Aftermath of the waterstorm

Last weekend the inlet looked like this as the wind created a storm surge that smashed into the bush.

  

 

And this is the inlet today: See that little grove of melaluca trees? It's the same one!

 

For weeks the inlet swelled and I was thinking, one more winter storm will do it, and then after another storm, well the next one should break it. 

"Never seen her so punishing, so angry," an old resident said, when I sent him a video of the water's influx on Saturday. It was hard to go outside into the intense, oxygenated air. It just felt relentless and the waves were throwing white foam everywhere. Chesapeake road became impassable as the inlet crept through the karri forests and all the river systems backed up. Eventually there was just nowhere for the water to go.

Finally, after days of insane wind and rain, the sand bar to the sea broke open. I woke up on Monday morning, looked out the window and realised we had a beach again. It was an eery feeling after all the drama. A Xenotopia, an in-between space where even the ravens breathed out a more measured Faaark!

Today we headed east along the beach, looking for things, beach combing for plastic and treasure. Peacocky tea tree oil from the forest was still leaching across the freshly exposed undersea.

 

 

 

The trees seemed surprised, caught unawares and exposed after months of being under water. The inlet dropped about 6 feet in as many days. Some of the trees displayed the tattered rosettes of their neighbours' papery bark, wearing them like survivor prizes. 

  

In the photo below, you may see something that looks like a bird's nest. It's not. It's flotsam from the water storm. We looked up in wonder and I measured myself against it, I'm tall but not that tall. "It's like a king tide," said H.

 

Paper bark trees hammered by the water are the most obvious signs of how high the inlet went. They have the tide lines etched into their skin.

 

Winter Solstice Part Four

 

Jayden put his arm around his friend’s shoulders. ‘Mum will really like these shrooms too,’ he said and then remembered that night out on the water poaching, when he felt scared and small and cold and his Mum was ranting about poetry or something and about the end of the world.

‘Parents, man,’ Jayden said, trying to sound understanding but he also knew what he was talking about and he tried to communicate this to Matt through his side hug.

Parents who didn’t think, who were so busy with their own dramas that they forgot to pick him and Matt up from footy training on that low, misty oval late at night. Parents who privileged their ancient vendettas against teachers over the yearly school camp. Parents who fought a landlord’s injustices in court and then ran some poor bastard down outside a BP service station. Fucking parents.

Jayden’s Mum had read him Beowulf, explained the Lady poem about rogue onions and the Narnia Chronicles and she knew what happened to the children of those men who’d abdicated responsibility and still she got arrested and locked up and left her kid alone to deal with the shit..

‘The swan roads,’ Jayden said, pointing to the lake. ‘That’s the swan roads, like in the poem..’

‘What, the lake?’ asked Matt.

The two of them stared at the pond and the birds. Jayden saw lights behind them but also lights gathering in the swans who squwarked and gossiped on the water.

 

Winter Solstice Part 1

 

Three hours out of the city and the sun sitting low behind them, Jayden and Matt entered the karri country. There they were, one minute driving past paddocks and scrub and next minute Jayden’s little hatchback was enveloped in blonde, serried ranks of the enormous trees. Some valleys the sun now failed to reach and these places were dark, the sky closed over with feathered, crown shy canopy.

  ‘It’s claustrophobic ey,’ Jayden commented.

  ‘In tiger country now,’ Matt said. He’d been quiet on the trip south, not his normal cocky self, a lot of time spent looking at the blue screen of his phone, finding murder ballads on Spotify or glaring out the window.

  They crossed the river into the old timber town.

  ‘Place is just up here.’ Matt had the maps app open on his phone and Cave’s sombre tone was replaced by a chirpy female voice: In 300 metres, turn left onto Sheffield Street. ‘Dunno why we even need an AirBnB, Jay. We’ll be out all night anyway.’

  ‘Promised my Mum.’ Jayden didn’t mind admitting this to his best mate. Twenty four and still beholden to his Mum but Matt knew why and didn’t tease him.

  It was an old mill house, one of many lined up like a little town, opposite the abandoned timber mill. Green shade cloth flapped listlessly against weatherboard walls, presumably to block the afternoon sun on hot days. Smoke curled out of a steel chimney. The house looked like a rental and Jayden wondered how that even worked. He stepped onto the veranda and knocked on the zed door. Matt stayed in the car.

  A man stepped out so quickly he must have been waiting on the other side of the door. ‘Are you two the pickers?’ He looked at Jayden and then to Matt in the car. His face was curiously soft and hard, a criss cross of scars on one russet eyebrow but his skin pale, like he’d stayed indoors all his life and still managed to get beaten up. About as pretty as a ditch, Jayden’s Mum would say.

