Leaving Spud

Tomorrow I leave my paradise at Potato Point to spend a year in Warsaw. This post is a temporary farewell to a place I’ve grown to love more and more since I moved here twenty years ago. 

It’s given me so many gifts. It’s offered spectacular places to walk – on the beach, through the bush, beside lakes. It’s provided plenty of animal life – kangaroos, emus, diamond pythons, plovers, kookaburras, seagulls, terns, black cockatoos, sulphur crested cockatoos, sea eagles, black swans, ducks, magpies, king parrots, orioles, honey eaters, bower birds, even the occasional lyrebird. It’s given me close acquaintance with many native plants in the wild – banksias, spotted gums, eggs and bacon, hibbertia, poison peach, schelhammera, blueberry ash, tea-tree, bursaria, donkey orchids, hyacinth orchids, greenhoods, bearded orchids, glossodia, caladenia. It’s indulged my liking for patterns – braided sand as the sea retreats, intricacies of colour and shape on rocks, the designs of at least a hundred species of shell, textures and markings on the bark of trees, reflections broken up by ripples. It has drawn me out onto rock platforms to peer into rock pools at low tide and to wonder at the ancient geological history represented in the cliffs. And it always offers a cool sea breeze on a  hot day.

Recently it’s enticed me into the sea, at least once, sometimes twice a day. I hang my towel on the minimalist structure surviving since the January floods and walk along the beach in my swimmers, often wet to my non-waist as the waves come in. The dog usually comes too, tearing off after the ball, poised in stillness mid-leap as he catches it, or digging a frantic hole out of which he noses it. When the lead appears he grimaces into the distance to see what other dog is responsible for his leashing. Sometimes we meet acquaintances and stop for a brief chat. Back at the towel, I hang my hat, shirt, camera and specs on convenient knobs and stroll in to meet the waves. Five or six steps in and I’m up to my neck, kneeling down at low tide, where I bob up and down for a few minutes. Only once have I been knocked off my feet and completely submerged, revisiting that salty-spluttering, eye-scrunching, and nose-holding I remember so well from childhood dowsings.

The moment I’ve been anticipating now since the middle of last year has arrived. I’ve wound down my Potato Point life. The bags are packed; the hard farewells to dear friends said. snippetsandsnaps is in mothballs till this time next year; 12monthsinwarsaw is on its rocky path to activation. Tomorrow we get on the Sydney bus, on Saturday we board the plane, on Sunday we’ll be settling into our apartment three doors along from my daughter on the other side of the world.

Thank you, blogging mates who’ve followed me in my Potato Point life. I hope you’ll sign up to join me for my Warsaw adventures. 12monthsinwarsaw goes live on Saturday, if my scheduling works!

  

 

Posted with Blogsy

Triton 2

Since my last shell post, I’ve acquired five more shells, all tritons, in varying stages of growth and decay. I decided to photograph them on and in my beach studio, the flood wrack construction where I hang my towel for the morning swim.

Once I’m in my studio I  feel obliged to experiment, rather than merely document and exult. I’ve taken advice from Sue’s guest post for Paula about negative space – “the space in your image that does not contain your main subject. It might be clear space with no detail or almost none, perhaps predominantly black or white, or it might be a blurred background that contrasts with your (in focus) subject. Negative space is perhaps the single most important aspect that helps the subject in your work – the element of interest – stand out and attract the viewer’s attention.” I asked her for ideas about photographing my tritons and she suggested capturing them from below.  The flotsam towel rack offered me plenty of opportunities.

    

  
  

 I was on a roll so I explored other perching possibilities and of course reverted to my passion for closeups and sand.

   
  

   
       

Eurobodalla flowering

2015 is the year in which I enjoyed two flowerings. I arrived in Warsaw in May, when spring was turning into summer, and enjoyed the dramatic flowering of the northern hemisphere. Many flowers were new to me, including horse chestnuts and laburnum: others had some familiarity as garden plants in Australia: still others (notably lily of the valley) were familiar only from poetry and fiction.

Now, in September, I’m watching spring unfold in my home bush. As I walk out onto the headland, I mourn things that were once there and no longer are because of the bushfire belt, which will be ineffectual anyway in a serious fire: hakea, geebung, pea flower, donkey orchids, ti-tree, banksia spinulosa. Zeiria are there but as regrowth, and I have to admit they are thriving.

Mostly the flowers here are less dramatic, but there is the delight of finding them where nature, rather than a human gardener, put them.

Let me introduce Eurobodalla’s September wildflowers. The names of some will be an “I-can’t-actually-remember-your-name” mumble, but most I know well as residents of my photographic ID notebook, built up over a number of years.

---

Zieria smithii: stinkwood

Zieria smithii

Hibbertia ?: guinea flower

Leptospermum laevigatum: coastal tea tree

Prostanthera ?: mint bush

Melaleauca

Hardenbergia violacea

Wonga vine

Pandorea pandorana: wonga vine

Wahlenbergia multicaulis: Tadgell’s bluebell [?]

Westringia fruticosa: coastal rosemary

Carpobrotus rossii: pigface

Pomaderris

Indigofera australis: Austral indigo

Kennedia rubicunda: dusky coral pea

?

Pimelia linifolia: slender rice flower

Violet

Stackhousia monogyna: Creamy candles

Posted with Blogsy

Migrating – again.

 

 

 

I'm about to leave my sleepy beachside village where winter is approaching to go into a Warsaw spring. If you'd like to join me there, I'll be blogging at https://warsaw2015.wordpress.com/ for six weeks, if playing with two year old twins leaves me time to blog.

