As I emerge from my car, on the grass in front of the carpark is a brace of ducks, basking in a thin patch of sunlight that breaks through the towering gumtrees. They are a motley crew, some with cream caramel and white feathers, others a warm chocolate brown with a Zorro mask type marking around the eyes, and a lone stark white duck with a sun-yellow beak. There are also a group a little away from the main bunch, as if they will not deign to sit with the “commoners”. They remind me of the ducks that are in those old hunting paintings, brown bodies with iridescent green and black heads that shimmer and change in the sun. I tread carefully past the ducks so as not to disturb them, and if I get too close an acapella choir serenades me with gentle honking, until I am a safe distance away.
I walk towards a small wooden bridge, a passage way over the murky green and brown water of the Barwon River, leading into an outback bush version of Brigadoon.
Before the bridge, there is a woman with her young child crouched down on the grass. The little girl is is desperately trying to grasp something fluffy and pink that is struggling in the hands of another women. Moving in for a closer inspection I note with amusement that it is a silkie bantam, previously a beautiful snow white, now dyed a baby pink colour. Is this what we have come to, designer animals! I overhear the owner of the cute pink clucker tell the mother and child that the chicken is her pet and that it will not bite.
I walk onto the creaky, curved wood and stop in the middle of the bridge to look out at the expanse of still water. In the shade the water is like a diluted mud puddle, but where the sun touches the motionless dark surface it is transformed, like a handful of diamonds have been scattered over the top of a muted green piece of velvet. At the other end of the bridge a gumtree breaks out of the ground like the huge gnarled hand of an ancient giant reaching out from its earthy grave. Two gliding cockatoos screech overhead, and then settle in the branches of the tree. They peer down as I cross the bridge and as I get closer to the massive truck of their gum tree perch, their cries intensify. I don’t know if it is a warning or a greeting.
On this side of the crossing, there is no sign of the modern world. The air is clear and crisp. A wild, raw scent of dirt and green things and eucalyptus fills my nostrils. The clicking of frogs in the rice paddy like water plants lulls me into a type of trance. I could be in the High Country, waiting for the Man from Snowy River to drove a herd of brumbies right past me. Everything seems good and right and peaceful here. I don’t want to return to the real world.
