Spirit of a Place

By Ross Lamond

A fifty-eight year old landscape architect from Brisbane, Australia who spent his entire life living within twelve square miles from his home is thrust out on his own after writing a note to his wife of thirty three years and leaving it on the kitchen table. He is leaving her and takes a journey into the unknowns.
Wil Sinclair was married with two grown up children. He is conservative and sedate, a traditional man. It all started during a holiday in Turkey with his wife, Betty. The Led Zeppelin words, “Babe, I’m Gonno Leave You”, echoing in his mind as they explored this fascinating land.
A flick of a coin in his trusty RAV 4 motor car outside of now closed architectural office in Toowong led Wil to a rented caravan beside the Pacific Ocean at Woolgoolga in Northern New South Wales. It’s here he chances a conversation with a bloke called John who says to Wil, “There’s a spirit in everything. Our surroundings are collections of individual spirits, resonating, mingling and creating the feelings we have with our surroundings. Our surroundings are collections of energies and spirits and we can reach out and connect to them.”
Was it a silly thing to say? Not for Wil. He had a need to search for something new and decided to journey to places unknown to find their spirits, hoping he could attach himself to them and receive them as some form of enlightenment. It became a journey of questioning, frustrations, bitterness and awakening to something deep and emotional. Wil realised there are spirits and they are in the land. The land holds its spirits. The place is the spirit and not the spirit being the place. So many conundrums on offer as he explores the complexities of spirituality. How to relate with them becomes his journey.
Something of nature, history and knowledge help to open pathways to spirits. Although for Wil it became the simple act of resonating with nature and connecting with his surroundings.
His discoveries opened up a new pathway for him as a landscape architect and producing a ‘new’ Wil. He had discovered harmony and connectedness to nature and the wonderful gift nature’s spirits offer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ross Lamond
• Release date: Oct 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9780980758870

Ross Lamond

Ross Lamond is the youngest member of a well-known and respected dairy farming family of the New South Wales South Coast, Australia. He schooled away from home, completing secondary studies at Sydney Grammar School, Sydney. Upon leaving school, Ross returned to the family farm and over a forty year period, gained extensive experience in dairying, beef cattle production, sugarcane, small crop cultivation and horticulture. An ever present interest in the garden naturalised into that of a nurseryman, landscape gardener and grower of in ground trees for landscape. Concern about environmental issues such as tree decline, dry land salinity and habitat degradation led Ross into external studies in Environment at Mitchell College of Advanced Education at Bathurst, followed by post graduate studies in Urban and Regional planning at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane. A chance reading of a Feng Shui publication in 1998, introduced Ross to Feng Shui and its influence on our lives and surroundings. He applied some of its principles into the garden and developed his own interpretation of Feng Shui garnished through personal experience and observation. The interest has led Ross into a journey of self-discovery including that of nature, environmentalism and spirituality. It’s an ever growing interest. Ross lives by himself, has four grown up children, and likes to travel and garden and write about his experiences and observations.

Book preview

Not too far now, Betty.

"You and your ‘let’s travel as the backpackers do’" replied Betty. "Why couldn’t we like most people, just get someone to work out our trip before we leave home?"

Betty was fuming to herself as she pulled her suitcase, with its two plastic wheels, across cobblestones which formed a roadway coming up a hill separating the Blue Mosque and the Aya Sofya Mosque of Istanbul.

Nice morning though hey, Betty?

No reply. They slowly worked their way from the cobblestones, up some steps and across a small patch of grass, which like whatever lies underneath their feet near the Mosques have incredible stories to tell about the past. They kept walking through the small park onto a bitumen path beside a tramline. Wil changing their Turkish lira for tokens and waiting with a host of Turkish people for the next tram to some place with a name he couldn’t pronounce or remember. A ‘nothing meaning’ location to Wil and Betty, whose only quest was to reach a tram stop somewhere up ahead and walk to a rail station.

This little adventure on a sunny morning was part of a bigger journey; a journey for Wil and Betty that began with a flight from Brisbane, Australia. For them now, this is the beginning of a journey to Turkey and the Gallipoli Peninsula, Ephesus, Cappadocia and places in between. A journey into history and culture enmeshed in the present day homes and places of Turkish people who witness and arbitrate over their past and accept change and the legacies of time.

But also a journey to save a failing marriage; a marriage lost in transition rather than deceit.

This journey offering so much to that which may be so little.

