Readers will notice that I have finally got around to getting a more up-to-date photo of myself on this page.
My daughter took the old one on my 68th birthday, and as I am now 78. it was way past time for my author image to catch up with my age!
It’s not easy to accept how one is ageing, nor to find a friend who is patient enough to tolerate my reluctance in ‘posing’.
So thanks Jane, for being so willing!
And to bite another bullet, I am taking ‘Peeping through my fingers’ to Victoria, for the Clunes Booktown Festival on 21st and 22nd March. I’d been wanting to go for years, but as a book-loving spectator, not a participant.
I want my short stories read more widely; these are mostly award-winners, and my biggest wins have been in Victorian competitions (The Alan Marshall and the Boroondara), and my writers’ residencies have been in Victoria too. Plus the Owner Builder Magazine, for which I used to write, was based here, in Dunolly.
So I won’t feel too out of place.
If you are going to it, do come by and say hello! I’m in a Writers’ Tent, stall FE
This male Wallaroo never came close to the cabin, despite all the fences coming down. I never saw more than one couple, and usually only one of the pair. The females are paler and smaller, but still stocky and longhaired.
It rained a lot at the Mountain, as this bedraggled little Roo family could attest.
It was the Eastern Redneck Wallabies who made themselves most at home as the netting gradually was rolled out of their way.
But they were happy to share ‘my’ space with the Eastern Grey Kangaroos. The male Roo by the barbeque is on alert, as always when I appeared, but if I came no closer he would stay. The females and joeys were much more relaxed.
Here they are all lying about drying off in the sunshine after a rainy spell, with me well distanced.
Being the only human there, I was allowed to witness many aspects of macropod behaviour.
Like these young male Wallabies practice-boxing. They balanced on their tails as they ’stood’, clasping each other and cuffing faces.
The bravado often fell as they overbalanced and did the same, which would usually end the ‘fight’.
Or their methods of cleaning themselves, like sitting back with their tail stretched out in front between their legs, and carefully defleaing it.
Sometimes the joey would help its mother deal with awkward places for the process, repaying her usual role as cleaner.
Not that the young were slack about their own cleanliness, like cleaning their dainty black paws.
When I say the Wallabies were the most relaxed, I mean it! I simply didn’t count, and often had to step over one to get past. I put up a toddler-type gate at the top of the verandah steps, for fear those long feet would get them into trouble.
While there were plenty of these Wallabies at my place, I never tired of watching them, of photographing them. I especially loved the mother/joey connections, no matter how old the ‘child’, pouch-fitting or not.
In any home I’ve had, where possible I have cloaked the verandah in vines as living blinds, to give me shade in Summer, fabulous colour in Autumn and sunshine in Winter.
At my Mountain it was a mixture of Ornamental Grape/Glory Vine (Vitus vinifera) and white-flowering Wisteria.
Each verandah was also decorated with a 1904 old-fashioned climbing rose, Crepuscule. Its generous repeat flowering of raggedy apricot blossoms even survived the munching possums and taller wallabies. It has a sweet if subtle fragrance, which you can bring indoors, as its small clusters make good cut flowers.
When I left the Mountain, I couldn’t take the rose, but I took cuttings of the Glory Vine and at my next place there were a lot more verandahs for it to cloak, so it took longer, but continued to give beauty in framing the great views there. That four acre place helped me acclimatise to civilisation, but it was too much work for me, being ex-dairy land, not bush.
In the rural town of Wingham, where I was flooded out in 2021, cuttings of that Glory Vine came with me, were planted in the raised beds below, and loved it. Here the vine gave me privacy as well as shade.
The Crepuscule was harder to source, but eventually took its place and began to grace that verandah.
Now, in my final downsizing (apart from the coffin) I planted more Glory Vine cuttings; these ones were from my daughter, who’d kept the vine continuity going. They took, and rapidly did the same job.
In a serendipitous moment, I found a Crepuscule as a solitary bare-rooted cutting, on special in a supermarket. Weird that they even had a heritage rose, weird that I got the last one. It was waiting for me…
Even here on the coast, which is not often rose-friendly, it is happily growing up and along the lattice.
I can’t describe the pleasure I get from seeing my Glory Vine and Crepuscule gracing my latticed verandah externally, and giving me shade, privacy and pleasure when I look from within.
