This day I’m driving back down the coast after visiting the lake, looking west over the ocean as the sun rises higher in the east. And out there, picking up some of that morning light on its white wings, I spy the long slow flapping of boodalung the pelican like a sliver cut out of the blue sky behind. He’s on his own, and slowly flapping but moving fast—faster than me sitting on 60km, winding my way down Marine Parade, over humps, maybe the odd detour for the first governor’s relative’s new mansion, a roundabout, apartments, traffic lights and so on, as boodalung simply flaps high over the water out there, keeping an eye on what’s coming—the dunes, the water of the river—maybe seeing already in mind’s eye the rock or stretch of water he’ll alight on. I lose him before the big red cranes of the port, and can’t be sure whether he went to the patch of limestone they put in place to save the train line from ships that loose their places in storms, or whether he maybe flew further on towards the southern side, or south beach or some of the other water places further south. I suspect he went up the river. And I wonder how far he’s come today, flying over all that coast, faster than I can drive.