I have never been able to choose between sunsets and sunrises as regards beauty and spectacle; they are so different, and each one of them is different from another.
Autumn is a great season for sunsets, as this rather fierce example shows when I look to the south-west, where the sky seems to be on fire.
But face north and that same sunset takes on more delicate hues.
Face straight ahead to Dooragan and gold lights the sky.
And burnishes the gently rippling river.
But on the same day the sun had made its entrance with great promise, if less dramatically.
It soon painted the sky and the sand with a glowing peach gold, while the land was struggling to share some of that light.
With strong winds sending small branches raining down at home, I could hear the surf thundering in the distance and knew it would be a spectacle.
But I hadn’t expected the amount of sea foam that awaited me at the Tuckeroo end of Dunbogan Beach.
The creamy froth had coated the rocks and sand, transforming the usual colour and texture.
The beach itself had been transformed, the high seas cutting into the banks and forging a new rushing stream.
The stream rippled along with each wave, with the yellowish foam edging it like a fancy frill.
Flecks and lines of foam were stranded on the sand, some caught and banked by what the tide had left behind, some blown willy-nilly to roll and dance over the sand.
As soon as I entered the dense bush of Kattang to walk back to the Tuckeroo car park, the surf fell silent, and stillness replaced the wild winds.
But if the sea was all white and cream today, in this weather even the Camden Haven River sported whitecaps and waves.
Always worth venturing out in such weather to see what Nature is up to.
The short Big Hill walk is the only one here, so I head past the beach to climb that and hopefully see out to the sunrise, of which I can see delicate flushes already.
It is still half dark on the walk, and the trees arching over the track make it even dimmer. I had needed a torch when I set out.
The sea winds have shaped the cliffside forest into slanting sideways for survival.
But then I emerge on to a side of the Hill where the sunrise can be seen through the dark trees.
There is low cloud limiting the sun’s visible rise, but it makes a beautiful bright contrasting glow with the grey sea and the dark cliff.
Before this loop walk leaves the sea to head down through the rainforest, I marvel at the rugged nature of the shore here. Steep and forbidding.
I come out the other end of the loop at the bottom of the Big Hill into brighter daylight, to find a lone Pandanus tree (Pandanus tectorius) propped on its stick legs, its unripe ‘breadfruit’ looking somehow inappropriately tropical.
Hundreds of people of all ages and backgrounds, colours and creeds gathered at Oxley Beach to watch the miracle of the sunrise on 26th January. It was a silent solidarity, especially moving on this first post-referendum Invasion Day/Australia Day.
The Aboriginal flag hung limply as the rising sun mirrored the emblem on the flag. A very few quiet speeches from local Indigenous people had preceded the sun. Mention of the massacre of over 300 Birrpai people at local Blackman’s Point set a sombre tone for the reality of why we were here.
But mostly silence reigned, quite a feat given the crowd on the hill above included many children. The grass was wet, the wise had brought towels or rugs to sit on, the elderly had trouble getting down… and would surely do so getting up …but nobody was complaining or fidgeting.
Sadness, yes, but communion with each other and Nature made it feel like peace and calm
At the end, everyone was invited to walk to the sea edge, and I found that most moving of all, as it felt like a healing of the division that seemed all around us after October.
When the risen sun began to be covered by cloud, my fanciful mind saw it as an allegory for the hopes that had been extinguished by that result. An opportunity lost.
But knowing the cloud would lift and the sun would shine out fully led to new hopes that our future and our past can be truthfully aligned and our First People come into their rightful place.
I contrast the rah-rah and ‘patriotic’ flag waving and noisy celebrations that will characterise this day for many Australians with how the same day, that of the invasion, was mourned this morning.
Surely we can be mature enough to allow both their appropriate days. Who would hold a party in a cemetery?
At my favourite local beach, early mornings are best, especially in holiday times, before the hordes awake, feed the kids and bring the sun shades and brollies down to claim their sand spaces between the casuarinas and the gentle sea.
A cloudy start to the day will delay them even longer.
It is so gentle because it is protected by two rock breakwalls that separate it from the river mouth on one side and the surf beach on the other.
Beyond the breakwalls it is not gentle, and the whitecaps and breaking waves splash high and surge mightily.
The tide is receding, leaving some sand sculptures intact from the day before. This one is unique in my experience, never having seen tools as sculpture subjects before: a hatchet, an electric drill and a mallet!
Another is more traditional, although not of the moulded sand castles I am used to. This one has a moated settlement of flat-topped roofs… adobe?
A small group of Crested Pigeons bustle down from the trees and grass edge to check out what’s left on the tideline. They are shy of any movement of mine, quickly wheeling and turning away.
This flock of resting seagulls is the opposite, completely ignoring me. They have chosen the ‘banks’ of a long channel no doubt made by kids, right where the tide has reached and stopped.
Some sleep, but most are busy preening and cleaning.
I am fascinated by the balancing acts: here three of the four gulls stand on one leg only. Why?
One leg must give enough stability, as it does not seem to restrict the movements required to perform the morning’s grooming.
Some of the contortions, while seemingly effortless, are amazing to one whose neck could never do this.
To remain so dapper must take a lot of such time. These gulls know early morning is best here too: no people, no dogs, no disturbance.
On a marine rock platform, at the lowest of tides a whole other landscape is revealed, a rich and colourful world teeming with life.
While we usually only see the top sunbaked surface of rocks, here the next layer down is on show – the dense cities of Galeolaria, tube-building worms needing seawater, but safe enough within their hard walls to withstand some exposure.
