Again this morning, cloud blanketed the sky over Townsville, it grey denseness a welcome sight offering reprieve from the sun. The shapes of birds and messy, curved leaves of palm trees loomed stark against it. Masked lapwings cackled machine-gun vocalizations, magpie-larks called “pee-wee” warnings, and pied imperial-pigeons cooed breathy, deep-throated love notes from a tall gum tree. In Bicentennial Park, the limbs of poincianas spread wide in elegant crookedness graced with bouquets of flaming scarlet blossoms. Thick-petalled flowers of frangipani and bombax trees littered patches of lawn like giant tropical confetti having curved edges and thick white and orange beauty.

This was no silent morning. The air was chock full of birdsong – the fussy squeaks of rainbow lorikeets, the ascending “who-hoo, who-hoo, who-hoo” of eastern koels, the deep “coop-coops” of pheasant coucals and ringing notes of brown honeyeaters against a soothing background of crickets. In an open, grassy meadow now green and lush with seeding grasses, nutmeg mannikins twittered while clinging to tall grass stalks, and golden-headed cisticolas repeatedly proclaimed territorial defence with vocalizations consisting of two distinct parts – first a light buzz, and then a deeper, liquid “dip.” Australian raven called its mocking, incriminating “ah-aaa!”

The lumpy profile of Castle Hill thrust upward into the sky in the distance on one side of me, and the soaring incline and pink cliffs of Mount Stuart loomed skyward on the other. The Ross River ran dull and leaden, its surface graced with rippled reflections of mangroves bordering its shores. Above it, a black kite formed a fork-tailed silhouette against the sky, and flocks of white ibises flew in orderly fleets, as though they were sickle-beaked airships. A little egret foraged for prey on the sodden lawn where I, on my first, utterly drenched outing in Townsville on the last day of 2009 saw plumed whistling ducks and heard Australian frog operas rising to the sky. Nearby stood trees that so fascinated me that first day – peeling-barked gums, bottle trees with maple-like leaves, and she-oaks possessing long, weeping branchlets resembling the needles of Canadian pine trees. Again, as on that joyful, drenched adventure, the mangrove swamp adjoining the path near Queen Street lay invaded by water, the pneumatophores or  breathing roots of the salt-tolerant trees spiking upward through soil and water.

Feeling rather steeped in nostalgia, I walked the edge of Queen Street past the Queenslander we house-sat for nearly three weeks after our arrival in Australia, while we drove the area near the river in search of rental house possibilites and found our feet in the tropical heat and humidity. Traveller’s palms, other palms, and a white-flowering evergreen frangipani screened its yard, and bougainvillea again bloomed pink throughout the canopy of the old mango in the corner of the back yard. Nearby, I noticed the alley in which I had found mangoes rotting on the road and had thought of the wonder of plucking fruits as lush and large as mangoes from one’s backyard tree. This month and last Vilis and I collected mangoes from parkway trees in Mundingburra, and in another significant step toward completing the circle of our time in Australia, I this week mailed a vacate notice to the house rental managers.

A great bowerbird hissed at me as I returned to the parkway, and a young father threw stones into a pool of Ross Creek for the amusement of his toddler in a stroller. I know I’ll miss the parkway with its colourful and vociferous birdlife, its moody river and elegant shade trees. And I’ll miss the ease of wearing shorts and a tank top outdoors all year round. However, Townsville’s thick, swamping humidity I will relinquish with pleasure.

As I strolled toward home, I passed nutmeg mannikins singing soft songs in dense, rank vegetation, a pair of plumed whistling ducks in lush grass, and graceful, broad-crowned fig trees with deep donuts of bark mulch hugging their trunks. A little pied cormorant and little black cormorant shared a dead branch jutting from a shrub overlooking the river, surveying their fishing ground which this morning was in high-tide mode – full to the brim and a strong current pushing water upstream. The voice of a channel-billed cuckoo was a rasping squalling in the distance, and that of a whistling kite a high-pitched, piping whistle.

Vilis and I are browner and leaner than on our arrival in this country as a result of the merciless Australian sun, its heat and the tropical humidity curbing our appetites and inciting a desire for scads of fresh fruits and vegetables. After I returned to the house, I slipped on my daypack, tucked my basket under my arm, and strolled to the nearby Coles to replenish said fruits and veggies. In the grocery store, artificial Christmas trees adorned the tops of cashiers’ stands, and the bakery section overflowed with classic Christmas treats – fruitcakes, mincemeat tarts, plum puddings, biscotti, and the fruit bread, panettone. So accustomed to celebrating Christmas during the cold, short days of Canadian winter, I found it disconcerting to envision it amidst Townsville’s tropical heat. But, that didn’t stop me from buying a fruitcake.