Nature's Place

In the cold light of the cloud darkened swamp mozzies swarm. I suspect they only swarm where there is a chance of a feed and that’s how they recognised me today, as potential food, by scent or sense of some kind. Hunger drives all in existence, for this or that, for survival. The only effective deterrence I know of is in a spray can, and don’t forget the hat. If there is a hole in the hat and it hasn’t been sprayed a mozzie will find it and inject such an itch, they can be big ones here and they are as persistent as life itself. Instinctively so.

Enough rain has fallen in a few days to flood the forest and surrounding area. This is tropical rainforest/coastal wetland/mangrove swamp terrain after all. Walking in the place is precarious since the wooden boardwalks are also slippy from soaking up the water, slippery as mud. It pays to respect the changed conditions. A shorter stride, planting the foot vertically, more controlled movement keeps the body upright. Or one can always go for an unplanned swim in the creek that is full and fast right now.

*

I was shooting a golden Dragonfly a few days ago in an area of bush an hour or so before sunset. It was by the water but not on it, a huge dam, and the tracks were only infrequently trodden so the going was good body work, nothing too repetitive, an occasional scramble. The colours of the setting sun were soft and warm and the dragon was available from many angles which I took good advantage of. It was darkening quickly and I was taking what was probably the last of the shots when through my camera I saw the creature disappear in a flash of action too fast to register the detail. I was quick to see outside the cameras frame the dragon I was photographing was actually taken by another dragon, a green one, and I suspected some kind of play or mating. I had never seen a golden Dragon and a green one together before.

I could see my dragon was taken from behind and in the others firm embrace, and when I followed to where they came to rest I was amazed to see the kidnapper eating my dragon head first as he struggled to get free, pawing backwards at the intruders eyes with his long thorny legs. It was a vain effort but an effort nonetheless and after a few minutes the struggle ceased as the head disappeared into the green dragons mouth and belly, to expose the flesh of the torso and all the muscle that makes a Dragon so adept at flying. That’s life. Dragons eat dragons, now I know, if I didn’t before.

At a clearing down by the waters edge the still bright sun was hot and dazzling, leaving blind spots in my vision where I couldn’t help but see the sun’s reflection while looking out for the variety of Dragons that inhabit this area. It is a miniature aerial battleground where many kinds of dragon chase one another in a flashing of wings and deft maneuvering by all concerned. It is a sight to see Dragons flying in tandem being chased by others and chasing too, all in their colours softened and highlighted by the light and against the clear calm reflective water, perfectly synchronous.

The famous dogfights of The Battle of Britain over the English Channel would have been training for what goes on here, poetic aerial ballet.

And the victors fed.

© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge

To find the nature I haven’t been to before I often just look at the map for the green places. That’s what I have been doing since moving to the Redlands in SE Brisbane. When I find a place worth exploring I usually do it in stages, the obvious paths first, then off the beaten. Every place has its character, an inarticulate quality that is really a matter of perception and I have to be still enough inside to discern it.

Point Halloran is not far from where I live now in Victoria Point. It is a mangrove swamp of a headland jutting out into Moreton Bay. On only one side there are houses and the other is given to nature. The nature side has been made accessible with boardwalks across the wet and with made paths. These walkways and paths cut through a waterway, swamp and forest that border some impassable terrain. People don’t go there and that is its quality, here on the edge of Brisbane is pristine nature.

Few people use these tracks. If you don’t live here you would probably never know about this place. I had to go looking for it to find it. And having found it one thing leads to the other. The walk referred to above is short and easy, and along the way are a few spots that tend to define its character. One is where the boardwalk crosses a metre above a weir for about 30 metres, and is bordered on both sides from a metre or so away by tall plants. On one side is a small runoff lake where birds and flowers grow and on the left is where nature takes full control as the water spreads out into the fields of tall brush, grass and mud where only wild creatures roam. The Dragonflies love it, delighting in their mastery of the air as they perform the Dragon Dance, what Dragons do. There are blues and reds, yellows and greens, and they are wonderful to watch as they play and hunt in the afternoon sun, down this busy canyon through nature.

Another place along the track is where a few large bush rocks have been scattered across an old entrance. The water pools shallow here, crystal clear, and the hot bright Australian sun beats down on the beautifully golden coloured stone where the magnificent sparkling Dragons perch. An easy, restful place, where you have to wait for something to happen. And happen it does, in this place of clarity. Whoever ‘designed’ this place had an affinity for the simple beauty of nature, it has been returned to an expression resembling its original state, and with ease of access.

*

Having been to this place a few times, enough to get to know it and see the telltale signs of another entry to the huge reserve, I went exploring again.

