I’ve been visiting the lake to observe the drying process, and the freeing up of the dying forces. When things dry out, collapse, something else is freed up. The lake was full of water and of life, a real world in miniature, even just a few weeks ago. Now there are seven swans, two Pacific black ducks, a sharp-tailed sandpiper, three stilts, one white-faced heron, a handful of crakes, some moorhens, swamphen regulars, and maybe a rail or two in the rushes and reeds. Green grass is growing on the drying bed. The landcare people are measuring water quality today. I’m not sure they’ve ever been here before. They don’t know the usual water levels, that it dries out most summers. “We looked up the history before we came—this is one of the largest freshwater lakes in Perth. The water levels used to be right up there. The canopy was tuarts and paperbarks.” They get their shoes caught in the waterline mud as they reach for the water with a bottle on a long pole. They scatter swans and ducks, and the sandpiper and stilts move on. They ask if the old fence line was a jetty. I ask them what they’re expecting to find. They talk about heavy metals, the way the tropical fig leaves impact the water quality. I tell them about the figs already cut down for the borers, the paperbarks from before colonisation on the way out. They look surprised. The wind picks up as they try to approach the lake, blows them backwards. They put on Wellington boots. I wish them luck and leave them to it.