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Monthly Archives: January 2016

Ridges and junctions

31 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by morselsandscraps in photos, theme

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

Potato Point beach

When my mind cuts loose on an early drizzly walk along the beach, what I see arranges itself into groupings, and then the eye picks out things that feed that motif. This morning, as the light broke though clouds, the sea mist rose, and I saw the world through rain specks on my glasses, two motifs emerged: ridges and junctions. I like such free fall walks, because the eye selects what it wouldn't otherwise notice, and fails to notice things it may have seen. Thus it becomes a unique ramble, funneled thusly rather than otherwise.

 

 

RIDGES

 

JUNCTIONS

 

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Drinking the rainbow

30 Saturday Jan 2016

Posted by morselsandscraps in challenges, photo

≈ 35 Comments

Tags

Durras, mosaics, toilet block art, vibrant

For this week's wordpress challenge “vibrant” is the theme and its epigraph is a quote from Khalil Gibran:

Let me swallow the sunset and drink the rainbow

Three king parrots offered their vibrant green and red briefly outside my living room window, but I wasn't fast enough to capture them.

Mosaics on toilet blocks are much easier to sieze photographically. This collage consists of fragments of Durras rising, 2014, a pair of mosaics designed by Moira Christie depicting Durras Beach by day and night.

 

 

 

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Malice of crows

26 Tuesday Jan 2016

Posted by morselsandscraps in photos, poetry

≈ 25 Comments

Tags

gossip

 

Farmland road dense with flies

edged with Queen Anne's lace

winds through green paddocks

past watery vestiges of flood.

Blackberry canes flaunt thorns and ruby fruit.

 

 

The road leads to a scandal of the past.

Malicious crows crarck crarck

“He's old she's young.”

crarck crarck “You'd think he'd have more sense”

crarck crarck.

 

A kookaburra laughs his mockery of love.

Hoohahahahadulteryhahadultery!

 

But then the liquid voice of magpie

rumples the air

and carols joy in love.

 

 

The road winds back the years

to lovers old now

gossip not forgotten.

 

 

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Midsummer gallimaufry

24 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by morselsandscraps in flora, photos

≈ 38 Comments

Tags

banksia, bunya bunya pine, chicory, fungi, leaves, thistles, tristaniopsis, wattle

It was a while since I'd been out and about, camera slung around my neck. The flood drew me to roadside plants, and at last I've begun walking again in the bush, on the headland and through farmland, after nearly a month of slug behaviour, incarcerated indoors by catering and computer addiction and for at least part of that time by a recalcitrant knee (if I don't walk, I won't find out how bad it is).

Roadside during the flood gave me whiteness: bursaria, ti trees, and what charms my camera most: that flat flowering, pink, white and green, that curls up into a ball as it dies and lightens the landscape with its delicacy. It doesn't matter that it's a feral.

 

 

I've finally entered J's vegetable dome on a picking expedition and was enchanted by my old friend, the zucchini plant. Many years ago in my incarnation as labourer in our market garden I harvested zucchini. I can still feel the abrasion on my tender damp unaccustomed academic arms as I parted zucchini leaves to seek out the gleaming shapely tubes, rounded at the end and sometimes with the showy yellow flower still attached. At market I arrayed them on an old door with all our other produce, and the people of Moruya asked “What's THAT?” This was in the 1980s. Now they take kale and quinoa in their stride.

 

 

On the headland is a grand old banksia. The flowers are over 20cm tall, with a diameter of around 12 cm, and some still stand erect and pale yellow, amongst the big bad banksia men cones. Once the tree was unreachable unless you wanted to brave snakes in long marshy grass, but since the fire brigade engaged in a protective burn I can walk confidently over short grass to admire its grandeur.

 

 

Also on the headland, an unexpected wattle with balls of pale yellow flower, little fists of buds and long lanceolate leaves curving around clusters of blossom.

 

 

Walking through farmland I came across another majestic tree, a little bit out of zone: the bunya bunya pine (Araucaria bidwillii). It's a relative of the monkey puzzle tree from Chile, an ancient tree from Gondwana and the age of conifers, a survivor from the time before the arrival of true flowering plants. The female cones contain edible nuts and Bunya Mountains in Queensland were the site for Aboriginal gatherings and feasting: unusually for Aboriginal people some trees seem to have been owned by specific families. My bush tucker book has three recipes using bunya nuts: toffee nuts in rum, chocolate roughs with bunya nut pieces, and witjuti (witchetty) grub and bunya bunya soup

 

 

In the reserve by the river is another treasure: Tristaniopsis laurena, the water gum or Kanuka box, used for coach and boat-building, cabinet work, tool handles and golf club heads. This information comes from a book that is also a treasure: the bible of local rainforests, Floyd's Rainforest trees of south-eastern Australia. J bought me my own copy recently, $5 from the Salvation Army op shop. Floyd reveals the poetry of bark in his meticulously factual description:

Outer bark: Light grey, shedding in thin papery flakes or strips. Underbark cream with plum patches, then brown and cream in alternate layers, very thin. Outer surface of live bark with cream-brown and light green blotches.

