18/3/17
There’s nature in the city too. On a hot day at Manly a line of cloud bubbled above the horizon. To the north it turned into a bulbous mass, all greys and blacks and whites tumbled together. The blue-grey sea was flat, punctuated by surfers catching what they could close to shore. We walked around to Shelley Beach, looked longingly at a clear green rock pool, almost feeling its soft fresh water cooling us under our clinging clothes.

Later, sitting by my grandson’s cot, I watched the sky lose colour while flying foxes crossed back and forth, their slow heavy flap carrying them past apartment blocks and aerials, power lines and treetops. The closer to night we got, the lighter the sky, until suddenly it switched and I was looking out at darkness, and lights were yellow in windows. The little boy beside me slept, clutching the book I’d used to bribe him into bed.

Another night I packed my handbag with glasses and wallet, headache pills and phone. I tucked a few mints into a corner as if I was going on a trek, or packing my child’s bag for a picnic. At the Opera House the air was thick, more rain ready to fall. Laughter in the forecourt came to me muffled, and lights formed blurry haloes. Japanese girls took photos of each other with the bridge in the background, its beams in the haze forming a subtle geometry of triangles and vertical lines. Seagulls wheeled overhead, flying in and out of the spotlights like disappearing tricks.

Packing the ute in a diminishing patch of shade, a wind blows hot and gusty and slams the door shut. The moisture from last night’s rain must be dried out again by now.

I take treats from the freezer to the chooks to help cool them down. The old boss is moulting, and is strangely slow to respond when I arrive with the food. I thank her for not dying in the night and giving me one more unpleasant task on this loaded day.

By the time the ute is packed, everything fitting in miraculously, but fitting better after a visit to the tip, it’s 3pm and the cafes in Gloucester are closing. Lunch finished at 2pm. Sorry. I take one last look at the main street, a row of shops baking in the blanketing heat. Two people walk on the shady side, looking for things to look at.

I drive out to the edge of town, where I think of the duck family that dwindled, week by week, as the parents led their ducklings back and forth across the road between the golf course and the shelter shed. I drive on, the heat baking my arm through the window of the ute. It’s so hot that I decided against checking the temperature. Knowing would only make it hotter. I drive past the petrol station at Stroud where we always bought our petrol. I stop for tea at the café on the expressway. I drive on, past people who I used to see every week. I am disappearing from their lives, and they are disappearing from mine.

Leaving the house I had checked the rooms, found I’d left the honey strainer in the laundry. I checked the rooms again, looked around the lounge room, thought of taking photos. But what would they show? A small rectangle of furniture, windows, curtains. They wouldn’t show the wonderment I felt every time I saw a frog on the window, one leg askew. Or a swallow on the shed roof, still for a lucky moment, its head so black and glossy, its breast and neck so russet. Photos wouldn’t show us sprawling on the lounge in winter in front of the fire. Or closing the curtains and sitting in the pleasant dim light under the fan in summer. They wouldn’t show how we would catch a glimpse of clouds or moon or stars through a window and go outside to admire billowing or light-catching or glowing or a mass of tiny lights against a black black background, and stand there, caught in thoughts of wonder, of distance and time and the universe.

I stopped checking the rooms, turned, and went out the door.

We’ve been outside paying homage to the night sky, the full moon, the cooling air after yet another hot day. I know this place so well now. I recognise the wet thud of a frog jumping down from wherever it’s been. The flashing light of a plane in the sky, so high up that no sound reaches us as it makes its steady way from north to south.

I didn’t expect to fall in love with this place. I didn’t even know you could fall in love with a piece of land. But I did fall in love with the land and the sky, with the heavy summer beetles that buzz loudly at night. The fussing of parrots as they settle down at dusk.

Now when I walk around the garden, I’m saying goodbye. We haven’t gone yet but I’m readying myself for that day when I won’t be worrying about a drooping avocado tree or welcoming the sudden leaves of a zucchini seed that has decided to sprout.

I’m readying myself to not hear the dawn sounds of the land and the birds waking, the backdrop of cicadas and crickets, the foreground of magpies and blue wrens. The kookaburras crisp and cackly. The dew still on the grevilleas.

Not watching the frills of mist curling around the tops of the trees as I drink my morning cup of tea.

A lone night bird flying silently in the nearly-dark sky, flapping up and diving swooping down, make wide arcing loops through the valley.

Enjoy the moment. It’s the only one you have.

30/12/16

Some years before we built our house here – where it always catches a breeze, on the edge of the hill, above the creek – lightning struck a tree on the bottom side of the track. We found it a couple of days later, still smouldering, and recollected a loud crack on the night of the storm. Heavy rain had meant that the fire hadn’t spread, despite the thickly burnt trunk, split down the middle.

