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.

Hanging in there

Last night I dreamt that one of Miske's puppies was washed off the rocks at Lights Beach. I jumped in to save her in the heavy swell. A big storm was coming in, in fact the first rains at the edge of the front have hit us now. I was swimming her in steadily, kicking on my back, a tiny bit at a time, as the choppy waves rolled in one after the other and the undertow tried to suck me back out. I just concentrated on staying afloat-alive until my feet touched the sand, and we raced into shore before we were sucked out again. Just after I returned with the first, the second puppy dived in and was sucked out and I had to do it all over again. I really didn't want to go back in, the water was so cold, but I had to.

That dream seems to mirror my current state as I try to finish my last piece of assessment work for uni. Just when I thought I had nearly finished, there is more to do. Then, when checking some facts, I found more images  and maps that need to be added, and the whole document has to be re-indexed etc. One hundred pages is now one hundred and fifteen ... and there is still an essay to finish. Perhaps I need to listen to my dream, ignore the 'cold water' and just do it bit by bit, till I finally get there.

Which brings me to the cockatoos, who also are just 'hanging in there'

Female Long-billed Black Cockatoo (or Baudin's Cockatoo) - grey eye ring

So much of their habitat has been cleared over the last one hundred years that they have trouble breeding successfully - both from the point of view of adequate nesting sites and adequate food in the vicinity of the nesting sites. Their favoured habitat is in the high rainfall forests of the south west. They are listed as vulnerable and rare or likely to become extinct, which is a terrible thought. I remember when we lived in Perth, at Men of the Trees (where I was a volunteer) we grew plant species for mass planting in the wheat-belt, specifically as future food and habitat for all the cockatoos. Those plants should now be maturing and paying dividends for the birds.

Male Long-billed Black-Cockatoo - red eye ring

Their favoured food are the seeds in the  honkey nuts of the Marri and sometimes the blossom. They also eat the seeds of  other Eucalyptus and  Proteaceae plants. Six years after planting Hakeas we have black cockies visiting to feast on the semi mature seeds. Not only do the hakeas provide seeds for cockies, but they are a haven for little birds that feed on insects and nectar from the flowers. Occasionally the prickly leaved shrub has been a safe nesting site for small honeyeaters.

Cocky feeding on Hakea protrata seeds

Kissing the Earth

Just love this from Lisa Congdon's blog. She is an illustrator and artist from San Francisco.

Walking with Archibald Menzies

In light of the recent eclipse of the sun which was visible over in Queensland, I was amazed when reading Archibald Menzies' diary of his arrival in King George Sound: 'On the morning of the 28th of Sep'r [1791] the sun rose eclipsed which was distinctly visible to us'. Menzies was the botanist (and surgeon) on board the Discovery, commanded by Captain George Vancouver on the 1791-1795 voyage from England to explore the Pacific region and the northwest coast of North America, via Australia and New Zealand. They spent some days exploring and collecting in this area from 27 September to 13 October 1791.

This amazing time lapse photograph of the eclipse by Ben Cooper

He describes a romantic landscape, after climbing a 'small prominence from which we had a full view of the Basin & a considerable tract of country beyond it ... was pleasantly diversified with groves of trees hills and valleys forming a rich & picturesque prospect boldly drawn by nature's manly pencil, but the inland country was one continuous forest of trees' . I was surprised that nature had a manly pencil - I thought nature was aligned to the feminine - or perhaps it was, but it was men who observed, drew, used her?

John Sykes, 1791

A Hut of King George III Sound 

on the South-west Coast of New Holland

They came across several deserted Aboriginal encampments, the first was a single hut on the edge of a grove of trees. The second was a group of twenty six 'scattered about in the skirts of a small wood … separated a little distance from one another & formed somewhat like beehives with a large opening on one side which faces to the south west in all of them … in two instances we  observed double ones, that is, two joined together with one opening or door common to both … there was a fireplace near each of them … Many of the stems of the trees bore evident marks of fire, some were even hollowed out by it’ . Interestingly, today there are houses nested in among these same groves, although I expect few of the original trees survive to this day.

Sykes, Alexander, Landseer 1798.
A deserted Indian village in King George 111 Sound,
New Holland

Groves of mixed karri, swamp yate and housing
Little Grove 

Generally, Menzies and his companions seemed to have little trouble walking through the country, there being 'many spots of rich pastures abundantly cropped with excellent grasses and a variety of herbaceous plants' . The going was occasionally tough and he has a quaint way of putting difficulties 'We traced this brook ... a task of no little labor on account of the density & luxuriancy of its crop of brushwood & long grass'. The grasses were frequently up around a metre high, in extensive valley meadows that were interspersed with wooded clumps of trees or bushes, and generally 'though trees and bushes were scattered over it, yet they were not apparently so thick as to form any obstruction to our investigation' .

Meadows today in Torndirrup N.P.

Menzies writes of seeing evidence of fire just about where ever he goes; 'Many of the stems of the trees bore evident marks of fire, some were even hollowed out by it' and 'The frequent marks of fire & general burnt state of the country every where round the Sound was a subject of much conversation amongst us'. They couldn't be sure about the causes of the fires, putting it down to 'a combustible quality in the earth' or 'elementary fire' or to the 'disposition of the natives who are fond of kindling frequent fires' . Although they did not see this for themselves, as they saw no Aborigines during their stay there, they were aware that Captain Philip, during his time in Botany Bay, had 'occular demonstration' of frequent firing of the country by the local inhabitants. Menzies reasoned that the 'general conflagration' could be more reasonably be explained by firing by Aborigines than 'by the aid of any supernatural cause' .

Banksia illicifolia in recently burnt country, Torndirrup N.P.

In The Biggest Estate on Earth, Bill Gammage explains the use of fire by Aborigines to maintain complex mosaic landscapes that maximise utility and game availability. Today in the south west, fire is used to maintain mosaic landscapes for biodiversity and for fire control. It makes sense that fire should have been used as a tool, not only for attracting and trapping game, but more simply as a mechanism to keep the country traversable. If you have ever tried to bush bash on foot through thick scrub that has not seen a fire for some years you will know what I mean.


Menzies, Archibald, 1790 - 1794, Journal of Archibald Menzies, surgeon and botanist on board Discovery, Empire Online.