Birds I A sudden high pitched beat of wings and I on the balcony look up from my phone to see a flock of lorikeets take flight, green wings against green landscape.
The Bellbird Cabin We have just arrived, but there are ants everywhere. This is perplexing, because there are no crumbs, only ants. The the bush surrounds us like a private retreat, or maybe like green wallpaper - big panels of glass, twin balconies, even a huge floor-to-ceiling window in the shower itself right next to the showerhead which even though nobody is out there but shrubs and birds makes me incredibly self-conscious, standing there nude waiting for the water to warm up like Eve in the wilderness of Eden. We delicately climb an old ladder to the bedroom loft upstairs. The toilets flush with tank water, the lights flicker sometimes even when they are off. When the ceiling fan is running, the balcony blinds are stirred, and in the middle of the night I wake and hear instead of flapping polyester the sound of people walking, or maybe the sound of horses with their hooves peeling and eating some kind of crunchy fruit (apples? shredding in teeth). The second night it thunders, and through the bedroom window flashes of light cast the surrounding trees in silhouette. In the morning outside the bellbirds clink nonstop. It is muggy as hell.
Farmland The cows are cartoonish, black and white, gazing placidly out like the cows on the sides of milk cartons, but up close they are imposing in their scale, uncontainable by the image. Up close a cow is the same size as a small car, but weightier, a goliath, ploughing the earth with hooves. A cow heaves itself out of a muddy bog in the field. "Meaty," I think involuntary, patting a cow's flank. The vegan tour guide explains how baby calves are torn away from their mother udders at two days of age, and I am moved - by this recount and by the heartbreakingly animal faces of the cows. We take an Uber afterwards and I, ever the hypocrite, have a steak sandwich for lunch.
Walking the Central Coast We spend most of the day walking, hours and hours. "It's more girly to walk," we declare, part irony, knowing full well that neither of us could drive if we wanted. The sun burns impassively, and we tire faster than normal, sweating like pigs. ("Pigs don't actually sweat,", the vegan tour guide says. "They're shockingly clean creatures.") Across the boardwalk, across the beach and rocks and back up the cliffs, we make it into suburbia. "Grandview Street". Here the roads stretch on wide and flat, far too wide for two cars side by side. The houses are wide and lifeless and depressing, the footpaths chopped up by stretches of manicured lawn. Pools and trampolines sit silently in front yards. We are the only people walking the whole way down. It is frighteningly hot. Two blonde Brandy-Melville tweens zip past us on an e-bike, riding tandem with matching helmets, shrieking when it jolts. We are walking through the thinnest national park I have ever been in. Anywhere else it would be a nature strip, but the signs declare it a national park, and so it is. There is foliage and blessed shade. All of a sudden I see the world as an artist might, the demarcations between foreground, midground and background clear and distinct like layers on a digital canvas, so well-formed is the scrub. We detour around some stubborn bush turkeys in the middle of the path. I have no swimwear but I take off my dress and shoes and wade into the water in just my underthings. It seems like a bad idea to free-bleed into the ocean (imagine the sharks!) so I don't submerge, just go far enough to let the water lap around my thighs. In the shallows the water is clear, but even a few meters past the wet sand line it is murky olive green. I remember the bluebottles my friend pointed out earlier, dying their venomous deaths in the hot sand. The icy water stings when it touches my skin. Someone told me (who was it?) the sand squeaks around here when you walk on it, so fine and smooth as it is. I don't remember who they were (no really, who was it?) but they were right. Less dog toy and more the squeak of rubber on wood. The sand dries and falls away from my feet as I put my socks back on. Small mercies.
Birds II The Coast is full of birds, many birds, noisy and unfearful, always in flocks, gathering in tens and eerie dozens like they were summoned by a spell. On beach cliffs, in the branches of the holiday park. Once, a flock of maybe six or seven magpies sitting hauntingly motionless around a bench overlooking Bateau Bay. The bench was dedicated In Loving Memory Of. The birds did not stir as we approached, and only as we sat down did they make room for us - us, the birds, and the memory of the dead.