Time, Seasonality and Design:
Reconsidering temporal dimensions and patterns of the Australian landscape

Dr David Jones

The storylines appropriated the Yarra Valley as an earth-anchor in which to convey the story messages. The ‘Climate - Seasonality’ story drew upon the ecology of the Upper Yarra Valley and in particular the wet sclerophyll Mountain Ash (Eucalyptus regnans) dominated forests. Other parts of the Gallery used the cool wet Antarctic Beech (Nothofagus cunninghamii) forests and the Messmate Stringybark (E obliqua) and Red Stringybark (E macrorhyncha) riparian flood-plains along the River Yarra as ecological settings for the stories.

Just how to realise this design strategy and to enrich it with a Wurundjeri understanding and cultural reading was unclear. The perchance publication of ‘Patterns in the Valley of the Christmas Bush’ (Jones, Mackay & Pisani 1997) subsequently provided a design thesis has intertwined time, natural ecology and Wurundjeri cultural themes together. This ‘time and seasonality’ thesis was developed in greater detail in Seasons of the Upper Yarra Valley (Jones, Mackay, Paton & Pisani 1998) and has provided the design model around which the Climate Zone in the Gallery of Life has been developed.

Jones, Mackay, Paton & Pisani’s (1998) Upper Yarra Valley thesis proposed seven temporal seasons, and two environmental variants, for the Upper Yarra Valley—part of the Wurundjeri country. Each season had a different temporal zone and environmental cues and strengths. The variants, fire and flood, addressed phases of significant environmental crisis in the Valley that sequentially occurred approximately every seven and twenty-eight years respectively. The season, given their richness of Wurundjeri cultural myths, symbols and food-patterns relationships provided design guidelines to enable a Wurundjeri elder-endorsed cultural translation of the ‘nature’ of the Upper Yarra Valley landscape. Variants fire and flood were indirectly incorporated into the larger landscape design for the Gallery of Life. The essence of this translation was the need to detach our sensibilities from the quad-partite European calendar (Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter) and to better understand the subtle patterns in our local environments.

Thus, project landscape architects Taylor Cullity [Lethlean] concluded:

	Figure Image of the Climate/Seasons Walk in the Gallery of Life. Source: Taylor Cullity Lethlean reproduced with permission

This Wurundjeri calendar represents a more detailed and local appreciation of the environment and reflects cultural values of the people. Biological sciences also provide a perspective of the great subtlety of biological change and continuity through the systematic collection and analysis of data. By representing both the indigenous and scientific interpretations of seasonal change and continuity, a great appreciation of the human quest to make sense of this environment will be conveyed (Taylor & Cullity 1997: 7.2).

Their final design strategy for the Climate zone proposed:

Zone Communications Objective
To promote an understanding that plants and animals in the forest respond to the impact of climatic change in a variety of ways.

Storyline Summary
The Tall Forests, like all environments and organisms on earth, ride our planet along a regular and predictable route through the solar system. This circular route imposes strict cyclic patterns of solar intensity and day length, and triggers (less strict) cyclic change in the climate: the seasons. Recognisable patterns exist, which people have codified into seasonal calendars.

The Europeans tradition of many Victorians observes a seasonal calendar of four seasons: summer, autumn, winter and spring, reflecting the culture and environment of European more closely than the local environment. The indigenous people of the region, the Wurundjeri, have a seven season calendar, which at the same time recognises two larger seasonal cycles which related to infrequent fire and flood events. This Wurundjeri calendar represents a more detailed and local appreciation of the environment and reflects the cultural values of the people.

Science also provides a biological perspective of the enormous range and subtlety of ecosystems and life processes in the forest (Taylor & Cullity 1998: 501).