The World in the Forest

Sydney is a beautiful city, with endless miles of harbor and rolling hills. You don't have to go far to be immersed in wilderness, even as small boats bob in the water nearby. 

A few days ago I took a bus or two to Spit Bridge, about 30 minutes outside of the city center. It was a bit of an impulse--I had read about the walk from Spit Bridge to Manly on Tripadvisor, and suddenly decided I would do it. At 10 kilometers, it is the most I have walked in a long time, but I convinced myself it would be fine. I packed my sunscreen, a bottle of water, and 3 pounds of unnecessary art supplies and headed off.

I had a hard time finding the start of the path--google maps had me get off the bus a full mile before the actual start--but once there my frustration drained away as I stepped into the forest.

It was an incredible walk, and took me much longer than it said on paper because I kept stopping to look at things.

The walk went up and down the cliffs around the water's edge. After two days of rain, the sun was shining bright, and waterfalls trickled between mossy stones.

I've had this poem stuck in my head the last few weeks, because of the way the sun looks on the trees. It is by Gerard Manley, called "Pied Beauty," and goes:

Glory be to God for dappled things--

 For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

 For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

 Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;

 Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and plough

It ran through my head the entire walk, as I took in the dappled world around me. The path was ever changing, over streams, along the cliffs, through scrubland and forest. Stone steps cut into the rock made it feel like I was walking in ancient ruins left from some forgotten civilization. Every now and then some absurdly fit individual would run by me on the path, decked out in Lycra and tiny water bottles, but for the most part I was alone. I walked leisurely, decadently slow, soaking up the landscape. I imagined I could feel a thylacine, the extinct Tasmanian tiger, watching me through the trees. Lizards were everywhere, the large speckled Australian water dragon, a creature which in the US would only be seen as an exotic pet, if at all.  They were well-camouflaged along the path, sunning themselves on rocks and tree limbs. Look for them in the beams of light. Ever now and then the view suddenly opened up, revealing the cliffs and the ocean.  When I finally made it to the beach town of Manly, I was sad to leave the cool cover of the trees and re-enter civilization.  I took the ferry back across the harbor, bumping and splashing over the waves, back into the heart of the city. Back among the trees, though, a leaf flutters from the canopy to rest on the forest floor, a wave breaks over iron-speckled stones smoothed over a thousand years, a scaly golden eye opens to watch a spinning spider. I know that this other world is waiting just around the corner all in stipple, skies of couple-color, landscapes plotted and pieced.

Sketches of Melbourne

City Skyline

Flinder's Station

View across the Yarra River

The first two are a new method that developed by accident after I messed up painting the sky behind the buildings. I cut that part out and put it over a new painted background, but added five or six strips of paper glued below that so the skyline was slightly elevated above the base paper, giving it a slightly two dimensional look.

I liked it, so I tried it again with the Flinder's Station drawing.

One of the best parts of drawing so much on this trip is having the time to make mistakes and see what comes out of it. I don't think I would have thought to cut out the skyline and put it on a new background like this on purpose. It was only once I had made a mistake and was trying to salvage a picture I otherwise liked that it came to me.

Must try again soon!

Melbourne, 3:47 am

I can't sleep at the right times.

The last few nights I have woken up in the small lost hours, peering into the dark, afraid, and not knowing why.

Today I wandered the streets of Melbourne, surrounded by a thousand people, felt lonely. This happens at times. I get to a place and once there don't know what to do. What comes next? 

Hands are poised over the keyboard but nothing happens. Want to delete this because people read it, want to keep it because that was never my intention, shouldn't change things.

I've been trying to draw landscapes. Cityscapes. Making bold lines. No room for hesitation there. 

Once, years ago, someone asked me what I was willing to claim for myself, and I cried. I've been trying to use words like artist and writer without parentheses around them, but it is hard. Clauses and caveats pull at my mouth, the need to minimize lurks nearby, a crocodile in the water. 

Why can't I sleep? 

My mind as the nocturnal section they have in zoos, where the lights are dimmed low and small desert creatures move just out of sight. A background of insects buzzing, a smooth slithering, the puff of air from an owl's wing, behind you and then gone. 

Once daylight comes, finally asleep, it is like being deep in the earth. To wake one must pull oneself through the bedrock, the heavy soil. A daunting task, best to just stay down there a little longer. The night animals are finally quiet, curled up in their burrows beside you, tails tucked over their noses. Take advantage of it.

This sounds worse than it is, the crocodile said.

Its true that it is only temporary, it hasn't been like this until now, just the last few days. It will pass. 

The trees here are a pale cream color with spots of gray and brown where the bark has peeled off. The trunks look like a painting of sun coming down through leaves, dappled spots of shadow and light. That view you get when you look up through forest canopy, but re-imagined on the tree itself. I think of this every time I walk by one, the forest painted on the tree. Have been meaning to write it down for days.

There, its done. 

Good night, good morning.

Cleland Wildlife Park - Australia

Subash and I are in Australia! We spent the first week in Adelaide and now moved on to Melbourne. We will be traveling around here and New Zealand for the last of our trip.