  ‘Pickers? Nah,’ Jayden turned to Matt, avoiding the man’s raptor stare. ‘We’re heading south. Hopetoun tomorrow.’

  ‘Okay. Just don’t want any pickers stayin’ here. Fucken parasites. Come on, I’ll show you the room.’

  Now that the sun had set on the shortest day, the cold crept out of the earth. The room they’d paid for online was out the back of the house, a veranda that had been converted into a sleepout using mismatched corrugated iron. It was clean and freezing cold. A double bed, a small white plastic blow heater and an ancient television.

  ‘Toilet and bathroom through here,’ the man gestured to what used to be the back door. ‘And if you want to make a coffee in the morning, use the kitchen.’ For some reason, he reminded Jayden of Matt’s Dad. The way he spoke, a man who didn’t bother with menace to be unsettling.

  The man looked at his phone. ‘Matt and Jayden,’ he said but still didn’t introduce himself. ‘Have a good night boys,’ and then disappeared into the house. Matt dropped his backpack and stared around him.

  ‘What the fuck? Have you locked up the car?’

  ‘Let’s just have a cone first.’

  ‘Not in here mate. He’ll smell it. Also, I asked if there were two beds but there’s only one.’ Matt’s gaze around the room and stopped at the wooden chair with a single towel folded on the seat. ‘I don’t mind sharing a bed with you, my brother but I’m not sharing a fucking towel.’ He stuck his hands deep into his hoodie pockets.

  Jayden stooped to flick the switch for the heater. Nothing happened. ‘Heater doesn’t work,’ he said unnecessarily and then tried the TV. ‘Maybe the power’s off out the back here.’ From under the back door there was a thin strip of yellow light and then a wisp of wood smoke from woodstove inside. There was a knock from the inside of the back door.

  The door opened inwards and the man stood, framed by light, holding a stack of towels. He came in and set them down on the chair. ‘Need some extra towels, ey?’ He went back inside the house and came out with an extension cord and power board. ‘Use this for the heater and telly.’

  After he’d left again, Jayden and Matt stared at each other.

  ‘D’you reckon he’s got a camera in here?’ Matt said.

 

Psychogeography of the inlet

 Psychogeography is a term that emerged in the 1950s and its practice is great for landscape writers and artists:  "the effect of a geographical location on the behaviour and emotions of individuals." Until a few years ago, I was completely unaware of the word but had been thinking about the concept for decades. Writing about people of the sea and islands will do that.

"Unfold a map of London, place a glass rim down, anywhere on the map, and draw around its edge. Pick up the map, go out into the city, and walk the circle keeping as close as you can to the curve. Record the experience as you go ... footage as footage." Robert MacFarlane, A Road of One's Own.

In an urban context, this exercise forces a re estimation of our surroundings - what is accessible and what is off limits: fences, the concept of private property, the absoluteness of a stoic brick wall, drains and public thoroughfares. Really, it's a form of re-mapping or even anti-mapping. It breaks us out of the unaware carpark and footpath thinking that we have when heading down to the shops.

The reason why this is coming up for me right now is that the inlet broke its sand bar out to the sea last night. Here is a photo from today and you can check out photos from yesterday in my previous posts.

You can see the footprints from where Selkie was wading out to catch a stick that I'd thrown for her last night, those trees then a pretty reflection on the glassed-off water. We have a beach again!

For the last month, we haven't had a beach. As the inlet filled with river water threading through a system of thousands of square kilometres, places to walk became scarce. We are in the bush here: there are few tracks or roads. The inundation began to feel oppressive. On land, ancient marri trees leaned over us, blocking out the sun and keeping us cold and the solar panels failed us. The bush became more dark and damp. I grew up in sand dune, coastal heath country. We always had an horizon, a big sky. Living in the forest takes some getting used to.

From a person unwittingly writing about the psychogeography of islands, I became a person writing about the psychogeography of inlets and how they are kinda negative images of each other. An inlet is a body of water surrounded by land after all. My feelings come back to the original definition of psychogeography: "the effect of a geographical location on the behaviour and emotions of individuals."

Now this is cool. Last night, I strapped the camera trap to a tree at water level to capture the water as it receded. There were only three night time infra red photos. It was glassed off so the waves didn't trigger the motion sensor. What triggered it was the water rat, a marsupial better known as a Rakali, or in the Noongar language a Ngurju.

Today and Tomorrow