Clouds are building up today, shielding us slightly from the fierce heat of the sun. The weather sites say there is no chance of rain, but we thought we heard the low rumble of thunder just now. A dry storm would cause all sorts of trouble. Fire would run a swift race through these crackle-dry paddocks.

There was a fire a couple of months ago at the corner where the highway meets our turn-off, Bucketts Way. Stark charcoal trunks stripped of foliage revealed houses we had never seen before. There is still a carpet of brown leaves among the blackened sticks, and pennants of copper leaves rustle on the tips of dead branches. But epicormic growth like bright-green velvet outlines the shapes of the trees.

Despite the adverse circumstances – the unusually heavy frost in winter, followed by yet another dry spring – some of the trees are powering on, producing fruit and forming beautiful canopies of fresh green foliage. One of the pears – the Williams – has excelled itself, with a cover of small, perfectly formed pearlets. So I’m disappointed to find, down among the rhubarb, one tiny pear, indented with tooth marks, cast aside in a, ‘phhh, that’s not even ripe’ sort of way.

It’s so dry that there’s a spider in the rain gauge. A young huntsman, it sits on the side of the gauge while the bottom fills up with whatever little showers we are blessed with and a mess of beetles. Christmas beetles, with their hunched shells, that flash rainbows off their glossy brown backs and wings when they fly. When I tip them out some are still alive, and they crawl off in a dazed wonder at being back in the world. The spider clings on, and I put her and the rain gauge back on the fence.

I’m kept awake at night by a frog that favours a spot right outside our bedroom window. I’m not sure if it’s a new frog, or just an old frog in a new position, but I can’t help thinking that it’s playing a zither. I lie in bed imagining its long arms and legs stretched out to pluck the strings with its fingertips. I imagine a jazz frog – happy jazz – in a little black and white striped jacket, a smile on its face as it weaves its esoteric way through the night.

Cool moist night air softly drifts into the house. Night chirrups. In the forest, a bird calls. Toe–toe-wit. Toe–toe-wit. Slow ‘Toe’ then quicker ‘toe-wit’.

Earlier, at dusk, two willy wagtails courting on our deck. One agitated and restless, jumping around, flying up to the rafters and down again, frantically twitching its tail back and forth and calling tch tch tch. The other sitting quietly on the back of a chair, watching, waiting, singing a beautiful melody once or twice. Loud, so close to where we are sitting. The restless one joins the quiet one and they are both still, regarding each other, as if lovingly. They sing quiet little songs to each other. They fly up into the corner of the deck, vanish from sight for a while, then come back down. Is that a post-coital cigarette they’re sharing?

Earlier, as the afternoon waned, two wallabies nibbled at the newly-mown grass. We watched them from the bedroom window. They knew we were there, but weren’t as anxious as wallabies in the past. Their big ears twitch and rotate at the sound of our voices, but they don’t leap away. We can see them so clearly. A white line runs from the mouth up to the eye. Their paws are black, foreshortening their arms. Black tips on their ears and nose. Red highlights on their backs and necks. Thick grey-beige fur elsewhere. Big black eyes, watchful.

Earlier, in the brash afternoon, the two blue wrens that have been frequenting the deck came by. The male – a young bright newly-blue boy – has been attacking his reflection in every window. We hear him tapping at the glass. His favourite spots are marked by a series of little white dots on the ground. He must sit for a while contemplating himself. The light brown female hops around, carefree, not needing either vanity or jealousy to fuel her days.

July 17, 2016

Down by the creek I hear a noisy flapping in the canopy, a bumbling from tree to tree. A heavy flight, wings beating in a high-pitched whirr, and it lands in a tree near me. I stare up, walk around the tree, finally see a bright little eye staring nervously down at me. I can’t see the pink chest but it must be a wompoo fruit dove, big and plump, shades of green in its head and body, bright golden dots strung across its wing.

Up in the garden there are the winter birds. The white-cheeked honeyeaters fill the stunted gums, dashing, hopping, sprinting – joyous, animated. They cluster in the trees, chasing and swirling. Eastern spinebills feed from the gradually opening flowers of a grevillea, their wings agitating in hover. A yellow robin flies urgently around the deck, crashing into a window, righting itself and fluttering off, a magpie in pursuit, zooming, jet-like, after its prey. The robin veers into the mess of shrubbery – curry plant, lemon verbena – and the magpie continues down the hill, returning moments later, putting on an extra cranky burst of speed in its frustration.

Meanwhile, in the chookyard, the broody hen continues to sit on as many eggs as she can collect. I have to be careful when I lift her off (unexpectedly thin bony body under all those puffed out feathers) to make sure she hasn’t gathered any eggs within her wings. I put her on the ground and she fluffs out, has a wander around the yard, a little drink, a peck of food, then returns to her nest.

