⛵ VOYAGE #06 — Sacred Geometry & Flinders Island

Below is the blog version of my fortnightly newsletter on the ocean, photography, craftsmanship, books and living a curious and exploratory life. To receive this directly into your inbox, subscribe.

⛵ VOYAGE #06 — by Nick Jaffe — December, 4, 2020



V O Y A G E
§
Sacred Geometry & Flinders Island #06

         Welcome to edition #06 of VOYAGE: No, you're not seeing double, this is another edition in quick succession, as a means to catch up on my fortnightly newsletter commitment!

I recently visited Flinders Island, the largest of the Furneux Group of islands laying in Bass Strait. This tiny outcrop of islands is battered by the continual push of the roaring forties, a wind which has blasted itself virtually unimpeded since brushing past the continent of Africa, on its run around the globe.

When a southerly blows up in Bass Strait, the relatively shallow seas and opposing currents turn boat crossings into a tumultuous nightmare. I once sailed the Strait from Devonport to Melbourne, motoring up the Tamar River, into the night and across the famed body of water, without so much as spilling my tea. The sea was flat and our 60ft expedition yacht was on a return leg from charter, loaded to the hilt with soft cheeses and porterhouse steaks — the group that had chartered the vessel fell limp to the cabin sole with such violent seasickness, not an ounce of French brie was touched and they all hopped off in Devonport, vowing never to sail again. We sailed lightly back to Melbourne as if we were upon Lake Como sipping Aperol Spritz. I am not used to such niceties — the luxuries of a working engine you can rely on, flat seas, refrigeration (to even consider soft cheeses as a cruising snack) nor a dedicated bunk (which was dry!). Anyway I digress, I actually wanted to talk to you about sacred geometry, global policy think tanks and A-frame houses — not pre-meal drinks.

Flinders Island has been a somewhat mythical place for me, as I grew up with stories from my dad about his time there, fresh from New York in the early 1980's. Much of my life has been about a search for identity and a search for meaning, so I was excited to be finally exploring the island with an opportunity to seek out some of his tales.

About six years ago, I was leafing through some books at my mums house and stumbled across a newspaper cutting about Coober Pedy, a pretty shit town in the middle of nowhere, some 850 clicks north of Adelaide. The name comes from the Aboriginal term ‌kupa-piti, which means 'whitefellas hole' — this can have a few different meanings I suppose, from white people digging lots of holes around the place in search of opals, or because it was at the arse-end of the once untouched and now molested western desert.

Dad was a dreamer like me in many ways, I think. He probably looked at that newspaper cutting while at a table somewhere in Greenwich Village, and thought to himself "Coober Pedy must be the absolute last frontier on earth". Fortunately for him he never made it to that shit-hole (shiti-piti?), and somehow ended up on the largest island of the Furneux Group in Bass Strait instead. I surmise that dad was an experiential dreamer like me, because I also find it hard to believe things unless I've experienced them. I hitchhiked all the way to the arctic circle once, just because I wanted to experience what an endless day actually feels like.

The story goes that the only person dad knew in the whole of Australia, was a mythographer and symbologist (also from New York) named Robert Lawlor. While traveling in India, Lawlor discovered the works of French Egyptologist and esotericist R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz, which led him on his lifelong study of sacred geometry.

The story becomes hazy at this point. Actually, it was hazy from the beginning, but I won't let my memory get in the way of a good tale. So, when dad wasn't spearfishing off the coast of Flinders Island and returning to beaches covered in black snakes at midday with his catch, he was labouring for Lawlor, who was building an A-Frame house. Not only was Lawlor studying sacred geometry on a remote island in Australia, far far away from both of their homes, but he was also on a year long experiment for the RAND Corporation, to see whether it was possible for a human to survive entirely on Spirulina) (algae).

How a man interested in sacred symbolic meanings from New York, ended up on Flinders Island building an A-Frame house, while running an experiment on his own body for a global policy think tank, is beyond me — but I love the idea that dad was somehow part of this — probably because it's exactly the kind of thing I'd love to get myself wound up in.

Flinders Island is also where dad retired from reading books. That's what he told us anyway. See, when he wasn't labouring or spearfishing or talking about symbols or egyptology or whether Schwaller de Lubicz was anti-Semitic or not, he was reading. He read every book at the library. And when there were no more books to read, they flew new ones in for him. He read every book he ever wanted to read in those days, and really didn't do much reading since. Our house was filled with books, there were (and still are) shelves of them. Dad even continued to buy books, but only because he wanted a physical record of a book he had already read, or, he wanted it on the shelf so he could 'read by osmosis' — as he once told me. Read by osmosis? While unscientific, I suppose there is some sense in the idea that if you surround yourself with enough of the right objects as well as the right people, it might just rub off on you.

I remember dad telling me about the time he drove a small Boston Whaler with a single outboard engine across Bass Strait, from Flinders Island to mainland Australia, in a single day. I always thought it was a farcical story — that is of course until I was eating Brie across the Strait on a perfectly delightful day under sail — I could finally see it might have been possible. Like any body of water — depending on the weather — things can be like Lake Como or more like the terrifying waters around Cape Horn.

Soon after landing on the island, I was drinking a cocktail (not an Aperol Spritz) with our host Jo, from On Island Time. After some pleasantries, I asked her if she knew of any beaches covered in snakes — alas, she did not, but she did hear a story once... I then asked about A-frame houses — were there any on the island? She called Mick who was the oracle of the island — he mentioned that he knew of an A-frame house built by hippies in the 80's — I figured my dad could have probably fit into that category, and obviously the decade lined up — I got quite excited. Alas, after further calls the next day, it was clear it was not the house — but — there was one more known A-frame on the island...

The borrowed Subaru we were driving was on empty. It had been that way for quite a while now. How long do these Subaru's go on empty anyway? Let's see. We wound up and down some small sandy roads and an A-frame appeared, surrounded by wallabies. I was with my pal Sarah, and while I walked around inside (it was a public wildlife sanctuary & cabin) investigating the provenance of the tin roof, she hand fed the fauna. This wasn't it. It just didn't add up. It didn't feel right. The pictures on the walls, the location, the building itself... There were only a few hours left of daylight and our flight off the island was the next morning... This mystery would require some more study — in fact, it might require some esoteric investigation.

Sadly, dad isn't around anymore, so fact checking my memories are imposssible... However, as it turns out, Lawlor is still doing great. He lives in the Byron hinterland now (of course he does), but he's impossible to reach and guards his privacy — I managed to track someone down who knows him in person, but he informed me he was on some kind of creative sabbatical and he had no way to contact him...

So for now, I will continue to believe my dad could read by osmosis, and that perhaps Lawlor (who must be well into his 80's or beyond), ended up discovering the key to eternal life, on a wild untamed island in Bass Strait: An eternal life made possible by a daily bowl of blue-green algae.

# §

Books

Recent photographic outputs

Recent workshop outputs

  • People often ask me to make them a leather dog lead. I always tell them it will never happen. Until it did.

Recent inputs

Elsewhere

My primary Instagram / Website & work / YouTube Channel / Workshop Instagram / Airbnb / Twitter

Reach out

If there is something you'd like me to riff on in the next edition or delve into further personally — simply reply to this email.

Colophon: written in Markdown with a dash of CSS in iA Writer, captured via Squarespace + Zapier & shipped to you via Buttondown + various tubes.

Nick J