Goodbye, Blinky Bill?

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Just next to historic Roto House and its café is Port Macquarie’s famed Koala Hospital.

Started in 1973, and now with 200 volunteers, this special facility treats rescued and injured koalas, runs a vet clinic and a conservation breeding program, and offers up close and informative experiences for visitors.

The first time I went was near midday and all I could see were furry balls, fast asleep. Koalas do naturally sleep a lot,  to save energy.

Next day I was there at opening time (8.30) and it was quite different. Here helper Geraldine is feeding a medicinal paste to CW, hit by a car, and left with only one eye and brain injury. He will never be able to be released into the wild. 

CW was more than eager to take his treatment, and Geraldine wiped his mouth when needed, just like a mother would.

The pens are roomy, with cleverly designed and shaded structures; fresh gum leaves are placed in each every day. About eight food tree varieties, like Swamp Mahogany and Tallowwood, are grown on a separate property.

There are pens for the permanent residents and closed-off, more private pens for those being rehabilitated, to be released back into the wild when ready. With free entry, the Hospital relies totally on donations.

Visitors do get to see how cute and furry are our iconic koalas… and they also get told how at risk they are. From habitat clearing, from disease, from dogs and cars – from our ‘progress’ in fact.

Australia holds the world record for the extinction of mammal species. How shameful is that!?

In 2022 the koala was officially listed as endangered.

How shameful is that!?

John Williamson was so ashamed when he visited the Hospital and realised the koalas’ plight that he wrote and recorded the song, ‘Goodbye Blinky BIll’, which included the lines: 

‘I don’t think I could stand the shame, knowing that I could
Have saved the world from losing something beautiful and good.’

And yet, despite the enormous bushfire loss of native forests, our governments are still approving the removal of large areas of koala habitat, be it for logging or coal or gas or housing.

As for the Moolarben coalmine expansion near Munghorn Gap Nature Reserve north of Mudgee. Or the Vulcan South mine in QLD. 

With coal and gas mining spreading in the NSW N-W, the Independent Planning Commission said, ‘If coal mining and koalas are to co-exist, then a robust strategy for koala conservation is essential.’ 

Indeed, but that cannot mean the sham get-out-of-jail system of offsets.

Well may koalas turn their backs on us, given we are doing that to their desperate declining situation. It is predicted they may be extinct by 2050 at this rate.

Where are our priorities?

Who will dare say NO to the developers?

Or who will explain to our grandchildren… and to the world;… how we let this happen?

Goodbye Blinky Bill?

History and Nature

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The charming Roto House is a gem in Port Macquarie’s armoury of attractions. John Flynn had it built in 1891 of local Red Mahogany (Eucalyptus resinifera). It was restored in the 1980s, with much work needed, especially on the foundations, but also the roof and verandahs.

You can wander through its timber panelled rooms for free; most have historic exhibitions on display. The light fittings are beautiful. ornate yet simple. The whole house gives one a vivid sense of the craftsmanship and solid materials used then.

With its many chimneys, of course most rooms have a fireplace. I am reminded of our 1895 house/police station at Minmi near Newcastle, which had five chimneys, each serving two fireplaces back-to-back. but they had marble fireplace surrounds and mantelpieces and were closed in with a metal face and a small grate.

Roto House has been hugely enlivened by the establishment of a café, Home at Roto. You can eat on the verandahs, at the picnic tables in the peaceful tree-studded grounds, or under the covered café addition. They also run special events, be it poetry or music, often with open microphone, adding culture to the charm of being in a building from a bygone era.

At the risk of sounding like a tourism spruiker, this has become my favourite coffee place; so un-modern and un-citified, where history meets nature.

Roaming ‘round Roto

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I have been told there is a track through the bushland below historic Roto House. This being a grey and bleak day, the beach does not appeal for a walk, so I aim to find that track.

I don’t, but through a deliberate gap in a netting fence I do stumble on to a patch of soggy forest.

It seems to have become a repository for the drains of the surrounding houses and for rubbish from trespassers.

