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.

Down by the Derbarl Yerrigan yet again—afternoon walking—and there in the river water, by the end of the Harvest Street jetty, are a few whitebait sitting stationary in the water, their noses pointed upstream on the outgoing tide, mouths open to any bits of food and detritus that might pass by. At one point a jellyfish small and brown passes a little deeper down, with a group of trumpeter fish, I believe, feeding off its tentacles and the inside of its jelly dome. I walk on to the jetties closer to the apartments downriver, and walk out on one, looking down among the muscled brown pylons, and see there a couple of slow moving fish that look as if the pylon colours and rough edges have up and taken the form of a sea creature—some kind of browny, knobbly reef-type fish perfectly camouflaged in the jetty and boat-pen barnacles beneath…unless they leave them for a moment, however brief.

While walking the river two days ago I saw by the jetty a small, then larger, school of kwulla the mullet—the first school slow moving amongst the blowfish, then the other shooting quickly by, their side scales flashing, their light tinge of blue fins swishing. All this while an osprey is chased towards the cliffs by two seagulls a hundred metres upriver—the second time in a number of days I’ve watched him be pursued. The mullet come back now, swimming upriver this time towards the osprey. Midi the large pied cormorant pops up from out of the water, surely in pursuit of something too big—some of the mullet pushing 40cm, not much smaller than him (though I do recall a cormorant pulling up a massive flathead some months ago). The mullet turn again and push downriver. I walk the same direction, and in front of the hotel a hundred or so metres south I see a couple of other mullet, smaller, resembling bream, swimming in the shallows, untroubled—and this time kakak the small pie cormorant comes up, then washes himself, before taking off, wings and feet like the pelican, though shorter, smoother. Two Pacific black ducks swim nearby, right above the mullet, almost touching them, and neither species seems to mind. I move on. And on my way back, the mullet are mostly gone, and one of the ducks is washing himself like the cormorant was, before both ducks jump up onto a boat pen just above the water’s surface, and begin their feather cleaning.

It took me walking all the way to Green Place today to see a boodalung swim up closer, then look over. I stood on the jetty and took off my glasses so we could see each other eye to eye. I sang to him a little. And then he opened slowly up his wings, and propelled himself forward, his wings moving out and his feet kicking underneath the water. One flap, one foot scoop with both feet together, tugging at the water, then another flap, another double-footed scoop, then another and another, growing lighter, growing faster, and he was up, up, boodalung the pelican up—just above the water, flapping, then a pause and a glyde, going even lower, his belly almost touching the water, then more flaps, and more gliding and gone between the boats towards other shorelines. 

Such will unfolding.

I go and meet a couple of friends by the river—one a boy of eight or nine; the other night he was interested in spotting birds and fish and crabs and rabbits nearby. Tonight, just as excited to see me, but in between he’d also met a boy of fourteen with rod and reel and lure and crabbing net. The fourteen-year old looked down into the depths and saw more than I did—saw blue mana crabs, saw mullet, was particularly tuned to flathead. When I couldn’t focus any longer, I  sometimes called out a dolphin from time to time, the jumping of some whitebait—things that left the water and rose above the surface line—but the teenager saw all below this, his neck permanently bent. Where I saw heron, he saw blowfish, the flashing blue manna, the shooting tail of the flattest head. Where I lived above the surface, he lived below the waterline. This fisher boy lived in it—lived under the surface—and didn’t need to try…where others did.