When I left Richard’s at 5:40 a.m. for my last run/walk in the park near his house, the air was already hot. It grew hotter still when the sun lifted above the horizon, a threatening ball of orange that first licked at my skin and then tore at it. The parkway grounds had dried and the puddles vanished. The river was shrunken and displaying exposed flanks and bellies of beige sand. I hardly noticed the birds. I wanted only to escape the sun.

In May, at an ecology conference in Halifax, Vilis and I were told by a pair of zoologists who had spent a sabbatical year here that Townsville is beautiful. “You’ll love it,” the woman said. “If you can survive the summer.”

This morning, I had almost convinced myself that Townsville’s summer was simply a matter of survival, when a fledgling myna landed at my feet, fluffed up its wing feathers, and adopted a begging attitude, making me smile. I stopped to visit with it for a moment, then ran on with new energy, the young bird accompanying me for half of my last interval. I know it was only looking for food, but I felt as if God had sent me a cheerleader.

After breakfast, while Vilis completed the entry condition report at our rental house, I cleaned up at Richard’s, washing linens, packing suitcases, and so on. A cockroach scrambled out from between two suitcases when I moved them, giving me a good-bye jolt. It waved its long antennae, and then hotfooted it beneath the bed and disappeared before I could capture it. Outdoors, a five-inch skink with stripes on its side darted about in old palm refuse, and grasses and herbaceous plants formed a thin meadow beneath the clothesline, where only dried earth and desiccated plants had greeted us on our arrival three weeks ago. In the kitchen, the tiny ants continued their scouting forays, and I wondered if Vilis and I would experience as much wildlife in and around our rental house as we had at Richard’s.

At noon, we were in our new place, and while Vilis spent the afternoon at JCU, I interspersed writing with unpacking and organizing. I placed my desk facing a window onto the side yard and was rewarded with sightings of peaceful doves and house sparrows.

After a supper from cans, Vilis and I strolled along a sandy trail through the golf course in the dim light of approaching darkness. Oscillating sprinklers sent out silver arcs of water beside us, and a flock of corellas roosting for the night sounded like a meeting of nagging, haggling old women. The silhouettes of palms were tropical signposts against a pink and gold sunset that once again issued its silent beacon to the black fliers. Chittering and screeching, the flying foxes winged westward, some swooping low over our heads before shrinking into dark, moving dots against the sunset. Whistling ducks flushed on our approach, lifting into the air with what sounded like anxiety in their voices.

A speck of bluish light gleamed in the dark and disappeared, and then another flashed on and off. “Look! Fireflies!” I told Vilis, and we laughed as they lit up and flashed off all around us.

As we walked the last block home, heavy music pulsated through the still darkness, emanating from a house a half-block away from ours. At the corner, instead of a circle of conferring-wise men trees like there were near Richard’s, two enormous rain trees reared up against the impending night like storm clouds of leaves. When we drove from Richard’s before noon, I said to Vilis, “I hope this new place will be a good one for us.”  In the evening’s warm, sensory-ridden darkness, I knew it would.