The bright green forests of Cunjevoi prefer to be underwater, and sometimes you see them ejecting jets of water upwards in the changing tide. Their common name is Sea Squirts; their soft insides were food for Indigenous folk, and then often used as bait by fishermen, but are now mostly protected.
Some of the sea gardens are tiny, packed into water-holding hollows in a rock, but so full of plants; here I can see ones that we used to call Sea Lettuce and Neptune’s necklace. A jewel box of life.
The plentiful small starfish here are mostly in shades of red and blue, but this particular aqua is not common.
Nor is this orange one that caught my eye; and here I can see at least four more starfish, but they are so well camouflaged or half-buried in sand that there may be more.
Across the shell-encrusted expanse of rock platform, I think I see a bird poking about. Is this my signature solitary bird for today?
Yes! Edging closer, I think it is a White-faced Heron, on its long elegant legs, looking for titbits in the temporarily exposed world as the sea washes in and out.
On a recent coastal walk, I met a wild sea with white whipped waves, a long damp beach with receded evidence of a very high tide, and a strand composed of murky froth.
The blobby yellowish-grey froth always puzzles me, as it looks quite disgustingly un-natural, polluted. It was especially revolting this day as it wobbled slightly in the wind.
What does not move are the rocks — extraordinarily varied in colour and composition, layered and exposed to different degrees.
Yet again, I wish I had a geologically-savvy friend with me to explain these odd pairings of materials, worn down differently and left in strange sculptural poses.
Some are more consistently like a pebblecreter’s dream, millions of small pebbles held together for another eternity.
How long ago did time and wild storms send them tumbling from the cliffs above, to begin their weathering, their sculpting, from the fury of wind and rain?
Such thoughts certainly put our puny human lifespans in perspective…
Early mornings often catch the river near Dunbogan in its mirror-like state, with the seaside banks still dark but Dooragan lit up by the sun.
If it’s been a gently receding tide, the sandy shore shows how many residents have come up for air since.
At Kattang Nature Reserve, on the clifftops, the showy yet virginal flowers of this small Clerodendrum floribundum tree flaunt their long stamens like antennae. Such flowers ought to be enough, but the fruit that follows is also stunning: black with fleshy red open collars or calyxes. No wonder it is also called Lolly Bush.
The Tuckeroo (Cupaniopsis anacardiodes) trees are fruiting now, although the ribbed balls are not yet the bright yellow they will become. Many birds like to eat the red seeds inside these.
Common to the point of being over-abundant there, what I assume is the Coastal Tea Tree (Leptospermum laevigatum?) is displaying beautiful arching branches of its simple white flowers.
And my final treat from that walk at Kattang is this twisted and lichened trunk, almost reptilian. I always want to ask such unusual trees for their history: how and why did you grow like this?
This Camden Haven area keeps on surprising me with fresh natural visual treats. Like this early morning view across the river as the sun began to streak light across Dooragan. The outgoing tide impacts on the riverside ‘beach’ drew me closer.
It was as perfectly rippled as a raked Japanese garden.
In Kattang Nature Reserve, these small trees were covered in starry blossoms.
It is Nematolepis squamea, I am told (ex-Phebalium). Such a dainty and graceful blossom to gather in clusters like this.
On a different, low and sandy coastal walk, there was an extraordinary variety of white-flowering shrubs.
Too many for me to identify, but the many flannel flowers were in bud, so those will clearly dominate when they bloom.
I am off camping for a few weeks, to colder, higher, rockier inland national parks, so the next posts will depict very different aspects of nature. There will likely be longer gaps between posts as reception will be rare.
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.
As I am about to head off for two months in Italy, I visited my nearest home nature spots to refresh my mind and memory.
First a walk to the long beach, often wild, today deceptively gentle and brilliantly blue.
Only one other person is here, a mere speck a long way up the beach; fishing, I assume.
I doubt I will see such an empty beach in Italy.
Next, to the river, where a small group of pelicans have been checking out the low tide mudflats. Two take off, but the rest stay.
And what a treat to see my special solo seagull there as well; did he come to say ‘Arrivederci?’
He looks very small next to his big-beaked Big Bird mates. I missed him at the beach…
And at my actual home, my about-to-be-abandoned garden has exploded with prolific and beautiful farewell flowers on the various Schlumbergera truncata succulents. I had feared I’d miss them, and was about to ask my house minders to send me photos.
The next posts will be from Italy; I will be staying in the Emilia-Romagna region, although in the hills above the flood-ravaged area.
It does feel rather like going to visit the Northern Rivers after the Lismore etc. floods, but Nature’s payback has no concern for my travel timetable.
One windy autumn morning I was called to the river by an odd sight. But when I got to the ramp, this magnificent solo Pelican took all my attention.
I love Pelicans and I love reflections and this one was offering both.
We looked at each other for some time, me admiring, him noncommittal, before I realised he wasn’t gong anywhere, just standing in the shallows, rocking slightly in the wind.
I turned to look at the original attraction.
What from a distance had looked like a dragon boat being rowed by a black-clad crew was actually a flock of Cormorants on an oyster rack.
There were about a dozen of them, busily preening, or holding out wings to dry those feathers.
Some looked rather fluffy, as if they were still young, but it was quite a cool wind, so maybe that was simply a warming tactic.
At that distance I couldn’t tell if they were Little Black Cormorants, or the bigger Cormorants.
Perhaps someone can enlighten me.
But why had they chosen such an exposed ‘raft’ in the middle of the river?
Anyway, they had intrigued me enough to bring me (in my slippers) racing down to investigate before they took off.
But, like the Pelican, they clearly had no intention of doing that.
