Waiting for a rainy day
Climate anxiety: a wondering walk in the Jarrah forest
Dear Creative Soul,
As the trees begin the shedding of old leaves in Australia, so too am I in a season of change, shedding long-established routines to make way for new routines in a new, albeit temporary, work role.
It’s exciting, but also complicated by uncertainty (at the end of six months, will I go back to my old position or will I move into something else?) and impending thumb surgery (removing metalwork from surgery in 2022) that will require months of recovery.
I am in a season of change, but my winter (if not, Perth’s) will come this month, forcing me into a season of rest that I know will impact my creative life, independence and my free time. At least I know what to expect this time … and I will be better prepared mentally for the seasons of rest and renewal.
As I finish this post (does anyone else write the intro last?), my family and friends in Sydney and NSW have been saturated by the heaviest rainfalls in four years; floodwaters are rising, hundreds of people have been rescued, evacuations are ongoing. Hopes and dreams have been drowned, washed away.
Yet here in Perth, summer refuses to surrender. My cousin in Germany tells me that spring is unseasonably warm. My husband and I talk about the climate crisis over coffee; today, as the sun shines hot and bright, we feel helpless and frustrated and sad about the way the world is changing. About unprecedented levels of biodiversity loss due to human actions. About climate indifference and the lack of urgency for action. The window is closing.
Come for a bush walk with me - see what I see in my part of the world.
We drive into into the Darling Range, leaving behind bone dry pastures. In five months, Perth has had only 21.8mm of rain, making it the “city's driest six-month stretch since rainfall data was first recorded almost 150 years ago”. The road winds upwards, into the Jarrah (Eucalyptus marginata) forest that is interspersed with marri (Corymbia calophylla) and on to the small historic town of Jarrahdale. One of Western Australia’s oldest settlements, the former timber milling town is ringed by national parks and bush and is popular with day walkers, hikers, and motorcyclists out for a weekend cruise. We have come early to beat the crowds that are certain to descend later in the morning. It wasn’t always like this here - since the first Covid lockdowns, the area has become noticeably busier on weekends, which never fails to irk my nature-loving husband, who has always seen this place as his escape from people.
We cross the bridge at Gooralong Brook - the creek bed is puckered with thirst, completely dried out - my husband says, with a note of sad nostalgia, that it always had some water in it when he was a child. Last time we were here, the creek was flowing and the wattles were flowering all along the road, branches drooping with golden pompoms that hold sunlight between wispy filaments and anthers; there are no flowers today, but a handful of churchgoers are gathered outside St Paul's Anglican Church, ready for the Good Friday service and enlightened words from a different son.
We turn off before we reach the town, heading for the road that leads past the old Jarrahdale cemetery and overpriced one-acre blocks, past the parking area that serves as the start point for Stacey’s Track, a popular and easy loop trail that winds through the forest and over the brook, and a longer hike along Kitty’s Gorge to Serpentine Falls. The carpark is half full already. We drive on, towards Millbrook winery which makes a delicious Grenache-Shiraz-Mourvèdre, but stop short of this enticing destination. We are not here to taste wine today. Instead, we park at the start of a less busy track, often used as a bridle trail, put on our hiking boots and hats, and venture into the bush.
It’s no secret that being in nature decreases stress and improves mood. In the summer time, when we need to unwind, we tend towards the beach, heading there in the morning or afternoon at least once a weekend. As the weather cools, we are drawn to the bush. It has been six months since we were last here, my husband points out as our feet crunch on dry laterite gravel; I remind him that we spent a month in Germany in December, and this summer has been the second hottest on record. Too hot for bushwalking.
