A Ripple Here, a Breaking Wave There

Cloudy, autumn, Blue Mountain dawns are, in our front yard, a melange of almost every green on the pallette, leavened by the dull greys and browns of bark and twig, and one brief glimpse of the white house beyond the creek, on the other side the little valley.  Later, the sun will push through even thick cloud and pick out the late roses, and second blooming of the rosemary, but, for now, the shadows and muted colours allow easy concealement for both the hunter and the hunted.

As I stood at the top of the steps, assessing what level of clothing would be adequate for a walk to the village, an anomalous fleck of brightness jiggled into view at ground level.  Brillliant white, bobbing up and down,  crossing the grass (not lawn, it hasn't been mowed for a while, and is only kept in check by the tyres of family who are staying for a while) towards me.

Changing focus from sky to earth, I find our resident Black Ducks waddling towards me.  One has picked up a fallen Cockatoo feather - small, squarish, and ever so white - and is waving it at me while its mate mutters quietly about their need for breakfast.  The feather is dropped in the rush, the moment I toss a few little scraps of (wholemeal) bread onto the grass.

How long do these birds live?  I've looked up a variety of sites and reference works and so far haven't been able to find an answer.  We met them first, eleven and a half years ago, soon after we arrived at our new home in the Valley on top of the Mountain.  I had walked to the letterbox and was standing there, checking the mail, when a soft, repetitive mutter intruded on my reading.  A duck was standing a few feet behind me, looking up, addressing me in his own language.  I don't know where he was while I crossed the yard - there was no flutter of wings to say he had flown in from the creek, so I must have walked past him.  I could hear my grandfather's voice, decades ago..

"Lucky it wasn't a Brown Snake, lad, it would'a got you"  It was a reminder to look about while I walked - what else had I missed?

He followed me back to the house, so I took the hint and threw some bread onto the lawn - he had made it clear he wasn't leaving the verandah otherwise.  A day or two later, he was back - with a friend.  Not long after that, we were introduced to seven fluffy ducklings.  I am guessing that the previous residents had been feeding them, and, despite the house having been empty for some months, they hadn't forgotten what might be possible, if the right questions were asked.

Similarly, it didn't take long for our Magpie Landlords to arrive and let us know what rent would be acceptable to them - and the King Parrot that landed on my shoulder with no warning was another sign of my place in the order of things.  Our new beginning in the mountains was, in the lives of the feathered locals, a continuation - a new, if similar, chapter in a longer story.  Those birds had been dealing with humans for a long time, and not only the owners of this house.  Our Magpie friends had a cafe-crawl that included several other houses along our street, as well as the butcher in the village on the other side of the railway line.

Before we had met many of the local humans, the birds were already greeting us and letting us know where we stood in their world.  It is a world that their ancestors occupyied and shared with humans for a very, very long time.  Only thirty years ago, or forty at the most, this ground was a swamp full of paperbark trees and reeds, frogs and snakes - do these ducks remember those times?  They would have raised many ducklings in such a place. 

The Cockatoos would remember - they are said to live seventy years, perhaps more, and the more I see of them, the easier it is to believe that they have a language, culture, and an oral history.  That would mean it is only just over three and a half Cockatoo lifetimes since Governor Phillip set his convicts and marines to work on the shores of Port Jackson.

It could be as much as a thousand Cockatoo lifetimes since the ancestors of the Gundungurra people first drank from the stream that flows past our garden.  I wonder what stories the Cockatoos have been able to tell each other about this land, and the changes that various people have wrought upon it, even as the ice ebbed and flowed, and the oceans rose and fell.

All who came before us left their marks, and created ripples that reach across time and space to affect the here and now.  Ripples seem tiny things, but when enough arrive at a conjunction, a wave can rise, and break - it can freshen a pond, or crash upon a shore and uproot what was standing. 

Have you wondered, as you paddle your canoe down the stormier reaches of the river of life, which choices of your own have put you where you are?  Most of us do - yet there are waves in that maelstrom that grew from the ripples of the decisions of others, made in other times and places, near and far, just as the ripples of our own making have gone far from our sight, to shores we may never see.  One wave might threaten to pull us under - another might wash us onto a welcoming shore - the voyage, one way or the other, is sure to be interesting.

I stood, mattock in one hand on this sunny morning, and contemplated my vegetable garden. I looked at the waves of pumpkin leaves and froth of summer grass seed heads that were breaking across my once tidy beds, and remembered the source of some of the ripples that led to this verdant tempest.  Hurrying onto rain-soaked steps while wearing old, smooth-soled shoes was one splash that is still making itself felt - one moment of carelessness, followed by months of consequences.  I can still only weild the mattock one handed, so it is going to take time to get the gardens back where I want them.  The winter frosts will probably do more clearing and weeding than me.