Come on Betty, I think it's this way. Wil didn't have a clue where he was walking because all the street signs they could see were in Turkish. Fortunately, a Turkish man told them where to get off their tram, and as Wil and Betty alighted they were faced with a profusion of Turkish names but no sign of a train station. Had they been misled? Why wasn't a train station there to stare back at them and looking like one, you know train lines and things like that?

Luckily, a Frenchman got off the tram with them. Wil asked about the train station and the Frenchman in perfect English replied, It's about two blocks away, accompany me. As they walked he talked, and said he represented a perfume and cologne manufacturer and was attending a seminar or conference of some kind and Istanbul was this year's choice of location. Like so many organisations, the conference organisers picked some faraway exotic destination for the wives or partners as much as for the participants. A tax-deductible holiday and possibly a couple of organised tours tossed in.

The train station was found and tokens exchanged for lira again; the station’s name to be immediately forgotten, and Wil and Betty were onwards moving further into a sunny October morning in Istanbul.

Their journey today hopefully is to board a public bus to a town they picked from a Lonely Planet travel guide, a ferry ride across the Bosphorus to a guesthouse and then tomorrow, hopefully a tour to Gallipoli to step onto the soil, shingles and beaches where Australian and New Zealand soldiers stepped, and for many, their steps led to a place of final resting.

The train trip was uneventful, the Frenchman courteously telling them where to depart. But the Otogar, as they say in Turkey for a bus terminal, was huge and the bus they were looking for was lost within an entanglement of buses and transit offices scattered beside football fields of bitumen surrounded by patchwork of buildings. Luckily for Wil an American this time showed them the direction for buses to the place Wil had written on a piece of paper.

Wil silently thought to himself, ‘You don't need a language, a smile will do, and people will respect that simple gesture’. Wherever you are in the world, the smile is magic when travelling in strange places.

Don't you worry about those, Betty said Wil taking the tickets to whatever location as they walked away from a ticket office to wait for their bus on that sunny morning.

Wil Sinclair is a landscape architect, middle-aged, does not want to accept he is 58 years of age. He is married to Betty, his wife of 33 years, and they are the parents of two children already left home. They call Brisbane their home, and live in a Queenslander style house on the slopes of St Lucia, an affluent suburb of Brisbane. They have a comfortable lifestyle, mundane and entrenched in mediocrity. Their lives were going nowhere of interest to each other.

Wil was born and bred in Brisbane and he spent his entire life in most ways, locked into an area of 20 square kilometres or twelve square miles. But he is content, secure, and nowadays his imagination has left him and it shows in his work. His landscape architecture practice is located in Toowong Village about a kilometre or two from the central business district of Brisbane and located up the street from a railway station.

Wil resembles the conservative side of a person to become a landscape architect. He’s not ‘out there’ in flashy clothes with beard or lengthy hair. Nothing flashy about Wil, just neat and tidy white shirt, slacks generally fawn and content in dark tan shoes. He wears his shirts loose and generally open at the collar with ample pocket for pencils and things, never has on a necktie and his hair is greying and parted on the left, his face is clean, honest and always shaven. Not a tall person, he’s just an average, fit-the-mould-to-be-anyone, person.

Wil’s client base comes from the surrounding suburbia to Toowong. Middle-class, educated, mostly professional work habits his commissions, using Wil’s skills to refurbish mostly tired or neglected landscapes.

Wil resembles a landscape architect model of a person, slightly greying and thinning hair, not too tall or short, paunchy stomach, angulated body on squat legs, slightly rounded and bloated face, perfect teeth and always clean shaved. He was clean cut and conservative to his bootlaces.

Betty, is another story, for Betty is a couple of years younger than Wil. Betty is also a product of Brisbane and the pocket of suburbs stitching their way from the Brisbane CBD along the North bank of the Brisbane River, running into the slopes and hills of Mount Coot-tha. These are settled suburbs, leafy and hilly. Queenslander style of homes of timber set onto stumps with a galvanised roof, verandas along three sides, and room for a garden with a big tree somewhere.

Betty and Wil met at a dancing class at Woolloongabba one night. It was love at first sight, their first loves and the union has hold them so long, but maybe it’s fraying at the edges.

Ironically, Betty is slightly taller than Wil. She always had a firm body, proportioned well at the bust and hips. Bottom just about right. Hair brownish and now tinted as per fashion of the day. Betty dresses conservatively in plain colours and loose fitting to hide her endowments, her shoes are always flat heeled, and prefers a shoulder bag than handbag, with never a hat to hide her freely flowing hair. Betty was an attractive lady but wasn’t game to express it.