It is still interesting bush, with features like this Bird’s Nest fern, the epiphytic Asplenium nidus, very low to the ground.

But it is hard to negotiate the muddy bits. And I know I’m not supposed to be here.

I retrace my steps, try the next ‘No through road’ street and find I am at the edge of the Roto House grounds.

A path skirts the lawn and scattered trees that border the wilder part, which today is alive with birdsong.

The tree trunks and tops are beautiful. The koala hospital is nearby, so I keep hoping to see a wild one in these trees, but no luck.

There are patches of colour along the way, from these fungi and from wattle that is starting to bedeck many roadsides.

There is even a strangler fig, familiar to me from my many walks though Wingham Brush. This one also houses another Bird’s Nest fern.

I am going to poke more closely around Roto House…

Remembering Harry

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‘Harry’s Lookout’ was a simple clearing,  a place for hang gliders to launch from and gawkers like me and my family to embrace the view of ‘our’ little beach, Shelly Beach.

But that was decades ago. Harry is long gone and I know his work on the Lookout and his rough steps down to the beach have been ‘updated’.

Now I am so close I revisit that Lookout and vow to walk down Harry’s steps to the beach once more.

The first surprise is the Lookout area itself. Very arty, sort of Polynesian, no cobbled-together scraps as it was in Harry’s day.

The spot is still magnificent.

There is a small but quite superb birthday celebration happening  here.

I ask if there is any info up here about Harry and one young woman says, ‘I didn’t even know Harry was a real person’.

I assure them he was, still alive when my parents used to live not far away.

I head down the steps that Harry originally made. Back then they were in many colours, of whatever scraps of pipe or timber Harry could find. I recall lots of blue and yellow, and hand rails. No doubt they were kitschy and probably unsafe.

Now they are all uniform treated timber… and no handrails.

They are still best taken downhill rather than up.

Harry’s path takes you through some great rainforest and magically twisted tree trunks.

When I reach the beach, it is smaller than I recall, and of course Harry’s caravan is long gone. But I am so pleased to see that down here at least he is remembered.

I do recall Harry and his wife as likely the most sun-damaged people I have ever seen. I know Council later tried to evict them but public support for one of our last true eccentrics saved them.

Now there are several memorials to him. One is a timber statue, complete with mayoral medallion.

Harry’s van was beyond the most visited part, where the cars park and the brush turkeys pushily patrol the picnic tables.

It’s busy even today, a windy winter Sunday.

There is a wonderfully varied and detailed testimony to Harry’s life set in a helix in the sand. 

I am happy he is immortalised here, but regret that there is no such information up the top. Or did I miss it?

That lookout and those steps were a huge labour of love: rough and ready and free, un-OHS, un-arty, unauthorised, but so personal and indicative of a time now past.

Vale Harry.

Port peace

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Today I dared my first beach walk, after a week flu-bound indoors, basically doing nought but coughing and sleeping.

The beach was pretty empty, although several fishermen were risking the rocks.

The rocks along the Port Macquarie coast are quite harsh and unfriendly in appearance. They are not foot- or hand- friendly either. Such a contrast with the gentle continuous swell that they edge.

There are many scattered ‘rocklets’  creating lacy patterns and sinuous swirls of their own.

There were very few remnant patterns from the tide, but I don’t know the moods of this beach yet.

As this cliff and this beach are close to many flats and houses, I wonder about the content of the drips on several rock faces, where the liquid is like caramel topping, not water.

I am pleased to see a healthy banksia with candles all a-glow, but mainly the beach itself claims my attention.

I sit on the edge of a sandbank and admire the tenacious grass runners. Not much evidence of crab activity, as I was used to at Dunbogan but then I am late here today.

It’s not a dog beach. There are just a few determined walkers, doing the length and back.

I feel so relaxed I could sleep on the sand.

Trying to understand why there is such a sense of peace here, I finally get it.

There are no vehicle tracks, no 4WD scourings, just the tidemarks…

Just Nature.