Perhaps I’m a boring gardener, but when you’ve had to move a lot, the continuity of these two plants is a comfort, a nostalgic link that I cherish.
Like my old timber furniture, they have been with me on my life’s journey, through fire and flood.
Well, I am finally fully moved to my new home, albeit with too many things to fit into a much smaller place. The local op shops have received a great deal of the overflow.
I had not had time to check out my nearby walks, which will often be on the coast.
Of course I was first drawn to the closest thing to a mountain: Nobby Head. I read it is only 30 metres high, but it will have to do.
Being an early riser, I hurried up the hill to catch the sunrise, always a miracle.
It wasn’t even 7am, but clearly the dog owners here are earlier risers than I am. The small Nobbys Beach where I had imagined walking was criss-crossed with paw and people prints. There were people busily walking down to it, along it and up from it. Before work, I suppose.
Some had more than one dog.
So the dog beach won’t be my beach.
And I was made aware that Port Macquarie is a much more citified town, as very few folk responded to my ‘Morning’ or my smile.
I climbed up my ‘mountain’, despite a wet and slippery track, much eroded. There is no view from the top, and it does not feel like a mountain, even a miniature one.
I saw other indications of too many people and too little respect for history or nature. The monument at the top was covered in graffiti. It was meant to commemorate Henry Gardiner, who had died in 1874 trying to save a friend’s life in the sea just below here. Both perished.
Where was the respect for them?
The vegetation still held natives like the lilli-pilli I could see, but under so much of the invasive asparagus fern that it was almost buried.
It was all rather sad. I’ll be leaving this beach to the dogs and their dutiful owners. The mandatory and multitudinous pairings struck me as quite odd; what would an alien think of this society?
But I have found somewhere else nearby to explore… and to introduce you to next post.
It’s difficult not to be distracted by the wildlife here, even if I don’t leave my desk. At this second floor height what’s going on amongst the trees is ‘in your face’, so to speak.
Like this goanna, who decided to climb up and laze on this branch for about a half hour; not after any nest of baby peewees, just hanging there. When done, it turned around – always a heart-stopping manouevre to watch — and slowly gripped its way down, its tail almost overtaking it.
Odd noises often alert me to activity closer to the ground, as in the various birdbaths. This time it was a repetitive soft bird call, and when I checked, there were two birds I had not seen here. Eastern Whipbirds, I learn, and I had certainly heard the males’ whip crack before.
The female’s call is described as ‘choo-choo’, with which I probably wouldn’t agree, but if they visit again I will listen more closely and come up with a more fitting one. Another book says ‘chuckles and whistles’ — quite an art, summing up bird talk…
A louder racket made me stand and look down into my small back yard where an Eastern Grey Kangaroo had pushed its way in beside the pigwire fence and was trying to return — but clearly couldn’t find or use the same route.
I was worried about him panicking as he pushed fruitlessly at the fence, but he was no fool. Having realised that no part of his body beyond his head would go through the wire squares, he quickly checked out the rest of the yard, then took a running jump and went over the fence.
With distant snow-capped Alps in my mind’s memory, I have just revisited a few of my most often visited local nature spots.
I found no Alps, but mythical cloud mountains over a pewter sea. The ephemeral will have to do.
Sun-splashed, that sea butts as restlessly as ever against the rugged cliffs that guard the Camden Haven.
The bush above the cliffs is equally buffeted by the sea winds, so grow low, and bend to survive. It is nothing like the bright verdant forests of Northern Italy, but I have been thirsting for this greyish-brownish-green, quite ‘verde’ enough for me. After all, as Kermit almost said, ‘it’s not simple being green’.
I marvel anew at the uniquely grotesque beauty and bounty of the banksia trees.
Being almost Spring, there are many small patches of colour already amongst the greys of the fallen trees. Flowers like the pink Boronia, many yellows, whites like the perfumed Pittosporum, the bright lime winged seed cases of Dodonea, or the striking berries of the Blueberry Ash.
In one dry but sheltered swamp this big paperbark tree had a large section of bark hanging by a thread, spinning in the breeze like a top, or a banner saying, ‘Look at me’!
Of course there were wattles to greet me, as there were on my other favourite walk, to the beach near me, where two sorts thrive.
