Weekend walks

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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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A weekend in words

Tags

goanna, Kelly Slater, laziness, weekend

I arrive at my weekend B&B to find my host in unaccustomed shorts and thick gloves heading up the hillside clutching something purposefully and carefully in his hands. I whizz over to see what it is – a small goanna, beautifully marked and vibrating with panic. It's already put its jaws around J's thumb which he had to expose to untangle it from the garden netting. I refrain from delaying its release by grabbing the camera and it races up a tree out of reach of galumphing humans, even if they are only trying to help.

The afternoon is very warm and the river reserve J has been shaping for a few years has been slashed by council (at last) so we pack seats, insect repellent and wine and head down to one of our favourite places under a huge old casuarina to watch the long long day draw to a close. We can hear the murmur of small rapids – there's a lot more water in the river than there usually is at this time of the year. A young kookaburra half-laughs above us and then arrows across to the other side of the river.

The sun is sinking and provides us with another pleasure as it back-lights a red spider spinning its evening web racing down, up and across in a very business-like way.

The next afternoon is very hot, so we turn to the river. We walk down the track where I used to wash carrots and beetroot in market-gardening days, and cross towards a developing island. We pass a small eel heading in the opposite direction to hide very effectively in the weed. I'm not wearing my glasses so I have to take J's word for this. Today I lose my balance in the deep sand and topple straight in: none of my usual dithering before immersion. The water is almost blood-temperature and no one else is about.

We sit in the water in the shade, chatting in a desultory way and looking for schools of tiny fish. When we've cooled off, we dress and return to our wine spot. It's been a busy day (three beaches will have a post of their own.) As light fades I sprawl on a cushion and look up through the branches of the massive casuarina, river wrack caught in its branches from the last flood, a good 40 feet from riverbed. The fine tracery of needles and nuts against the sky is replaced by the tracey of branches as I look higher. There is no sign of last night's spider or its web.

On Sunday J spends the morning with water: transferring water between tanks; drenching the garden to tenderness; and trawling through boxes of fittings in search of the appropriate nipple as he refines the fire-fighting system. There has been a small bushfire on Nerrigundah Ridge, alarmingly close and putting paid to summer complacency.

At lunch time we head off to an art exhibition at Bingi where a friend is exhibiting exquisite botanical drawings. The Priory is on a hill with 360 degree views to the sea and over Tuross Lake to the mountains of the Great Divide, and the wind is rioting, slowly spinning a shark sculpture. J was last here in the early 1980s for a clearing sale, nosing around to see what he could find of use in our new poverty-stricken rural life. No sign now of the old sheds and paddocks. They've been replaced by a manificent house, marble floored, and a garden inhabited by sculptures and statues. The artist, Barbara Romalis, is trying to place a delicate pottery nativity scene and can't find a base to her satisfaction. J scrutinizes the paintings by Peter Mesenberg, and pronounces them excellent beyond envy.

My bush weekend is drawing to a close. After lunch we return to the river, startling a foot-long fish (bass or bream?) and loll and idly splash and talk about the magic vastness of geology and other smaller matters.

I return to my beachside home to prepare for the imminent arrival of my Queensland family: son and his partner, two grandchildren, a dog, two kayaks, two motorbikes, eight or nine surfboards, pushbikes, camping gear, and maybe even the bread maker. My resident son amuses – or is it bemuses – me with a video gone viral of Kelly Slater's home-made surfing wave, ending a very pleasant Australian weekend.

 

 

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Portrait gallery: burrawangs

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burrawangs, Macrozamia communis

Burrawangs (Macrozamia communis) are prolific around Potato Point. Their ferny leaves look particularly spectacular against the trunks of spotted gums.  The Cadigal people made the pulp of the seeds into cakes roasted over hot embers, but only after pounding and soaking them in water for a week, changing the water daily, to remove the poison.

The seeds are a rich red: they may be waiting for a photo-shoot when I return from Warsaw.

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The river rises

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January rain, Nerrigundah, Tuross River

We’ve had unseasonal rains. The river is flowing fast and clean, creating a big pool where we loll about and cool off on steamy days. On Saturday, we drive along the Nerrigundah road, where I walked in October and November, and see the landscape transformed. Where there were sandbars, there there is now a wide river, and the grass is an intense unAustralian green. At the bridge, the water is deep and bank to bank with no sign of the sun-dappled rocks under its hurry. The road near the causeways has been washed away and everywhere there are signs of flood wrack: uprooted trees, tangles of vegetation, and a washed-away car trailer. Pelting rain fills the gutters with rushing brown water, but eases off as we crest the mountain.

