Cape Tribulation Moai / Rob's Place

Rainforest Hideaway is a wonderfully creative environment. Although I am not making books at the moment, I am making lots of other things, as well as writing plenty of poetry and prose. Rob is also eternally creative with several projects on the go at any one time. His latest passion is for building giant concrete scultptures like Rapa Nui moai (Easter Island heads). Here's some photos of the first one coming into existence, accompanied by a poem I wrote called Rob's Place.

First Rob made the framework of reo bar

Rob uses everything he finds here.

Looking at a gnarly rootball

he sees Medusa’s throne, and makes it.

Deano from next-door welded the reo bar

We live with massive slabs of fallen trees

dragged in from the forest,

smoothed and sealed into muscular furniture.

Rob sculpted the head with three layers of chicken wire

The living room is decorated with driftwood au natural:

a lifesize giraffe, a baby rhinoceros head, a giant melomy fleeing.

Only the frog in the lightshade is real.

I helped by climbing inside to fasten the chicken wire to the reo bar.

Spiders and bats, branches and vines

all come inside, recognizing a sympathetic habitat.

We breakfast with the brush turkey.

Applying the first of two layers of concrete

Outside, narrow tracks lace through the forest,

past structures that seem to float among the trees

but human presence here is not tentative.

Ready for the final layer of concrete with iron oxide to make it dark, then alayer of potting mix porridge, and whole thing wrapped in cling wrap to cure as slowly as possible in the warm weather

Ask Rob’s towering, earthy avatar,

the stern moai rising from the ground

to preside over sunny expanses of water.

Unveiling a week later

Hiding away in the rainforest,

offering a seductive, sensitive vision of belonging

Rob’s place imagines forest life into reality.