Local lorikeets

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My verandah railing was obviously the watching point for feeding time by the previous owners, and the pigeons, brush turkeys and lorikeets took a few weeks to realise that I was not going to be doing the same.

Only the lorikeets have kept trying their luck.

There were hundreds of lorikeets at my old place, noisily loving the paperbark blossoms. But I rarely saw them still and up so close. 

Their colours are ridiculously bright and beautiful, compensation for their unmusical screeching.

In the recent wet week, pairs have taken to sheltering on the verandah. While there, they take it in turns to preen each other.

I know it was likely fleas they were after, but it seemed affectionate and charming, to be mutually grooming even when their feathers were somewhat bedraggled and damp.

Port prelude

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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.

Natural pinks

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The glory of a very pink sunset and its reflections in the Camden Haven River were a treat. The deep blue additions seemed like punctuation marks.

Although some of that blue cohort seemed more like questing creatures, hurrying forward against that stunning still backdrop bank of pink.

As the colour faded, their southern rush was echoed by a higher golden compatriot, aiming to leap over the blue bars.

Fanciful?  Yes, but such an ephemeral show invited fancies.  Better than facts at present…

At home the cascades of several varieties of Schlumbergera cacti were showing a fine range of pinks in their abundant flowers, from pearly pales to cyclamen deeps.

I would usually say I don’t actually like pink much, but I applaud these.

Farewell to Wayfarer

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At low tide, the rescued boat is unable to float, sitting askew on the mudflats.

It is early morning and the sky and its gentle colours and reflections take all the attention for the moment. But up close, this slanted and stranded boat offers its name as ‘Wayfarer’.  I wonder where it had journeyed as a wayfarer, and if it would again.

Its exposed underside tells me it had sat on the muddy bottom of the river for some time.

Its deck is as colourful as the sky, worthy of contributing to the reflections before the mudflats halt them.

Not that my solo heron minds the low tide; all the better for finding breakfast. 

I then learnt that Wayfarer is to be dragged ashore and broken up; she is not salvageable, having sat for about five years on the bottom. Her masts had already been taken down.

She will definitely no longer go a-wayfaring…

River residents

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My recent walk to the river boat ramp offered the surprise of a new resident: a resurrected boat, muddied and somewhat askew, plainly pulled up from a watery depth greater than it was built to inhabit.

From the mangrove edges the more usual resident ducks were heading out through the reflections and ripples, and creating their own silver trails.

As they passed the salvaged boat I thought how much better adapted they were to this   river, to water. It was crippled, useless to do aught but stay afloat: they belonged.

There were actually four of these handsome ducks; I loved the way their reflections paddled with them, double hooked.

I had expected the other inhabitants here to be solo, as was usual. My pelican was indeed the only one on the oyster stacks, but I later realised it had a companion– a shag?

Not sure why I always see solo creatures so often — mirroring me? — but here was my solo seagull, and yes, standing on one leg…

The sole watchful heron picked its delicate way through the exposed mangrove flats as it sought its tucker. And while I have seen more than one seagull or pelican elsewhere, I have not seen multiple herons.

I have taken many photos of Dooragan reflected in the river at all times of day, but to see it reflected in watery mud was new.

As I am moving from here soon, I am relishing all glimpses of the many moods of the river and the mountain…

Sandscapes

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A walk along a deserted beach where I will not swim is yet full of delights and surprises.

Here I imagine there was a full mermaid sand sculpture before the tide washed her torso and head away.

But fanciful figures aside, the tide had left many different patterns, like these mountains of the moon.

Unusually, today there were areas where fine shellgrit had been deposited, here highlighted and disrupted by a splayed kelp plant.

And how was this rippling, ruffling pattern produced?

Despite the grittier top layer, the tiny and tinier creatures who live below still made their presence obvious by the balls of sand of varying sizes.

Ephemeral patterns and pleasures for the early riser…

Double-ended drama

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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.

Such beauty at both ends of one day!

A free show, if we only look.