Australia has been fun so far. The money is waterproof and everyone wears flip-flops.

Between South Africa and Australia I am getting spoiled by amazing animals. Australia, of course, has it's own unique set of creatures that have evolved separately from those on other continents, namely marsupials. Marsupials here are in the family "Macropodidae," meaning "large foot." 

It is worth looking up the "Australian megafauna," as there were a lot of crazy giant marsupials living here that went extinct in the last ~100,000 years, including a marsupial lion, carnivorous kangaroo, and a kangaroo that was 10 feet tall.

Outside Adelaide is the Cleland Wildlife Park, which is itself inside a large conservation area. The park is basically a free range zoo, where the animals are kept in large open enclosures, and you can generally walk around them at your leisure. 

Our first attempt at getting to the park wasn't so great, and a good example of When Traveling Fails. There haven't been too many of these on our trip, but they do happen.

I used google maps to help plan the proper bus route to get to Cleland, which is about 40 / 50 minutes outside the city. We were already frustrated that day, for reasons I can't remember anymore, and took a couple wrong buses within the city and then waited for a while for the next "right" one to come along. It was a chilly day, and as the bus climbed up the surrounding hills got colder and rainier, which neither of us was prepared for.

We got off the bus where Google indicated, along with a single old woman, in the middle of nowhere. The bus pulled away before we realized just how empty it was. A sign that I thought might be for the park was actually for one of the entrances to the giant conservation area around it.

We chased down the old lady to ask which way to the wildlife park and were told that we were nowhere near it, and then it started to rain.

There was nothing else to do but wait for a return bus. There were no time tables posted and the phone number on the bus sign wouldn't go through. The rain and wind came harder. 

We huddled inside the small tin lean-to at the bus stop for over an hour before another bus came by in either direction. Defeated, we took it back to the city and went home.

It was a miserable day, except for the parts where it got SO miserable that it became funny.

I did some more research on the REAL bus and we tried again the next day.

We took two buses and a shuttle, and finally made it to the Cleland Wildlife Park. They sell little bags of animal food for $3, which you can actually hand feed to the kangaroos and bandicoots. We stepped through the gate and bam! Australian animals!

I approached the first kangaroo very slowly, stopping about 5 feet away with my hand out holding some food. I was so afraid of scaring them, and of their powerful legs / giant claws. It turned out they are so used to being fed, though, that they don't even bother to get up and come to you! You have to bring it right up to their mouths.

Their mouths were very soft and fuzzy!

They have a number of different kinds of kangaroos in the park separated by different fences and gates you can walk through. Some had little joeys! They were amazing to see up close. I knew they used their tail somewhat when moving, but never realized that they actually put their weight on it like another leg when walking around. Their tails are so muscular to support the body weight and help keep their balance. Apparently this is called "pentapedal locomotion." 

Their hind feet were also like nothing I've ever imagined. It looked like three toes, with the center one highly elongated. I looked it up and it turns out the first toe is generally missing, the second and third toe are fused, the fifth is small, and so it is the fourth that is the long powerful one.

And their front paws like little hands.

I can't believe I was able to get this close to them! No zoom required.

All throughout the park were also little potoroos, an animal I had never heard of before. 

In the animal-feeding zones there were also emu!

They looked so much like raptor dinosaurs, it was slightly spooky to watch them walk around. I wouldn't want to get kicked by those feet, and feeding them was a little scary.

The park also had Tasmanian devils,

wombats, wallabies, bandicoots, monitor lizards, as well as a huge number of birds, including the biggest pelican I have ever seen.

There were also dingoes, which were so cool! They are a beautiful orange color. We happened to be there at their feeding time, and got to watch this young woman with possibly the coolest job ever feed them raw chicken.

Last but not least, in a separate area, fenced off from people, were koalas!

They have two opposable "thumbs" instead of one, and also have fingerprints.

I was reading about them afterwards and they have almost comically tiny brains. It has one of the smallest brains in proportion to its size of any mammal, and it only takes up 60% of the actual skull space. The rest is just fluid! Possibly it's tiny brain is due to its extremely specified diet of mostly eucalyptus leaves, which aren't really that nutritious and are also toxic. Bonus fact for your next dinner party: koalas can get chlamydia, and the unfortunately acronymed KIDS, Koala Immune Deficiancy Syndrome, similar to AIDS in humans. 

Can you imagine being one of the first foreign people to come to Australia and see all of these animals??? It must have blown their minds, they must have thought they were dreaming.

We had a great time at Cleland. Going in to it I was a little nervous about the fact that you could feed some of the animals---I wanted to do it, but I didn't want to support something that was harmful or taking advantage of them. In the end, though, I think the park has a good handle on this. You are not allowed to get close to some of the more uncommon and rare animals like the Tasmanian devils and dingoes, and they are careful about how much their animals are close to people and their stress levels, including limiting some if the day is too hot.

It was wonderful to see the kangaroos close up!! I do hope to see some in the actual wild, but I loved being able to get right next to them and see their various features.

How strange to feed a kangaroo!

I can't wait to see what else Australia will bring.