Apologies if you find my blog-bopping confusing. I do it for my own benefit, so I can keep some sense of order in my gallivanting life.

 

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

From blog to blog

Tags

Potato Point

 

I've returned to Potato Point. There won't be any more posts at https://warsaw2015.wordpress.com/ until May when I return to Warsaw. Until then I'll be blogging at https://morselsandscraps3.wordpress.com/, aka snippetsandsnaps, if you want to follow me there.

It's a bit strange changing the view from my window: from Stalin's Gift illuminated in purple, to the imminent budding of the rich purple Tiboochina in my back yard.

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

My mother’s eulogy (don’t panic, she’s not dead)

I was absolutely delighted with my daughter’s take on my life – sobbed and sobbed as I was reading it. When she posted it on her blog, I dared to reblog it, although I hesitated. It was a lovely stocktake of my 70 years, and a wonderful gift from a daughter who has 2-year-old twins, and a job, and not much spare time to indulge a mother’s bizarre request. Thank you so much Rose.

migrationtothenorth

For her 70th birthday, my mother has asked for her eulogy. Initially my mind flinches from such an enterprise- I don’t want to contemplate her death. But I see some sense in her request, and once I forget what a eulogy is, I get great pleasure from contemplating her life.

My mother in her time has been many things. The first feminist in Broken Hill, the first wearer of miniskirts in Temora. Housewife, separated mother, market gardener, teacher, consultant. Mother of four, sister of two. Photographer, blogger, traveller. It’s a measure of her energy for life that she is 70, and I still expect her to be many more.Last week, she was painting frogs for the first time. They looked like they had been run over by a truck. I can’t think of anybody else who would decide to do this at the age of almost 70.

She sees new…

View original post 1,949 more words

Eurobodalla Regional Botanic Gardens

A visit from HeyJude of http://smallbluegreenflowers.wordpress.com/ would have been incomplete without a trip to the local botanic gardens. I love the way visitors from away drive you to lovely places near home that you rarely visit. The last time I popped into the gardens (with another visitor) was fairly recent, but foreshortened by heat and fatigue. Before that, there was a tortured excursion with two reluctant grandchildren who very wisely wanted to be in the surf, not wandering a bleached landscape on a blazing day with parents and grandma. And before that, I’d occasionally nick down in my lunch hour for a quick hike down the rainforest trail.

The visit with Jude was on a cool grey day, perfect for photography. After a wander through flowers we ate lunch with cheeky blue wrens perching on the plate, and then walked through the beautifully laid-out Arboretum. There, eucalypts announced their identity with unmistakable labels that hadn’t receded into the undergrowth, or been plonked down where they didn’t belong. I’m not very good at ID, but I do know the difference between a geebung and a grevillea: the signage amongst the flowers on the Sensory Trail didn’t appear to.

Eurobodalla beaches: Jemison’s

Tags

Jemison's, memories

Jemison’s is the closest beach to my home. It has absorbed many images from my past.

My two sons, their father and their mates stand at the top of the grassy track, beanies pulled down, hands in pockets, grunting their evaluation of the day’s surf. My niece holds her baby in the water as he experiences the sea for the first time in a shallow sandy rock-pool. My Most Beloved Senior Granddaughter dances and twirls and cartwheels along the beach, desperate to climb the cliffs at beach end. My son tells me with reverence that he was the first to surf a new beach formed by heavy seas near the southern headland. My artist friend scrutinises the rocks and opens my eyes to their patterns and colours as she collects inspiration for her painting. I face the dilemma of two small children, one of whom wants to fling herself in the water and swim to New Zealand, while the other one, terrified of the surf, heads frantically for the dunes. I drive the 1300 kms from Broken Hill, eager to see my two sons who live with their father, rush too fast down the grassy track and crash head over heels amongst the dune wattle. I walk along the beach at night after a meal of champagne and fish and chips with my husband and hear the resonance of the waves and the counterpointing squeak of the sand.

South end, looking north to the village

North end, looking south to the headland

There are three ways to reach Jemison’s Beach. A track winds behind the dunes, between casuarinas and zeiria and monotoca and eucalypts and banksias, and emerges where a creek reflects the twisted trunks of casuarinas at the southern end.

A sandy path held in place by boards, and edged by dune wattle and a protective fence, takes you to the centre of the beach.

A steep grassy track topples you towards the north, where daisies and nasturtiums overflow from headland gardens and coastal rosemary, dune wattle and and white correa thrive. On the headland above is the village of Potato Point.

My memories go back close to forty years. And yet when I walked the beach the other day for a photo-shoot I saw things I have never seen before: the jagged honeycombing; the lichen patterns; the steepness of the cliffs against the blue sky: the rocky outcrops stretching towards the waves; and the wonderful colour and design of the rock face (featured in Jemison’s part 2)

Sometimes, in rough weather, there are sand cliffs taller than me. Sometimes, tongues of ocean reach to the creek and deposit sea-weed where there’s usually a protective sandbank. Sometimes the shoreline is littered with bluebottles, shearwater skeletons and grey pumice.

Sometimes what I capture at the beach is evanescent, fugitive: the particular patterns on the rock face, brought into definition by moisture or light, or revealed as sand retreats; treasures left behind by the sea; visitors, human or animal, or traces of such visitors; flowers and grasses changing with the changing seasons.

At the end southern end of the beach, steps lead up to the headland. Walk across it – above rocky coves and a tiny beach reached by a rough track too steep for me; underneath the flight path of sea eagles; looking across to the majesty of Gulaga – and you reach the next beach.

Another Jemison’s post at

http://morselsandscraps.wordpress.com/category/south-jemisons-beach/

Posted with Blogsy