Lockdown, Sunday Morning, Aug 22nd
A wild cry just before four – animal? bird? Woken from sleep, how can I find the details and eliminate suspects?
I get up, peer down from the top deck into the dim cumulus of leaves. The only sound is sea-sound, a wilderness of noise, waves packed into one big roar as if attacking a border. The full moon keeps Venus for company, the sky has an even, jaundiced look, not silver, not gold. Stars are sparse.
How do we say thank you to the moon – part of ourselves ripped out by an immense collision 11 billion years ago, last of the great shocks that spooked our orbit, organising summer and winter, variety pointing life in the right direction.
We watch the moon drop into the trees and when the sun glare through the trees- a third law of motion, we go and walk. 
The forest, crouched in shadows, is haunted by webs and dew night has left behind. I was ready to record the dawn chorus, but not much song. Even the Drongo, first of the season was quiet. 
Three male whipbirds call from the edge of the Bloodwoods. I only hear one female replying.
The ocean precipitates a hazy blue, still worth celebrating.
Wyn is ahead beyond the capsized Banksia, nothing can tear us apart.
Each step we take might not be small or giant, but is a constant freedom, out of the currents, the wind-blow canopies (though I bloody my shin on a Banskia that had lost an anchor.
Back home I cook breakfast then head back down into a heady, thick spurt of spring scent, a mix of wattle and osmanthus. I become gardener, turn the compost, rake leaves, piss onto a weed.
This is the lockdown, a solid particulate of history. Back on deck I am surrounded by the calls of the tiny tree frogs, in the tree ferns mostly, like a high-pitched, simple, wooden cog rattles. Is their audience listening? Breeze ruffles the flowering Tallowwood, a jezebel trembles by, the one butterfly that copes with our cold winter mornings. A monotonous young Rainbow Lorikeet is scratching chalk on a metallic blackboard. The sea sounds calmer. I’m timing my sorrow happiness. It’s just gone ten.
