I don’t recall ever having seen a bee hive
in swarm before.
But in the last few weeks I have seen three.

The first on the north side of Galbamaanup
Lake Claremont with Katie and Sol
talking about all things caring for Country.

The bees hung from a eucalyptus branch
in a loose form of their own making—
of their own bodies.

The next was after leaving a Noongar Land Enterprise
strategy and website launch—how Indigenous people
are caring for Country on land they own.
The bees parted ways for us 
as we slowly left the Bentley Technology Park
in our car.

The last time was last weekend, when Katie,
Shenali and I walked the usual stretch of lake,
talking our usual Saturday morning talk
of that place,
and right where the paths diverge
on the north western edge by the watery paperbarks
another swarm began to fill the air,
flying towards the sun.

The sound of them.
So many wings flitting the air.

In the last few days it’s mostly in the flowers I hear them—
paperbarks and eucalypts—
not swarming—
merely going about their business—
in the light
in the sun.

25/7/25
From a cold Perth into the clouds
onto a green wheatbelt, looking down,
becoming wetter-season river gulleys
that take some time
to decipher which way they flow.
This followed by corduroy lines 
of hills and flats
running east to west to east,
the Earth darkening,
the shadows extending.
Broome of the bay and 
port and beach, all that 
blue moving, breathing, in
and out, now 6pm, post sun,
on the depths of the exhale.

In the twilight I hear those
now physically gone
and what they cared for,
including the thunder and lightening,
including the relatively new gift
of the spirit of the Earth as a whole.

26/7/25
Evenings and mornings equally chilly
with winds coming in from the 
further south and east. The sand
of the beach once again firm,
washed clean overnight by
the water now again retreated
to the morning exhale.
Birds dive into it.
People paddle through it.
The red dust and the white sand
colliding. Rocks flooded and buried
now exposed. Crab holes and rolled balls.
Some clouds also signalling rain–-maybe
yesterday’s now gone.

The trees and plants look familiar,
but on closer inspection not-quite known.
At the midday high-water bay, all
turquoise, there’s a dark shape
moving just beyond town beach and mangroves—
a humpback whale going slowly under,
coming up, then moving further south.
A fire north of Cable Beach, dark and 
grey, pushing further north.
Evening sunsets, walking to the 
retracted water’s edges, fish
jumping, sand swallowing feet and quick,
the sunset peeling back from the
eastern horizon like an orange,
revealing orangey yellows, a dash 
of green to the north, indigo
violets on the edges rolling west,
dome-shaped and curved, as the 
water curves on the dark blue
horizon, the moon a bottom-cupped
sliver, left like a treasure, like a seed
above the sun, the rest of it slightly
seen against the backdrop of sky—
the whole scene reflected on the
shining still-wet sand, so it 
seems we’re in this sunset, setting.

There’s a music to the sunset, and actual music
playing, which takes us into evening.
Fireside. Trees in Broome
darkness. Softness. Tending. And more
and more music playing.

27/7/25
I hear the gentle Country.

The softness of this place is still there on
waking; on morning walking through red dirt and
white sanddune and cool south-easterly blowing.
At the ridge above the ocean, the whole scene
is revealed again, another wiped-clean beach,
the water again subtracted to its edges—
but where in the world is the
tide currently high?
The water’s retreating journey traced on the sand from one
pooled line of trench down to the next-lower 
line, then the next, like now-dried moats
surrounding the self-made castle of ocean, like desert lines,
though these will resolve themselves overnight
in shorter tides of time.
A white-bellied sea eagle? flies into the
wind, gliding sideways north along the water’s edge.
I go up another dune and back through he
bush and red dust and white sand dune.

At Coconut Well, Waterbank—a tidal 
channel with limestone sandy
spit hanging over, like a long lip—
dozens of people are floating on the incoming tide
at walking pace, the shallow
channel flooded in less than an hour,
the water flowing north, rounding the
bottom jaw and floating back south,
before it will turn again after I am gone.
Yawuru Conservation Park, agreements
with DPIRD over net fishing—
all of it probably some people’s idea of heaven.

