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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Though they mostly hung around through summer, things got pretty thin the last little while, as the water also thinned. But with rain, they have returned, and maybe slightly settled in. Janjarak the black-winged stilt is back, maybe the last to leave; wayan the white-faced heron, one of the last, now here again; sandpipers and dotterels— it’s hard to see exactly. Plus seven white ibis, three straw-necked and, for something different, two big shelducks plodding and poking around the water’s edges, not deep enough to swim. Then there are the djiddy djiddy wagtails who’ve taken an increased liking to the lake-bed in the warmer months; a ring necked lorikeet flies across. And then the friends who never left:, kwirlam the swamp hen, and even little cooli the buff banded rail not so shy. The birds, not quite circus animals, reappearing; in not quite the order they disappeared, but something like a mirroring, something like a breathing. 

The first rains of the cooler months have come—not too much, but enough to attract the first birds of the lake back again. There have been some who’ve hung around the puddles of water over the dryer months, like wayan the whitefaced heron, janjarak the black winged stilt, some dotterels or sandpiper maybe. But this morning after first rains is like the evening I came a few years ago after first rains back then, the last time the lake was close to drying out. Three wet winters in between have meant that this scene of birds returning to a dry lake has been missed. But this day it’s more or less the same as several years ago, when I came and saw a great flock of seagulls, usually so rarely here, pecking at the slightly damper chunks of mud, some welcome swallows flitting slightly above, and a group of ibis plucking up something with their long curved beaks from further down than the seagulls can reach among the growing water and mud. That was a few years ago. And on arriving today with my wife I’m surprised to find something of the same scene repeated—the water has not grown too much, but there are seagulls again picking away in or near the water, though only four; kanamit the welcome swallows are welcoming back to life, though only briefly, whatever they flit and fly around, lowdown, to catch; and the ibis too are back, in numbers, walking as they like, shooting their beaks down into the cracked gaps between dried mud bricks, now filling, at least a bit, with rain. They have all waited, as whatever they are eating has waited, through dryness, approaching death maybe, waiting, waiting for the rains to come, waiting for life to hatch and spring and begin (again) and end for some—waiting and then acting, knowing exactly what to do when those rains finally came. 

While further from the lake’s centre, kwirlam the swamp hen—the lakeside year-round, wet-or-dry, guardian—swims and washes in a private little puddle pool, today now deeper, by the rushes.