For Marie, with thanks for five glorious hours, and years of friendship
I sit in the sun with my friend Marie on her wide deck, looking down over neat paddocks to a line of trees and the creek, as she tells me about the creatures that share her world. A tawny frogmouth regularly perches on the deck railings. Barn owls live in the shed. One year a pair of cranes built a practice nest in a tall eucalypt: the next year they returned “for real” and she watched three chicks as they learnt how to stagger along a branch towards food brought by their parents. When a plover family began to behave strangely she took notice and the parents led her to a post hole where one of the chicks had fallen in. Her partner encountered two kookaburras fighting: when he picked them up he found the beak of one firmly embedded in the other one’s head. An old kangaroo who hangs around the house recently died: his body is down by the creek.
As we talk the horse snorts periodically.
I love visiting Marie. She always has travel stories: this time about her escape from a dictatorial tour guide on a package tour in Cambodia. She eyes off the drivers waiting to waylay tourists; finds one who isn’t aggressive; and books him for the next day to take her by tuk tuk out to the killing fields.
We talk and soak up the sun, and then head out for a walk, driving through the forests of Murramarang National Park, to Durras Beach, where the bush comes down the mountain to the sea. The tide is lowish but coming in, and a flat rock platform stretches out towards a little parcel of an island topped by green. This is sandstone country: we don’t have flat platforms like this further south. We follow a thin track edging the beach until we encounter a kangaroo who seems to be blind and sick. When its companion emerges from the bush we decide to leave the track to them and I bum it down to the sand.
Soon we’re caught up in all the visual delights of the platform: the shiny gleam of rocks; pools catching bits of the sky; rocks neatly packaged in iron-stone; unnaturally natural right angles; neat layers of rock laid down under the sea over who knows how many eons; pock marks, cracks and intrusions; tiny shells, a dead starfish, a wrenched up crinoid and piles of seaweed; swirls of brown and grey and orange and tan; and then the grand finale.
The view down the coast along a string of bulbous bluffs, striped and capped with trees: pleasures for another day when the tide is low.
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Nature’s accurate geometry, how do those very straight lines happen? Marie and her stories sound lovely, I can tell how relaxed and easy you are with each other 🙂
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I’m glad you got that impression of my friendship with Marie. That’s exactly how it is. Those straight lines into a right angle were pretty amazing, eh?
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Meg, those grey bobbly rocks look like frozen tripe to me! I learnt to love it in Singapore, when it was prepared with lots of slivers of ginger, and soy sauce, with spring onions. It was soooo tender, quite unlike the way my mother murdered it!
All your images of the rock formations help us gather a knowledge of the different formations they make, without the knowledge to name them all, but to enjoy their shapes, colours and structures. Naturally, the horizontal ones are fun to walk on. I too have fond memories of Durras, both North and South. Al and I explored them both, too. Prue
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I haven’t had tripe for 40 years – I know pretty well exactly because it was just before my senior son was born. We had it Italian style: Singapore style sounds good.
I haven’t been to this part of Durras for donkey’s years, although a lot more recently to the glorious sandstone of Wasp Head. I’m very grateful to Marie.
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In the middle of our heatwave, I didn’t really want to engage my brain today but as usual with your writing, I had to shift gears and start to imagine the lovely scenes you painted, helped by the images you posted. Thanks for waking me up. Too much sun isn’t good!
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Midwinter here and a T-shirt at the weekend. Flowers that should be spring appearing. Bad prognosis for bushfire season! I’m glad I woke you up. I know that heat-wave feeling. At least at home I usually get a sea-breeze
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I love the tales your friend Marie tells of her animal encounters and her escape from the dictatorial tour guide in Cambodia. I would have hopped off myself and found a tuk-tuk to the Killing Fields. I really dislike most organized tours and prefer to go the solitary route!
This walk along Durras is lovely; I love this kind of rock ledge and the spongy-looking rock, the tiny shells, starfish and seaweed. You always include so many concrete details and beautiful language in your posts; they really are a pleasure to read, Meg. 🙂
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I’m glad I’m a good ambassador for my part of the world, as you are for yours.
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Love this post as testament to good, longstanding friendship. Alas, you photos didn’t appear on the iPad, so I shall check on the Mac later
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The contentment of a long time friendship comes through this post Meg. Quite different scenery to your local beach. I like the vision of you “bumming” it down to the beach. I know exactly what you mean
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Marie’s considerably younger than me and tried to lend a hand, but I’d rather maintain undignified independence! The beach is very different isn’t it?
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I’m with you on undignified independence, Meg! Though as you know, I willingly accept help when it’s sensible to do so!
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Some times it makes it more awkward when some one helps. Yes the beach is quite different
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The beach looks so serene and inviting.
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It is. I’ll be going back.
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Unusual rocks here Meg. A great place to explore by the looks of it.
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Just had a look to see where this is and I see that I have been relatively nearby, stayed one night in the cabins at Pebbly beach where I discovered I had claustrophobia!
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I’ll have to explore up there a bit more but it’s a long way for a day trip. Haven’t been to Pebbly Beach for years. Is claustrophobia ongoing? It’s always strange when you’ve been where I know in Australia.
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I’m not good in a dark enclosed room. Need to have a door or window open or at least the curtains! I just feel as if I can’t breathe. Happened in a tent once too!
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I’ve done a bit of solitary walking in Murramarang NP before blogging days, and we dropped over the edge a few times in rainforest days – digital, but I never mastered rainforest photography – shards of light cutting into dim. Maybe a camping or cabin trip for a few days when the coffers are replenished.
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Sounds like a good idea.
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Thanks to Marie for pleasures shared and to you for your generosity in sharing. I love those rocks. All ready for scrambling xx
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And all the better for not requiring much scrambling. Marie is the personification of generosity: sharing rocks is peanuts by comparison. Just been for a daybreak beach walk with another friend and a dog called Latte. And I’ve knitted 4 rows and made pastry for tonight’s quiche. Probably means I’ll do nothing for the rest of the day. Except send hugs your way.
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That’s more than sufficient xxx
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Thanks again Meg for an interesting story about Marie and her environs. Your storytelling really stirs me to try and manage my first venture into Blogs. I made a start but nothing in there yet. I also need to re-write that “itinerary you asked about way back in another place. I have pictures of local PLovers and I think I told you a story about a family of them in a car park a while ago with a little one stuck.Love the pictures as well.
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Plovers seem to like getting underfoot, eh? You wonder how on earth they manage to breed up, which they have done at the Point.
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Deep-rooted, this friendship – in time, of the earth. Lovely post and some fascinating rocks to be explored.
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Friendships beginning at work don’t often survive: this one’s thrived post-work. Proximity helps – 150km round trip is nothing in Australia. I relish it too because I’m old enough to be Marie’s mother.
It’s a while since I’ve been in sandstone country: I think I feel most at home there, maybe because Sydney where I was born is sandstone. And it’s always beautiful.
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I think that’s all very lovely – the enduring friendship and the sandstone. I was born on salt – big deposits under the dairy-country of the Cheshire Plain, and mined there since Roman times. I’d not thought about that before.
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