Every wave is a daily tidal movement
in miniature.

Evening sunset shoreline walks through dunes then among the trails of snales
and crabs—both larger, both smaller—lines
within lines. A little ‘forrest of trees’ in the sand—the form of water course retreatings…
The wind now more west than east.
The doming of colours,
the slowly retreating light—
more space to shrink back from up here—
the moon left, hanging, a bright
nail cupping the rest of it seen clearly as grey disc
against the darker sky behind.

After reading the tourist brochures
and visitor guides I can’t help 
thinking all the tourist thing of this country
is built on shaky foundations,
maybe even lies.
And I can’t help see that extending 
also to all the four-wheel driving culture—
travelling for experience extraction?

It’s about water—
from earth to water thinking
(and eventually fire).

It’s about the shift from
extraction ‘tourism’—
what can I take by way of experience–
to caring tourism—
how can I show up with love for Country
(and the love of the spirit of the Earth)
as a healing
as a gift.

28/7/25
Minyirr morning at Redell Beach, 
populated by rocks
both sandstone layerings
and rounded red rocks,
tidal brushings and rain-runoff formings,
like people in the cliff faces.
The red and yellow sands combining, layering,
the red painting the rocks and beach.
Shells stacked upon shells, pinnacles of red rock and 
sand, wearing down, silica deposited on the shining beach.
We read afterwards a place of healing
of spirit children
and rebirth.

Midday sea-breeze turnings.
Story conversations.

Sunset turtle trail sitting on the dunes,
walking all the way to the water still retreating,
one or two small clouds on the horizon,
water-tree trails drain into footprints, red jellyfish pindan-like,
the sky a little less, but golden mango, geen, blue; indigo and violet
advancing like a tide.

On the walk home, sun behind, feeling invited
for the first real time, to notice the plant life.
The long dune vines with purple flowers closing upon night.
The small sun-explosion acacia flowers, and the long
yellow-finger ones.
The one with double leaves on the stem ready to clap
like little cymbals.
The one with bird-like green flowers,
Another with grey leaves as soft as wool.
A love-heart shaped leaf.
A kind of quondong.
Spinifex, tumbleweeds, many others yet.

An invitation to observe minerals first
then Minyirr signage
in the morning.
Plant life in the evening…
Always water…

The mind’s eye…
but also the eye’s mind…

Through the spirit of the Earth
I find others.
I find Country,
saltwater and fresh.
A door(way).
I find myself.
Country can find itself
in me.

29/7/25
Morning walk through dunes to beach.
Saying good morning to walkers and now plants too.
The ocean still going, overnight sand scrubbed clean
again. The wind south-south-east, and less.

Broome sensing, Indigenous publisher, ethical clothing network, venues.
The water, light blue, flooding the bay.
Eagles on the wind.
Seagulls on the umbrella.
Evening sunsets again, amid colours and rockpools and camels.

No one single place comes up to grab 
me here, as in Noongar Country—
instead, larger areas are shown.

How can living Country speak itself in us?

30/7/25
Drive to the top of ‘Dampier Peninsula’—
to Andyaloon/‘One Arm Point’—
Country passing by, places burned too hot
by government most likely, trees dead at the top;
other places close to needing a burn, grasses dead, while on the other side
places burnt cool, green grass coming back…
wattles flowering, yellow pandanas,
eucalypts. In floodplains: paperbarks and grasses. 
In some places it looks like jarrah/marri forrest,
but with burn marks 
almost the whole way.

Hawks, smaller raptors, crows, magpielarks, a kookaburra, two lorikeets? (or parakeets at least), a bull, cows,
flocks of smaller birds cutting across the floodplains.
Tides move in and around the point and islands at
Ardyaloon, the wind howling south easterly (attempting to blow the water back),
some waves stationary—
a turtle pops his head up, gliding past.

Cygnet Bay seems hungry with visitors
for tours and pearls and camping
and lunches.

At Lombardina the church ceiling is lined with paperbark,
the rest is bloodwood and corrugated iron.
There’s a cross painted with images of local animals.
Inside it is dark, sacred.

