CHARLES MASSY READS THE LANDSCAPE
SUBJECT Charles Massy
OCCUPATION Farmer and author
INTERVIEWER Mikey Densham
PHOTOGRAPHER Rohan Thomson
LOCATION Cooma, Australia
DATE October, 2018
ANTIDOTE TO Domination
UNEXPECTED Excitement
Most of us can still remember a time when we were taught the basics of reading and writing. It’s hard to imagine how communicating and navigating the world happens without basic literacy. I also remember my first memories of camping, walking and being in nature, but I can’t remember ever being taught how to read a landscape or interpret the natural patterns found in falling valleys, wide ridges or open plains. Nature’s language, or ecological literacy, is something Indigenous communities have learned and understood for millennia. But for modern culture, it is a dying knowledge system.
This is a part of the reason I was enticed to chat with Charles Massy. I wanted to hear from the guy who grew up on the land and had a number of epiphanies that radically altered the way he saw, understood and farmed it. His story is one of hope as much as it is a blunt warning, a story of how true intimacy with the land can spark life and abundance, while the opposite can lead to sheer loss.
Charles was raised on a farm in the unique countryside of the Monaro in the highlands of New South Wales. Born into a farming family, he quickly developed both a love for the natural world and the traditional European way of interacting with and farming the land—a practice he describes as working with the “mechanical mind.” A storyteller by nature, Charles’ recent book, Call of the Reed Warbler shows the impact of European farming on Australian land in extraordinary detail, and makes a case for adopting new (old) agricultural practices to bring our farms back to biological richness.
“If we can harness the energy and the minds of those of us who care for Earth, both those managing landscapes and urban people with their decisions to buy food and re-engage with growing their own food, there’s hope.”
Our conversation is balanced by Charles’ characteristic no-nonsense way of looking at things. We need to dramatically change the way we eat, produce and dispose of our food and fibres, he warns us, if we want to build healthy communities and save the planet. Charles’ personal steps towards regenerative farming and ecological literacy is sobering and inspiring, particularly coming from an earlier generation of Australian farmers. As a farmer myself, I felt incredibly privileged to be learning from this honest, hard-working farmer about how he is learning a different language—a language which talks with nature and of a brighter future.
MIKEY DENSHAM: I’ve been diving through your book. Restricting how much I actually read ’cause I was hoping to have a conversation as well just straight from my heart, not reading too much. But it’s really beautifully written, I’m really enjoying it.
CHARLES MASSY: Thanks mate.
No worries. So I know you’ve got to run off at some point. You’re selling off sheep you said?
Well because of the drought we have to keep selling out, selling down. So we’ve got another truck going off today. Only a hundred odd. But there’ll be more if it doesn’t rain.
We’re all thinking of you down here. It’s hard for me to imagine. Down in Main Ridge we get a fair whack of rainfall and it’s so green at the moment.
And just seeing photos of you guys up there is pretty heartbreaking.
We might get something out of this next change. So we’ll see what comes.
Fingers crossed. You know, in your book you’ve got some beautiful descriptive pieces of the landscape. And I was wondering if you could describe
