Liston soundscape

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sounds

The underlay of Liston sound is silence.

It's 10am, and all I can hear is Loki's slurping as he licks his paw, the light tapping of my fingers on my touch keyboard, and the occasional settling of a log on the fire. Suddenly that silence erupts into a barking frenzy as a car goes past.

At night there isn't even the sound of the wind as the still starriness precipitates frost. Occasionally you hear the swish of a car or the rumble of a truck on the Mt Lindesay Highway, and early in the night the intermittent thump of a possum establishing residential rights on (or in) the roof. At daybreak the four roosters begin their daylong competition, the still-thin crowing of Christopher Pyne Jnr competing with the mature crowing of the other three. Then magpies warble, and soon there's the twittering of smaller birds.

Occasionally, but not recently, thank goodness, there are the fighting growls of alpacas as Bruce and his son Boo struggle for supremacy: now there's only the slight sound of tugging as they feed on green pick in the garden yard. We're on edge for the sound of orgling, and J heads out as soon as it starts up waving the big yard broom to discourage illicit congress. Occasionally there's the bass boom of teenage music, and for two days the irritating never-ending drone of a small plane circling.

Human voices come and go as one or another of us talks to the animals: “Hey, Brucey boy, how about that funny run?” Or “Come on cat-face”. Or “Outside Em.” Or “It's no use looking like that, you've just had a walk.” Or to each other: “Do you think our kids suffer from at-the-age-of-37 syndrome?” Or “I'd like to read the Spenserean stanza you wrote when you were 13.” Or “Coleslaw and lentil patties OK for dinner?” Or “This article has completely misinterpreted Plato's cave.” Or “Anything to add to the shopping list?” Or “What about continuity of their lives when the recently undead reappear in Glitch?” (The profundity is J: the food management me.)

On the walk to the lagoon a the bottom of the hill, there's the scritching sound as Em rolls in the grass; the faint tinkle of Leopard's bell as he joins us, having undergone species reassignment in the six weeks we've been here; the mocking cries of noisy myners as they fly overhead in a gang taunting him; the plastic rattle of lids as dog, chook and alpaca pellets are dispensed. There's the occasional mewping of alpacas in mild distress at being away from the herd, and then the glug of our warming tipple of half-cabsav, half-port, that marks the end of the day.

 

 

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Lichen: a portrait gallery

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lichen

The old dead tree near the ruined house en route to my iPad internet connection is covered in lichen. In the winds and snow of the last few weeks, twigs have been blown off and the ground is littered with the patterns of pistachio green lichen with deep brown innards, quite beautiful. In the afternoon sun, warm as long as the wind was still, I knelt down in the tussocky grass and paid photographic homage.

 

 

 

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While I was on Mt Tamborine …

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cria

… an unexpected cria was born at Liston. J went out to feed the animals on an icy Sunday morning and saw what he described as “a periscope poking out of a small pile on the ground.” When he went to investigate, he found a baby alpaca sitting down, head poking up, placenta beside it. He is no animal mid-wife and was driven into a state of near panic. The mother, Rosie, wasn’t feeding it, and the weather seemed colder by the minute. An attempt to settle mother and child in the shed failed. He rang the vet, who connected him with a couple who breed alpacas and who arrived with information leaflets, a coat for a baby alpaca, instructions about preparing the coat for mother’s acceptance, and general reassurance. By this time the baby was suckling happily, and the coat was never used. But confidence in its survival was still not strong.

When I turned to Stanthorpe on Wednesday, J met me, saying “There’s something I need to show you.” And there it was. A tiny brown and white creature, long-legged and alert-eared, taking brief and frequent feeds from its mother. Having read the information on alpaca fertility cycles, J became paranoid about the boys impregnating Rosie again immediately, and began a contraceptive fence-strengthening project to keep them away from her.

And then, just when confidence was building, the snow began to fall, and the wind began to howl in a once-in-thirty-years weather event. It took us a while to figure out that alpacas live in totally inhospitable-to-us climates and that Rosie may well have chosen to unpack her offspring in ideal weather. Rosie and babcia Connie stayed close to the little one and they all sat in a sheltered spot under the eucalypts. The cria even frolicked on the freezing day when frolic was the furthest thing from my mind.

The day after the snow was sunny and warm, and, superstition fading, I was finally allowed to take photos. The baby is a week old.

 

 

 

 

J strengthening the contraceptive device

 

 

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Snow

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snow

Just before daybreak I went outside in a sleepy stupor, and forgot to put my yard shoes on. The top step felt strange to my bare foot. First thought, frost. And then I realised I was stepping into the subliminal crunch of half an inch of snow. There was one star in the sky and flakes were drifting gently. By the time we stirred properly an hour later the shed roof outside the bedroom was an inch deep and our Liston world was white: snow settled on clothesline and power lines, on the lichened fence, on the brown backs of alpacas, on the fence posts and the paddocks, on the opening bud of the cyclamen and the sharp spikes of the aloe vera, and strangest of all to me on the eucalypts.

This does not happen here often, and by midday the white cloak had gone. The day was cold enough for me to wear my beret all day inside, and cower under my cape in front of the fire. My delusions about cold sharpening the brain disappeared when I tried to deal with an insurance claim in the unheated part of the house and couldn't remember how to find my bank account number. We took the dogs for two short sniff-walks down the hill to the creek and drank hot chocolate and port. J read Pride and prejudice, borrowed from the library, but gutted – whole slabs of Mr Darcy missing. And I of course blogged.

 

 

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