Earthrise Diary No: 808

“The cormorant above the water is using what in aviation terminology is called the ‘ground effect’. At speeds just above Vs (stall speed) an airfoil (wing) floats close to the ground on a cushion of air. I find that knowledge of aerodynamics increases my enjoyment of watching birds in flight.”
Charly Waldorf (in Alice Springs) re the cormorants at Earthrise

July 26 2008. Fence-line Force. I’m startled early in the morning (while walking the road) by the whirring of small wings. A sizeable mob of red-browed finches rises from its interrupted breakfast of multi-grain grass seeds along the Happenstance fence. Some settle on the wires to watch me safely past. I glance back; the birds settle again to feed. When looking back earlier I’d seen river mist in patches drifting along, marking the river line downstream from Earthrise (there was no breeze). If the gentle beating of butterfly wings in (Central America?) may initiate wind systems and trigger Big Winds, how much bigger might Australian Big Winds be? Could red-browed finches be rented out to move river mist? Finch Power. Finch Force. Avian Winds. (‘Rent our well-adjusted finches for all your mist and cloud-shifting needs’). (‘Your labour costs must be negligible?’ ‘Certainly not; we’ve had to build huge aviaries over 39 of their favourite grasses; our costs are enormous’). When finches park on wire fences they remind me of musical notes (not that I can read music). I wonder if composers take advantage of such bird notation?
Which reminds me of the huge totally enclosed aviaries in San Diego, (the SD Zoo or Balboa Park? I forget which). Now I’m remembering the Café del Rey Oro in Balboa Park and Sunday Brunch with a glass of champagne included (Gestalt therapy training at nearby La Jolla allowed us free weekends. Sigh).
Fence-line Art. Along the fence-line are the dewed heads of grasses and some taller dead weeds. Many of the weeds have dewy spider-webs attached. The rising sun turns the scene into artwork; all the dewdrops glister. I’m at the right place at the right time of day.
Toward the end of July most of the red cedars in the area have now leafed, pinkly; the cedars are slower here because Earthrise is so much in the forest and doesn’t become sunnier until summer. Most of the (unrelated) white cedars are still gaunt, bare, and grey-white; an occasional tree works to make leaf buds, but most are still resting. Do the red cedars have growth energy to spare? I’m puzzled that there are still so many yellow berries on the white cedars; normally, the fruit pigeons and magpies would remove them all well before mid winter (come to think of it I’ve not seen many brown pigeons since summer). The soaring pear tree in Cedar Grove looks gaunt now and has only a few bedraggled brown leaves; however, in the foreground the five crimson and scarlet azaleas are in full bloom. The eye sees what is most pleasing. The pear tree at the foot of the steep slope recedes into the forest background of dense scrub and big trees.
August 1 2008. I turn the La Provence calendar (thanks, Nick) page and admire a colour picture of sunlight at Pernes les Fontaines. The sky there is eye-achingly blue, as it also is here. Today, early, the weather is 5 or 6 outside with the meteorological promise of the temperature later reaching 25/26 (which, to my surprise, it did). Also today there is a Total Solar Eclipse (I don’t know where, exactly, but one of you Out There might witness this event) at 10:21 UT (by which time it will surely be dark here). (Yesterday was also brilliant; there was no cloud, a top temperature of 19 or 20˚). I’ve been able to read, comfortably, on Lookout Lawn on both days (not bad for mid winter?). The May Literary Review cover illustration features ‘Earth from the Air’ and one review is about doing archaeology from the air (which reminds me of Charly’s observation, above). Wouldn’t it be fun to have one’s own satellite? Perhaps I’d then be able to see a Lost City or an old buried space ship beneath Big Lawn or the outline of a Sunken Treasure Vessel beneath the banks where I like to sit in winter sunshine. Now I’m reminded of an unpublished novel of mine, ‘Selati,’ in which I ‘use’ a 1912 Antoinette Racer as the search/photography platform along the old Selati Railway Line in the S-E Transvaal (Louise, 12-years old daughter of the principal protagonists, grows up to become an aviator with a business of her own: aerial archaeology). Wouldn’t that be fun? Fiction writing can be a Grand Adventure. Sometimes.
I see that there’s a review (by Charlotte Appleyard) of Tom Fort’s book, Downstream: Across England in a Punt and I’m reminded of Pam and I punting on the Thames many years ago (I prefer a paddle to a pole). CA writes, “As a teenager I spent a day in a field in Kent waist deep in water with a large ruler and some string. I was, along with a group of equally disgruntled teenagers, measuring the gradient of the bend in a river.” They “concluded that the river was officially ‘meandering.’” I share author Fort’s annoyance “that there is no name for his passion [enjoying rivers]: fluviophilia and river-love are unsatisfactory…”
I’ve been casting a jaundiced eye at the belvedere: it appears to be settling differentially—toward the river, being right on the lawn’s edge at the top of the riverbank. I realised, years ago, that the base stones supporting gravity walls sometimes settle into the soil and virtually disappear. I remember reading that in John Jerome’s Stone Work, an old favourite of mine. Should the base stones settle, so will the wall, of course. The paved area behind the wall will slope at an increasingly acute angle. I’ll have to keep a close watch. Tai Chi chaps will have problems. I wonder if the deer like to lie there restfully on moonlit nights?
