Wild Side

I noticed it a few days ago but I didn’t mention it, maybe because I didn’t really believe it. There are a few spots along the coast near where I live where I frequently go. One of them I enjoy because there is a fair walk from the road where I have to park the car, and the walk is through coastal bushland where wallaby’s and birds and goanna live. Even though there are many farms around here and it is often used by people passing through it is still wild in many ways.

Today I took a pic of another kind of wildness I didn’t expect to find here. Just a few metres in from the road, in plain view of anyone walking this way, was a small bush with women’s bra’s draped over it like tinsel on a Christmas tree. That’s what it was, some sex obsessed man’s present to himself that no doubt served to quell some emotional demand in him. The demand for sexual gratification.

All men have it, this demand, it’s what drives the reproduction of the species. And there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s what all animal bodies do. But man, through thinking about his sexuality, has emotionalised and complicated the matter out of all proportion.

The fact is all bodies mate in some way or other. Sex is sex and serves the species. But man has realised the need for love but he doesn’t know how to find it, so he gets confused about sex.

Poor man.

I went on in towards the beach and saw some shrubbery a little past the narrow trail to the sand and I thought I’d investigate. There were a few different kinds of grasshopper amongst the foliage and a few different insects. I took a load of photo’s and got a few good shots, I always try a few different settings and modes to learn what works, where and when. A delicate hopper, a two faced spider, and a tiger bug.

I went on in to the beach and it was lovely. There was nobody there for miles in both directions and the waves were crashing with that incessant roar that is always here by the ocean. I walked a while along the edge of the water, sometimes getting my feet and legs wet. Nice, cool water. Along the length of the beach I could see flotsam, loads of driftwood and some rubbish from some far away place.

The driftwood was as big as trees at times, some so big they had sunk into the sand and only the main trunk and some branches sticking up here and there. I wonder where all the driftwood came from, somewhere up or down the coast maybe? or some far off land where there had been a mighty storm. I don’t know, I couldn’t tell the kind of wood. We have had coconuts along here so it’s not unthinkable the trees came from another land. It could even be from that tsunami so many months ago.

The clouds were multiform and lovely and soft in a blue sky. And the white of the foam on the breaking waves was easy on the eye.

When I turned around I came back by the softer sand. I often do this for the exercise. To walk in the soft sand is demanding of a full range of movement of the legs and hips that helps strengthen and mobilise the hips and lower spine. The muscles from the calf to the tip of the toes are all vigorously engaged. It’s good for the body basically.

I am relatively new to photography, I’m sure I have mentioned it before. There were a few puddles of water on the trail where it collects after the rain. The birds know about these puddles and like to bathe in them when nobody is around. I’ve seen them before. I waited about five metres away for one to go to the water but as soon as I stopped so did they. It’s like that around here, the creatures are very shy.

But I waited anyway and it paid off. Splash, one bird dipped in for a quick bath but was gone before I even saw it clearly. Then another. So I stood there with the camera pointed at the spot I thought would be best and set the pre-focus so all I had to do was complete the press of the shutter button.

I was looking at the lcd screen on the back of the camera for the bird to drop into the water and as soon as It did I pressed the button. And splash is all I got, it was just too quick for me. I took another one and splash is all I got again. It was getting dark and the mozzies were coming out so I went home.

This amazing beast, monster moth, was at the doorway when I got back.

All copyright reserved / Mark Berkery

Even with the air conditioning on the car is hot here in Australia’s summer. Especially after going for a walk in the bush. The power windows stopped working last week and I couldn’t find the fault myself. It is inconvenient and I do prefer to drive with the windows down. But I just have to accept what can’t be changed, for now.

Today the mechanics I have met since moving to N. E. NSW looked at it for me. It could have cost a lot but I can’t live without working windows in the car. Peter, one of the partners, spent ten minutes on it and it was working again. Mark, the origional owner of the business only charged me ten dollars. Isn’t that amazing? That’s a rhetorical question. It is amazing.

Mechanics are notorious for taking advantage of the lack of mechanical know - how of the man on the street but these guys are the best. Good old fashioned service without the rush, and pleasantly communicative. And honest, they do what needs to be done and you pay an honest rate for it.

If you are ever in this neck of the woods and need a mechanic you will find them just outside the village of Burringbar, north of Byron on the old Highway One to Murwillumbah. Murnane is the name and you’ll find them in the phone book, or if you’re in the area just ask someone.

It’s good to be treated right and I thought I’d pass it on. I have met other gentleman mechanics but not since I started writing this blog and this blog is about my experience here and now.

After I left Murnane’s, with my windows working, I went to the Mooball N. P. for a walk. More like a climb really, it’s very steep hill country. But it is relatively unknown and there’s a certain freedom in being alone in a place few people go to. I enjoy it.

I drove around a bend and saw a Goanna run for the trees in the distance, about a hundred metres. You have to keep an eye out for the creatures if you want to see them in the wild. I saw where it went and made a mental note and stopped about where it ran from the road. I got out of the car and there it was, a small Goanna, about two and a half foot long from nose to tail tip.

I got the camera out and got a couple snaps of this shy creature as it peered from around the trunk of the tree it was climbing to escape from me. A slender quiet thing flicking its tongue to see what I taste like. It may know me a little if ever we meet again, and maybe won’t run away so quickly. It didn’t run too far until I moved around the tree for a better shot. It might have felt I was trying to flank it. And I was but only to take its picture, but it didn’t know that. ( P1000611(1).jpg )

I went for a walk then and came across a few small creatures. A few spiders in their webs and a few grasshoppers. Magnificent creatures in themselves the way they are structured for what they do. And they are designed to survive. The magnificent webs of silver and golden thread that house and feed the spider. And the powerful legs and secondary wings that enable the grasshopper to get away, some of them have suits of thorn so if any frog got one in its mouth it would soon spit it out.

It was nice and quiet on the trails in this place. Nothing to name or think about except nature. But most of the time just seeing what is there, the leaves of a myriad different plants and fallen things. And smelling the air, and feeling the cool breeze up in the hills. That’s nice.

On the way home I stopped at an old spot of mine on the top of a hill that was probably the site of a house before it became a national park. I have stopped here many times and got a few good pix but today was special.

I was in a hollow looking where some old palm trees had been dumped a long time ago. It’s an area that I visit since I found some beautiful yellow fungus there before I had the new camera. The old one couldn’t focus on it. I have also seen a big hornet scouting the place at another time, moving slowly and deliberately from place to place looking for I don’t know what. Food, shelter, nest site. The same things people look for I reckon.

Today I met Golden Boy and he posed for me for a long time, and I thanked him for that. It is a privilege to get close to the wild creatures and I was grateful for it. This fellow was magnificent, a streamlined body with four wings and the muscle to control them that gave him exquisite control in flight. An efficient hunting machine that told its predators ‘I don’t taste good’ with its yellow and black colouring. ( P1000660.jpg + P1000624.jpg)

He had such control in flight he could take his prey on the wing. I saw him take a small insect from the air with ease, as if harvesting what is naturally and rightfully his. He is a predator after all. Cruising his territory with an air of invincibility. Poised to respond to the slightest significant signal.

Such beauty of form and function was unsurpassed in my view today. You should see that head swivel on its ‘neck’ and focus and lock when something I can’t see attracts his attention. It’s robotic. Simply a beautiful, deliberate, instinctively intelligent hunting machine.

Sylvan of this hollow in the top of a mountain. A privilege to meet.