Skip to main content

A wilful, lavish land


Aren't our birds wonderful? This a Gang-gang cockatoo, spotted at Mount Hotham.

Musing:
From Gang-gang Cockatoos by Peter Skrzynecki
"Calling to each other in soft creaky voices
through long shadows and out of sight --
the red heads and crests of feathery blossoms
carried along by waves of morning light."

Comments

  1. Your budgie shots are definitely winning! Love it!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Budgie - smudgie!

    He is a bottler, JE. Don't listen to the hoi poloi in the bleachers!

    Is that a line from the poem: shall have to read the entire thing. This poem is a bit like the national anthem isn't it? We only know one small section.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Julie, you will find the full poem here. This leads you to a whole volume of his poetry, you will have to scroll down or search to page 165. That's why I didn't put the link in the post.

    ReplyDelete
  4. What a fabulous shot! I love cockatoos, especially the GangGang and Sulphur-crested.

    This one is so pretty!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Wow! This one is fantastic! Australia has amazing endemic birds!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Coolibah?

Is that a Coolibah tree beside the abandoned house? Every Australian knows about Coolibah trees because the bush ballad Waltzing Matilda is nigh on our unoffical national anthem but most of us live nowhere near the inland where they grow. Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong, Under the shade of a Coolibah tree, And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boiled, You'll come a Waltzing Matilda with me. Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda, You'll come a Waltzing Matilda with me, And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boiled You'll come a Waltzing Matilda with me.

The end

I retire from the workforce this week and to celebrate have decided to retire my current blogs and start afresh with a single consolidated blog -  My Bright Field  - to record the delights of my new life adventure. If you are interested follow me over there.  I will still be Sweet Wayfaring and collecting Royal Hotels.  The delights I discover along the way will appear together with my gardens and towns where I live.

Brown streams and soft dim skies

I gave my husband a thick book on the history of Australian Art for Christmas. It documents just how long it took the artists to paint what they actually saw -- at the hands of early artists our wild Australian landscapes looked like rolling green English countryside. Today's photo has "that look" so I have referenced words from the poem describing England. It was Christmas Eve. We were camped by the Tumut River in the Snowy Mountains of NSW. A shady spot planted with exotic trees from the "old world" and with the soft burble of a swiftly flowing stream. Bliss after a hot afternoon drive. But the old world dies slowly, a hot roast for Christmas dinner followed by plum pudding is one of those traditions that just won't die. Knowing we were going to be on the move on Christmas Day we settled for having our traditional hot meal on Christmas Eve this year.