my HEART—how would everyone’s PHYSICAL experience in a SPECIFIC PLACE manifest itself in a PARTICULAR VISUAL PICTURE? What if each PILGRIM made ART, and we all could SEE his or her SPIRIT embodied?

 

On my PILGRIMAGE with my Chiboogamoo, I have had the good fortune of seeing ART which EMBODIES the SPIRITS of PILGRIMS inhabiting Winton and its neighboring towns in central Queensland, Australia, about a 500-kilometer drive from the charming coastal city of Townsville.  Please take a moment to breathe in these beautiful concrete expressions of SOULs living in the outback of northeast Australia with its vast treeless grasslands in which an occasional acacia or eucalyptus stand jut out from its open vistas. The red earth also gathers itself at moments and erupts into towering hills and plateaus. Kangaroos bounce across this vastness, weaving in and out of herds of sheep and cattle. The gulahs and brolgas fill the sky with flapping wings and chatter!

Cities, like Winton also suddenly arise out of these seemingly infinite grasslands. And how WONDERFUL are the SURPRISES that the city of Winton holds for the TRAVELER! Although this city is small—its modest number of blocks can be traveled by foot from edge to edge in about 30 minutes--its inhabitants’ LOVE for what is ARTFUL is large and clearly established!

On Elderslie Street, across from where my Chiboogamoo and I stayed in the North Gregory Hotel, is the Waltzing Matilda Centre. In addition to providing documentation to the history of this iconic song, it also houses the “Outback Regional Gallery,” which promotes local artists. It is at this gallery that I got to imbibe some LOCAL visual SOUL. Look at these images! At these “SOULs”! (All the artwork you see here belongs to local Queensland artists.)

Walking northeast several blocks from the Waltzing Matilda Centre, we were DELIGHTED to visit “Arno’s Wall.”  Hallelujah! Grotjahn Arno’s  SPIRIT has been creating this wall for over 30 years, patiently collecting tools, hubcaps, statues, and whatever he thought would add pizzazz to this 2-meter-high and 70-meter-long wall made from rock quarried from his opal mine in the nearby town of Opalton. Thank you Arno!

Leaving Arno’s Wall behind, and walking past the caravan park, Matilda Country Tourist Park, and refueling road trains filled with mooing cattle, my Chiboogamoo and I successfully found the “Musical Fence”—a Winton touristic destination that had filled us with immeasurable curiosity! Imagine PILGRIMS my anticipation! The winter sun is setting in central Queensland. We have left the architectural structures  of the city behind, and we “discover” a sign introducing us to this musical wonder constructed by Graeme Leak in 2003. How was this SPIRIT, this PERCUSSIONIST able to “tune” a fence?  With PLEASURE, my husband and I picked up wooden sticks and PLAYED as the sky darkened and red streaks burst out on the grasslands. The wind blew and the fence reverberated! HALLELUJAH! (Listen to me "play" the fence!)

We thought Leak’s musical fence was the zenith of our Winton cultural experience. But! We hadn’t seen BUSH POETs perform at the caravan park! Spoken Word ARTISTS, Slam competitors, speakers of the people--whatever you want to call these story tellers of the outback, their performances are mesmerizing!  When we stopped at the caravan park on our way back to the hotel, it was dark, but the heart of the caravan park was glowing. Not a seat was left at these buskers’ “free” performance. People were hanging onto fences and sitting on garbage cans, leaning in to hear two forty-ish women wearing cowboy hats. The only money these POETs get is whatever is collected in their hats at night’s end. That and selling their CDs. How I wish we had purchased one! For now, these poets’ names remain unknown to me and my Chibogamoo! My apologies FELLOW CREATIVE SPIRITs!

Dinner at the Gregory brought us into close contact with the hotel’s current proprietor, a Philippine woman long married to an Australian. Running an old hotel in the outback is no easy thing, but this proprietor was a real CREATIVE. Luckily for Chiboogamoo and me, she sat us down in front of an old player piano, which in order to make run, we had to pedal like a bike! Next to the piano is a cabinet with more than twenty original paper rolls with songs from the early 20^th century!  Listen to my Chiboogamoo play!

PILGRIMS I will be writing more about Winton in a future blog, so I will conclude here with two questions: 1) WHAT CREATIVE ACT WILL YOU TAKE TODAY TO EXPRESS YOUR SOUL’S VIEW OF REALITY?  2) HOW WILL YOU INTERACT WITH FELLOW PILGRIMS SO THAT YOU CAN SEE THEIR SOULS?

Hallelujah SOUL BLOGS with you to SEE you! Please write me and SHARE your precious self with me! Hallelujah!