The beach itself was disappointingly but familiarly abused, scored by dozens of 4WD tyre tracks. I watched the air bubbles after each wave receded, and wondered what small creatures were taking refuge beneath the sand. No tiny ghost crab would be game to stick its head up here…
On the dry higher sand where grass is holding it all together, there were fewer tracks — although there should be none — and just an occasional spot of colour like this succulent, where another plant struggled to get going.
As I walked back, I felt truly home when this lone kangaroo stopped to watch me.
Having been fortunate enough to have gone camping lately, I have been once more cooking on an open wood fire… and loving it.
It took me back to the first year on the Mountain, when we lived in a tent. Being in a forest, there was limitless wood for fires.
Four rocks and an old fridge rack did excellent duty as my stove, as I cooked our food in cast iron pans, and occasionally used a cast iron camp oven for baking.
It also heated the water, in billies made from pineapple juice tins, for our wind-down canvas bag showers. More simple luxuries.
A card table, with its upper legs dug into the ground in an attempt at a level tabletop on a slope, was my preparation area and our dining table.
Of course I was more agile 40 years or so ago. Not sure I’d be so happy now with the squattng and bending needed for this kitchen.
This drawing was done for The Woman on the Mountain, but we didn’t end up including drawings in the book, so it’s nice to revisit them… and to share them.
This more sophisticated Forestry model of fireplace that I used recently has a swivelling hotplate as well as a grill. I am still a fan of cast iron, and my blackened enamel kettle is meant for this!
And the smell of woodsmoke came back with me, in my hair and clothes, so I could savour the memories.
I have finally been sorting through the saved flood-damaged files and photos, not without much regret and a few tears, throwing out many, reviving some and surmising what must have been deemed beyond hope and tossed by my helpers in the flood aftermath.
My daughter had dried these curling and stuck-together remnants; I just have not been able to face them.
I came across this drawing, intended for what I can’t recall, but it did set me reminiscing on just how primitive were the bathing facilities … and the leaky tank water supply… with which I grew up.
No shower, a once-a-week bath in inches of water, daily face and hands washing in a basin on a chair, which was then set on the floor for feet washing while one sat on the chair. And we did not get a bath or a basinful each, but shared it: Mum first, then down through the sisters, with Dad last.
The once-a-week hair washing was done over the cement laundry tubs, with a jug of warm water for rinsing. For years I was too short to do this comfortably, as the drawing shows!
The wood-fired copper heated the water for Mum’s washing, with a water-furred stick for stirring the clothes and for lifting them out to the adjacent tubs for rinsing.
Mum did have a small cloth bag of Bluo for special whites and a slab of rough sandsoap for Dad’s really dirty work clothes.
But overall one soap did all this, plus being grated into the wire mesh soap holder for dishwashing: a plain yellow bar of Sunlight, the sort that would now be considered only fit for the laundry.
The dishwashing was done in another dish, on the kitchen table, with a metal tray beside it for the brief draining of dishes before our tea towels seized them. There was no hot water on tap in kitchen, bathroom or laundry. The kettle on the fuel stove heated the washing-up water, while a ferocious and highly unpredictable chip heater loomed at the end of the claw-footed bath for the daring to light.
How did we survive without the hundreds of options in personal soaps, bodywashes, shampoos, conditioners, water softeners, pre-washes, stain removers, laundry powders or liquids?
How did my mother?!!
I can still recall the wonder of my first shower, elsewhere, as a late teenager.
So my years of outdoor bush showers and washing at the kitchen sink at the Mountain were not hard; they were luxuries!
Lovely weather for ducks, as they say! Enough to keep me indoors even if my radiation burnt face didn’t.
A Maned Wood Duck couple patrol the grounds here, but they are wary, hard to catch with my camera, even if I was to be quick enough to nip out in between cloudbursts. Sudden dumps of wind-driven rain interspersed with sparkling sunshine seem to be the current pattern.
The photo is of the female, but they are both handsome. The ducks reminded me of the piece about them in ‘Mountain Tails’, so here’s the sketch of the couple and a short extract:
‘…through the reeds I spotted a pair of Wood Ducks. I crept towards them, and got closer than usual, but they sensed me coming and waddled off into the mist. Keeping their heads averted as if I didn’t exist, they were muttering to each other at the disturbance. I’ve noticed that they rarely do look at me.