Still, it could be worse - we escaped the fire season that was anticipated for The Mountains, unlike so many other parts of Australia (shhhh!  I know - it is only the beginning of March - there is still April to go yet)

Rainbows Made From Mud

Beyond the lawn that stretches from our back door, past our clothes line, around the corners of the orchard, there is a darker space.  Keep walking and suddenly the warmth of the sun is gone from your shoulders.  The shadows of the pines, casuarinas, hakeas and eucalypts are dense along the bank of the creek.

You can walk silently, your footfall absorbed by the deep carpet of fallen leaves and needles that is slowly darkening within those deep shadows, becoming one with the soil below.  Where your boot soles bruise the rotting carpet, scents arise to tickle the nose - mold, terpenes, slime and mud all contribute to the bouquet.  Stand quiet for a few minutes and the currents of life that stilled themselves at your intrusion will slowly resume their flow.

Insects will skitter, and skinks rustle among the leaves and fern-fronds.  Perhaps a snake will rasp across the drying leaves in pursuit, the fear inspired by your presence overpowered by its need for prey.  Wrens and finches will flit through the leaves, seeking a safe path between the serpent below the winged raptors above, and perhaps a pair of ducks will push ripples across the surface of the pool, startling the water insects, tadpoles, and minnows.

Stand still, breath slowly - more life will become obvious as you become less so.  Lower your gaze and see the tiny scurryings among the blades of grass, as ants and spiders go about their business.

A place that seemed still and empty is revealed as a thriving market place of living and dying.  Look closely, breath even more slowly - there is another level here, known more in the imagination than by any apparent movement.

Those fragments of plants and animals and fungi now fallen from their places are still busy - dying and decomposing and becoming part of the mud in and beside the creek.  Mud that binds to and is bound by the roots of the trees and shrubs and ferns and rushes and grasses and violets that thrive on its richness.  Below the mulch, the mud is alive, and is sharing its life with the fractal root-web of feeding plants. 

Just there, by the bank - see the smooth grey-green and cream dappled bark of the eucalypt that dominates the head of this pool.  Look inside it - see the miracle.  Somehow that patient, motionless, trunk is busy pumping a vast flow of liquid towards the sky.  From the sodden earth below, the sap carries microscopic fragments of that dark mud, lifting it twenty metres or more to the tiny, solar powered factories we call leaves.

Look up - you can see the undersides of the branches, twigs, and leaves - an airborne net to equal the complexity of the one below the surface.  Yet there is something you cannot see from there.  Back you go, back out into the sunlight, across the lawn, until you are further from the base of the tree than its topmost leaves are.

Look up again, see how the late afternoon sun is playing on the leaves - and something else.  Tiny flecks of white among the green and orange growth - the tree is in blossom.  The final destination of that miraculous flow of dissolved mud, brought all that way via root, trunk, branch, and twig, is that fragrant cluster of creamy reproductive complexity.  In a few months, some of those flowers will have become gumnuts, holding within themselves seeds tiny enough to make acorns look clumsy.

But now, as the blossom basks in the sunlight, another miracle is taking place.  Listen and look - living bells that chime and squawk and flutter and flash in shades of blue, green, yellow, orange and red - the rainbow lorikeets have arrived to feast on the nectar that is the penultimate product of that mighty trunk.  The bees that have had only tiny honey eaters to compete with are now scattered by the chattering, swirling, feathered rainbow of lorikeets, and must circle hopefully, or yield, and return to their hive, and the leaves and petals that fell last year to become mud are once again airborne.

Village Life

Do I live in a village or a town?

I once lived in a village that had so few houses that it would barely have deserved the title hamlet, but for the church, school, fire brigade shed, and the trading post/wine bar/fuel stop/stockfeed store that formed its centre.

 It is said that there has been some sort of inn or bar on this site (legally or otherwise) since 1837

Now I live in a town that most of its residents refer to as a village.  Wishful thinking?  Or perhaps the locals are applying the designation of village merely to the commercial core, with its little row of shops facing the railway line and highway in a straggly "L" shape?

My Geography teacher, so many years ago, would probably have called it a large town, and been adjudged correct by authorities.  Perhaps it is a medium sized town with a number of village areas comprised variously of the shops and the older residential precincts close by, with another couple of older villages along the creek and ridge lines that lead to the grand feature of the district - Wentworth Falls - plus those late arrivals that have pushed outwards beyond easy walking distance of the railway station, along rocky ridges, through twisted gums and native scrub, to the heights that offer a panorama of The City on The Plain.