At the very edge of this civilisation there is a walkway that roughly hugs the contours of the Eprapah creek. It’s a tidal creek and the water is muddy as a mangrove swamp would have it. While exploring along the banks I heard a bubbling on a bend where water enters it, a lovely sound to me, water bubbling over stones that never move. The sound of birds that belong here echoed in the afternoon shadows, and I saw a blue kingfisher dive from its perch and dart into the trees on the other side of the water. Nature is at home here, there is peace here, to be acknowledged.

There were some striking cardinal red berries on a bush and at another place the Dragonflies were many. I was standing on the bank at a bend in the creek where there is a clearing of the normal growth. The bank was twenty foot high and looked down on the opposite bank, which was the beginning of the swamp, about seventy feet away. I was on the eastern side late in the afternoon and the young dragons were feasting on the small flying creatures that only come out in the coolness of the day. There were as many Dragons as I have seen in one place, going this way and that, taking their food on the wing.  Lace wings glistening in the sunlight against the darkness of the opposite banks shadow. A dance of life in the open air above the water in the light of the closing sun, with a certain urgency. Well fed is more likely to survive the night prowlers, and start the day in readiness.

Nature does what is needed as it is needed, now, instinctively. A redness here, a dying there, a flowing of water, flashing of colour, sunshine, a cooling breeze.  And flight, amazing flight. Nature is, there is no was in it, and no future. That’s the peace of it, peace of mind. That’s the sense of it.

© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge

That’s slang in Aus for relatives. In case you didn’t know.

Moving to a new place involves a lot of things but seeing new nature and meeting new creatures, the relatives, is what I am concerned with here. Eprapah, the name of the scout grounds down the road, is apparently old Hebrew meaning bountiful or fruitful. Nature is surely that.

Around the house the most striking change is the Geckos. They came here to Aus in a container from Thailand, so they say, and never looked back. Nature never looks back. They loved the place so much they have populated the entire coastal region of Brisbane, evicting the indigenous Gecko along the way. They do love the light to which the other insects are attracted, instinctively clever fellows, and fast. And they can walk on ceilings upside down, amazing that. These Geckos are not shy, there’s a baby one two foot above my head right now waiting for something to move so it can eat.

They often track across the flyscreen as I look out the window, stacatto gait, going this way and that. Not a lot of colour in these fellows but look at those fingers, two kinds, stickers or grippers and hooks. Intelligence has given them an advantage, as it does in the little niches of survivability.

There is some colour in the woods, a lovely greeny yellow – in the setting sun – trumpet flower, a small wild passionfruit flower, a white flower with pink-purple spots. And a host of others, including the creatures – cicadas, dragonflies, flies, butterflies and company. And an elephant beetle.

*

There is a flowering bush in the garden, a big red showy one. I had to laugh. I saw this small black bug, a young shield bug maybe, making its way along one of the petals. It had a little yellow dot attached to one foot and I wondered what it might be. Then I noticed the stamen/anthers and thought it must have been feeding. I wanted a picture of it feeding on the yellow stuff so I put it back where I thought it had come from but it was not so. After it climbed out of the pollen jungle it was obvious why this creature would avoid the place like the plague. The pollen? balls stuck to its feet and it could no longer walk in a balanced way. It kept slipping because the pollen was sticking to its soles but sliding on the other surfaces. After a while I took pity on it, the predicament I had got it into, and watered it down to wash away the pollen. Then off it went into the other jungle of nooks and crannies of the deck around the old Queenslander of a house. Not a sign of recognition, or complaint.

*

On a moonlit summer’s night the breeze comes across the cool water from the islands to wash my face and arms as I walk along the shore. The sound of it in my mind overlapping all others. In my vision grey clouds play around the near full moon as they sail swiftly west. The grass a soft carpet beneath my feet. A simple pleasure it is to be in the sense of nature, my nature.

© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge

I have come across these fellows at every location I’ve been in Australia so far. They are communal creatures and often make their long conical fibrous paper hive, made up of a number of chambers stacked and angled towards the ground, amongst the dead branches of standing bushes. This nest is against an old wooden fence, protected from above by a climbing jasmine and consists of maybe 25 individuals. It is interesting to watch them at work, coming and going, and at rest. I have noticed one leaving the nest flying backwards just to return to another spot, in a short loop, and carrying out what looked like an inspection. Some are obviously dominant.

I’m not sure they play, these bees. In fact they look more like wasps to me, no sense of humour at all.

That’s how you can tell a wasp, no sense of humour. I was stung by these ones a few years ago, probably not these exact same ones – relatives, and it was so mild it hardly registered, others would disagree no doubt. Not every body senses the same thing in exactly the same way, especially when it’s as close and personal as chemical attack. Big sensation, different sensitivities. And sensitivities can be tuned in and out.

I blundered into the nest and they let me know not to do it again. Nature is unforgiving of the careless. And so it is said only the fittest survive. It is true amongst the creatures and plants but obviously not amongst humans. Fitness can no longer be measured by any known yardstick. Can you measure will? Or Grace. Can it be judged by appearance how spiritual one is? I don’t think so, unless I have been that way.