Jarrahdale is etched on my husband’s heart - for him, the landscape, the towering Jarrah trees and marri woodland evoke happy childhood memories and later, a place to find peace. For me, the area doesn’t have the same emotional pull as the Blue Mountains in New South Wales, but I love escaping with him into the largely untamed wilderness, even if escaping is meant only in the lightest, safest sense. The Australian bush, while long regarded by colonists as a place for rejuvenation and recreation, is not a place to go off piste - many have had firsthand experience of its less benign nature. So we stick to the track, our eyes watchful for snakes (rarely seen) and spiderwebs (often walked into, leading to a frantic and graceless dance).
There is no wind today. The laterite (aka pea gravel) underfoot is almost jarring in its volume (if there are any snakes, they will hear us coming); usually our footfall is muffled by wind in the trees, by damp ground and leaf litter. But it is dry, so dry that worrying parts of the understorey - Bull Banksia (Banksia grandis), parrot bush (Banksia sessilis), soap bush (Trymalium odoratissimum Lindl.), grass trees (Xanthorrhoea sp.), bracken fern (Pteridium esculetum), Zamia Palms (Macrozamia riedlei), Hibbertia species and Hakea species - are dying back, leaves brittle and brown, small trees and shrubs mere skeletons in the dust. Perched high above, a pair of Forest Red-tailed Black Cockatoos squawk and I realise that there is an absence of the half-chewed Jarrah nuts that usually roll my ankle. These iconic birds are under threat from the loss of nesting hollows and declining habitat; all three species in this part of the state are at risk of extinction due to ongoing expansion of housing estates leading to loss of woodlands.
We wonder when the rain will come and if it will be enough; we think of how this bush looks and smells after the rain, when droplets glisten on the tips of grass trees, when the wind sends showers from high branches as we pass, when our nose fills with petrichor. Of the waterfalls on the Kitty’s Gorge trail, of Gooralong in flow. As we continue our walk, tiny pardalotes dart in and out of the trees, singing and calling in high voices. Little forest sopranos. We spot a bronze-wing pigeon, evidence of bandicoot diggings, echidna droppings filled with tiny seeds; around another bend, we find a cairn made from dried banksia cones and I am reminded of the Big Bad Banksia Men, the villains of May Gibbs’s much-loved Australian classic Gumnut stories. As a child, I was always frightened of them, of the mean faces in the dried-out pods. Now I smile, thinking of the children (or adults) who add a banksia cone to the cairn, hoping to see it when they return.
We come across a grove of sheoaks, where we often find mushrooms and fungi in late autumn, orchids in spring. I spot a lone puffball mushroom valiantly pushing its way through rock-hard earth. There is evidence of Black Cockatoos along the final section of the trail - leaves and small branches stripped from trees and thrown to the ground as part of a feeding frenzy. From somewhere above, a discarded gumnut thuds to the ground, just missing me. I am a moving target, lucky this time. Once, a cockatoo dropped a large pine cone on my car’s front windscreen, cracking it (it was a laugh writing that insurance claim - “a bird did it”). The birds evade our view this time.
As we head towards the car, I think of my current manuscript, untouched for months, about as long as the ground has been untouched by rain. The story begins with my character, a child lost in the Australian bush, sheltering from the cold in the hollow of a tree And I wonder if, like the bush, I am waiting for the winter rain to refresh me and bring to life the next part of my story.
We live close to a beautiful bush track that I walk at least once a week. It too is crumbly dry, and you can almost feel the bushland aching for rain. The birds love our two birdbaths, often three or four different types of birds (Bronzewing Pigeons, Twenty-eights, Magpies, Wattlebirds) are waiting impatiently for a quick immersion in the water to get rid of the dust in their feathers.
I'm not a summer person and am desperate for this heat to end.
My Nanna has a saying that has thus far (in my life) proved true, that after Anzac Day we'll be wearing our coats. It's always cold by the end of April, but being so warm so late, it makes you wonder if the cold rainy weather will ever return.
Loved your piece, Monique, beautiful as always.
I have traveled all over the world for my work but Australia is one locale I have not experienced. I appreciate your depictions of the natural world you experience there. Perhaps I will make it down under one of these days.