9/7/16

There must have been a night of terror last week. We arrived to find feathers all over the yard and two of the chooks – the two Andalusians, Andy and Lucia – missing. On closer inspection, the feathers were black, or grey. Some were fluffy, like down, like feathers that must have been on their bellies. Others were bigger, like quills – they must have been the wing feathers – the feathers that we should have clipped a few weeks ago to keep them in their run.

They discovered that they could fly out of the run about a month ago. First it was just Bub, fluttering heavily up onto the gate, swaying there and waiting for a partner. Once Andy joined her they were away, jumping down into the garden and gradually exploring further and further afield. Bib and Lucia soon joined the escapees, leaving the two old aunties (whose wings were clipped last year, and who have never realised that their wing feathers have regrown) to enjoy the run of the run, just like old times. The wanderers grew bolder, staying out longer, venturing further, until we woke one morning to hear the pleasant sound of smug chooks and saw a little cavalcade of the four of them trotting down the hill to the happy lands of the onion seedlings, just waiting to be scratched up.

But Andy and Lucia – who were always slightly stupider – had trouble getting back into the run, and would scurry up and down the outside of the fence looking for a way in long after Bib and Bub had returned to the fold. Maybe one night they just gave up and settled down somewhere near the house, maybe on the porch. Telltale smears of blood on two of the glass doors conjure tragic images of terrified chooks trying to find safety.

Now Bib has gone broody, sitting in a half-comatose state all day on the two plastic eggs and any other real eggs that she can steal from the nesting boxes, leaving only the canny Bub to come and go as she pleases.

6 May 2016

Two willy wagtails are out on the deck, sitting under the cane chair on its crossbar. Seen up close their black and white colouring is so precise, so sharp and stylish. They are tcchhing at each other, sidling closer then away, facing their plump chests at each other then turning. One jumps down to the ground and starts singing, a clear joyful four-note tune that rises quickly and ends still on a happy note. I have heard that song all my life, in suburban backyards and in the bush, but never known who was singing it.

The bird that has stayed on the crossbar starts pecking at a piece of spidersweb hanging from the chair, pulls it off and drops it to the ground. The singing bird keeps singing and strutting, wagging its tail with that distinctive whole-body wagtail wag, and bowing its head. The bird on the chair adds the occasional tcchh. Then the singing bird flies up into the top corner of the deck, where the roof is thick with spiderswebs, and probably the spiders’ larders. The crossbar bird joins the singing bird up in the corner, where they flutter and fall back, flutter and fall back before they fly away, out into the morning sunshine.

21/4/16

We look back with nostalgia now on the weeks after the young chickens arrived. They were so frightened that they couldn’t walk up the ladder to their house. We had to go up to the pen at dusk every night, pick up the four drowsy chickens nestled together in the long grass, and place them in the house, closing the door on the squawks and bangs as the old chooks showed them to their roosts. Gradually they learned the way up, learning to go to bed before the older ones so they didn’t get pecked, like Ping, as they made their way through the door. Gradually they became a flock of six. The older ones slowly became less aggressive, the younger ones less scared. The younger ones discovered the tree, and pioneered roosting in its branches, impressing the older ones with this daring. We gave them names for the first time, calling the old ones the Aunties and the younger ones Andy and Lucia (the Andalusians) and Bib and Bub (the identical New Hampshires).

As predicted by the chook lady back in December, the two Aunties are now ‘spent’. Or nearly. They rarely lay eggs any more, and the darker Aunty, the one who used to rule the roost, who used to peck kind friends when they looked in to top up the water, is rapidly losing feathers. The base of her neck is bare, and she is hesitant about coming forward when there’s food in the offing. She sits on a branch in the tree, away from the rest of the flock below her. In contrast, her partner in crime, the lighter-coloured Aunty, the one who used to wait behind her boss for the scraps, is now top of the roost. She delivers a sharp peck to the younger ones when they come too close to her favourite foods – the sunflower seeds out of the mixed seed, or the rolled oats – which I am using for handfeeding in an attempt to make them all a little tamer.

But she is mellowing too, and when I leave the pen I look back and see her sharing the water dispenser with Bib (or Bub). Surely she can see the time coming when the younger ones realise that they’re bigger than her? Change is all around. The pen is full of feathers, either from moulting or fighting or both. Bib and Bub have started laying eggs – little pink-brown eggs with freckles, sometimes without their shells – and Andy and Lucia can’t be far behind. This Aunty’s time at the top of the ladder will be brief. Maybe there’s a lesson in this for all of us.