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My cousin, Eliane Roos’s View: “Here in Paris we are bathing in a unusual hot climate. It is still a beautiful city even under such heat! Out of my window I can see modern buildings 6 to 15 stories high with flowers on many balconies and trees and wild shrubs in between and a light blue sky with some sheepshaped clouds.”
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Aug 3 2008. While walking over the Plains Crossing Bridge I spot some of the first white spider orchids on one of the older river-oaks on ‘my’ bank. I know where a ‘veil’ of such orchids can be seen (it’s not here; it’s the best part of a metre long…but I’ll keep that location secret. In the past, vandals have chain-sawed trees to removed orchids).
Aug 7 2008. It continues cold in the mornings and at night; there are blue skies all day. The old native privet on the road near the group of silky oaks (grevillea robusta) hosts at least four species of birds these mornings: the privet is loaded with tight bunches of small dark blue fruits that look like bunches of mini grapes. Red/green king parrots, being so noticeable seem also the most nervous. Black/white magpies slip in and out of the food source without troubling other birds. Fruit pigeons are usually on the outside of the tree, above the road (and me).
Aug 16 ’08. Nine days later I stop abruptly in the same spot: the Regent Bower Bird is feeding in the privet six metres away and watching me watching him. I stand and watch him, walking carefully closer, for nearly ten minutes (probably a record for both of us). If you Google him you can study his striking plumage.
Today the five azalea bushes continue to bloom in Cedar Grove. The World’s Highest Pear Tree is putting out new leaves that look like coloured cotton wool. Near Richardson’s Bridge I see the Secret Mulberry bushes are leafing and also fruiting (!). They’ve been repeatedly slashed and mowed and now have tactfully moved further into the verges, down the riverbank slightly and closer to the protection of big casuarinas—well away from the road and safely beyond the slasher’s reach. No silkworms though.
Today, too, I see the first goanna of spring (can the snakes be far behind?). He’s close to the house on the scree slopes while I’m axing firewood and noisier than an elephant. Later I carry 150-mm logs from the West End to the chopping block on the stone pavement in front of the house steps. Viva chelation! Hard work. Something I dared not attempt 6/12 ago. Oddly, I have many thoughts about the past in Victoria, BC & Paris. Can this be a sign of approaching madness, I wonder?
Aug 18. I see two large turkeys scratching near the Dog’s Garden. BIG. Both are in excellent condition. And I see a wallaby bounding up from the riverbank. He stops in front of the house and I cluck at him. He turns, frowning like Grommit at me, then bounces up the track to the carport. He’s BIG too. Perhaps it’s my fevered state but this wallaby seems about twice the size of your average critter. Can it be an Eastern Red? Is this the return of the mega fauna? What’s going on?
Aug 28 ’08. I hear yet another goanna lurching past the house while I’m writing (he’s smaller than the first). I wonder at the ungainly lurching walk for the umpteenth time and remind myself that they can move VERY quickly when they’ve a mind to (and they have an unpleasant reputation for Running Up Humans). Their claws are formidable. You’ll all be aware I think of how cheerfully they snack on snakes of all sizes (see Google). Goanna claws remind me that a couple of days ago I heard a noisy clomping on my front steps. I stopped writing and politely opened the door. It was a very healthy-looking turkey (their claws are also huge). This turkey behaved like a pet or perhaps an old friend. He walked right up and accepted a multi-grain crust (gluten-free, too). What if he wants to move in?
If the weather improves I’ll risk planting some dahlia tubers this w/e. I’m the only person I know able to defeat turkeys at Dahlia Tuber Time (they love to dig up newly planted tubers): a square metre of chicken wire placed over the newly planted tuber.
Aug 29 ‘08. After last night’s storms the river has put on a little weight and risen 100-mm or so and washed down the corpse (possibly a platypus) that was caught on the concrete ford next to the bridge. Two weeks ago I’d watched a big eel on the bottom next to a bridge pier (upstream side) and had assumed the eel would clean up the evidence; the rain arrived first, however. The corpse may now be in the corner bend (from where I pump water to storage…). Further down the road there were ragged clouds and rising mists above the forest and the slopes leading up to Dorrigo and the sun was trying to break through. Too bad I no longer take pictures (except in my mind). Coming home from Coffs Harbour/Bellingen on the 27th I noticed a ‘near morning glory cloud’ lying along the range. This morning, too, there was a similar big cloud, half way up the slopes. I was reminded of Frank Herbert’s Dune books.
