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Tag Archives: bush

Night noises: dusk to daybreak

17 Saturday Feb 2018

Posted by morselsandscraps in words only

≈ 19 Comments

Tags

beach, bush, night noises

1

In the bush

The light patter of rain on an iron roof. Slabs of bark whirled from tree-trunks landing with faint thud. The crack of a metal can contracting in the corridor. The rising whoop whoop whoop of a nightjar. The barking of a neighbour’s dog.

A short time of silence when not even the breeze breathes.

And then morning sounds. The crowing of a faraway rooster. The revving up and fading laugh of a pair of kookaburras. The shrill throbbing of cicadas. The clear trilling of a lyrebird, interspersed with its rattling, whirring and thudding.

And then the padding of bare feet, heading to the kitchen to make coffee.

2

At Potato Point

The voices of children playing in the street as light fades. The hissing and snorting of possums. Occasionally a slight asthmatic wheeze or the irritating zzzzzzzz of a mosquito.

The crunch of gravel in the drive at 2 am as my son leaves for work.

The long whimpering of an unhappy puppy. The call of the wolf-whistle bird. A twitter, a trill a throaty rise. The happy-birthday-to-you bird. The magpies’ liquidity. The friar bird with its irritating grackle-grackle-grackle. A harsh wick wuck wuck. All the smaller twittering that one day I’ll be able to name.

And always the continuo of the surf.

New growth, boles, weeping trees, memories, a dam, dogs and cobwebs

01 Monday Jan 2018

Posted by morselsandscraps in photos

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

bush, cobwebs, mini-walks

By way of new year greetings to my wonderful blogging friends, a post about the pleasures of little (and not so little) things right on the doorstep of wherever your life is.

At the weekend my mini-walks take on a bush flavour, rather than the week-day suburban stroll around Spud. On Sunday, I head up the hill onto Bullocky’s Hut Road, and turn left at the triangle just above the house. It’s a road I’ve taken many times over the years, but not recently: a walk in the present, but also into the past, and even the future. Times sometimes merge and sometimes tread their own paths.

In the present, there are lichen, juicy new red growth, a purple leaf and dew-speckled leaves; wrinkled boles of mature trees: viscous red sap oozing from wounded bark; a peeling that looks like a teddy bear with its tongue poked out; traces of burning; gracious tall trees; and bark and leaves caught in cobwebs or on twigs.

The past walks beside me. That one’s the gully where I used to visit a great grove of greenhood orchids, and where Rosemary, my orchid-spotting friend, found a caladenia. A bit further along is the hillside down which we used to bush-bash to the creek past a shy congregation of toothed helmet orchids and into the realm of the evil hooked walking-stick vines. There’s a wild cherry tree fountaining its veil over the view: I used to like sitting under it on my folding chair in the days when I was playing recorder – “not where I can hear you.”

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Where the road begins its downhill journey, there’s a mini-forest of tall fading pink hyacinth orchids, still there amongst the burrawangs and spotted gums, still vigorously opposing a good photograph.

The future is visible too. Startling new growth springs from the black trunks of geebungs. Yellow posts, yellow dobs of paint on tree trunks, a blue plastic knot around a fallen trunk, a pink tie around the waist of a spotted gum, and bulldozer tracks are all reminders that the gully is under consideration as the site for a dam to store floodwaters.

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The next day, the first of 2018, I walk again, this time continuing along Bullocky’s Hut Road. I set out in the company of a man and two dogs, but they are soon far ahead of me as I dawdle, trying to capture sun-struck cobwebs with dew still on them.

 

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The peeling bark is irresistible and so are the wrinkly boles of the spotted gums, and the light-illuminated trunks.

I pass the Skype clearing, the turnoff to the steepness of the Big Dipper, the Eastern Standard Time meridian. When I reach the overgrown track down Dead Car Hill, memories swarm. Just there is where we saw our first greenhood orchids and identified them as pitcher plants: I remember poring over them with my new magnifying glass at the beginning of my long perving on the inner parts of plants. Further down the ridge, years ago, we entered a gully after very heavy rain: the creek rushed along between rocky banks draped with ferns, a vivid green spotted gum guarding the junction with a tributary.

I don’t go down the track because the man and two dogs are returning. We walk back to the house companionably.

RegularRandom: 5 minutes with lichen

18 Sunday Jun 2017

Posted by morselsandscraps in photos

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

bush, lichen, RegularRandom

It’s early morning in the bush. My first job is to head down the hill below the house and photograph lichen rampaging over fallen casuarina branches. I take a low folding chair because everything is damp from evening mist. Below me in the gulley I can hear a lyre bird calling and every time I grab a tree for balance I’m showered with droplets. As the sun crests the roof of the house I begin photographing. I move around keeping close watch on my feet: mobility is very precious to me.

