Category Archives: Nature Poetry

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.

Moths in the Grass

I have often looked at the dryer lake and thick green grass and wondered what it would be like to run it—to step out into it and go. This day, instead, I walk with a small group of mostly family out onto what is a kind of island or spit during the wetter months, but now a dryland edge of the north-east corner. My companions sit by what in winter would be the lake’s edge, grass now lapping against the shore, somehow still held back by this once high-tide line. I get up at one point, and take a few steps out into it—out amongst the grass—thinking snakes would be avoiding the heat of the day, or else preparing somewhere drier for winter to come. I don’t go too far—a few paces maybe—and am surprised to see an immediate up-surging of life. With each step a little flurry of white-winged moths (or maybe butterflies—small winged insects in any case). I take another step, and more fly up out of the depths of the stems of grass, then fall back into it again. Another step, another puff of small, white, flying life. Even now, amongst all this dryness, all this death— the life of the lake.

Kite in the Trees

At the northern end of the lake—in these dry months when it’s not a lake of water but a lake of grass—the dead grey tree stumps stick up out of the shifting ground of green. And up on the highest of these branches, on a sharp point where trunk once thrived but then dried and split, there sits—in silent, steely repose—a bird of white; the only things giving it away is its form and slightly lighter colour than the trunk and branches. It sits and watches and waits. I have seen it before, and later, on other days—one day appearing from the grass to return to its perch, the black splashes on its wings enough to name it—the black shouldered kite. Bird of the northern lake, now dry.

A Third Janjarak

Two janjarak black winged stilts have been coming and going from the lake in these dry days as the land waits for rain. They skirt the edge of the water, sometimes stepping into the shallow puddles, bending down, picking from it what they will. They spread a bit, go their own way, but often come back together again. Two together…until this day—another arrives. It comes in closer, gradually, slowly, right at the edge of the water, right at the edge of the boundary between it and the other two stilts. Until it crosses something there, mostly invisible, and one of the pair flap-hops over to it and pushes the new arrival further away—its mate follows on slightly behind. The solitary one moves off a bit, but obviously not far enough, so the flap-hop repeats, and the solo bird moves off again, further from the water, further from the pairing’s edge.

Bees Too

As I walk the lake today, all seems pretty dry and quiet—nothing too out of the ordinary. And just when I’ve almost returned to the car, in the parkland which once was golfcourse, which once was—or close to—rubbish dump, which once was…I notice the sound of the buzzing hum of hundreds, thousands, hundreds-of-thousands of bees above—and the white-coloured flowering of a big, broad, smooth-barked gum.

First Storm

Evening walking along the clifftops by the river, storm blowing north to south further west, and now south; the weather still warm, more like a tropical low dipping down, though slightly past us, than a cold front come in from below to batter. There is lightening there, to the south—horizontal fork lightening stretching from cloud to cloud, south to north, like I don’t think I’ve ever seen. Then ten seconds in between. And then the thunder comes. There are cumulo-nimbus down that way, with sheets of rain we watch from the top of Cyprus Hill. 

(And was this the day we also saw the first rainbow of the season to the east, fairly faint and partial?) 

We walk back along the clifftop. And as we start to turn away from the water, my eye is caught by a large rippling bubble—an aftermath of displaced water, almost the size of a dinghy—dolphin I’m thinking, but nothing (re)emerges, there by the edge of the sandbar—Katie thinks shark. I watch and watch for minutes, but nothing disrupts the surface of the water again.

While this morning the birds are gone from the lake once more; ibis all gone, shelducks gone, wayan the white faced gone, don’t see any sandpipers or dotterels, only two janjarak black-winged stilts remain on the shoreline. 

Raptors?

How to know if it’s a hobby, peregrine falcon, or brown goshawk? Maybe more. I need eyes stronger, or at least more refined than these. One appears today, by the lake, suddenly from the trees—from the gum slightly south, coming close, flying north—then disappears.