I
“Though fire and water will always be opposites, nonetheless moist heat is the source of everything, and this dischordant harmony is suited to creation”
I am atop a very tall dune on an isthmus of land: the sound of the ocean at my left and Lake Cootharaba to the right. The sun is rising; each ten minutes becoming noticeably hotter as the angle to the earth’s surface nears the perpendicular as has less atmosphere to inhibit its radiance. The patterns of texture and glass have changed across the silken surface of the lake; no movement perceivable by watching for any period of time; but when glanced at at intervals a different is arrangement apparent altogether.
The wind is so light the lake cannot decide to be ruffled in its entirety, yet not present enough that it all may be smooth; what dictates the boundaries between subtle and arbitrary, a splash of a fish catalyst enough to invite ruffle; the shade of a floating twig harbouring an acre of still water behind it; for chaos begets chaos, and peace begets peace, just as an ionic salt solution at the point of saturation needs a first crystal to form for any others to follow, or a moisture-laden air is enticed to turn to cloud with the disturbance of an aeroplane.
The dune is tall, and the vegetation so well developed that I was at first sceptical if it should be classified as a dune at all and there was not some bedrock responsible for the elevation; however, save for a very thin layer of detritus, underneath is pure white sand. The plants, while holding dense complexity in their collective colonisation and individual form that only comes with time, are stunted in their growth and rarely reach above my eyeline in height, betraying the dearth of nutrition available; for sand is the product of the ocean driven out of its element by wind and waves; the kingdom of terrestrial plants forced to make what use of it they can, envious of their cousins in the valley below thriving on rich sediment.
Last evening a man appeared at dusk, donning Nordic walking sticks, ankle socks and a professionally-small backpack 3/5ths the volume of my own; signs his trekking experience was the greater. Of course, I dreaded the two or so hours to follow before we were politely able to retire to bed.
Today he had walked two legs instead of one: this trek training for another he referred to only by name, without an accompanying description (that I was apparently supposed to be familiar with).
When I did ask, I sensed mocking in his reply, but also a small disappointment; the track perhaps so gruelling its mere name was a boast, and in my naiveté I was unable to appreciate the full magnitude of his claim.
At this point, my tea had reached the boil and I offered him a cup; he quickly refused, stating he had better find a spot to cook some dinner, with the implication that it was to be remoter than within conversational range.
It was now my turn to feel disappointed: that glumness that social interaction would not happen replacing the fear that it would.
I formerly believed that offers of generosity were most politely refused, for they are only the economic loss of the giver and the gain of the receiver; however this opinion was due to being a child, and rarely with the facility to have anything to offer, and almost constantly in a state of acceptance; this is as natural in youth as the opposite is true in old age; hence a grandparent’s spoiling of grandchildren an enjoyable indulgence for both parties.
The exchange between two men of equal circumstance is an intricate dance, and just as good manners compulsed me to offer tea, a corresponding obligation rests on him to accept it. For good manners are the cornerstone of all friendship. This ideal is more strongly held by the older generation than our own; but one which we are erroneous in abandoning. Two men from any walk of life acting in accordance with social etiquette will be able to tolerate each other's company even if the beliefs that dwell in their hearts differ. For close friends, whom derive joy from what is shared between their hearts and intellect; these things are but gold leaf; insufficient for a friendship to stand upon alone, but when combined with good manners, a glorious one indeed. Let me here redefine manners as goodwill, because although manners, as all customs do, vary throughout the world, they are universally underpinned by a will to avoid inconveniencing one's fellow man with disregard to any inconvenience caused to oneself. Hence, the young man opens the door for the old lady, and shoes are removed to delay the necessity of the next sweep for the host.
II
I am at cooloola sand patch: it is somewhat like a glacier or a ski slope: particles so small they approach liquid in behaviour (or at least that illusion is given); pure white sand lined by trees, marked by the tracks of humans and dingos, the setting sun out of sight. As I look westward over the hill a procession of clouds approach; orange, then red, now fading pink, the sky above purple in space, a blue-yellow contour to the north. Note only the bottom half of each cloud is illuminated, stringy like fairy floss, and now the hues of sunset are gone altogether, clouds uniform and grey again.
I turn to the east now, and it never quite becomes dark; for the moon is full and brilliant, alighting the outside of the discs of cloud that surround it yet part in the middle to offer me full view, and the sand becomes luminescent: the reflective qualities that render it white under the sun are equally suited to the silver of moonlight, and for tonight I am on the moon itself, it is alien and barren, the breeze cool and hostile; I am vulnerable but safe.
The dry eucalypt forest gives way to needle-leaved she-oak on the boundary; the hardiest of the species; the conditions such that only it can exist here. Amongst groves, the sand is blanketed by shedded needles.