After my five minutes I crab my way along the slope to a small pile of firewood and heft an armful to the stairs cut out of the hillside and then onto the deck. When I download the photos I’m disappointed. The lichen luxuriance has posed the perennial problem (for me) of depth of field and the clumps are sharpshot in the foreground and a background blur.


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This gallery turns into a slide show if you click on one image. It’s my contribution to DesleyJane’s RegularRandom, where this week she gets up close and personal with pens.

 

 

 

 

Family gathering

04 Monday Jan 2016

Posted by morselsandscraps in family, photos

≈ 17 Comments

Tags

beach, bush, Christmas holidays, daughter-in-law from heaven

My house is no longer the staid domicile of a working son, a woman in her seventies and a white dog with black eyepatches. It's the roiling base for the Mt Tamborine mob: my son and daughter-in-law, two grandkids and a calm black dog. The garage is full of camping gear; kayaks and surf boards lie under rainforest trees; wetsuits and wet underpants dangle from branches; a TV migrates upstairs surrounded by a scatter of Nintendo handsets. The frig is packed with ham, leftovers, chicken thawing, lettuce and herbs from J's garden dome – but not with whatever it is A's looking for when he opens it hopefully. There is perpetual coming and going: K's sisters are staying north at Tuross; S's mates south near Tilba.

The beach calls: T and A are old enough to surf alone or bike around the village, and even I ramble down late one afternoon to watch them ride waves and my granddog dig a colony of holes. On Christmas Day, J and I stand on the headland and watch our youngest in the empty sea waiting and waiting for a wave. Another day, his brother documents him in the thick of more action. Uncle H hops his 6' onto a motorbike too small for his nephew and hoons up the street, knees up to chin. The Christmas lunch entertainment is provided by the coupling of a murky brown no-egg vegan pumpkin pie (mine for J) and a luscious white pavlova, six inches of eggs, sugar and cream (T's for the rest of us) which tempted me into two evil slices.

One of the holiday rituals for S is a motorbike adventure with his mates out into the rugged wilderness behind Cobargo, this time negotiating the notorious razorback ridge where there's a sheer drop into two valleys. I go out with him, about an hour from home, to hide extra fuel, through Nerrigundah and out to Belowra and Belimbla. Although I haven't been out there for many years, it feels beautifully familiar: the view out over the ranges of the great divide, and then the opening out into the Belowra Valley. We stop on the edge of the dirt road where there is a brief moment of mobile reception and I eavesdrop as S talks to someone who knows the area, scrutinises the map, is tortured by locked gates, and then discusses his findings with a mate. I sit idly and suddenly see something tiny and white moving quickly on the rocky road edge – an ant with some kind of food – or is it an egg? I'm astonished that I can see something minute so clearly and I track its movements for five minutes and about three meters before I lose sight. Phone calls over, we go back the way we've come for a rethink and then follow tracks down to the clear waters of the Tuross looking for a ford.

While we're away a miracle has happened. I left a vast pile of mulch on the grass outside my fence. It is no longer there – it has been spread all over my front yard, K's handiwork with a bit of help from my son and grandkids. Once she starts there is no stopping her: she prunes and clears and leaf-blows and terminates vines until my front yard actually looks weed-free and tidy. My feeble plan for the mulch was two wheelbarrows a day: she does it by the car-trailer.

This isn't the end of her home maintenance. Discovering my gutters need clearing she finds a ladder and climbs up onto the roof to remove the litter of a shameful number of years, including the shed skin of my resident python. In all of which she assures me she takes great pleasure, not enjoying idleness.

There is a lot of calm time between frenetic activity: teasing the dog by pretending to eat his hambone or reading. My resident son produces books from his downstairs hoard for his nephew. Grandfather and 12-year-old grandson compete for the same book: So you've been publicly shamed by Jon Ronson. A. goes off to ride his bike and tucks the book out of sight. This is a time-honoured family tradition: you hide what you're reading so no one can nick it.

When they go out for the day, the house reverts to silence, and feels quite empty.

 

Kids!

Waiting for a wave ...

... and catching one

Brown's cows and Christmas lunch

Preparing for an epic motorbike ride

The daughter-in-law from heaven

 

 

Acknowledgement: The title of this post was appropriated from one of Paula's challenges. I thank her! This post wasn't appropriate for a one-photo challenge, nor had the events in it happened then.

 

Posted with BlogsyPosted with Blogsy

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