The Mountain

Where land and sky meet

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High mountains belong as much to the sky as to the land.  They often meet with clouds in secrecy, their intercourse hidden from us land-dwellers.

I can see the lower edge of the clouds almost boiling up the deep upper gullies, frothing and rolling, but I can’t see inside.

The ridge and its peaks remain under dense white cover, in an otherwise cloudless sky.

No wonder moss forests and Antarctic Beech live up there in this dedicated Wilderness Area, and it seems clear to me that it’s not a place for humans. Gods, maybe.

Final winter flurry

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As August came to an end, the season decided to show a bit of properly wintry snow.

Not at my place, unfortunately, although I’m just high enough at about 1000 metres, but opposite me in the Wilderness Area, where the range is about 1500 metres.

It was cold, 2 degrees, which is about as low as it gets here here, 4 or 5 degrees being the average on a cold morning.

I love to see some snow each year, and I was cosy, with the slow combustion wood fire banked right down, gently beaming fire glow and warmth day and night.

When the snow clouds lifted, all of the upper southern faces had patches of snow, which isn’t unusual.

The surprise was that they stayed there, brightly, whitely visible, although this range is quite a long way off, for the next 4 days. It was sunny down here and not snowing up there, but clearly a lot colder.

Yet the very next week I saw my first red-bellied black snake in my yard!

Why I live ‘way out here’

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This post is extracted from Chapter 1 of The Woman on the Mountain, with the kind permission of my publisher, Exisle.

Wherever you live you need to feel safe, and in tune with your surroundings. I do.

Yet my place is a 90-minute drive from a post box, police station, shop or mechanic, let alone a Big M or a Big W or whatever other letter is considered crucial to modern survival.

Half of that drive is over a dirt road, partly through a national park which verges on wilderness. I have no neighbours within sight, sound or coo-ee, or not in the accepted sense. My neighbours are the wild creatures who live in the national park.
…

…if I were forced to live again in a city, town or suburb, I certainly wouldn’t feel safe, or in tune with my surroundings. I’d be nervous, draw my curtains at night, lock my doors, lower my voice — and I’d feel like a fish out of water.

I’d pine for the tree-clad mountains stretching forever into the distance, the blue gums and stringybarks and sheoaks just beyond my house fence, the hundreds of infant rainforest trees I’ve planted in the gullies, the wild creatures that are my neighbours — the wallabies and birds, the quolls and koalas, the snakes and lizards — I’d even include the leeches.

I’d miss the sounds of cicada, mad wattlebird and bleating frog chorus, or me yelling ‘Feedo!’ at the top of my voice for the horses to come. When could I yell anything at the top of my voice again?…

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A protected joey

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Walking through my forest, I often come across small groups of Eastern Red-necked Wallabies. On this occasion there were three, who propped and watched me.

Sometimes they take flight, but mostly not, because this being a wildlife refuge, they are used to not needing to fear me or what I allow to happen here. No guns or dogs or roads for careless cars.

I was especially taken with the innocence of this joey, who didn’t move at all, just watched, big eyed, its little black paws relaxed against its pale furry tummy. We looked at each other for some time. It didn’t mind the camera. It’s been born here and will grow up here, as protected as I can manage.

Rock god

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As I walk through my mountain forests I often come across impressive examples of the past power of geological events. I also often see things that I can’t explain.

This mighty rock rests upright, halfway up the sides of one of my spring gullies. It is too imperious to be ‘decorated’ with moss as lesser rocks are, mainly restricting it to its feet.

But how did that small separate rock get up there on its top? And stay there?

It has sat there, like a wren on an elephant’s head, for the thirty years I’ve been here.

Sunrose

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Whenever I fluke a morning sky like this, my day starts well.

No wonder artists are inspired by nature!

Even if, like me, you’re not a fan of the colour pink on handbags or cars or bedroom walls, when you see the absolute delicacy of the pink hues in a sunrise sky — you’d have to agree our colourists have gone wrong in their translation from the original.

Season of moss and lichen

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After being cabinbound for a week, when a morning came with no rain threatening, I seized the camera, donned gumboots and went a-walking.

Most blatantly rainloving of all were the mosses, drab in dry times, at their party best now.

On rocks in the gullies they glowed like textured velvet in a rich range of shades of green, with shapes and heights varying as the best of garden designers would recommend.

Set off by the splotches and splatters of the hardy lichens, decorated with an occasional fallen leaf or wallaby scat, my moss gardens are at their best.

On the rocks of the drier ridges, I find the plumped-up mosses glowing less in rainforest brights than in sage and thyme blues, honey browns. Here the lichens stand up amongst it like vivid corals – the flowers in this garden.

Moonset morning

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There is something absolutely pure about the white orb of a full moon, even though I know it’s a great lump of pitted rock and dust.

I’m not sure that I wanted to know or that the knowledge has done mankind any good. I think the money for the space projects would have been better spent down here on poor old earth.

But when I wake up and see that perfect globe still hanging up there above my pink-flushed morning skyline, I can imagine it still holds all the mystery and magical powers that it used to.

The softness of she-oaks

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she-oak
Some consider the Australian bush harsh. Even in my rich mountain forests, there are areas where the dry furrowed bark of big stringybark trees dominate, with only bare ground and rocks, sticks and dry leaves beneath.

But it cannot be called harsh where she-oaks of any sort grow. These trees, properly called casuarinas, have what appear to be delicate bunches of slender drooping leaves.

Only they are virtually leafless, with the ‘leaves’ reduced to small teeth or scales arranged around the branchlets that we see as leaves.

The red she-oak timber, once used for shingles, is now prized for cabinetry. Most of the casuarina family burn with great heat and were in demand for bakers’ ovens.

But for me the standing trees have greatest value, rain or shine, for they grace the bush with their elegance, filter sunlight like fine lace, and turn raindrops into diamonds.
she-oak raindrops

Sunspotlit

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wallabies
It’s autumn, but it feels like winter. There’s a cool wind blowing. I’m walking through the damp forest early this morning, with the sun only reaching small patches here and there.

I need to keep my eyes on the narrow wallaby track so I don’t trip over the many fallen branches, but a brightness up the hill draws my attention.

In the pool of sunlight allowed by a small clearing, a wallaby mum and her teenage joey are propped, sunsoaking, sunspotlit – almost incandescent in contrast to the surrounding dark forest of fire-blackened stringybarks.

After the rain

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sun and rain 1
After a week of non-stop rain, I awoke with a start. Something was wrong, different, out-of-the-ordinary. And then it hit me – silence. No rain on my tin roof.

What’s more, I could see beyond the first belt of trees. And soon after, I saw the sun, returning in a most spectacular fashion. Ta-dah!!!

Filtered through mist, yet everything sparkled with gratitude, trees and grass, fences and spiderwebs — and me, looking out my kitchen window at it all.
sun and rain 2

Snoopy skink

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snoopy skink
This very sleek and speedy lizard is a frequent visitor to my verandah. At about 180mm (7 inches) long, much bigger than the most common garden variety, he’s probably a Southern Water Skink, but could be an Eastern one. Regardless of his exact title, I know he’s an inquisitive skink.

Often when I’m at the computer I catch sight of him snooping round the corner of the open door, then scurrying in and off across the timber floor, usually disappearing behind my wood ‘box’(actually the liner of an old copper) near the fuel stove.

Occasionally I worry about him being trapped inside when I close the door at night, but I suspect he’s also a clever skink and knows when to make his exit. I just don’t see it.