Black Duck, page 19
Three baby swallows are sitting on the gutter above the back door near the nest where they were born a few weeks ago. Every time I leave the house I am dive-bombed by the parents. Have they forgotten that it’s me who turns on the outside light to keep them warm on frosty nights?
I woke to thunderous rain and began to worry about the roads. The Striped Marsh Frogs are loving the wet weather but I’m concerned about the gravel. Water is already gushing out of the Water Ribbon dam.
I looked out the window and the Buru were standing erect and switching their heads about looking for something. The horses were on hyper alert. While we were making breakfast, Lyn saw some Mirrigan (dingoes) down near the flooding dam. We have been seeing Mirrigan up by the northern gate for a few weeks and this looks like the same pair, solid golden animals, fit and assured.
The commotion amongst the Buru continued but their focus shifted from one side of the farm to the other. They were mightily confused. One small joey got separated from its mother and just stood by the BBQ seemingly immobilised by fear and uncertainty.
Then we saw two dingoes charge at a mob, switching them back and forth across the paddock. Finally, a young Buru was isolated and the male dog attacked him. The roo was brought down but in a mighty struggle freed itself and took off further into the swamp. I lost sight of it but could hear it splashing through the shallow water. The female dog reappeared and she circled around the edge of the swamp while the male drove the roo onwards. It looked like a well-rehearsed plan.
I had to go to work but knew that I would find the roo on the edge of the swamp when I got a chance to get down there later in the day. Around midday I saw the first Bunjil fly into a tree at the edge of the swamp and guessed that the dogs had got their fill and loped away to rest in the forest.
Later Whistling Kites arrived too and then a second Bunjil. After work I walked down to the swamp and found the poor Buru with its ears eaten off. Mirrigan often drags a Buru down by the ear to immobilise it.
A few years ago Vicky Shukuroglou and I saw a roo at Namadgi National Park that had both ears eaten off. The Park Ranger told the story of how Vincent had survived two attacks by dingoes but as a result his head now had the appearance of a camel.
The stomach cavity of the Buru killed this morning had been opened and the intestines removed and the heart and liver eaten. The birds waited petulantly while I inspected the animal, but as soon as I moved away, they glided back to their meal.
It was both sad and thrilling. Sad to see a young animal hunted, but thrilling to see the natural order in operation. The Mirrigan were casually organised in the beginning and then ruthless in their execution.
The rain continued and the river rose quickly. I’m sure Mirrigan ran the roo into the swamp deliberately because the extra depth would slow it down.
I dug drains during the heaviest rain because that’s when you can see what needs to be done to guide the water safely.
I was drenched when I got back to the house and while I waited to dry off I took Dad’s old spirit level apart. No one on the farm will use it because the lenses are cloudy. I washed the glass and reinstalled them. It brought me very close to Dad and was a lovely thing to do as the rain hammered down.
When the rain eased I went down to see what was happening at Mirrigan’s kill site. The eagles and kites were sharing the carcass in a prickly arrangement and didn’t appreciate the disturbance of my company. Now the Buru’s face had been eaten off but there was no sign of Mirrigan.
While I was down at the swamp I noticed that Nadgee had slipped her forward mooring as well. She was gone. If she had drifted downstream she could end up out in the ocean. I walked the bank of Yumburra Creek with my heart in my mouth and then caught a glimpse of her nuzzling the bank.
I paddled out to her on the faithful blue board and tied her up to the bank and put a long lead rope on her bow and threw the anchor off the stern so she’d ride in midstream. It was such a relief to find her because my heart would have been very sore if my carelessness had allowed her to be lost.
The swallows had collected in a large group and were feeding while hovering close to the grass and sometimes brushing it with their feet. Were they taking advantage of insects which are trying to get away from the surface moisture in the paddock? It is a plan as deliberate and well-executed as the Mirrigan hunt.
I had to drive to Pambula to talk to Sydney University students who had been planning to stay at the farm but their vehicles couldn’t have coped with the crossings which were now up to the running board of the ute. Bit sloppy in the cab.
It was a good yarn with the students but it was getting dark by the time I returned to the farm and I had to get out to Nadgee and bring her back to the jetty as the flood was dropping and I didn’t want her to get snagged amongst the riverbank Melaleucas. I was wet by the time I finished but there’s an idiot in me that loves the flood dramas.
Bunjil was sitting on the carcass of the young roo and stared at me in defiance. I heard the first Scarlet Honeyeater of the season, a real indication of changing weather. The Golden Whistlers, Black-faced Cuckoo-shrikes and the Rufous Whistlers were all back in residence too and I rejoiced in their return.
On Friday 28 October I had to fly to Orange to deliver the NSW History Society Annual address. It meant leaving at 4 am in the dark. The mist was so heavy that the headlights were almost useless and I ran into the branches of a fallen tree before I had even seen it. The slap against the side of the car was mighty and it dented panels and wiped out the mirror and most of the electronics. I was already late and so drove on hoping the car wouldn’t stall.
I arrived just in time to catch the plane at Merimbula but was so rushed I couldn’t even inspect the damage to the poor old ute. I was very lucky the branch hadn’t been a few centimetres higher or it would have come through the windscreen at eye level.
