Water dreaming

Summer has finally reached us down here in the south west, with warm sunny days, blue skies and high humidity. Nothing like the dripping heat one experiences up north or the baking heat of the inland. My brother and his wife, who live in Broome, spent a couple of days with us recently. We breakfasted outside in the morning sunlight, a gentle breeze wafting over our skin, and they felt cold. We thought it was perfect. Up in Broome they'd be dripping with sweat before breakfast was done. Our maximum temperatures are their minimums!

Despite the contrasts, the heat of summer brings to mind enticing visions of cool water. Down here we have  rivers with tannin dark waters and pristine beaches of white sand, rounded grey granite washed by cold azure seas. Up north, the beaches are washed by warm waters that can disappear into the distance with the huge tides, and the inland pools have fish lurking in the shadows, visible if you are still and quiet. In the wet after a good cyclone there can water as far as the eye can see.

It is those inland pools that remind me of the work of Sonia Kurarra. We saw some of her paintings when we were last in Perth at Form Gallery and it was great to see her work up close as I had only seen digital images previously. Her colours are rich with the reds of her homeland and vibrant contrasts. Nothing says sweltering humid summer more to me than shimmering hot pink and orange red. Barramundi  appear and disappear within her expressive brushstrokes.

The river near Noonkanbah (Yungngora)

Kurarra is from the country around Noonkanbah (Yungngora) and the Fitzroy River in the Kimberley region of  Western Australia, not too far from Broome. She paints the billabong country of the Fitzroy, and the fish - barramindi (parlka) and catfish (kurlumajarti) - that are important food species. Other themes that she paints are also related to traditional life; the rocks where the fish is cooked (parrmarr), coolamon for carrying things (ngurti) and boomerang (karli).

Barramundi dreaming

In 2010 Kurarra won the Western Australian Indigenous Art Award and the port Hedland indigenous art award. This year she won the Most Outstanding Work at the Port Hedland Art Awards for her work Martuwarra (Kurarra's river country).

Parlka (Barramundi) and rockholes 2010

Images are from WA Art Gallery and Short Street Gallery.

Cuckoos and caterpillars

This horsefield's bronze cuckoo is a new comer to my vege patch seen recently. It has been feeding on the bugs and caterpillars in my garden - and it is looking quite fat on it. We've heard its sharp descending whistle for some time now, especially in the early mornings, but until now it had stayed out of sight.

Here it is perched above a tomato plant, spying on green caterpillars.

 Below it is amongst the radish plant that I have let go to seed.

This cuckoo, like many, is a nest parasite and particularly, but not exclusively, likes nests with a domed construction. There should be plenty of those around here as wrens and thornbills are always to be seen and heard in the garden. The female lays one speckled egg in the chosen host nest and the incubation period is usually shorter than the hosts which gives the cuckoo chick the upper hand - or foot in the case of the chick - as they turf the competition out of the nest.

Counting chickens

I think it is reasonable safe to write that we now have a dozen chickens, safely hatched, post fox.

 

It wasn't without dramas. About three days after they started chipping I went down as usual to check my two hens and their chicks and I found my big white splash hen on her last legs, drooping on the ground with her chickens gathered under her head and body. What the!! I figured she must have been bitten by a spider, as she had no other signs of illness - just flaked out, and dead within a short period of time. Poor old girl. I had to gather up her chickens and give them to my other tiny mille fleur hen - she now has charge of a dozen healthy chickens.

They ripple her undercarriage as they jostle to fit under her body, and she spreads her wings wide to accommodate them all. I ended up with five mille fleurs - their 'mother' is the only surviving mille fleur from the fox attack. And I have seven araucana chickens in a mix of colours. After all these disasters I am not taking any chances and have brought them up to the house.  I can hear the conversations between hen and chicks from where I sit typing - just outside on our dichrondra lawn on the edge of the verandah.

A feast of Skinks

The sacred kingfishers are still here and yesterday I found them feeding on garden skinks from the vantage  of posts in my vegetable garden. Here are some pictures.