As we move further towards the bare centre, a small she-oak punctures the white sheet here and there, thin and windblown, trunks at 45°, impossible to tell if they are young or merely stunted from exposure, and whether its they will find some kind of worthy soil with their roots or must exist on light alone.
A walk across the sand patch the next day reveals its true immensity, the impressive field of view I commanded at camp but a fraction of the whole. It is here where the dunal system I doubted before is in full flight.
The wind has turned from blowing lightly from no direction in particular yesterday, to a strong marine SE tradewind today. Through a chink in the foredunes one can see a triangular portion of white-capped ocean a long way below, and this is the force that powers the sand’s slow motion, not flowing downwards as I imagined yesterday, but upwards against gravity.
The sand patch is marked as a permanent feature on the map, for within one lifetime it more or less may be, but it is not, for where I am the she-oaks push the frontier of forest forward, not being mobile themselves they throw forth shoots and seeds; seedlings and saplings. Some will survive, turn sand into soil and chance will throw a new generation forward again. And now I look more closely they are not the only species; miniature banksia, a prickly-small-leafed shrub, even a eucalypt grow in sparse lines and clusters.
On the other side of a crest, both wind and gravity in its favour, sand, newly arrived and loosely packed, invades established forest and swallows whole trees as thick as I.
It is just that a band of wind-ruffle moves across the lake’s surface with a momentum of its own, disturbing tranquillity and leaving tranquillity behind. Here, though the smooth sand looks peaceful, it is destruction and chaos, while the forest; appearing intricately intricate, is permanence and calm.
***
I did consider doing a large-scale line drawing on the sand, but someone of course had the idea first – on the opposite bank a large name and love heart – and I found it to detract from the dune rather than complement it.
A dune does represent a sheet of canvas - the uniformity means marks can be easily distinguished. Like fresh snow, a walker has the rare opportunity to make a virgin print; but the instant one does so the beauty is diminished; footprints can only mar the surface.
The question is; as a medium for art, which damages the environment the less: this pen on paper or the sand drawing? I may insist that I am better off withholding my urge to make marks directly on nature and use my purpose-made tools. But the harvest of pulp, mining of pigment, and the drilling of oil to shape into a pen surely erodes beauty elsewhere on the earth far away?
***
III
Here on a hilltop, by a small margin the highest in the vicinity; there are several others nearby of about equal height that all in all raise the horizon all 360 degrees, the tops of tall fire-scarred ironbarks in the midfield merging with those across the valley. Picture me at the centre of an orange juicer – the manual type, not mechanical – that is only really suited to juicing oranges (and perhaps grapefruit): moulded plastic, from the 90s or earlier; a relic of a time when there was some narrow-mindedness as to which fruits are suitable for juicing, before the walls were busted down in the late 90s and a proliferation of juice bars and electronic juicers occurred, and suddenly all manner of vegetative material was fair game, until the 2010’s, when it was collectively realised that the removal of fibre: the juicer’s essential function, was not beneficial to health; concurrently a number of dried products emerged - spirulina, chia and the like –that did not hold any liquid of their own, so in order to be drunk, must be combined with a liquid substrate, hence the smoothie and blender overtook, rendering the object I refer to redundant for a second time, however owing to the pleasing minimalism of their design, I would wager IKEA still produce a version.
The hilltop, though tranquil now, was this morning loud with bird calls from every direction, a battle of sorts being waged between two crows and a tribe of noisy minors. It was so spirited I was impulsed to (quite illogically, I admit) sound some calls of my own. Occasionally, the verbal would progress to the physical and the crow was forced to flee, successfully intimidated despite being larger in stature, barking with earnest distress as it was chased in circular laps before resuming its perch atop the bare crown of a perished tree of the type crows are fond.
The skirmish was interrupted twice by a screech of a higher frequency than the rest - lorikeets – the melee silenced as if in submission; they flashed through the trees with greater speed and agility than all, like F1-11s on surveillance patrol, unthreatened; not spurned to either attack or defend; their manoeuvrers for play or exhibitionism rather than operational necessity. It was like a teacher’s walk through the playground that forces a temporary truce amongst the brawling pupils, and just like the effect of the entrance of a junior teacher is negligible and the headmaster’s profound, the respect granted to the lorikeets is a sign of mysterious and severe punishment they are capable of delivering should it be trespassed.
Now the allusion is raised, the cacophony seems not unlike a schoolyard in which no individual words are heard, but still the motivations behind the communication are felt; tussles for territory, allegiances and enemies, leaders and followers, confrontation and surrender.
Just now, some hours later, the crow has returned to his perch, but without the social structure, his position is meaningless; he let out a few vain calls and flies away; the irreverent laughter of kookaburras on neutral ground some distance away a reminder dusk is here.