The flowers are hard to capture: two cameras and two visits still didn't quite nail it.

 

 

There is an escalation of thistles, all very well as decoration on a Scotsman's sporran, but a real pest here, especially since the ground is already deep in thistledown: too late to stop them proliferating this season.

 

 

Australia doesn't have the autumn falling, but leaves do part company with their tree and they are one of my favourite photographic subjects. A gravel road or grass make a good background to showcase their diversity.

 

 

And then of course a miscellany within a gallimaufry: chicory flowers, lomandra fruits, a delicate fungus (awful name for something so beautiful), spiky grass and a tree fern against the sky.

 

 

My preference, I thought, was for flowers in the wild, but my daughter-in-law filled the house with domesticated flowers and I was entirely charmed. The zinnias came from J's dome (it was a bouquet of zinnias he brought me when our first child was born): the three lavish vases of roses, jasmine, and gardenias from the garden of her friend. I admired the background ferns, and discovered that they came from my own garden.

 

 

 

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I need a 6 months holiday… 2 times a year.

21 Thursday Jan 2016

Posted by morselsandscraps in guest post, photos

≈ 18 Comments

Tags

beach, holiday, nanny meg, Potato Point, TRT

Potato Pt has been a favoured destination for our family since as long as I can remember. Longing for the yearly trips on the summer holidays is the only thing that gets me through school, one assessment handed in is one assessment closer to six weeks of bliss. And that is exactly what it is. Everything about the south coast radiates bliss. Walks on the beach, waking up to nanny meg pottering around the kitchen with her new adorable haircut, surfing, swimming, kayaking, camping, socialising and bike riding. Ours days are dominated by activities such as these and we return to the house battered and exhausted where a little old woman and a mental white dog await our return. The place brings experiences you cannot have in any other part of the world, no matter how far you travel or how much you pay. Falling asleep to the sound of the wild sea, watching the sun set from the headland, smelling the salty spray of ocean with a hint of kangaroo poo, tasting nanny Meg's gourmet dinners. It makes the senses tingle with pleasure everywhere you turn. Although, a heavy feeling begins gripping your heart reminding you that you will have to leave and resume your job and school work. This is the feeling that slumps your shoulders and droops your eyes with its sheer weight. But all good things must come to an end. This is our personal little paradise, our sanctuary of relaxation, and nanny Meg's presence is just the cherry on top. As Facebook once said, “I need a 6 months holiday… 2 times a year”.



 

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Beach architecture

20 Wednesday Jan 2016

Posted by morselsandscraps in architecture, photos

≈ 23 Comments

Tags

Potato Point beach

We had a flood a week or two ago. Tree trunks and large logs roared down the racing Tuross River, and out to sea. They arrived riding the surf onto Potato Point beach, defacing its pure sand. But where I saw ugliness, holiday makers saw possibilities. Soon the beach was busy with engineers and architects and labourers, and the supply of timber was raised from horizontal to a variety of verticals. Architectural style varied: shack, minimalist structure also serving as hanging space, bungalow, tepee, miniature Shinto shrine. The architecture wasn't brutalist: seaweed, pebbles, logs, beach grass, shadow and view became decorative elements.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Weekend walks

18 Monday Jan 2016

Posted by morselsandscraps in Eurobodalla, photos

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Eurobodalla quarry road, spotted gums, towards Widget farm, walking

At last I walk again, exploring more half-familiar territory near J's. On Saturday I drive into Bodalla early to grab bread for the evening fondue, a seventies phenomenon, an occasional treat when the children were young, requested by S for old time's sake.

I want somewhere a bit unfamiliar to walk so I head out past the discarded school, now a Men's Shed, and towards the river through farmland. The air is oddly chilly for mid-January, almost autumnal and the road winds invitingly along a ridge looking down over green paddocks and the vestiges of floodwaters. The landscape is astonishingly green for an Australian midsummer. I startle cows into a mini stampede, gaze my fill at roadside grasses, enjoy the many pleasures of spotted gums, and watch two birds raise lazy wings spotted with white as they fly between clouds and earth

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Sunday I decide to walk up the road through Tyrone Farm to the quarry, the source of the procession of large trucks creating a danger to life along the narrow and now flood-damaged Eurobodalla Rd. This road crosses a ford and passes a dam covered in red algal bloom which looks beautiful but is in fact a pest. Flies swarm around me: it is after all cow country until the road begins to climb. I look down on a channel through a green paddock, a windmill turning lazily and a large open concrete tank, and then a rainforest gully full of tree ferns. A large bird lands in a gully tree, a lyrebird I think. As I follow wheel tracks through grass at the top of the hill, my eye is caught by the pale green trajectory of grasshoppers and the orange and black fluttering of a large butterfly.

