6 Jan, After sunrise
Sawtell, southern lookout
This coast has become so popular, we couldn’t find a park at first.
A pair of Cormorants in the ocean pool keep fishing while a swimmer laps past them, a pair of Sooty Oystercatchers wander on the rocks with a mountain backdrop.
So many of us long for an intimacy with animals that is false, and dangerous for the animals.
A young woman walks by, skin shaped beautifully, a rich contrast between shallow and deep attractive, variant hues.
Varieties of beauty range to a Tiger Moth in the toilets by Bonville Creek.
The surf school is preparing for adventure.
Sawtell, northern lookout
One other car in the carpark. Boambee Creek has darkened from the rains. It’s quiet here (no coffe cart) and there’s long grass and birds. A Tawny Grass Bird flies up stalls, dives down again, keeping an eye on us.
A Red-backed Wren scoots from bush to bush, ignoring a Lewin’s Honeyeater. Four Figbirds sing and dance in trees lining the walk to the point.
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I drop Wyn off at the hospital for her check up and wait down the road beside rough open ground, beneath a grating noise, similar to the Black Cockatoos.
These were two Galahs, close together. One would start chuckling, wings out and get intimate with the other. A third close by, watched me instead. They are monogamous.
Galah (gilaa) is the bird’s Yuwaalaraay Aboriginal language name from north-west New South Wales. The naming of most birds in this country in English is a replica of accidental death, non-disclosureof the past. We need a 4th estate of scientists, poets, indigenous elders. Why were the birds arriving early this spring? Who is helping Gilbert White?
Coffs Botanic Gardens
The Water Dragon stands his ground, a shimmer of colours and tough looking spines.
An elderly man is feeding this lizard bread.
I worry, and casually ask, Do you know if it’s good for them? He says, they love it. Young Water Dragons have a diet of insects, but gradually become omnivorous with vegetable matter making up to half of their diet. My mother says that as a toddler I loved feeding the ducks in the grounds of Sandhurst, the British Army’s officer training centre – now under strict security. Ducks and swans can digest all types of bread, the issue being too much bread leaves no room for more important and nutritious foods.
The Satin Bowerbird was dancing on his own with a petal in his bill when we arrrived.
Di, a volunteer in the office, sees my interest and comes out with a blue bottle top and throws it up in the air. Says he will come and get it. He didn’t, scooted up a tree as a family arrived to see what was going on.
Ecological awareness forces us to think and feel at multiple scales, scales that disorient normative concepts such as ‘present,’ ‘life,’ ‘human,’ ‘nature,’ ‘thing,’ ‘thought,’ and ‘logic’. Timothy Morton [1]
[1] Timothy Morton, Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence, Columbia UP, 2016, p159.
