Discovery of the week: the power of a sneeze

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Catullus, prophecy, sneezes

Last week I was expecting a number of things in the mail. They were unexpectedly sluggish arriving. As I was complaining to my son at dinner one night, Cruz sneezed three times. My son said confidently “They'll be here tomorrow.” It hadn't occurred to me that the resident dog, with his endearing black eyepatches and a terror of thunder, might be a prophet, but sure enough the next day the sluggish mail arrived. I'd never heard of this superstition of sneeze as omen.

 

Is this dog a prophet? -

 

At the weekend I was telling J the story and he, putting on his classicist's hat, said “Surely you remember that Catullus poem? Sneezes a good omen for a love affair?” No. I didn't remember. I found the number of the poem on the Internet (Carmen 45) and he hunted it down in his murky green Catullus. Over coffee and toast he translated it for me.

 

As the two lovers, Septimius and Acme protest their love for each other, Cupid that perennial bystander when love's in the air, sneezes approval on the left, and sneezes approval on the right.

Now, having set out with good omens they love and are loved with mutual passion.

 

From now on I'll be scrutinising every sneeze for its prophetic insight.

 

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Discovery of the week: Bogong moths

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"On track: searching out the Bundian Way", bogong moths, John Blay

The day before Christmas a book arrived mysteriously in my letter box – no donor name and no memory of having ordered it for myself. Before I began reading it, I crowd-sourced a search for the giver, and discovered her, currently taking possession of Amsterdam, the friend whose book-gifts have opened worlds to me over the years.

This book is “On Track”, an account of John Blay's attempts to find the old Aboriginal route from the high country near Mt Kosciuszko to Eden on the coast, the link between feasting on bogong moths and feasting on whales. The country he traverses is wild, rugged and remote, and very close to where I live.

Early every summer, when the children were small, we used to be visited by stray bogongs, who congregated on the inhospitable glass of the French windows, banging against them, large and furry. I knew then that the moths were heading for the high country and that they were eaten by the ancestors.

But I didn't know the technicalities of gathering and cooking till Blay enlightened me.

The moths congregate in vast numbers in caves in the high country. They cling, massed, to the walls. Blay touched one and thousands peeled off and formed a squirming crush on the floor. Blay comments “It's a demonstration of how readily they might be harvested.” (p. 24)

How they became a feast has always puzzled me (although not enough to check it out). Blay solves the puzzle for me. You cook them, winnow out dust and wings, and pound them into fatty cakes which last a few days, longer if they're smoked. (p. 26)

 

Then of course I consulted Mr Google and found plenty more details.

They have a wingspan of about 50mm, dark brown mottles and two light spots on each wing, and fly up to 1500 kilometres in their year-long life. Bogong moth expert Ken Green says they are the second biggest energy input into the mountains, after sunlight.

Larva develop in ground now poisoned by low levels of arsenic which is stored in the body of the adult, and then leaches into local soil when they die. Because they die in large numbers, 1.5 metres thick on the floor of some Alpine caves, representing many generations, the arsenic becomes concentrated and a potential threat to anything that eats them – antechinus, spiders, lizards and Mountain Pygmy Possums.

Deceived by artificial lights into thinking it's sun-up and time to rest, they can disrupt air-conditioning, cover lighting for sporting fields, and become a nuisance at barbecues. They smother buildings with a dark coating of moth, infiltrate Parliament House in Canberra and one even perched on Yvonne Kenny's nose at the closing ceremony of the Sydney Olympics.

 

 

 

Sources

http://australianmuseum.net.au/bogong-moth#sthash.4ZsJY83y.dpuf

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2002/11/14/2583232.htm

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/21249231/ns/business-small_business/t/australian-eatery-puts-moths-menu/#.VoclC8saySM

 

 

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Discovery of the week: Bolwarra flowers

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bolwarra, Eupomatia laurena

It's a long time since I've poked around in my front yard which is full of sandflies, ticks and mosquitoes: or at least that's my excuse. I was prompted by the need to spray knee-high grass. I found two dead trees, and another challenged one, and while I was being sand-flied around the ankles I noticed that the bolwarra was flowering, something I had never seen before.

The bolwarra (its Aboriginal name, meaning either “high”, or “flash of light”, or who knows what?) is a rainforest tree with an ancient lineage. This one's been in my front yard since the rainforest makeover about ten years ago. Its common names are native guava or copper laurel: I'm a fan of common names because they aren't subject to the name changes brought about by taxonomy wars. In this case they hint at its edibility – the sweet, aromatic fruit can be used as a spice-fruit in beverages, jams and desserts; and at the botanical name, Eupomatia laurena.

The flowers have a distinctive ether-like perfume (I've heard it called sewer-like) and each one only lasts a day. They are pollinated by small brown weevils – I spotted one in action, but the camera didn't: a rare occasion when I saw more than the lens.

 

 

 

 

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Discovery of the week: Fossilised ripples

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Cadgee, fossilised ripples

This won't become a weekly series, because there's no guarantee that each week will proffer a startling discovery. But last week did.

On Saturday afternoon we drove along the river road towards Nerrigundah, the road that I walked in twelve instalments last year with such pleasure. We wanted to examine the rock in the cuttings with new geological eyes, and see if it matched any rockage we'd seen on the ridge in the morning.

We scrutinised the rock face in a way that never occurred to me twelve months ago, noting the easy way pieces peeled or broke off and fell to the road.

Then, high up, a riveting sight. Our first local fossil. Not a shell or a leaf – these rocks are too old for that. What we were looking at was ripples, that most evanescent of motion, captured in stone.

 

Can you spot them?

 

How about now?

 

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