Murphy’s Bridge downstream, November

Murphy’s Bridge, downstream January

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What I’m missing by going away

Tags

events

I don't know whether I should do this. I was just settling in to a rich life on the South Coast, when I left it for a month. I relish and mourn the things I'm missing.

Cheese-making at a friend's place

Are you free for a Greek day at my place with Greek music and coffee as we make feta and Haloumi? We are not experts but I think we can pull this off. We will start about 10.00 Wednesday, go all day and finish about 4 pm. There is a lot of sitting around to do apart from sterilising, thermometer watching and chatting.

 

 

A book launch at my favourite bookshop

This author has already written a fascinating book about wombats, and one about the Wollemi pine. (have you seen the caged Wollemi Pine in Zagreb Botanic Gardens, Paula?)

 

 

 

Fibre and textile art exhibition

I love the diversity and skill showcased in this annual exhibition, and the Mechanics Institute is a great venue.

EFTAG presents its annual fibre and textile art exhibition

‘SERENDIPITY’

Mechanics Hall, Moruya Dec 13th to 21st

Open daily from 10 am to 4pm

Official Opening

6 pm 12th December

Don't miss this! Quality, variety, imagination, inspiration …. yet another fantastic display of work by EFTAG members …

just in time for Christmas!

 

An ABCOpen workshop

 

I've done workshops like this before. The presenter is excellent and interesting. She's returned to work after having a baby who spent a fair part of his early babyhood sailing off the Queensland coast. I would enjoy exploring family traits, especially since I'm spending so much time with half my family. But I can't do both.

 

 

 

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The river road 12: The end

Tags

bushranging, Gulph Creek, Nerrigundah, Nerrigundah Recreation Reserve

And what an end! The longest walk. The most creeks. The most dwellings. The most flies. Things that curl and hang. Tennis court, shelter shed and a mud brick loo. Tall tall trees. Wisps of cloud low down on the hills. A busy fluttering of butterflies – rich brown with orange eye splotches on the lower wing; orange and black; white with green dots; a deep mauvey-grey; black with white patches. A reprise of trigger plants, ferns, wattle, dianellas, tree ferns, honeysuckle, mint bush, kangaroo grass. My only encounter with territorial dogs.

I push on across a couple of fords over Gulph Creek, disturbing a family of ducks. And there is Nerrigundah. A fire shed. A hedge of wild roses. An old house that was once a shop. And my goal: a monument to a policeman shot by a bushranger in the days when this minimalist village was a thriving gold mining town. The clouds lower and turn deep grey, spots of rain spatter my specs, and a confetti of leaves swirls down in the rising wind. It's a long way back to the car and I'm fading, but the River Road Project is about to have a rousing climax.

 

My fly swat draped, with thanks, in the fork of a eucalypt

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your chance to enjoy my world in the real world!

 

 

Next post – River road: climax

And a challenge. What do you think the climax might be?

 

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The river road 11: droplets and the distractions of new knowledge

Tags

flowers, raindrops, river road

Raindrops. That looks like being the theme of the day when I set off, weatherproof jacket at the ready in case the cameras are in danger of getting wet. And it is, for a while, because droplets require the use of the old camera and its capacity for close-up. As soon as I contemplate a broader view, I hear a voice saying “Not CIM. You know better. Use your knowledge.” So I take a chaos of shots, twiddle a multitude of knobs, and select a bevy of options, to the point where I have no idea what new understanding took what photo. When I look at my collection of shots I find that I am in the middle of my Blue Period, although lacking Picasso's intentionality. At least now I know I need to make two different kinds of photographic excursions – one with an earnest notebook and pen, in the true spirit of skill development, and one with CIM frivolously engaged. Technique has interfered with the pleasures of the walk.

Which are many, beginning with raindrops on leaves. The bitumen only reaches a certain distance, as I expected, far enough to join the road that winds its way down the mountain: and then the combined road travels over a bridge near a cluster of houses, an old church, and a hut where I spent many evenings a lifetime ago. Droplets still draw my eye; and tiny purple pea flowers (blue with the learned camera); and the precariousness of trees whose roots are revealed in the cutaway earth; and the twistings of vines, and the framing of scenes (and a horse) by trees. The road in spots is paved with the round yellow balls of wattle blossom, and the long orangey needles of the casuarinas. The creek allows indulgence in old passions for reflections and ripples.

