Overview

While building a secluded retirement home in rugged, dry sclerophyll, natural woodland in central Victoria, David Chalmers began glimpsing fragments of strange stories written in the landscape. Stone walls and mysterious caves revealing evidence of long past human habitation, animal tracks through nearly virgin woodland and forest linking with wild animal behaviour, and other natural mysteries began pushing David to yet another calling and to new destinations. Those pathways were to become the storylines of Eight Moons to Midnight. Introducing his book, 'The Biggest Estate on Earth', Bill Gamage describes his discovery of Australia's indigenous people and cultures as like meeting 'people I never knew'. These are the same words David Chalmers would use to describe his experience. On the other hand, 'The Biggest Estate on Earth' is primarily a comprehensive 'scholarship of literature' that seeks to analyse much of what has been recorded (mostly in English) about Australia's indigenous people. In contrast, Eight Moons to Midnight describes a study applying 'scientific principles' to the remnants of the life and living of one indigenous clan, as that has been preserved in a myriad of ways in the living landscape, 200 years after that clan was driven away.

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9781998190706

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Professor David Chalmers' lifelong career in plant biology began as a field assistant, eventually leading to Deputy Vice Chancellor in universities, research centres, and organisations in Australia and overseas. Throughout David's career his constant research goal was to learn to manipulate plant growth so these processes could be harnessed to reduce the cost, and increase the yield and quality, of plant products. With his colleagues he published work in many research journals and scholarly treatises. Their work has been recognised with awards from national and international scholarly societies. Quirkily, whilst exploring the mysteries of plant growth, David also owned a dairy farm. David the farmer learned to understand his animals in similar ways to how he understood his plants. Bizarrely, in the most mysterious and coincidental of ways, this potpourri of knowledge prepared his mind for his 'move to retirement in the bush' and in due course lit the fuse to inflame his scientific curiosity yet again. Alvin Darcy is a Yorta Yorta, Taungurung man through his father, and a Ngarigo, Walbunja man through his mother. Alvin studied graphic design and has worked in building and construction, landscaping, and as an artist using pyrography, screen printing, logo design, and bronze sculpture. In 2019 he was awarded the People's Choice Award - Koorie Heritage Trust Art Prize. His works are held in private collections in Victoria and South Australia and public galleries. In 2021, he had a solo exhibition through Castlemaine Art Museum's Orbit program and most recently was commissioned by Sharing Stories Foundation to create a large-scale totem series for a permanent cultural exhibition - Boorp Boorp Boondyil (passing knowledge onto our children), on Djaara Country.

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