Jean shifts gears of the Hilux as we snake up 99 bends. Morning fog clings to the valleys, not yet ready to receive the sun. The Door's Roadhouse Blues crackles through dented speakers as the radio dips in and out of range. With the way Jean is driving, I suspect she is not hearing Morrison’s repetitive call to focus on the road ahead, both hands on the wheel. A quartz crystal hangs from the rearview mirror, jostling with one of those cardboard air fresheners cut to the shape of a pine tree. I can smell wet dog, dried grass and a hint of patchouli.   

Jean turns the radio down and asks, ‘what’s your star sign?’

‘Virgo,’ I respond. I feel familiar with this language but unsure if I signed up for the right Tour of Queenie.

‘Mmm hmmm, an earth sign.’ She nods with a knowing glance. ‘And your element?’

‘My element?’

‘You know, the five elements.’ She explains that in Chinese philosophy there are five elements all things are composed of—wood, earth, water, fire and metal, and they all relate to each other in cycles of creation and destruction. She tells me ‘wood fuels fire, fire creates earth, earth bears metals, metal collects water…like in a bucket, and water nourishes wood. But wood,’ she emphasises, ‘can also separate earth with its root systems.’

‘And this is destructive?’ I ask as I look to the young wattles and pines penetrating the surrounding hills. I see them reshaping slopes stripped bare of their elders.

‘Yes,’ she responds. ‘Well, think of it like one element is overcoming the other, controlling or dominating it in some way. Like earth can absorb rain or contain the flow of a river, water can extinguish fire, fire melts metal and metal cuts wood.’ She karate chops her hand across the dashboard.

‘I see,’ I nod, too shy to admit I don’t fully understand. Life doesn’t feel so simple.

We establish that I am earth. ‘Double earth,’ Jean notes with a raised eyebrow and grin. I smile, wondering what this reveals about me and then turn inward, self-conscious she might be reading my thoughts. I glance out the window to a wall of rock that has been cut by metal.

I am earth
bearing minerals
containing rivers
deep organs on fire
conducting energy
waves pulled by a blood moon
seeping through portals
everywhere

We walk from the highway to Iron Blow lookout. I feel as if I’m a fly being shooed by an invisible hand. ‘What about the wind?’ I shout out to Jean.

‘It is ever-present. It keeps things moving,’ she cackles, leaning into the gale force, motionless for a moment as if the wind pressed pause.

We persist, despite the resistance, and all the while I’m overlaying the elemental cycles onto this place. I’ve lost touch with my internal compass and I want to make sense of a tourist brochure’s description - ‘a devastated-yet-beautiful landscape'. Memories from the past days flicker before me.

wattle and camellia blossoms
entangled by the queen
river rusting metal
and wood
until it meets a different energy
slowed down
plump moss clinging to stone
sheltered from the wind

From the cantilevered lookout I cautiously peer over the edge and into the open cut mine. Jean must think I’m trying to be graceful because she yells out ‘let yourself be tousled!’

An ore body
replaced by
a water body
an amphitheatre for those
who can read ripples

ghosts and fortunes
waxing and waning
this too will pass

Back at the Airbnb, I light a fire to calm the rattle in my bones. I can hear Jean’s voice on repeat ‘wood fuels fire, fire creates earth…’ I press the collar of my jacket to my face, inhale, and find comfort in the scent of yesterday still lingering in my fibre. A group of us visitors had been invited by Johno, a local Palawa man to Lake Burbury for a welcome ceremony. We were a mixed bunch. Some are here to sift through memories of this place, some have bloodlines coursing the surface whilst others run deep, and some, like me, are outsiders, ‘mainlanders’, seeking stories of connection. No matter where we had come from, in that moment we all understood ourselves as guests.

mist lifts
a submerged forest
of relations

embers crackle
into wet eucalyptus
welcoming respect
warming intentions

I inhale again. Now I can sense earth and recall my intention.

be present
to the systems already at play
let yourself to be tousled
drift your gaze to the edges
Take your hands off the wheel slowly

And let it roll...

Caitlin Franzmann

Caitlin Franzmann is a Magandjin (Brisbane) based artist who works with installation, text, sound, performance and community-based projects. She creates experiences in galleries and public spaces that encourage slowness and invite conversations about human relationships to ecological processes and change. Since completing a Bachelor of Fine Art at Queensland College of Art in 2012, she has presented work nationally and internationally, including at Kyoto Art Centre and New Museum (NYC). Caitlin was a core member of feminist art collective LEVEL (2013-2017) and Ensayos (2018-2024) - a collective research practice centred on extinction, human geography, coastal health and peatland conservation.