Bush Portraits I - The Seeker, Magi Nams

Torrid heat poured down onto Townsville, causing me to ooze copious amounts of sweat as I washed walls and ceilings and scrubbed grout between shower stall tiles with a soapy toothbrush. I think I ‘glowed’ as much as when I’d bushwalked the steep section of the Thorsborne Trail between Mulligan Falls and Zoe Bay on Hinchinbrook Island with a loaded backpack on my back. (A university friend who had attended a girls’ school in Victoria, British Columbia, informed me that she was taught at the school that horses sweat, men perspire, and ladies glow.) I yearningly envisioned the cool freshness of Paluma and its highland rainforests only 80 kilometres from Townsville, and recalled fondly (now) the chilly nights Vilis and I had camped in Narawntapu and Lake St. Clair National Parks in Tasmania. There, we huddled fully-clothed in our sleeping bags; here, we throw off our sheet and awaken sticky from the heat. The Canadian winter ahead of us, with its snow and ice, is beginning to look better all the time.

While I worked, I listened to bird song beyond windows and walls and heard on ABC radio news that birds of the Murray-Darling Basin are experiencing their best breeding in a decade, with 20,000 avian residents – including royal spoonbills and straw-necked and glossy ibises – nesting in the Lowbidgee wetlands on New South Wales’ Murrumbidgee River. Some nestlings have already fledged, a good indication that populations of herons, cormorants, spoonbills, and ibises are on the increase this year. This boost to Lowbidgee breeding birds is partly due to local farmers (who are thrilled with the numbers of breeding birds) diverting some of their water allotment to the wetlands to provide the birds with the habitat critical to their reproductive success. In a region with a 10-year history of drought, that’s impressive.

Inspired by my musings of past excursions into cooler landscapes, I decided to dedicate today’s post to photos of some of Vilis’s and my escapades during February and March, when we drank in the coolness of Paluma and Tassie and explored the burbs of Townsville, revelling in beaches and hilltops that provided us with commanding and inspiring views, as well as great photo ops. Here’s Bush Portraits I.