It's the wattles that shout that Spring is coming. They splash themselves across the canvas of blue skies boisterously. There's no shyness in a wattle. They cavort and whisper, dance and carouse, with no shame at all for their flamboyancy. They're through and through Australian, and although they make us sneeze, die within ten years after going quite straggly, and drop leaves all over cars, we love them passionately.
The wattle trees are brandishing their many shades of gold
The blizzards of the mountains crack the granite, with their cold,
They roar across the mountains, like a wave across the sea
And the yellow-foaming wattle keeps the love alight in me.
- Denis Kravens
An illustration of a possum skin cloak on a sign on the walk. Once, we didn't have signs here, and they make the place lose it's wildness a little.
How close they lived to the earth, and how bereft they were torn from it. The path twines through their land, really, but when you're born and raised on it too, you also feel a sense of ownership. Such is the Australian dilemma.
The gum with it's glittering leaves
Is sparking in the sunny light
And around my leafy home it weaves
It's dancing shade with flow'rets bright
- Unknown, written by an aboriginal mother in a Sydney newspaper, 1880
I want to share Kinsella's poem about lichen in the moonlight, but the sun is out, and it doesn't fit. But it does embrace the rocks, holds tight, glows in the shade of the trees. Up close the tiny stems of tiny plants hold their throats toward the sun.
as lichen
embroiders the face of granite
as lichen
seduces the fallen log
as lichen
rings the stem of the rose
as lichen
caresses the knot in the bark
as lichen
paints the fence-post orange
as lichen
flowers boldly in the mist
so we are married to this ground
- Nicola Bowery
So we are married to this ground. What a beautiful line. I feel that, out in the crisp late Winter air, walking this familiar path, along this familiar coast. Even when I was far from it I felt it's presence in my heart. The joy in the home coming, the embrace of the sea. The laugh of a kookaburra. Did the kookaburra sing the world into blessed existence, or did the world sing in the kookaburra?
I love this coast. This path in particular, this beach in particular. Dad and I would ride the horses through the bush, back when no one worried about those things. We'd ride them naked along the beach, me and my bestfriend and no one was around to see. Now, getting close to the trail that leads back up to the carpark, I can hear cars - people here to walk dogs, to paddle out and try their luck with the waves. It's less busy than other beaches, but still, it's not solely my beach anymore.
For years my friend's Dad and his mates would tear down the sign that led down to this beach. Every time the council put it up, they'd pull it down again. No one was allowed to surf on his break - not if they wanted to risk him shouting at them or staring them out. He can't surf any more - his back gave in. He's having a hard time with that, as you can imagine. He too was married to this ground, and unable to walk it anymore or paddle out in the wild waves, he's bereft as you would be, losing a spouse.
https://gateway.ipfs.io/ipfs/QmU9f4FK9j91cnUGYk9hnMXuYdAFcnF6ekkpXZ5DfiByfG