At Beagle Bay the church is white and pearl-shell shining. 
A single black cockatoo flies over,
a wagtail on the grass.

The sun lengthens all shadows
across the road.

At Coconut Well we rush for the sunset,
crossing mud and limestone cliff, to chase
again the retreating tide, and all those colours.

Globally speaking,
between desert at one extreme
(and saltpans at the extreme of that),
we find the head end (and death),
while at the other, forest and jungle (the limb end and life).
In between: savannah-type places,
in this place created by fire
(the heart—a third path balancing life and death).
This is us, this is Country.
Fire is heart.

Country is alive, and I feel like singing.

I wonder if what was/is here
was waiting for what came
in a form as yet
not alive enough 
to meet it.

31/7/25
Morning walking—birds introduce 
themselves more fully.
Some speak a gutteral, throaty talk
in the bushes, not unlike a 
butcherbird. Smaller ones
speak in higher more silver-like tongues.
Red-flower plant, one with blue-purple
flowers hanging down, like borage.

Minerals, plants, animals…
from earth to water, air and light…

Morning conversations.

Minerals, plants, animals, human beings…
from earth to water,
air/light and fire…

Later bay entrance sunsets.
Red rock and sandstone.
Cruise ships and tides
still retreating.
Sunset colours.
Moon almost half. 
Mars.

Tourists in the caravan park—
within fences
like cages—
and maybe the current avenue of 
tourism is a narrow, confined one.

Europeans have descended
from an Indigenous spiritual 
culture and, no longer being surrounded
by one (in Europe), are in a position where the one they create 
needs to be based on freedom and love…
To be of European culture in this place?
To grow a Western spirituality based 
on freedom and love here?
The gift of being in this place
(for here and elsewhere too?)

1/8/25
Morning east-north-easterly winds not so cold.
All the plants 
on the walk to the beach—
a flock of budgerigars?
Low tide. Warmer today.
Pack and goodbyes.

Country of the spirit of the Earth,
of living beings.
Opening up
Country.
The beings of story.

Big rain yesterday, and the water levels are up—
it is starting to look like what you think of
as a lake. (1.03 metres,
though the gauge starts at 1 metre.)
But it is always a lake.
An old, flat land makes efficient use
of all water dropped. 

There’s a crowd of janjarak black-
winged stilts facing north
into the wind. There are 
Pacific black ducks, grey teals,
marangana wood ducks,
larger shelducks, swans
flapping and making noise.
There are swamphens
and the sound of grey butcher birds
and crows in the trees.

I walk the western edge
of the southern part of the lake.
And half way to the gazebo
I’m again struck by the love
of this place, of al places,
of all people. It’s enough 
to make you cry,
to make you stop in your tracks.
But I don’t—not this time.

It changes you though, 
on the inside—
first pouring in,
then pouring out.
Love for this place,
love of this place.
All places.
All people.
All things.

At the gazebo there are three
herons waiting.
Koorodoor the eastern reef egret/heron 
almost blindingly white
in the morning sun;
wayan the white-faced heron;
and djilimilyarn the white-necked heron.
They are all very close to the gazebo
so I hang back. Kooridor wanders
slowly east; wayan the same; djilimilyarn
hangs by on the northern side
of the timber structure.

I come a bit closer.
Wayan now has his beak to the sky,
pointing up to the gazebo—I’ve never seen him
hunt like this. He then strikes mid air,
and I see he’s trying to bring in a dragonfly.
He tries a few more times over the next
20 minutes, unsuccessfully; unsuccess-fly.
The larger white-necked heron
comes out from behind the gazebo,
long enough for me to see he has a ladder 
of little dots on the central frontal part
of his neck.

Further north, a small raptor—
maybe a hobby, maybe a kestrel—
has landed on a dead tree
next to some ibis; while to the east
a pack of crows or magpies
chase down another bird in a
cloud of black wings.

To the north a cumulo nimbus
is moving in, covering the sun.

From beyond the lake comes 
the sound of combustion engines,
sirens, chainsaws, as well as rifle fire
from the nearby army base.