***
IV
My last morning on the trail. Awoke craving tea, made tea and ate the rest of last night’s dahl and rice. I am out of sugar – tea has changed recently from a drink to which sugar is an optional addition to a mere vessel for carrying sugar; the drinks fridge at any takeaway is proof that this is not unusual for drinks: soft drinks, iced teas, flavoured milks; sugar in different suits. One may as well take sugar into his own hands and add it liberally to home-made drinks to save donating a profit margin to the companies in the business of craving-satisfaction, for when we eat out we are seeking to do just that; part of what we pay for the blindfold so we may not know the quantities and ratios of pleasure-giving ingredients – namely salt, carbs, fat and sugar – we attribute instead to secret recipes, skilled hands or specialised equipment. Some, however, have not forgotten this: older rural generations for whom eating out is not part of their culture, or, at most, an annual event, and salt can be found at the centre-stage of the dining table; oil not bought in boutique glass vessels but heavy plastic drums; the post meal pilgrimage to the 7/11 confectionary aisle replaced by expertly made cakes, biscuits and puddings; white flour the most essential of all pantry items.
***
I am in a section of rainforest, earlier in the walk only found in small pockets hugging a creek or a particularly shaded gully, identified by a single palm tree; a lone representative of the species that had somehow traversed miles of drier woodland all around to arrive.
Yesterday I passed through two hours of forest of this type, leaves in the understory becoming fleshier and broader. Strangling figs appeared: some just as ambitious tendrils hardly noticed by their hosts; others locked in the apex of battle, hitherto separate fingers meeting to encircle the circumference of a mighty gum, nevertheless defiant and shouldering the load; other figs victorious, the trunk it owes its shape to rotting or completely absent, a hollow centre glimpsed through chinks in flesh, bent under the strain of the former tree’s collapse in the last throes of life.
It is miraculous that forests a few hours walk from each other vary so much; the rain not falling by pure chance over to region to result in an average uniform distribution, but favouring (by small amounts) certain sides of hills to others. Whereas, on higher ground, the soil is crumbly and dry and the leaf litter crisp and eager to receive a raging flame, here everything is damp, despite no recent rain; the underside of my tent damp, the logs placed by the park-keepers not acting as furniture as intended, but as part of the biome, rotting in their place, covered in moss and fungi, not appealing to sit on any longer. My campfire only started after much coaxing, gathered branches relinquishing water vapour in suffocating plumes of smoke amidst much hiss and crackle, before they could alight and, in turn, offer a dehumidifying service to the next log placed atop.
***
I am at Poona lake that is perched up high. The rainforest abruptly ended before I came across it. I had been climbing for a while next to a creek that was almost a caricature of one – a neat parabolic gully – so obvious it could have been designed and carved out of the sand by an excavator, with no apparent increase in vegetation density leading to it; despite the ceremonious channel, the watercourse itself an idle series of pools covered in dead palm fronds.
It was with relief that about the same time the incline flattened and the surrounding vegetation changed away from rainforest, the creek took on a more familiar appearance; now choked with greyish reeds and lined by friendly paperbacks.
It is curious that where water collects in greatest abundance, rainforest is not found – not in the valley of the Noosa River where the ground is not damp but positively wet – there be a low, nearly treeless marsh; neither here, on the shores of the perched lake; no, the balance must be just right; water must linger in its passage from the canopy to the floor, long enough for everything in between to be damp, but ultimately drain away.
In sections around the perimeter of this lake, between the reeds and water, is a narrow band of white sand and look – humans – reclined and undressed, pale skin of similar hue, only contrasted against a towel placed underneath, the optimistic mummer of their voices mingling with bird calls.
This quirk of geography - sand beside water - resembles a beach enough for the visitors to follow the accompanying cultural protocols. In Brisbane a similar phenomenon exists at South Bank. If the sand itself is too busy the mode of behaviour can extend onto grassed sections; as long as an observer can understand the original intention, they are not offended, although in another public part of the city they might be.
Here, towards the end of the walk, there are several points of access by car so I should not be surprised to encounter mankind. I met an older couple, not beach-bound, but armed with day-packs, sensible hats, binoculars and bird catalogues. I asked if they were bird watching – he replied, “well, everything” – nodding to a mushroom below as though to mean “this too”.
With much delight, the lady showed me in her book a species of native pigeon she had just spotted – the largest of the Australian pigeons. Suddenly everything seemed the more sacred and beautiful, and I regretted squashing a mushroom with my walking stick on a whim earlier on; and now I think about how strongly one feels a subconscious pressure to conform with the ideals of those he is in company with (if the disagreement is not so opposite he can confidently reject it outright); for I can recall the discomfort of being around others where the identification of a particular pigeon would seem amusingly trivial.
