Category Archives: Shoreline Poetics

Goats and Roos

At the end of a day following the path of a distant relative I drive from Northam through Bakers Hill, back to Toodyay Road and decide to deviate across to Walyunga National Park. I only have a couple of hours before they close the gates, so I park and walk up along the Gugglyar Avon River and keep going past all the tuarts and sheoaks and low water levels; past the teals and hardheads and galahs to where the trail moves away from the water. I decide to keep going but find there, in my unpathed path, a group of goats, one of whom has decided to brandish his horns a little. I give them some width—a herd of a dozen or more, I see now—and head further upriver, crossing on dry rocks to what would be an island during higher water levels. There I find a solitary kangaroo sleeping in the shade and sand of a tree. It gets up when it sees me and begins hopping in all sorts of directions; I can’t tell if its very young, or very old and waiting to die, or even if it might be blind. There is a deeper pool of water in the river nearby. I go back the way I came and cut in even further upriver. By now I’m aware I’m well off the track, without cell reception or a personal locator beacon, and snakes would be no surprise. But I walk on and cross the island towards the running river water on the other side, seeing a couple more kangaroos—mother and young—not really hopping away when I appear, as if I could almost touch them, as if they were not used to humans. I arrive at the water running over shallow rocks, with deeper stretches upriver. On the other side of the water is a trainline. And to me, the whole island and area feels a little untended, unloved by human hands and hearts and minds.

Ancestors and Spoonbills

I take a drive following the movements of my first blood relative of this place, starting in Walyalup Fremantle, heading through Boorloo Perth, then out along the Gugglyar Avon River to Toodyay. I follow the Guggleyar further upriver to Northam and there do a lap along the river’s edge, crossing at two different bridges. There are geese and wood ducks, coots, seagulls and, in a little wetland area, white swans.

And up on the road bridge, where you can see the Mortlock River flowing into the Avon, I notice the clean white of a flying kakka-bakka spoonbill. He has something in his mouth—either a reed or a stick, and so I assume he’s building a nest. I watch him fly up to the height of the treetops by the river’s bank, come in to land, think twice, circle again, then again, before landing and coming to a halt. I lose him in the branches and leaves.

And it seemed to me at the time a long way up for such a bird to be building such a home as this.

Mid-Sky Moon

The moon is about mid sky again (between the month’s peak north and peak south), and I’m down at the beach. The shoreline is at around 30 degrees with duel ridge mounds—one line near the top of the incline, the other nearer the water. There has not been too much of a change between high and low tides. And the weather has been pretty normal for this time of year. The mid-sky moon—of neither higher high tides, nor lower low tides, but bunched up smaller variations with more than one high or low in a day—clearly written on the shoreline.

Hardhead Dives

Maybe I have been confusing boodoo the bluebill for my new friend eroodoo the hardhead for some time. Maybe not. I see the differences clearly now: hardhead has white tip on bill end, white undertip to tail, white of eye; other features, though, are somewhat similar. And today I notice that I have another diving duck on my hands.

Dead Koolbardi  

I come across a dead koolbardie magpie in the the grasslands and big eucalypts not far from where a large branch fell down by the owl nest. His back is to the sky, all black and white, and his beak is tucked in under him—under his chest. He is in a small cupping of dark sand—not grass—and the earth seems to hold him there, like that…or his body at least; this bird of the sun, this being of the stars and skies.

Ducks, Bark, Warblers, Coots, Bandicoots

Before seeing a dead koolbardie magpie I’m at the eastern viewing area again. And in the reeds below, unseen for much of the last few weeks, I see the female kadar musk duck with two young, now not so small, paddling away from the reeds and rushes and from my interruption. A little later there is koordji-koordji the reed warbler at the top of the reed, near the seedhead, the whole thing bending slightly with its little weight, and the lake so still that the entire scene is mirrored clearly in the water below. To my right is the paperbark that is always there, but today I take special note of the many dozens of layers of its skin, folded in, folded over, layering and layering like limestone. There is the sound of coots in the water, and the sound of quenda the bandicoot in the dry rustling and leaves.  

Snake in River

Evening walk with Katie, heading upriver: southwest wind, very small alto, maybe some cirrus. It’s been a mid-to-high-20-degree day. Two dolphins head upriver over the sandbar. There are terns and seagulls, and many flowering native grasses—mostly tall feather-grass. And it’s one of those days where it’s easy to see, in the middle of the river, a snaking line of intersecting surface layers, at the corner by the yacht club, on the incoming tide.

Treefall & Tawny

Walking the grassland and large tree area of the lake today, approaching the last of three known tawny frogmouth nests, and I see that a large branch has fallen down and now sits near the base of the nest. On getting closer it’s clear that the branch would have fallen right on the nest in the tree next door if a couple of smaller branches hadn’t deflected it and caused it to fall slightly further east. On standing at the canopy of the now fallen branch, I look directly up to see if the owl is still there in the nest—and sure enough she is.

What a moment that must have been to hear the tearing of the bark of the tree—maybe in the night—and then to hear it come crashing down onto your own tree, only to miss by a couple of wingspans. I look at her now. She remains perfectly still.

Joondalup to Jennalup

I walk downriver from Joondalup Point Walter towards Jennalup Blackwall Reach along the shoreline on a relatively low tide. Koorodoor the egret is there all white in the morning light, Pacific black ducks, koordjikit the black cormorant, kakak to small pied cormorant with a small fish—djilba bream?—in his mouth. Two osprey fly high above, while another perches on a riverside dead tree branch, which becomes eye-level when I take the path up; hIs feathers are all ruffled, and his eyeline stands out brown against the white of his head and chest. There is plant life in the area that burned a couple of years back, including many healthy-looking balga grasstrees. The wind is offshore for here, no clouds. So much limestone, and so much depth to the water below.