I look out over the treed paddocks to tree-covered hills, and see the unnatural signs of the quarry in conflict with the beehives and rough stone wall. There was local protest about the quarry when it started up and I had my first lesson in the ineffectuality of the EPI process: all the letters in support of the quarry were from relatives of the quarry operators. When visual amenity was cited as an argument against the quarry it was dismissed: “It's out of the way. There's no one there to see it.” This failed to take into account the dairy farmer who was planning to build a house on his own property and was told he could no longer do it because it was too close to the quarry. There are still signs of his dream: an avenue of deciduous exotics, and grand gates.

As I head back down to the car, I spot an eagle with uplifted wings riding the air against the blue sky and then its mate emerges from the background of trees and they soar together. My eyes drop back to ground level and fall on a tiny finch no bigger than the butterfly, and the orange and green iridescence of the carapace of a Christmas beetle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Discovery of the week: Orchid

14 Thursday Jan 2016

Posted by morselsandscraps in orchids, someone else's photos

≈ 26 Comments

Tags

Cryptostylis subulata, large tongue orchid

This discovery wasn't mine, unfortunately. My friend has a spotted gum forest behind her house and there a visitor found a colony of large tongue orchids (Cryptostylis subulata), uneaten and thriving. This was exactly the species we'd been stalking on the road to Congo before the volcano trip. The colony there was unobliging and refused to flower for us, obviously because it was too early, although their flowering period is listed October – March. I'm partial to tongue orchids because their leaves aren't shy. They poke up and announce their presence rather than sequestering their identity in thick leaf litter. They're pollinated by ichneumon wasps as they try to mate with the flower lip, yet another deception practised by orchidaceae in the interests of procreation.

The enterprising photographer, Lynda Wightman, used toilet paper as background to get a clear shot.

 

 

For more photos see

http://www.retiredaussies.com/ColinsHome%20Page/OrchidsTas/Cryptostylis/Cryptostylis%20subulata/Cryptostylis%20subulata%20Large%20Tongue%20Orchid.htm

 

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Floods

11 Monday Jan 2016

Posted by morselsandscraps in floods, photos

≈ 16 Comments

Tags

Tuross River

Last week, heat threatens fires. This week, floods send vast amounts of water from the mountains to the sea. One bridge at Cadgee along the Nerrigundah road washes away; water laps at the edges of a caravan park; and further north about forty campers are stranded, including a baby. When the rain first pours down the grass gutters near home flow so fast the grandkids ride their body-boards down the hurtle.

We indulge in a bit of flood tourism and spend about eight hours visiting and revisiting places we know well, barely recognising them under pelting water. At lunchtime, just before Tyrone Bridge goes under, my grandson and I walk across it, water spurting through the boards, and he rescues a body-board caught up against its edge. Later, when we return with the rest of the family, the bridge is thoroughly submerged and the water is still rising. By the time we finish rubber-necking, the chance of getting home along the Eurobodalla road is slim, so we drive at dusk through the bush along Big Rock Road, to be stopped by a fallen tree. However, C-Ridge, the forestry road along which we found sun orchids not so long ago, gave us a clear run to the highway and took us home to a late makeshift dinner.

By 7 the next morning we were out and about again, checking the same spots as yesterday. Our wine-above-the-river spot has become a wine-well-below-the-river spot, and even J, who knows the river reserve intimately finds it hard to pinpoint its exact position. K, my animal-loving daughter-in-law, is in the water up to her knees rescuing grubs and insects and rodents caught up in a drama bigger than us all.

By lunchtime not everyone is keen to see the river enter the sea, so S and I venture off alone, stopping at the Tuross bridge where it would have been no trouble to launch the boat – if you had a death wish. At the opening the water is wild; out to sea are standing waves; at the edges sand drops away in chunks. The water is murky and roiling.

At home, Potato Point beach is no longer pristine: it’s black with tree-trunk detritus.

On the third day the rain eases off, the water drops and wetness becomes a nuisance: piles of damp dirty laundry; no chance of a week camping upriver by the clear calm waters of the Tuross for my visitors; and beans sulking under the vegetable dome because they’ve been watered too much.

By Sunday evening our wine spot is seven metres above river level again, and we sit in early evening above its rapid flow, relishing bank-to-bank water.

 

Tuross River flood peak: Tuesday

 

River rising

 

The tree where we drink wine

Cheese factory bridge

Going under

Bridge across Highway 1

River joining the sea

Potato Point debris

 

Water receding: Thursday

 

Levels dropping: Saturday

 

Mud mark on leaves

 

Wine-spot 7m above river: Sunday

 

 

 

 

 

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Gleam

09 Saturday Jan 2016

Posted by morselsandscraps in photos

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

bark, spotted gums

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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