There are three messages 
I’m given in all this time. 
One for work here;
another for the Asia Pacific;
another globally.

And then it’s time to go.

It has been raining this last week—
the first real rains of the year, waiting
till the end of djeran, 
and the beginning of makaru
right around the new moon.

The river looks cleaner, greener.
The beaches have emptied of people.
And Galbamaanup Lake Claremont 
has started to fill again
with water and birds.

The swans have come and gone and 
come again. The Pacific black ducks
have returned in great numbers,
as have the teals,
the wood ducks,
and the periphery-dwelling ibis 
(both white and
straw-necked).
The swamphens never left.
Crakes and rails are emerging
from the reeds.

Wayan the white-faced heron 
has carried on, alone among
his species. A couple of
white-necked herons
are hidden somewhere in the 
grasses and trees,
occasionally spooking the smaller
birds that aren’t used to them.

The small band of dotterels have remained,
as have the black-winged stilts,
now joined by others,
occasionally flapping to land
on top of one another.

But I have so far been surprised
to see no seagulls.

Then today I walked from eastern edge
to northern gazebo, and saw there
an egret, all white and clean.
And on the way back spotted
a couple of seagulls coming in to land
on water, though not with their feet out,
duck-style, but from circling heights 
and ‘landing’ on their bellies.

While among the black-winged stilts
I saw also yajingarong the red-necked
avocet dragging his mosquito spear
of a beak from side to side 
like a spoonbill (a representative of which
came and went again in recent days.)

I look again and the seagulls have increased
in numbers. 

I recall a couple of days ago walking
the edge and seeing all that grass, no
longer shining green in its newness,
but alive and swaying still—
and then felt with the wholeness
of the lake, and the Earth.

And today, feeling a renewed love
for this place, with its renewed
life and rain, I felt again connected
to all parts of it—this place and beyond—
noticing what I might not have
otherwise. Like the seagulls,
like the avocet and, remembering now also,
the first Eurasian coot—kidjibroon—
of the season—the first, behind which
great numbers will come,
walking his way through the now muddy
edge of the south-east corner
of the lake.

A couple of years ago they released 
some quenda southern brown bandicoots
at Galbamaanup Lake Claremont.

I see them from time to time.
Sometimes they run into the bushes.
Sometimes they they’ll stay out in the open.

There was one today down in the shade
by the paperbark tree
at the eastern edge of the lake.
He was digging through some of the ground cover
that has choked the lake’s periphery.

And right there, by his side, unfazed
and unmoving, was djiddy djiddy
the willy wagtail.

Every now and then the bird would 
shift behind the quenda
when the brown marsupial 
would dig dirt, first with its nose,
then claws,
and tunnel it back out between his hind legs.

Djiddy djiddy was there to scoop up
any food the quenda startled into flight
either by his inspecting snout
or his subsequent digging.

Sometimes the quends would look over 
and the wagtail would hop aside a little.
But eventually they seemed  to simply
carry on in their slow, little rhythm.

Nature cooperating, or at least not competing.
And I wonder—what might the quenda
get out of it?

The neighbours are having a 21st birthday party
so I take the chance to head up to the hills.
Friday afternoon hills,
walking in along the Bibbulmun from the Discovery Centre 
carpark to Ball Creek Hut. 

I’ve crossed the sprawling city in traffic
and cut along the short walk through the hills
and the horizontal afternoon light,
heading east.

I register a few trees and the sound of 
small birds, but it all plays
as backdrop to my going to get there.

I overtake a couple of hikers with smiles
and set up camp near the firepit to the north
of the hut. 

The night is still and cold with stars,
flames,
later the moon,
and eventually the sound of trucks
gearing down, probably on Great 
Eastern HIghway to the north.

In the morning I eat breakfast and watch as
the small birds emerge from the powdery 
bark of the wandoo forrest all around,
with space between trees as there always is
below them.
One bird has a yellow breast. 
Some are larger.

After breakfast I pack up and leave
just as a group of walkers arrives at the hut.