I got to Orange in convoluted fashion and the presentation I called The White Orchid of Melbourne was very well received.
A whole bunch of historians and archaeologists were there and their enthusiasm buoyed me. The Aboriginal community were fantastic too and we had a long yarn afterwards. The local kids who have been kicked out of school made me a painted boomerang. I was really moved by their thoughtfulness and support. It means so much to me given the trolls on social media are so vicious.
Diuris similar to the endangered fragrant White Orchid
Orange Museum was hosting a local Aboriginal story exhibition and it was great to have a couple of hours to enjoy it. Two of Lyn’s desert painting mates gave me a lift to the airport and I asked Don to look in on the kids who made the boomerang, to make sure they were supported by the Education Department. That’s the point at which we need to spend the money and time on young people, not after they have lost their way.
I then flew to Brisbane in time to work on my presentation for the Harlan IV agricultural conference. The University of Queensland were doing a full exposition of their work at Mithaka. This was our chance to speak to the profession about the grindstone mines and their significance.
I think we were all anxious that the presentation was as thorough as we could make it. There wasn’t a big crowd but they were all academics active in the area so it felt worthwhile.
Out in the Convention Hall there were several Aboriginal food producers and we had a good old yarn and they loaded me up with jars of their produce and t-shirts. Those are the moments that keep me going, the community sticking together.
It was a long trip back home in the battered ute and, in a daze, I took the boat down to Gipsy Point to watch the Melbourne Cup at the house of Libby and Mitch, our good friends and neighbours. It was great to talk boats, fish, gardens and fowl and nobody seemed to notice that the TV was on the wrong channel. The Cup was won by a horse so we just shrugged and got on with small town chat. I don’t socialise often so it was good to catch up with people from the district.
There is always work on the farm. Heaps of it. I was working on a new garden but also had to repair a pipe and then pick up soil with the tractor to fill in potholes which had got worse during the rains. While I was doing those jobs I noticed another plover sitting on eggs. Tractor work can be hard and tedious but there is always something happening in the natural world and the time flies.
When I had a chance for a cup of coffee, Terry and I had an hour where we could yarn about the culture and the lore jobs we have to do for Uncle Max. A brother from the Australian National University rang later to talk similar things. It was a full and rich day but I was exhausted by sunset and I struggle to get excited about cooking a meal on days like that.
In the morning the swallows were doing their butterfly hover over the tops of the grass again. I am fascinated by their various feeding patterns and how they work together like a large family.
The roos have been scarce since the dingo attack but as I drove out of the farm to attend the Twofold Aboriginal Corporation fortnightly meeting, I saw all the Buru hiding out in the forest where they have more protection.
When I got back home I worked on the boat motor which has started playing up again. While I was working on the motor I noticed a large male deer in the swamp.
I cleaned up and picked up Lyn so we could drive up to Mudgee to do a food festival presentation for Sharon Winsor, a sister I’ve known for decades and who has joined the Black Duck board despite being incredibly busy with her own business. It was lovely spending time with her family again as they danced and sang cultural songs. One of the dancers had a long yarn with us. She’s so excited about graduating as a lawyer next week.
The drive home was long and hard. I have to avoid doing those long stretches in the future. Too dangerous.
We had the Wadawoorong and World Wildlife Fund mob arrive for some workshops on the farm. It was wonderful to work with more Aboriginal people interested in culture and food. We cooked a wonderful meal up at Bun Bun Gungwan using all our own ingredients.
We all continued the farm tour the next day, sharing knowledge about the plants and culture.
Sharon’s family of dancers
That night Chris cooked his famous kangaroo stew and the rest of us did the bread and dessert. It’s a big job cooking for twenty people on the open fire but the conversation while we do it is always enriched by the expectation of filling our bellies from Country.
A few weeks back the fellas found a freshly run over echidna on their way to work and as we had a burn pile going we threw the animal on to the flames after removing forty or so quills to use in our artwork. They are a really fatty animal which helps them cook moistly and the flesh really is delicious. It has the texture and taste of pork but I think it is sweeter. Waste not, want not.
I picked some cunjim winyu (Yuin language for ‘salty sun’, a little herb that grows on the margin of the salt swamp) and sea celery, fresh herbs that grow in our wetlands, for our research manager Cheryl Taylor to analyse for us at the CSIRO. I sent some of our wattle seed up as well so that we can sell our produce on the market with confidence. I can’t see that we will ever make much money from our growing but we will be introducing new foods to the market. New for the market but old for the country.
Eating cumbungi
Jitti Jitti is really loud at dawn these days and the Red Wattlebird joins in. The familiarity of it and the subtle changes in their behaviour draws me ever closer to these wild creatures. Jitti Jitti is such a people person but for the wattlebird we just grow plants it likes. The bird is watchful and knowing of our habits but never seeks greater intimacy, whereas the King Parrot will sit on my shoulder and tell me fibs about the Rainbow Lorikeets.
There is a Yumburra (Black Duck) and Binyaroo (cormorant) feeding together in the top dam. The cormorant has been there for days so it encourages me to think that dropping logs around the edges and allowing reeds to grow has created a healthy habitat for aquatic animals. When I first arrived at the farm this dam was a sterile basin.
