Dodo Au Go-Go

At the end of the road, there is a creek.  A little waterway which wends narrow and sings joyous and clear around rocks, widens into calm, almost-still pools, and runs muddy and ferocious when the rains fall. This post is a list of observations of the worlds which intersect at this creek. Many of them seemingly random, or that I have no explanations for. Let's draw on my anthropological past and call it an ethnography of the creek. Or a collection of daily ethnographies of the creek. The creek has one little footbridge, coloured red-brown. At the edges of the creek are combinations of trees, stones, grasses, lots of elephants ears, weeds, thickets and bushes, and in one spot, a large clump of bamboo. After these, there are more trees. Scattered. Or in family groups of 3 and 5. Perhaps they are the original trees from when this area was originally developed in the 1970s.  After the trees, there is grassy/parkland, some boggy patches of land and several more trees spaced further...

Earlier this year, before rainbombs  and such, I said I wanted to try and push small limits of my creative comfort zones. Which basically means joining in with my LittleOne's creative activities and doing things like splotching paint on paper or doing crafty things or making play-clay models non-judgementally. Emphasis on the non-judgementally bit. I gave myself 10 rules  (scroll down in the link to find them).  A few weeks ago, LittleOne and I did a paints day, with some new paints and brushes. I was quite impressed with how I'd managed to get these ocean colours looking quite, you know, oceany. For once, I was genuinely not harsh at myself. Then LittleOne wanted to have a go on my paper and I quickly demanded a pause in sharing my paper until I got a photo of my oceany colours.  This pause aggravated LittleOne's imp of the perverse. How dare I pause the collaboration?! Humph! As soon as I got my photo, LittleOne grabbed my paper, my oceany colours, the...

This is an old, crumpled, dried out, crunchy frangipani leaf. It's currently in my kitchen and I'm not allowed to throw it out. I've tried a couple of times, but LittleOne spotted it, rescued it and chastised me. Most severely. Both times. Why can't I throw it out? Well, you see, it goes back to the rainbomb floods, which I wrote about here . Before we realised the water coming in downstairs, we were having a normal rainy Saturday. LittleOne was transfixed by this little snail who, like its friends, had ventured out to the rainy parts of the deck to eat, groove, sing and to do whatever it is that snails do in the rain. LittleOne was quite delighted by this snail. They are quite small, with shells that aren't much bigger than the nail on a forefinger. They're small, fragile and rather cute.  LittleOne has stern, standing instructions to not touch snails and most other creatures (lest we accidentally hurt them or they bite us). But LittleOn...

On the last weekend of February 2022, starting on Friday, it rained in Brisbane. Not normal rain. It was a strange rain - heavy, hard and non-stop. It fell furiously and at the same thick, relentless volume all day. Maybe it eased off once or twice, but mostly, non-stop. All day long. I've never seen rain fall like before. I'm used to rain coming in bursts, easing up as though to take a breath, then falling hard again for a bit. Not non-stop. I worked from home, periodically looking out to marvel at this incredible non-stop volume, and very grateful I didn't have to go into the office and drive in this kind of weather. That evening, we took a little walk in the rain to look at the creek at the end of the road. It fills very easily after a little bit of rain. The creek had climbed its banks and had filled the surrounding parklands into a lake. Some local kids apparently took their boogie boards down to have a play in the new lake. The creek that turned into a lak...