Although I have failed to locate those letters from 1984, I did transcribe some of them a few years ago. It was rather tedious work and I got fed up with it but am now glad I put in the effort since I have some entertaining descriptions of some of the many exciting bird-trips we undertook. Photos from that time are colour prints which have disastrously faded and I have yet to lay my hands on the bird note-books for added flavour. I know I’ve got them but I’m just too badly organised.
“On Monday we went canoeing on a lake – Toolibin – I think it was called. A long convoy of Nats and Birdos rendezvoused in Narrogin with a guy called Roger Jaensch (I see he’s still going. Interestingly, for someone passionate about waterbirds, he had webbed toes. He showed us my first Long-toed Stint) who organises a vast rolling waterbird survey throughout the South-west. He had got hold of a dozen aluminium canoes from the Youth Service.
The cortege set off. I thought that this lake was just by Narrogin but – silly me – it’s “Australia” so we drive God-knows-how-far 30 miles? 40? 20? Through wheat country: low, rolling land, thin soil over purple/pink granite which breaks through in the shade of tree-clad ridges, or sometimes in bare pink domes. The fields are all green and yellow now, after good rains, but in a month or so the whole prospect will be brown apart from the glittering, reflective leaves of the Salmon Gum, Mallee and Wandoo. There’s a lot of woodland scattered out across the land as you look over a dozen ridges out to the distant horizon.
There are few roads, and these straight orange gravel. No towns, almost no houses (you wouldn’t always be able to see on between you and the horizon). No rivers to speak of either, just narrow braided channels leading into pans of dead tree-trunks where the run-off has nowhere to go and the accumulation of salt kills the plants. When it was wooded, the trees and the woodland litter sponged up the rain in most parts. 150 years of clearance has produced surface water after rain which has not had enough time to wear channels through granite (I don’t suppose it ever would) and it lies in the hollows where it brings up the salt from underground then evaporates.
That’s what the lakes are like in these parts: not attractive, calm, wooded strips of water but massive sumps, sometimes many miles around, full of tree skeletons. They lie in shallow dips so extend their circumference by miles following heavy rain. They fluctuate in size from year to year, often dry completely in the summer and rarely more than a couple of feet deep so the water is warm and full of life. They are generally roundish and often a series is strung together. From the air they are reminiscent of microscopic specimens, especially Daphnia (I’ve suddenly understood – it was Daphne who was turned into a tree wasn’t it? And Daphnia have branched “arms”).
Half the group stopped at one lake that resembled those terrible skeleton forests left in the wake of First World War battles (though in these dead branches were perched Egrets and Spoonbills). In a convoy of six vehicles, we drove yet further and it was at this point that, in retrospect, a sad chain of events became identifiable. The driver of the third car stopped to look at a beautiful lizard he’d noticed on a fence post, so those behind halted too. As a result, the first two carried on ahead but failed to pause, as they usually do, at the next crossroad. So, we went straight ahead instead of left. Eventually one of the first two, Dave – a tanned, bearded, inarticulate backwoodsman in a green panel van – caught us up and told us to turn around. But the two cars ahead had already disappeared round another corner…so while Dave & Boyd turned around, we dashed off to catch the others…
When we finally all turned about and once more caught up with Dave, we could see from a distance that he’d stopped and was looking at something and, as we got closer, that he had a rifle in his hand. We pulled up just in time to see him put a bullet into the skull of a kangaroo which was lying injured in the road. Maybe they take a while to die, perhaps because a .22 is not destructive enough, but this poor creature thrashed about with blood pouring across the orange gravel for a long time till it shuddered to a halt, when he dragged it by its tail onto the grass then squatted for a while with his hand on its heart to ensure its life was indeed extinguished. He seemed very upset though apparently carried the rifle mainly for this purpose. It’s unusual to hit a kangaroo in daylight though at night it’s a real hazard – they just come bounding across the road, not always in front of you but into the side. This is what happened to Dave: he swerved to avoid the beast which then hit his rear wheel arch and smashed its head on the corner of his rear bumper. One of the cars behind had a big boomer go straight over its roof.