Betty and Wil lived together for awhile before marrying and Betty spent her early married life as a housewife and mother, becoming involved in school things for the children and playing social tennis. It was an easy to live life, unobtrusive, and led around traditional things. But recent years saw change. The children had left home and tennis is no longer an option because of an elbow and niggling lower back pain, her weight was now catching up with her and tugging at her beauty. Menstruation passed by, and with it Betty was feeling life starting to pass her by in a meaningless fashion.

So Betty got a job after training herself in bookkeeping through a technical education school, and found new friends, made money of her own, no longer relying on a husband who wasn't into money. She had recently moved jobs before their trip to Turkey.

And the need to continually make money was probably where their problems began. Wil was clever and imaginative, but he was also a dreamer, idealistic, introverted and a prophet of change. Fat chance to make money with that make up. He found himself moving into landscape architecture by chance, rather than as a goal in early life. Instead he was found after leaving school training as a draughtsman in an architect's office. Wil did his work enthusiastically and efficiently, remaining neat and punctual. He was reliable, and collectively these were a good combination of skills for mediocrity.

Wil’s drifting into landscape architecture took time and virtually followed a pathway of doing the landscaping details for architectural drawings. His curiosity to name and use plants in landscape led him to enrol in a certificate of landscape design at a technical college close by his place of work. His continuing and enthralling interest in landscape design saw Wil apply and be accepted into a Graduate Diploma course at Queensland University of Technology studying part-time over four years.

Wil had a flair for landscape architecture. Plant uses and garden profiles came naturally to him. He was sensible enough to wander the streets to identify plant species and note where they were best suited. He drew up lists and guides for hundreds of plants and impressed his lecturers with names, their uses and significance in landscape. But, Wil was content where he lived, his surroundings, its gardens and didn't make full use of this natural flair. Betty…, she just was there as some sort of attachment.

Wil and Betty boarded that bus to its destination, spent the day looking at countryside, not realising they were on European soil and enthralled at the numbers of apartment buildings reaching away from Istanbul.

Why were they there on a sunny day in Istanbul, Turkey? It came about by chance for Wil and Betty one Sunday morning after Church. They were sitting at a timber slatted table on the back veranda of their Queenslander, reading the Queensland Sunday papers and Betty glancing up from a travel section about Turkey said, Wil, let’s go to Turkey.

It may have been the sun filtering through the backyard tree or ambience of contentment weather and its settled feeling. A harmonious thing, that feeling, and Wil, content and purified replied without thinking, Yes, I’d like to do that.

Betty replied, I’m going to hold you to your word, Wil.

That’s fine was all Wil could muster.

Betty organised the airfares and purchased a Lonely Planet guidebook for their Turkey trip. There was no turning back. The book became their guide and history, and in some way, they were completely naive to the complexities of history and time within the places they were now within and about to see.

A ferry ride across the Bosphorus was included in the bus ticket price. So it was taken, back onto Asian soil and the township of Canakkale with a guesthouse said to be run by an Aussie. They inspected and booked a room, asked about touring Gallipoli and within a half an hour after arrival, they had a guided tour organised the next day, and the guide was the same person who introduced Gallipoli to many Australians and New Zealanders including Australia's Defence Minister and the group surrounding him.

Wil wasn’t spiritual to say the least. When he and Betty left Australia for Turkey they were Church of England in the old days or Anglican as it’s now known, but only attended Church as a necessity for social friendship and business contacts or for marriage or funerals. Both had once been interested in the teachings of Christ and that of God and the Christian faith, but not any longer. Church became a duty thing.

Spiritualism to both of them was obscure. Sure, they read about Buddhism and that of Zen, and read books attesting to something of Hinduism. They understood the workings of Zionism and that of the Muslim faith.

Here in Turkey and the home of Muslim people, Wil and Betty quickly realised ‘they’ are the same as ‘us’. These were peaceful, gentle, caring people, and presumably the same the world over to those comfortable in their faith, and to their God or spirit.

Wil, about three for four years ago went through a change. He discovered Feng Shui for it was a fad at that time. He purchased books including that of Gill Hale and the Feng Shui Garden, realising the landscape had another meaning. It was a place of Yin and Yang, Five Element Balance, and that of Chi, a place where auspicious energies react with inauspicious energies, and a place of spiritual attachment if the garden was in visualised as that of Chi.