We march to the same tune as the animals but with the added harmony of self reflection – thinking, until it becomes something else. It sets us apart from the creation and eventually, if I am lucky, I come to know the insanity of a separate identity and give it up – to something else. If I am lucky.

For my definition of lucky see here: Karma

© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge.

Brisbane?

No, just another place and time. Another relative position, from the existential (relative) point of view. Otherwise it’s a new place, inside.

New? What’s new? Now is new, as always. :)

*

As anticipated, some green tree frogs came up from NSW in the truck. They were in the habit of making their home in various parts of the truck and two or three exited just after sundown, looking a bit knackered after hanging on through the long journey – a little self reflection perhaps. They now live and hunt down from my front door where I leave a light on for the same reason I left one on in the country, to keep the insects from zeroing in on the lights of the house. There is always fresh water there for them though the beautiful blue Siamese Fighter is a little put out. The frogs seem to favour the wood rising out of the water where the fighter was used to retreating to at night, or when disturbed.

Such is life, always changing regardless of accustomed positions. And in this world change means activity, work, movement. Pain or death to any fixation in me. That’s living.

*

There is a forty hectare property nearby that is old forest and mangrove swamp, an old scout camp. Right now the cicadas are in full song and there are a few dragonflies and ‘others’ about though the forest is too dense and mozzie infested to be stalking anything not easy to shoot. It’s a dragonfly I haven’t seen before, the colours. A striking red, black and yellow. Still getting the hang of exposure.

There are some interesting flowers as well, lovely colours, delicate form. I met a fellow on the track who works there and who is an expert on cicadas. He told me a few things I didn’t know and have now forgotten.

Oh well, such is my retention of facts I probably don’t need to know, it being an unnecessary exercise of the mind for me to remember. An expenditure of energy I don’t need to spend.

*

I used to wonder about ‘home’ when I was a kid. Whether it’s a place or feeling or what. Now I know. Home is where I am at peace and I am only ever at peace in me, inside. All I had to do for the last forty or so years was find it. :)  And it is always found now, here, beneath the believer and the disbeliever inside the writer and the reader. Now.

Then (now), like anything worth having, it has to be kept in tip top condition. Polished as the shiny ‘surface’ of being. Another forty years maintenance.

Then ho, ho, ho – ome! Like now.

© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge

Haven’t had time to prep anything from Brisbane to take advantage of this window of connectivity so here is one that’s been waiting in the wings of my mind. You have to love these guys, such efficiency, such single pointedness. No emotion whatever, thank god.

“Not Guilty! Your honour.”

For three days now I have been down the same track to the same spot at the same time of day and the ‘same’ robber fly showed up in the same spot, on the barbed wire fence. That’s a lot of the same.

I wonder how some creatures get their name. Robber fly? I suspect it’s called that for the ease with which it takes its prey. It snatches them on the wing, gripping them with its long thorny legs and robs the life out of them. I have seen one on the back of another flying creature, poised on a branch, sucking the life out of it through its proboscis. I also saw one sucking the life out of another robber fly. Indiscriminate? Or, like the famous black widow spider she was done with him, he had served his purpose?

Many creatures have a proboscis of some kind, usually the pointy kind. I just haven’t seen many actually use it. The cicada has one, the shield bug has one, the assassin bug and so many more small creatures I have never known the names of have one. I have pictures of them though, dead and alive.

The proboscis must be a very efficient killing and eating tool. Well it is, isn’t it? As efficient as a knife is at cutting, a spear is at piercing or a tube is at siphoning. That’s where we get our tools and weapons of war, from nature. Our beautiful nature, put to use.

© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge

Time has come to move from Wooyung, soon, back to Brisbane where there is what I need right now. I wonder what to do with the cat that came with the house here. I arranged for someone to take her and then he didn’t show up, yet. A week late usually means no show.

I was just watching her chasing a small water dragon in the garden. Dragons are fast when they need to be and this one was up the mulch mound around the tree and gone at a run. They look funny running, though not to a dragon I’d say. I wonder if the cat could handle being in the town.

Queenie, the name I gave the cat when I got here nearly two years ago, is very comfortable with me now. She always talks to me, says hello and loves the attention I give her. I usually stop to pet her and acknowledge the form and beauty. She enjoys lounging around in the heat of the day, often in the shade outside the wide sliding doors of the living room. She is more mature now, older too, and a far sight from the hungry cat who was abandoned and depressed when I found her.

What to do?

*

Plenty to do getting this house ready to hand back. The gutters and water tank filters were next and when I went to the first and easiest filter it was occupied, by a Python, with a tick on it. That will have to wait. Later, as the sun was going down, she was out on the tank top. I say she because it is a small snake, about 2 ½ feet long but the belly was huge as if she’d just eaten the cat – I checked, no. I suspect babies are not too far off now. Another hoard of hungry mouths about and I won’t be here to see it play out.