This left us all feeling quite dejected by the time we finally arrived at the lake, which was invisible since it had shrunk so had to be approached through scrubland and dried swamp. Roger managed to plough his trusty/intrepid Kingswood & trailer through sand to the edge of a creek from which we paddled off with our lunch in an Esky since we’d not felt like eating earlier. After a couple of hundred yards, we had to get out and drag the canoe through mud to a body of water deep enough to punt or paddle. By this point we were into a maze of trees, some dead, others Melaleucas or Flooded Gums that grow in wet places. Through their close trunks we looked onto shallow pools where there were various ducks, coots, and in one place a line of kangaroos splashing away from us. We passed through a series of open waters separated by trees, sometimes so close together that we had to pull and squeeze the canoes between them, dragging them over fallen logs. All the time there was the sound of skittering, wingbeats and calling from the Shelduck, Grey Teal & Pink-eared Ducks fleeing visibly or invisibly from the disturbance.
It was completely disorientating; I should never have found my own way around and the Fisheries & Wildlife Dept bloke with us reckoned he still sometimes got lost after ten years’ acquaintance with the place. A rise of two feet in the water level (an event indicated by a ghostly tideline across the tree-trunks) would completely alter the geography of this weird place.
Eventually we paddled into a large open water where a lot of duck flew up to join herons, night-herons and cormorants circling overhead. The object of the whole exercise (on Roger’s part) had been to survey breeding duck and (on everyone else’s) to Tick Off the rare Freckled Duck. One guy called Brice had been trying to see one for three years (it’s an elusive species) so paddled off into the thickets to search. He did, unwittingly, flush out a pair which flew around for some time affording us all good views while Brice himself remained among the Melaleucas oblivious to our shouts. His son, who had remained with us, spent the rest of the afternoon taunting his father, who had not emerged till long after the Freckled Ducks had vanished. There were rafts of Grey Teal, Shovelers & Pink-eared Ducks going round and round when suddenly a great wind hissed through the trees, the surface became choppy, our canoes drifted out and a violent purple storm-cloud appeared behind spirals of wheeling Cormorants, Spoonbills & Night-herons. It put me in mind of the Bible story but luckily the storm got no closer and by the time we’d punted and dragged our way back to the cars it was sunny again.
After shedding muddy and odoriferous footwear we took a last quick walk with the Fisheries & Wildlife guy across some heath and into a Casuarina thicket where various orchids were growing. The most spectacular was King Spider, a wonderfully formed thing. Maybe you know how various orchids mimic female insects in order to attract the randy males who, deluded, attempt copulation with a flower and get pollen dumped on their heads. How the flower knows what that particular insect looks like (it’s usually only one species), how they make their plans and how they adopt the appropriate and convincing shape is not understood by anyone in the world and clearly refutes any narrow interpretation of Darwin’s theory. These orchids even mimic the scent. This King Spider actually mimics the flightless female of a species of wasp which, by the male’s attempt to carry her away, stimulates the usual zap on the head from the stamens.
All this boggles my mind very considerably; in fact, I think the wasp gets away lightly in comparison.
By the way, there’s an Underground Orchid here too, which flowers below the surface and is pollinating by burrowing termites! It was discovered accidentally in 1929 but rediscovered only recently. It is thought to be rare but no-one knows because it never shows! And a mammal has just been rediscovered. It’s called a Dibbler.
In returning from these flowers-like-flightless-wasps we disturbed a bird-like-a-lump-of-dead-wood: a Tawny Frogmouth, which is something I’ve missed on a number of previous occasions.
We have cat-who-looks-a-bit-like-a-bit-of-dead-wood. His name is Spud. He keeps very still. He moves like a bit of dead wood dropping off a tree. Or maybe crumbling in corruption. He has just eaten a fat brown moth with zigzags and eyes on its wings. I found it pegging on the kitchen floor so put it out into the garden. The intrepid Spud is just about quick enough to pounce upon a crook moth and swallow it down like a prawn. Perhaps he enjoys some obscure taxonomic link with the Tawny Frogmouth – another challenge to Darwinism.”
Birding Walks in RXland 