Jitti Jitti (Leonie Daws)
Boats
Chris Harris helped me identify the problem with Nadgee’s motor and so I went into town and bought a set of spark plugs and now she runs as sweet as a bird. It’s a relief because Nadgee gives me so much freedom of movement and the absolute pleasure of being on the water. Since a child I have been bewitched by the action of boats, their buoyancy and liveliness. It is a completely different feeling to being on land.
As a boy I used to lay in the bow of Coonah, the little rowboat Dad and I made. I would listen to small waves slapping and knocking at the timber and drift off to sleep in a trance of peace. I learnt so much about myself in that boat and its echoes can still be seen in my poetry and stories, the world of wild gentleness.
We were cold stony broke when Dad bought that boat. Like many of our purchases it was actually a barter. One of Dad’s mates made do-it-yourself boat kits and he had one that had been cut out incorrectly. Dad swapped a window renovation on that bloke’s house for the boat pack. He cut the boat pieces down by a few centimetres and made the rest fit together. She was beautiful.
I spent days poring over paint charts. I wanted her to represent Maran (seagull) and Gadu (ocean). I got the white and grey just right but when it came to the beak and legs I was torn. Red didn’t seem right with the other colours so I chose the yellow of Grandfather Sun. She looked beautiful to my eyes and I loved her so dearly.
Dad and I made a trailer out of old bike wheels and frames and I could haul her down to the beach on my own. I spent days in her, mostly alone, diving and fishing. Dad was as generous and thoughtful a man as you will find but, even though he worked on cray boats on King Island, he forgot to include an anchor. One day I found myself in the shipping lane in Port Phillip Bay and had to row like steam to get out of there. I couldn’t rest because the tide just took me further south. I rowed all the way back to Mornington, my arms nearly falling off.
I made my own anchor out of a shoe last and a length of rope. We had to pull it to pieces every time Dad put new soles on our shoes. I can still smell the leather and glue he used. He boiled resin beads to fix shoes and furniture. It was the work of alchemy, and I thought of him like that, a magician.
I’m not nearly as adept as Dad but the fact I can fix things is a testament to how closely I watched his hands.
Binyaroo and Bitheega
Binyaroo was still feeding in the dam and I feel enormous happiness that I have helped create a place from which she can feed herself. I showed her to Noel and Trish Butler who were here to cook for the Mallacoota Wild Harvest Seafood Festival.
All the Black Duck mob helped Noel do his presentation dinner. My job was to scrub the Bimbla (Blood Mussels) and oysters, which meant I was on my knees, head over a bowl, but it made me invisible to the crowd so I had an armchair seat to their conversations. Writer’s Gold.
People are stunned by Noel’s hot oysters, the taste of the sea is in them, the juice like liquor. I do mussels like that too; to drink the brine from the shell is one of the great luxuries of our lives.
A Maori diving mate taught me how to eat Kina (sea urchins) too. When I come back from a dive I sit in a rock pool and crack open an urchin and sluice the shell halves and eat the roe. It is as decadent as life can get. Years ago, Gurandgi were diving for Walkun (abalone) and I showed them the urchin trick and we sat around in the warm water of Green Cape gorging on shellfish roe. We never drink on the eleven days of our camps, and it rarely bothers me, too busy, but on that day I was thinking a dry sparkling wine would have been perfect.
Because I just wrote the above I indulged in the luxury of a dive at the Tura Beach rockpool. It’s a steep climb down to it and I am so nervous of having a fall and breaking something these days that I crabbed my way down to the water. It was a superb day and the water was jade green from the brightness of the sun.
Once in the water the old physical freedom returned and I revelled in being a tourist in that other world, gliding over kelps and sponges, cavers and crevices. I feel so at ease in that world.
I pulled a big urchin from a cave and cracked it open in a little channel as the waves dandled me in a bed of kelp. The roe was delicious and I lay back in the kelp as relaxed as I have been for years.
I got dressed and as I was getting ready to leave a bloke came around a headland in the rocks and stopped dead. I realised he’d seen the Black Duck badge on the shoulder of my shirt and he must have thought I was a fisho or park ranger. I wonder what he had in his bag.
I have dived for seafood most of my life and have come across all sorts of poachers. Years ago at Cape Otway I met one underwater. He had a long-hooked spear and we looked at each other for a few seconds before he turned away. I later found the spear he had dropped and later still the skid marks of his tyres as he left the car park in a hurry.
The market system has hiked the price of abalone and crayfish to such an extent that criminals have been attracted to the industry and the sea is now so plundered that fish and crustacea are in very serious decline.
In the fifties Dad used to buy two crayfish wrapped in newspaper for two bob (shillings) and in the seventies my brother-in-law and I used to catch crays in rockpools with a stick wrapped in panty hose without getting our feet wet. Those days are long gone, not because the animals have stopped breeding, but because the Western market system has no respect for the earth or ocean.
Cleaning the Fridge
Richmond got beaten in our AFL semi-final by a few points. We should have won it but the goal umpire robbed us blind.