He also discovered Taoism and its relationship to Feng Shui, accepting Feng Shui origins come from ancient Chinese Taoists, and the many interpretations of Zen in Japan evolving from a mixture of Taoist principles and spiritualisation. He introduced these exciting ideas into his practice, but didn't promote himself.

It was something his fellows and peers would not accept.

Wil and Betty that evening had a leisurely walk in the streets of Canakkale. They found a place for a pleasant meal and made love that night, something that was deluding them and maybe driving a reason for them to come to Turkey together and reigniting a failing marriage.

A lovemaking following past practices, he touching and kissing Betty, gently arousing her, moving his hands over her body and encouraging her to receive him, for 33 years of marriage had long extinguished the excitement of discovery. The mutual passion and art of lovemaking for them had become something of a chore, a bit like making the bed in the morning. This time it was pleasant for them to be in an unfamiliar place and would, if they could have, expand it to reward themselves. Next morning, they walked to a cafe and chatted while waiting for the tour to Gallipoli to commence.

Gallipoli

Gallipoli in recent years has become something of a Mecca for Australians, and part of the European thing, especially timing the visit for 25th April and the Anzac Memorial dawn service. But it was also to be present within a landscape that witnessed the absurdity of man's infliction upon each other and death.

Gallipoli, it’s a location of spirits and history, and histories introducing the place to its spirits and of men from two opposing forces. One force invading and the other force defending. The defenders, the Turks, doing what is being asked of them with the unknowns, hardship and sacrifices made without dissent, a duty and loyalty unknown to exactly who, but finding themselves in military dress with a rifle and few bullets, there to defend their land, and they as children to their mothers, willing to stay there and become part of the soil.

Wil and Betty with a small band of fellow tourists were able to transfer this image of Gallipoli into their minds through their guide who respected the sacrifices made from both sides. He, a Turk and proud of his countrymen’s sacrifice while respectful of the courage and absurdity of the invaders, they being unknown and yet their willingness to sacrifice themselves so easily for a cause they had no inkling for what it was about, or for whom. The guide willing to postulate the British General’s encampment on an island not very far from the entrance to the Bosphorus Straits and Gallipoli Peninsula. The British Generals were unwilling to visit and as such showed their ignorance and ease to sacrifice those under them.

Wil and Betty’s guide took the small group to a cemetery located beside a small beach, identified with marble plaques with names on them such as Simpson, the man with the donkey who gave his life to save others, and also the names of soldiers whose feats and daring will remain unknown, and untold.

Yet, the landscape is now so different to that of 1915, its vegetation cover, erosion of the gullies, the beach itself and the obliquitous bitumen roadway now cuts across the sacred ground to support ease of transport for tourist coaches. The innocent tourist of similar eke to Wil and Betty, are incrementally, and collectively altering and potentially destroying the histories and spirits of so many places around the world. Wil, thinking to himself, ‘who are the villains in this parade, and are we as tourists, the innocent perpetuators?’.

Wil and his small group, included a specialist doctor from Brisbane of all places, he was middle aged and greying, joining the tour as an aside to a conference he was attending in Ankara. The group complimented by a couple from Korea and someone-else-from-somewhere-else. Gathered together as any group, they visiting the Gallipoli battlefields in their air conditioned minibus, and it separated them from a cold afternoon unfolding within misty rain.

They stopped at Lone Pine and its pine tree, and beside it, a Memorial and the scrubby landscape folded across hillsides and slopes, falling towards the Dardanelles and Sea of Marmara; this landscape now silent. But underneath the same earth, Turkish forces once lived their lives and held their positions, giving some then taking it back. A place where two forces faced each other with the ferocity and determination continuance of life demanded.

The little tour paused on a dirt track located exactly where it acted to separate the two opposing forces and a place where a can of baked beans could be tossed to the other side, and the pausing of rifle fire to bring back the dead and wounded. And a place where Christmas was respected, the two forces both human and so similar in a way.

Nearby was a memorial for the Turks and a moving salute to all who fought and sacrificed over the nine month Gallipoli campaign. On the memorial was inscribed a message from Lieutenant Colonel Mustafa Kemal who headed the Turkish armies of Gallipoli. Wil and Betty paused and read the message, respectful for all who were sent to Gallipoli and Ataturk’s words there to stay in their minds.

Those words alone were enough to stir the emotions of all who visit Gallipoli, Ataturk’s word so precious, emotional and fulfilling.

Wil was silently moved by it all and didn't convey his feelings to Betty. No doubt, she had her feelings about the words and what they meant.

But Wil was feeling something different, a deeper feeling of being within the Gallipoli Peninsula. Maybe it's in the plants or the landscapes, the slopes and hills themselves, the trenches or whatever remains of them or possibly thoughts of people once occupying them.

They visited a small clearing about the size of a grass tennis court, located on a hillside not far from where Ataturk commanded his forces. The tour group listened to their guide explaining the courage and sacrifice of New Zealand soldiers who were ordered to leave their trenches and charge the lines on the other side of this clearing only to be machine gunned down as platoon after platoon of men moved onto that place. Wil wondered what thoughts could have been on the minds of those waiting for the order to charge over the bodies of those laying in front of them.

Wil and Betty were silent tourists out of place. These were places to keep thoughts within the inner mind. The misty rain coming off the Dardanelles mixing with the scene made them aware of what those who were part of the Gallipoli campaign had to endure; bitter cold, searing heat, dust, dysentery and mud.

It was a quiet trip back to the ferry point and back to their hotel. Gallipoli had touched on both of them, and maybe brought something of themselves back to earth and their lives being pretty meaningless, and without sacrifice. They had not known suffering or how to suffer.

Ephesus

That evening, Wil and Betty had their first disagreement of the trip. It was over Wil’s careful planning, for he was the one to study Lonely Planet and work out places to visit, places to stay, transport and places to eat. Forever the meticulous planner so used to preparing specifications for a landscape.

Wil had his mind set to leave their hotel, the one he had pencilled into his Lonely Planet back in Istanbul, and travel by public bus to the Acropolis and Troy and visit for one day this ancient wonder, the nearby mud springs and continue on to Ephesus the following day.

No, I’m not doing that, said Betty, This is my trip as much as yours and Troy can wait for another time. I want to go to the coast and Kas.

Wil said, When are we likely to return to its history, Bet?

But Betty replied, No I'm going by bus tomorrow to Selcuk and Ephesus, you please yourself.

Wil sulked, knowing he had to give in. Betty in no way was equipped to use public transport in this strange country. She had no knowledge of places to stay, the towns to visit and all those details he had put together.

So they took a public bus to Izmir.

Coming into Izmir on their public bus, they witnessed this large and busy city of Turkey, the city becoming well-known for its electronic and manufacturing industries, and having ready access to central Turkey, Ankara and the Mediterranean Sea. Wil looking out of the buses window noticed huge concentrations of apartment buildings clustered onto the hillsides. Same size, design and elevation, and the numbers of these buildings were mindboggling, seeing them stretch deep into the valleys. Where did the people come from to use them, and why did they come here?

Wil was aware that urbanisation and its relentless growth around the globe were being fed by rural people immigrating into cities, and a job. These people were becoming instruments of another birth, that of city growth, consumption of natural resources, benefiting from technological innovation, and in doing so, the loss of individual identity; their families and forebears somewhere else, and probably, a rural place. Older people’s baby sons and daughters having left those places and the earth under their feet in some way to join an artificial world, one created from steel, concrete, glass and bitumen.

Wil’s interest in Feng Shui suggested to him these processes were Yang and the surging determination and strength of Yang energies were dissipating those of Yin, nature, and connectedness to the Earth. Wil knew Yang’s infiltration on Yin was behind climate change and global warming. Nature and the natural environment were under threat and change was inevitable as Yang was taking people into the unknown, including that unknown of ‘mass global urbanisation’.

Wil was silently thinking about this dilemma as they wound their way past the apartment complexes and into the city itself, reaching an Otogar and boarding another public bus to Selcuk, and from there, the famous Roman ruins of Ephesus. At least this was worth it, and for Betty, it's up to her.

Wil and Betty had noticed another thing about Turkey. Its bus systems and their organisation through the Otogar’s were incredibly efficient, and huge numbers of Turkish people were able to get around the country so easily and affordably. The buses were modern, clean, air conditioned and staffed with someone who came around with a bottle of water and some moisturisers for hands and face. The roadways they passed along were tidy, not potholed and constructed with a determination from those who constructed them to cross mountains irrespective of any barrier placed in front of them. Turks were aware their roads linked their cities and encouraged economy of transport, allowing manufacturing and rural enterprises to prosper in places where they normally couldn’t.

Turkey has a lot of lessons for other democracies to look at and