‘This shy and very elegant native duck is my most consistently resident waterbird.
‘The male has little patterning on his pearl-grey body, and a chestnut-brown head, with a black strip, a feathery mane, at the back of his head. His folded wings create bold dark stripes down his back. While he gets the smart tuxedo treatment, she has a more delicate feminine patterning. She’s a softly spotted greyish-brown, with white stripes across her brown head; since her mane is also brown, it’s only noticeable in profile, as an odd shape. Hence they are sometimes called Maned Wood Ducks. Until they are grown up, the young ones of both sexes look like their mum.
‘Occasionally the couple fly over to the small dam below my house yard, but they hardly get to land on the surface, trailing arrows of ripples behind them, before the bossy magpies hassle them to leave. After a lot of protesting squawks on their part and insistent cries from the maggies, the pair take wing, back over the treetops to where they belong. No outsiders allowed in the magpies’ local pool. They will allow the ducks to fossick amongst the tussocks around the dam wall for a time, but not to go in.’
Confined as I am to my place, unable to see what is flowering in the bush, it is a great treat to have Spring come to me.
Some of these plants are having their first Spring as residents, so I am glad to see them not only survive their potted lives, but burst into bloom!
This is a native, Philoteca myoporoides, flowering above the Bacopa ground cover.
Planted at the same time last year, this Ruby Belle variant on the native climber, Pandorea pandorana, quickly climbed right up the lattice to the top floor and has proved really too vigorous for comfortable control, but it is pretty foliage anyway, so I won’t be pulling it out. These are the first flowers I have had on it.
In the back garden strip, inherited pots of orchids were put to shelter under a tree fern. Their current starry flowers are a surprise gift!
Not a flower, but green at least, and a symbol of why I am not out bushwalking. My personal mask has been my daily companion/jailor during my month’s radiation treatment, and I now have it at home.
I am told some people grow strawberries in theirs! But I will keep it as a sculptural memento of the time: of fighting down panic as it is placed over your face and clamped down firmly to the table beneath you.
I know it is so the radiation is targeting precisely the right spots on my nose/face each time, and I appreciate that.
But as your nostrils are plugged with wet cotton wool, you must breathe through your mouth. And stay calm…
The team at Port Macquarie Cancer Unit are great and do their very best to help, but it is a fact that radiation burns the good cells as well as the cancerous ones, so my burnt face must now undergo about 10 days of escalating side effects before it can begin to heal.
I only hope it has done the intended job, as that cannot be determined.
But the lesson I learnt there was that, as my Dad used to say, ‘There are always others worse off then you, Sha!’.
Many of the plants in my low garden, in ground or in pots, are turning up their toes at the seemingly endless rain, like this lavender.
Yet other things, like these fungi, can take advantage of it.
My garden is flat, and the swamp it must have once been is evidenced by the next door property, still pools of brown water. The ducks and water hens don’t mind, as they can wade and swim at ease; even the kookaburrras like to fly down and splash about.
But I realise now I ought to have raised the whole area before installing these garden beds or placing large pots down there, so bad is the waterlogging.
So I depend on pots up on my decks, like these surprisingly generous cacti. Formerly called Zygocactus truncata, they now bear the fabulous name of Schlumbergera truncata.
Having survived being inundated at my old house, where again the deck was their home, they have now burst forth into delicate yet showy blooms.
I have rarely seen a Sacred Kingfisher, but this gorgeously coloured bird was perched near the mangroves of the river where I live, just when I happened to walk down to see what the low tide was presenting.
From my window I often see its cousin, the Laughing Kookaburra, the largest kingfisher in the world. This morning there had been two to welcome me home.
There are almost always Pelicans to be seen here, perched on oyster racks or mud banks. The degree of flexibility of their long necks is as impressive as the accuracy with which they can use their bill tips for the cleaning going on here.
This White-faced Heron was a solitary wader through the mud and shallow water, and keen-eyed watcher. I love that the longer feathers on its back and chest are called ’nuptial plumes!’
Long-necked and long-legged, it was most elegant in its wading, double-imaged in the almost still water.
So I am back home on the coast, where the birds are perhaps no less bizarre than in the Desert Uplands.