 

Mist in the mountains

 

 

 

Animal tracks from the bush to the road

 

Vacated wombat hole with spiderweb

 

 

Wattle blossom

 

Casuarina needles

 

GALLERIES

 

FRAMED

 

TWISTED

 

RAINDROPS

 

 

CIM = Complete Idiot Mode, i.e. automatic shooting mode. My favoured mode, in fact!

 

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The river road 10: orchids and black cockatoos …

Tags

birds, flowers, orchid

… amongst other things

The hills are swathed with wattle, and the roadside crowded with the white of mint bush and ti tree flowers and the yellow of wattle and pea flowers. Today’s stroll is a bit hilly, curving past cleared land, and tracks stumble off into rainforesty gullies at the foot of the mountain. The school bus laps me twice, once for high school, once for primary school. There are tempting side-tracks up into the forest and down to the river, but this project has Rules, so I stay on the road, noting options for another day. It suddenly occurs to me that I haven’t spotted an orchid yet, and lo! There are the traces of a bearded orchid in a stump, its flowering long past. Just over the road a flurry of bird call, and a flash of red. Three red-tailed black cockatoos feasting in the casuarinas, unperturbed by my presence, but unwilling to pose. The best I could catch was a blur of red. They are doubly welcome: the black cocky is my avatar, and they are supposed to presage rain. Two tree ferns stand by the road, unmolested by clearing and nearby houses. Groves of pink trigger plants straggle up the verge of the road into the bush, a brighter pink than those I saw the other day, despite the dust.

Today’s walk ends in bitumen.

A pond dotted with wattle balls

Dust from the school bus

Beard orchid flowering, Potato Point

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Fringe lily: Thysanotus tuberosus

Native holly: Oxylobium ilicifolium

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Trigger plants

Has Andy Goldsworthy been here?

And a wombat here?

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The river road 9: Grandeur and a river crossing

Tags

flowers, rockface patterns, trees, Tuross River

Suddenly on this stretch of road the trees become bigger, towering up out of the drop down to the river. Wattles are in the splendour of full bloom, and so are ti trees and white mint bush. The air is dense with the buzzing of bees and with perfume, heavy-sweet and spicy. Below, the swishing of the river in a series of small rapids. No familiarity on this stretch, after more than twenty years.

A car stops. The driver leans over, looks at me, and says “I know you.” His name I remember; his face has changed. On the edge of the road past and present meet, and I’m incapable of giving him the required directions in the jangle of adjusting old memories. What do I remember? Offending him by refusing to let him carry my bag after a P & C meeting in Sydney in 1978. Did he really sulk for 300 km? Is this a story I’ve made up? I don’t want such intrusions on my grinning solitude.

The pink rocks of the cutting soon fill my mind with memories in the making, and I relax into the beauty of the morning. I pause on the bridge, noting that sand has taken over, where there were once pink rocks. The river brushes noisily over pebbles, and floats circular mats of algae. A man on horseback nods hello, and the cutting still towers, revealing tree roots coiling from crevasses.

Green mullein: Verbascum virgatum

Old man’s whiskers and lichen

Crabapple?

Pomaderris (Buckthorn family)

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Bracken unfurling

Peaches

Senna pods

Wattle pods

Clematis

White cedar

Wandering jew: Tradescantia fluminensis

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Melaleuca

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A bridge for Jo, queen of bridges

Snake heading for skeletonhood

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The river road 8: the birthday walk

Tags

birds, birthday

On Monday I turned 70. I planned to drive to Canberra and back for the day, a round trip of 400 km. Instead I head off eagerly and early for a segment of the river walk. The air is cold and the sky grey as I park in a spot just above the river. By the time I’ve walked through the first cutting the sun is shining, and the air warmer.

The gifts my walk give me are many. The river moves along just below me, shallow and brown, with the sound of tiny rapids in the stillness. Trees reach into the sky and lean over the road.  The second cutting offers sliced rock revealing pinks and purples and browns, and fountains of yellow pea flowers. Two magpies sing their melodious song and a willy wagtail, dapper in black and white, swoops across the road. Mysterious chalices line up on a grassy bank, remnants of purple flowering in the hollows where the seeds wait for dispersal.

As I drive home every old fence post seems to have a kookaburra perched on it.

I don’t feel 70. Every time I acknowledge that number I do it with astonishment

Such a pity it’s a pest!

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