It feels like village life, though, as I work in my garden and accept compliments on its behalf from passers by, discuss the weather, give directions to tourists seeking the lake or the falls, or exchange news with a passing fisherman.

It feels like a village when you can greet storekeepers by name each day, and be named in turn by the quiet tide of patrons that flow in and out of the library each day that it is open.  It feels even more like a village when particular Magpies, King Parrots, and Cockatoos come to talk to you when you are sitting on the veranda or working in the garden, and you can greet passing dogs by name.

So how big is a village, really, and why don't we all live in one?  It feels a better place to be than the anonymous stacks of brittle concrete and flammable foam our developers and politicians seem determined to foist on most of the population.

Risky Business in the Garden

I did a terrible, brutal thing to a couple of trees just recently.  It wasn't their fault - it was mine.  I had not allowed as well as I should have for the likely growth of a larger neighbour, in root or branch, and put two little apple trees in a spot that seemed perfect - until the Alnus Jorullensis grew faster than anticipated.

 The White Cockatoos like the Alders, despite the lack of food.

It stretched its leafy limbs out to cut off too much of the summer sun that the apples needed, and its larger roots intertwined themselves through the roots of the smaller trees.  Four or five years passed before I was certain of my mistake, and a couple more before I found myself with the time and enthusiasm to attept a remedy.

After a fairly mild winter, the frost finally bit hard, the trees all fell dormant, and I struck; first with the heavy pruning shears, then the handsaw, and, finally, the mattock and the big spud bar.  When levered up and onto their sides, they were far to heavy to move on my own - each root ball and tree combined weighed well over a hundred kilos.  After considering how much more damage they could sustain and still survive, I went for the hydraulic option, and spent half an hour or so using the hose on the roots of each tree.

It was a good choice, as it happens - as the soil and stones fell away from the apple tree roots, it revealed a tangle of alder, kikuyu and couch grass roots that were threaded through the mass.  Soon after, they were in their new home, close to some other apple trees, and well clear of the Alders.

They stood forlorn, almost completely bare of twig or bud, for a month or so, as I poured water at their feet every day, and begged their forgiveness - and then the first spring heatwave struck, followed closely by the second.

The few remaining twigs and small branches produced a few tentative green sprouts, and my hopes rose.  Not too far, as the new growth was sparse, but there seemed to be a chance.  More warm days arrived, and the undisturbed trees around the two new arrivals were flourishing.  I tried to ignore them, not wanting to invest too much hope after the brutality I had inflicted, and that's why I did not immediately notice the miracle.

Tiny buds, pink at first, but greening as they stretched and thickened, had appeared near the stubs of the branches that had been cut away before the move.  Soon, more buds appeared at other spots along the previously smooth, grey-green bark, and within days they were opening out into rosettes of beautiful, soft, luscious pink and green leaves.  A few of the surviving twigs even produced flowers, some of which appear to be setting fruit.

Why was I surprised, I ask myself now - after all, I have lived and worked in the bush of eastern Australia for quite a few years, and have often observed the miracle that occurs after bushfires have seared the forest and blackened or vaporised everything above ground.  For while, all is white, grey, or black, but within weeks, those first tiny buds push through charred bark, or rise from hidden ligno-tubers, and soon the pink, red, orange and green rainbow of new growth in the eucalyptus and angophora forsts is everywhere.

The trees of the dry sclerophyll forest are so tough that I have seen trees with new shoots up to a couple of feet long fall over as long as three months after the fire attacked - victims of a hidden, smouldering cancerous spark that had entered through a crack and slowly, and persistently grown, as it chewed away at the timber between the bark and the termite-created hollow where the heartwood should have been.  In an opposite fashion, the wind-shattered new growth of the willows along the creek, that were hurled down to their doom when roofs and windows were being rattled a few weeks ago, did not complain, but lay there in the damp fringes of the pools and rapids, putting out green leaves and tangles of white and pink roots.

While the bushman side of me understood that toughness, it thinks of the pampered and over nurtured trees and shrubs of the fruit and vegetable garden as too soft to withstand harsh treatment.  But, of course, they are not as weak as we think - though plenty of water, seaweed solution, and dilute fertilizer all probably aided their recovery - and they remind us of just how persistent life is.

After all, everything now alive is descended from stock that somehow made it through massive ice ages, asteroid impacts, tectonic turmoil, and constant attacks from other life that desired to eat it.

Life, I have often said, is Persistent Organisation in Opposition to Entropy, and what a beautiful, wonderful thing it can be, and how sad that the one thing so much life on Earth seems unable to survive is the onset of Humankind.