I step out on the trail, the sun behind me again,
walking back through what was half sleeping
last night.

Towards the end, on the side of a southern-facing
decline, banksias, balgas, zamias, 
sheoak, jarrah and marri all around,
still burnt from last fires, 
maybe half a dozen years ago—
ready for a new burn to clear
the undergrowth—
the horizon line of the next
ridge of hills to the south and west,
the air still,
sheoak needless on the ground,
the gnarled yet soft-looking trunks
of the banksias,
the light pouring in from above and 
to the right,
I’m suddenly filled with the meaning 
of this place,
and the meaning of this place in the world
as a whole.

I grew up not too far from here.
And I had a different feeling 
of this place back then—a surface layer
feeling that I knew masked hidden depths.
But for whatever reason they’ve revealed
themselves now, with the depths of 
the rest of the Earth, the depths of
humanity too. 

The world is alive at these depths.
Is living in its connections.
We stand on the crust of the Earth,
yet stand in our home.
Who we are.
What this place is.
What has been sacrificed.
What has come before.
And what is now made for 
a future place, as foundation,
for what comes next.

There are those who work with 
it consciously.
Those for whom it is real
whatever the name.
And those for whom it still slumbers
in inner depths.
Overlapping fields of humanity.

Clear skies, no wind,
high teens / low 20s,
waning gibbous hanging 
above trees and smoke
on the western horizon.

The swamphens walk
the edges of their grass and lake.
The Pacific black ducks
rest on a log within 
the confines of the water.
The shelducks hang on the 
drier peripheries.
The dotterels totter back
and forth across the watery
threshold.
A white-faced heron walks
ghostly and lonely 
on a dry flat between 
water and grass.
Four janjarak
black-winged stilts
wander the water area
to the south.

Above, kanamit the welcome swallow
flies and flits and cuts the air.
Djiddy djiddy the wagtail
drops down in places, lifts
off a log, lands on mud.
Above, two red-tailed black cockatoos
call and cross over.
Wardong the crow of course.

There are jakalak wattlebirds in the 
paperbarks flowering with bees.
Smaller birds in another paperbark
drop down in and out of the reeds.
Grass birds too? Warblers?
I think I spot a crake 
shoot out of then back into
the taller rushes—just a shadow really—
a buff-banded rail maybe.

Lorikeets higher above.
No raptors seen today.

All these layers.
All of it filled by ideas that live.
Life inspired by living beings.
And I—I’m left with questions:
How to bring more living things—
more living beings—to life?
How to invite, in freedom, that life
of the world that lives in each of us 
further into light?

Galbamaanup Lake Claremont
and there are clear skies and calm wind.
The water is still low. Hazily I make out
maali the swan. Many kwirlam swamp hens.
A couple of djiddy djiddy wagtails
down by the water’s edge.
Some smaller birds to the south.
I walk in this direction—the small birds
appear to be five nidoolyorong 
black-fronted dotterels—
the first I’ve seen this season.

Then a second swan.
The dotterels are pacing around 
in the shallows. In front of one 
there flies up a little cloud of insects
which settle again on the water
beyond. 

The wholeness of the place—
of the Earth—
also comes settling in.

Need I keep observing?

But then, nyimarak
the shelduck to the west—
and where there is one…
a second.

Kanamit the welcome swallow
flits over the water.

And then on a log directly in front,
a grey shape, 
on one leg,
wayan the white-faced heron.

This place made more whole.
Me made more human.

A foundation to build on
for what comes next.

At the lake today there are 
four janjarak black-winged stilts,
two nyimarak shelducks,
many kwirlam swamp hens,
and one yet Pacific black duck.
No swans. No white-faced herons.
No white-necked herons.

I walk around the southern wetter end
towards the gazebo,
where the lake is still a lake of grass.
I sit and watch the wind
blow through the green and drying stems—
a strong morning wind from the east.

I stay and sit with it.
The whole comes creeping in.
The spirit of the Earth as a whole,
of humanity.
And it’s clear to me, in that moment,
that this has always been present 
in this place—always worked with,
always seen—
before it had another name.