The gutters had paper wasps squatting so eviction was necessary. There was a massive cellular hive under the electric meter that had to go too, otherwise the reader would have had trouble. Plenty of spiders had their homes demolished. So long as they don’t rebuild before I go I don’t mind. Ran into a few frogs along the way I didn’t know about.

The place is its own little ecosystem and no doubt it will recover from my interference, cleaning up. By the time someone else moves in it will all be back to normal and then it will be too much work for anyone to undo, so they won’t, probably. Wasps a hiving, spiders a weaving, slugs slithering, snakes hunting, mice, birds, frogs, ants singing in harmony. Nideep! And the cockroaches, beetles, earwigs and those little black biters that just showed up and leave a maddening itch so I can’t leave a light on for too long, can’t leave any of them out.

The plants are getting more attention than they have had in a while, arranging, re-potting, transplanting. Some are doing better to be left behind in the ground. We’ll see about the ones that are coming, they will need some lovin.

*

And when a day’s work is done? Fresh, ripe, sweet, cold from the fridge mangoes on a hot summer’s day. Aromatic. Heavenly sensation.

© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge

There are places in the coastal wetland forest near Wooyung in NSW that have special significance, apparent to the small creatures at least. When I take the time to look it’s not difficult to see why they are special from a purely utilitarian point of view. One such place is where a track cuts through the dunes to the beach. It rises the dune somewhat, cuts into it towards the top and falls down to the beach and the open ocean and sky with low bushes and small trees to either side fanning out and thinning as it resolves to the sandy beach.

A large dragonfly patrols and protects the open space of the track on the forest side of the dunes where the wind dies down after coming in fast through the cutting, carrying with it the forms that are food to the dragonfly. The cutting acts like a funnel to the wind off the sea and anything on it. The dragonfly clearly recognises this advantage, in its own terms. It makes sense to be where there is greatest chance of survival though there are dangers to go with the apparent bounty, being open to the elements, flying sand and things, and predatious birds for instance.

The obvious significance is in the abundance of food carried on the wind and corralled to a narrow passage that ends in a death zone. The wind rises up the dunes and then over the low forest canopy and dumps anything riding it just over the dunes as the track descends to the forest floor, where the dragon waits. Anything riding this swift wind has a good chance of dying here.

*

Whatever gets past the dominant dragonfly then has to run the gauntlet of the defined space of the track, defined by thick long grass, bushes and dense forest. The track cuts directly inland from the dunes through the forest and along the first hundred metres or so there are more flying predators posted at intervals, each with its own territory that it too guards aggressively, aggression being death to any traveller that gets caught and can’t win out.

Patrolling this stretch of track were more dragonflies, robber flies and a few other large flies I can’t name but did get a few good shots of one, a zebra fly maybe. It had its own territory that it oversaw from various favoured vantage points. It would come to rest on one for a while only to take off again after something of the right size and speed flying within hunting range of it.

I noticed it could see something coming as it took to the air just before the traveller passed a foot or so above its perch. Up it rose as poetic as any man’s word, singing its hunting song, a buzzzing sound to my ear. Trailing the unwary traveller with unwavering tenacity as it dodged this way and that, with singular intent, kill to live.

Some travellers made it into the bush where there is enough cover to presume an easy escape, for now. One way or the other life goes on. Without taking the life of the others the living wouldn’t be. Death, the other side of this, intrinsic, essential to it all. Integrated.

This, inside, is a place of life, wild life. Beauty, wonder, intelligence. It’s a matter of perception and acknowledgement.
 
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
 

If you go down to the woods today you’re sure of a big surprise. No bears here but nature fascinates anyway. While I was watching a robber fly do its thing, killing and eating with aplomb, I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye. As I turned to look she saw me and stopped dead in her tracks.

So many creatures have as their first defence to be still. No surprise since it is movement that usually gives them away. A stick insect, looks like, probably related to the mantis I often see around the house and forest, climbing the trunk of a tree about six feet from me. I only saw her because of the light background, otherwise she is just another brown stick at the edge of the forest.

She is about ten inches long and he, on her back, is much smaller at about half that. They are in the process of mating, to make more of themselves. That’s nature, always reproducing, always dying, to live again. I have heard the female mantis consumes its mate head first after mating, to feed the seed of the young he has just planted no doubt. Other females of their species do the same.

Man and woman, hmmm! I wonder. But these insects produce many offspring that take care of themselves very soon after birth, one for many self sufficient is good trade. One adult who can mostly take care of himself is not good trade for one baby that takes years to raise. Better to let him live if only for the money he ‘might’ contribute. Or the loving he might do.

I reckon men are safe, for now.
 
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge