A couple of months ago someone at the lake said to me, “My wife and I have decided that the water isn’t going down any further because it’s reached the water table.” Something in the way he said it made me sceptical. And, anyway, I try not for explanations but for portraying. And so, in the meantime, though I have gone away and come back again, the lake, it must be said, has not dried out completely, though hot dry weather has persisted. And when it has rained new puddles have formed, but they too have not dried out during further hot dry weather that followed. So, without reaching for an explanation (perhaps failing), but reaching through portrayal, which my shoreline colleagues have somehow added to, we might well be forced to say that we are not looking so much at the drying water of the lake sucking itself away; but rather the breathing of the water level of the whole area—the so-called water table. If so, it is less a case of something drying from the outside in (or topside down), but rather something rising and falling from the inside out (or underside up).
Author Archives: jbstubley
Swamphen Bathroom
At the lake again today I see Kwirlam the purple swamphen in a little puddle of water by the edge of the reeds he likes to inhabit this time of year. This bath sits under a little dead-log overhang, and seems now just deep enough for him to sit in and make a few red-beak head-dives under the water and then spill this over his back and wings, wetting his feathers. He does this rapidly—over and over again—diving down head first, while crouching, with the water falling over his back. After a dozen or so of these, he steps out and shakes himself a little in the sunshine.
Just Manatj-ing
At the lake today I see three manatj corellas head south over the pools of water. There have been many on the streets of Cottesloe closer to the ocean pecking at the cones of Norfolk pines and, maybe, other roots and seeds. But I realise it’s been a while since I’ve seen many here—these three seem to look down at the water, but decide to keep on flying. I lose them after a while, or look away, only to find a short time later koolbardie the magpie chasing three more manatj—or maybe the same—out over the lake, away from the golfcourse and trees.
Djeran, adulthood season; first rains, without the rain.
The Season of Fertility
We are deep into the season of adulthood, butting up against the season of fertility. And still the water hasn’t come. Kwirlam the swamp hen has been running around the lake today, chasing one another, and there is plenty of room to run. There’s mud and grass, but not much water, and only a few other birds in the morning sun: a couple of shelducks, three black winged stilts and a handful of little noodilyarong black fronted dotterels. Other than that, it’s a wide open field to chase and hunt and flap and fly and run. And they do, one on one, past each other, their red beaks low low to the ground, their black bodies moving on their whirling legs, their purple chests bent down. Sometimes they move so fast they might as well spread their wings a little and fly for a time, their feet protruding behind—until they come to land again—then letting them down early, reaching for the ground.
Seasons have their laws to follow, even if the rains don’t come.
Goomal Morning
I arrive at the lake this morning and there seems to be one helluva racket amongst the birds by the big trees to the east. Not only are the lorikeets all screeching, wardong is crowing up a storm, and jakalak the red wattlebird is giving away his true name loudly, incessantly. And even old dili-brit the magpie lark is there singing out his high-pitched protest. I see koolbardie the magpie on a branch or two, though he doesn’t seem to say much—one of the few. And I wonder if there might be a raptor circling higher, or even perched among the trees, for they don’t seem to be chasing much, or evading either. It’s just an all-round protesting cacophony. I walk the path and approach the lakeside edge, and there spot a few people looking up at a forking ledge amongst the gums. And there in one little hollow sits a still and furry morning goomal, the possum, awake in the day, kept awake no doubt by all this bothering. Some town official has been keeping the birds at bay, or at least that’s what I gather from what I overhear the nearby people say. I walk a little south, and look up at him, all pink-nosed and big, black eyed. I go and watch the lake for a while, and wait for the whole thing to pass over, the whole thing to subside. Eventually people seem to move on and even the birds do too. I walk back a little and look up at the little fella in the tree. There is no more screeching. Jakalak remains though, looking on inquisitively, jumping from branch to branch. The official is doing a lap to catch lead-less dogs, while someone keeps on filming and taking photos, wanting me to know everything she’s just learned: “The ranger threw sticks at the birds; not usually out in the day apparently; probably traumatised, the little thing.” Someone on a bike stops to ask me if it’s a koala; their accent is South African. They then immediately suggest “or a possum” before I can reply. I can see his little limbs are shaking. He’s licking some of them. I walk around the other side of the tree—he doesn’t seem bloody or pecked at, like one I saw here a year or two ago, in nearby tree, who had a run-in with the crows. I consider calling the same person I did back then, and waiting for him and wildlife officers and more town employees to come. But goomal looks like he’s stopped shaking, I can’t see any blood, and the birds seem to have moved on for the most part. Last year the possum eventually moved to another tree. And I wonder what more could be done for this one now. So I get on, no birds left screaming, no people left to bother him, for now.
(Post script: I come again the next day and, from that spot at least, he is gone.)
Ngalkaning and Jerenkar
Ngalkaning (or nankeen if you can’t manage that) night heron all rufous and still in the evening by the river, perched above a pylon at the end of the water-police jetty. And slightly above him, on a bigger pylon, two janjarak silver gulls squawking and screaming at him to leave. They don’t fly or dive bomb, but merely screech down at him from a feet or two away, all flustered and inflamed. At one point the heron seems to point his beak a little more their way and then open it up, but his movements are so subtle it’s hard to really see, and maybe it was imagined. The gulls squawk and protest even louder, and the heron seems to return to his earlier position—one eye on the gulls, the other looking occasionally sideways at the river beneath. In any case, he seems poised—looking at his assailants, but also somewhere between them and whatever might be swimming below. One or two other herons glide by, letting out a throaty bark from time to time. It’s quite the raucous scene, and I consider going. But I watch a little longer—long enough to hear the gulls eventually lessen their accusations, and ultimately cease altogether. Then the silence (and the river passing). Then I go.
The Dying of the Trees
For the last few weeks I’ve been watching and hearing about the dying of the trees. Today I really noticed it most obviously after a few days being inside with illness. The dry time has continued into this season of first rains. And some trees haven’t made it. I hear of others, further from the city, but even here I’ve seen many peppermints—wanil—dry and baked and dead; many tuarts by the lake, other eucalypts. There are smaller shrubs by the river, acacias maybe (or were they cockie’s tongues?) that also haven’t made it, in addition to the dead casuarina’s poisoned for million dollar views.
And then at the lake today I thought, and surely it couldn’t be for the first time, of the dead tree stumps in the middle of the lake, dry and grey. They have been there as long as I’ve been visiting—a seemingly permanent fixture in the up-and-down movements of the water and birds from year to year. But for such trees to have once been here—eucalypts I guess, maleleucas maybe—this place would have once been much drier, for it’s in the centre of the lake that their skeletons rest. And they rest next to the straight edge of a fence line, protruding from the bed not quite as high. In the northern part of the lake the dead remains stand even higher, serving most recently as perch for the black shouldered kite. The northern ground is higher, dries out first, is covered in greener grass earlier, so it makes sense the trees were higher there—but even at the southern end they must not have been tiny; the ground must have been much drier, for no tree or bush grows there now, between the deepest centre, and the highest water periphery; only the back-and-forward movement of grasses breathing in the seasons, the rushes and reeds at the edges, then ground cover, going out to some shrubs and sedges and, on dryer land, eventually trees.
Three Kings
For two evenings in a row I have stood under three noolyarak white-tailed black cockatoos as they flew from the western side of the curving river, across cliffs, to the eastern edge—two nights in a row, their long slow flap of wings, like a sculpting of air, the occasional screech let free. And then again this morning, while driving, further up the coast, three more coming into land in some backyard tree carefully chosen, though unseen by me on the road. Three noolyarak like three kings going.
Dead Limb Down
A couple of weeks ago I was standing by the lake’s edge one morning, with chai, when from behind came a thunderous tearing crack, followed very soon after by a crash. It was a couple of days after rains, so I thought it might have been a branch falling from one of the larger gums. On the lake, meanwhile, all the purple swamphens, plus a couple of roaming Australian shelducks, had all paused what they were doing, and fully extended their necks, craning to see what had caused the noise. For me the noise, while audible, was not so significant, but for the birds it seemed to be of utmost importance. Their pause continued, waiting for anything to follow, but nothing came. Eventually the swamphens began mostly moving slowly towards their hideout in the reeds; the shelducks stayed put—for a couple of minutes they seemed to move more cautiously, their necks still extended, until gradually one by one they began retuning to their morning work.
Today I again passed by the branch fallen from one of the large gums. Someone had dragged it back from the walkway so that its snapped end seemed to extend almost directly from where the trunk met the ground, its smaller branches pointing up, its leaves no longer green but a crumpled, dryed-out brown. I looked up to where it had fallen from, and followed another branch still attached with leaves still green and life-filled. And maybe it is this simple: What is life? It is that which is perceived, with all organs open, when I look at the difference between the clump of dried, rusty leaves of the fallen branch, and the vibrant springing green of the ones higher up, still attached.
The New Fish Traps
Having just been talking of the ways the old people worked with dolphins and rocks and tides to bring in the collective fish—and after a seaplane circled overhead all silver on the underbelly, recalling stories of American pilots landing on the river during the war, approached by dolphins and fish—we walk the shoreline by the river. And, looking down from cliffs, we spot the back of an osprey in a tuart tree—he’s also looking down at the rapidly retreating river which peels its way back from full, sucking itself out through the mouth beyond; the sun also leaning that way, crescent waxing moon with it too. A darter slinks about on a lower tree like a liquid twig, like a preying mantis in bird form, getting a better view on us, on the osprey, on the living and unliving things funnelling past in the deeper water below. The river is a kind of thick, lighter-leafy green—like a spring green today. The osprey has turned his head and shows us his brown eyeline, keeping it on us walking higher; the darter continues his movements—“big data is watching us,” I joke to my wife and sister, with only groans in reply. Mimal and dorn-dorn by other names (the birds, not the women). We walk on to the small jetty below, with higher-tide wetness on its topside, and tidal line beyond the limestone wall of the ‘beach,’ detritus washed up on its first steps—boat-wake waves seek to push up between the gaps in the planks. We walk the winding shoreline further downriver towards its mouth, past the football ground, past the two little inlets getting some of their first soakings in months, island tea trees long past dead. We walk under the concrete bridge, past the apartments, and on out and under the old, timber traffic bridge soon to be removed—my sister seems to want the wood. We watch the water moving quickly under us, past us, past a little line of a rocky limestone island—much used by pelicans—which someone built to stop another ship from crashing into the trainline bridge should one ever slip its chains in storm again. There are a few ships berthed today—Saturday in May. I watch where the water is all churning not too far from a ship on the northern side—there seems to be some extra movement there. We watch from under the bridge, as one, then two, then a few fins emerge from the water and return to it again. A pelican takes off, then another. The water still moves and churns—and then there is a shooting run of a dolphin towards the large container ship, others slide in that direction, the pelicans too. There’s a splashing, a shooting of spray against the painted red wall of the ship, pelican’s gliding in and flapping about, water thrashing, as the sky glows a golden yellow. All the dolphins come up at one point, blowing spray into the air, the pelicans paddle back and forth. The fish—maybe mullet—must be pressed up against the hull of the ship, nowhere to go except further down if they can manage. The dolphins come again and again, the pelicans too. And it’s not like the time a school of fish got stuck for hours in the shallow water in the middle of the sandbar surrounded by dolphins…but today they are, for a moment at least, wedged up against the edge of a giant steel rock wall, with nowhere much to go, dolphins and pelicans coming at them, the tide rushing out. And now, on this day, maybe we’re the only humans left watching, but surely not the only ones left caring.
John Stubley 