The swallows were larking about down at Richardson’s Bridge and I did my best to imagine magically slowing them down so I could see them more clearly. The swallows move wondrously fast and are scarcely recognisable as swallows when they sometimes land on dry stones in the stream. Flying, their actions are almost like contests—but that doesn’t make sense, does it? Might there be swallow experts reading this who could enlighten me? And as I start my return walk I’m struck by the artistic look of stag horns and elk horns growing on the trunks of riverside casuarinas. (I’m assuming that they’re epiphytes because they grow non-parasitically on the casuarinas and I know they’ll even grow on wooden fences; and that reminds me that I have half a dozen small birds nest ferns (so-called) growing on an exposed roof timber of my carport). Anyway. Near the bridge there’s a stag horn growing profusely on a wrecked casuarina that’s surely dead (the fern is 8-m up where the top of the tree has broken off and vanished). The fern is luxuriant and looks (at least, to me) amazingly like a green version of a Corinthian capital and its symbolic acanthus leaves, being at the top of the dead tree ‘column’. The more I look up at it the more it also looks like one of those very artistic capitals that Antoni Gaudi designed in the amazing Barcelona cathedral (La Sagrada Familia). At this time of year there are large brown ‘patches’ on the undersides of the bigger ferns (maybe ‘sporangia’?) (I plan to know all about plants in my next materialisation).
With my head still up I study the feeding action in the roadside native privet trees halfway home. The magpies go silent and move about cautiously. There are other (grey?) birds also feeding on the berries. I stop to watch and almost miss seeing the Regent Bower Bird (at eye level) for the second time this month! Can it be the same bird? He feeds nonchalantly (as if I don’t exist and I’m only 5 or 6-m from him)! After a couple of minutes this relaxed behaviour is too much for a second bird that drops down and muscles Regent away from his breakfast. Regent pops up several metres where he feeds without losing his composure. The new bird is grey, looks like a thrush, and is scalloped; later, I can’t identify him in my field book. Imagine having been so close to a Regent TWICE this month (he seemed almost as tame as my new turkey acquaintance!).
More rain falls—and some small hail. It’s being a day of Looking Up.
I’ve twice been denied my lunchtime reading by cool showery weather. I wandered about briefly and sulkily pulled a few weeds, particularly the fiendish Mist Flower (a smaller ‘version’ of Crofton Weed). As I tottered about I had a good look at the ‘lawn,’ where there are patches of umpteen different grasses (gifts of the BIG 2001 flood) and an almost endless expanse of so-called Wandering Jew, a fleshy creeping weed that colonises shady and damp areas and is forever green. I know that the feral deer (Deer Farm escapees from across the road) enjoy grazing here (my fence line was destroyed by the 2001 flood) I’d not realised quite how partial they are to the greenery (including the balsam or impatiens, now nearly extinct here and numerous other cultivated plants). The deer have grazed my lawn ‘pastures’ so enthusiastically that large areas appear mowed or brush-cut. They do this at night (there are many more deer hanging out here than there are wallabies). Indeed, there are now game paths connecting several areas of the gardens and beaten-down lantana on the slopes behind the house (wallabies behave quite differently). The lawn now looks like a great green unmade bed and the slopes look as though very busy safari traffic has been Opening New Routes. Should I perhaps organise a deer herd to do lawn mowing? Sheep do it, why not deer?
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Aug 30 ’08. Here I borrow a neologism and way of notating from Durrell’s Justine: Workpoints. All the Valley misted, the weather damp and chilly; Darkwood Road puddles shining; a dark-coated fox bounding across Happenstance, stopping to stare me down before running to the river; remembering the scarlet head and golden collar of the plump brush turkey; first blossom on the Halfway Wild Peach Tree; the twice-seen Regent breakfasting; the river a little higher following storms; the surge and long trail of bubbles made by the log upstream of Richardson’s; the look of the neighbours’ paddocks at winter’s end: light to emerald dark greens and further along, russets, khaki’s, browns and pale yellows; green and red king parrots feeding; Mount Die-Happy’s summit swirled by mists; tiny apricot and blue flashes in images of those fly-past swallow.
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‘What is the use of a book,’ thought Alice, ‘without pictures or conversation?’ Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderlsnd, Ch 1.
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‘Chateaubriand on journal-keeping and the need to write down one’s impressions immediately: “Our existence is so fleeting that if we don’t record the events of the morning in the evening, the work will weigh us down and we will no longer have the time to bring it up to date. This doesn’t prevent us from wasting our years, from throwing to the wind those hours that are for us the seeds of eternity.”
Quoted by Alberto Manguel in A Reading Diary (2004).

This Diary is No. 9 in the New Series (previously, 1107, 108, 208, 308, 408, 508, 608, 708; this is 808). DDD August 29 2008.