Clay Gully

by Sally van Gent

  With a sudden rustle of feathers the magpie alights on my shoulder. He’s clearly mesmerised by this creature, too small to be a dog but without the necessary ears to be a rabbit. I continue to follow the path through the trees with a dog on one arm and the bird on the other, staring into each other’s eyes in fascination. Just as we reach the gate the magpie flies off.

  Now I call out whenever I see a magpie and sometimes it turns out to be ‘my’ bird. He follows me, fluttering from tree to tree along the side of the path. When I reach the big dam he flies down to sit on my shoulder, where he stays until I finish my circuit of the bush. Just as I reach the gate at the end of my walk he flies away, perhaps because our property is another bird’s territory.

  There are twenty-four different apple tree cultivars that need to be labelled in a way that can be easily seen. At first I buy plastic tags and push them into the ground next to the trunks, but they’re soon displaced by large kangaroo feet. Then I try hanging the tags in the trees, but once summer comes they’re too difficult to find amongst the foliage. Finally, after looking around the recycling shop at the local tip, I return home with two old venetian blinds. When cut into good-sized lengths and written on in pencil, they make perfect labels.

  One morning there’s a hare in the orchard. I always assumed hares were just like large rabbits, but this is a far more impressive animal. For a moment I mistake it for a dog. This is partly because of its size but also because of the way it runs rather than hops. It stops just long enough for me to see that its enormous ears are tipped with black. I know hares will strip the bark from the young trees, so now something must be done to protect them.

  I see that the professional apple growers in the Harcourt Valley use insulation paper, blue on one side and silver on the other. I buy a large roll and spend the next two mornings taping pieces of it around the trunks of the trees. For a few weeks that seems to solve the problem. Then I spot a magpie attacking one of the new guards, apparently attracted to its shiny surface. Within a few days most of the paper rolls are in tatters and little pieces of foil are blowing all over the orchard. Maybe they don’t have magpies in Harcourt.

  After removing the damaged guards I fasten them back on to the trees with the intact blue paper on the outside. For a while that seems to work. Then one night there’s a big storm with driving rain, and the next day the paper is a soggy mess. Nick suggests I use plastic gutter guard and fasten it to the trees with a long stapler. Obviously this material is waterproof and it shouldn’t attract the magpies either.

  It isn’t until early summer that I begin to notice guards lying on the earth beside the trees. More fall off every day and it seems I can’t have fastened them on firmly enough. I staple them back in place and then work my way through the entire orchard, reinforcing the remainder. Within days they are all lying on the ground again.

  Walking through the orchard, I notice that just ahead of me two powerfully built crow-like birds are strutting between the trees. They’re grey currawongs. As I watch, one of the birds suddenly pushes its heavy beak inside a tree guard and forcefully rips the staples loose. When the plastic drops to the ground the other bird hurries across to join its partner, and together they fall upon the spiders and beetles which have made the dark interior of the guard their home. Now I know what’s happening, so this time I tie the strips back onto the trees with hay-bale twine. And there they remain.

  In late winter we add another six rows to the orchard. The final 100 trees will go in next year. After considering our water situation we decide to plant a variety of Australian natives suitable for cut flowers. We have been told there is likely to be a strong market for them, and they could provide additional income.

  Between the apple trees we grow dainty pink wax flowers interspersed with pimelea. That has dark leaves on interesting, hairy white stalks, making it useful in flower arrangements. At Christmas the persoonias produce long heads of yellow flowers on spruce-like foliage. The tea-tree bushes at the bottom of the orchard are spectacular in springtime when they are covered with a mass of lavender flowers.

  In the front garden rosellas feed on the native hibiscus. Crested pigeons and wattlebirds drink from the fountain and a Pacific black duck dabbles at its base.

  In the early spring the front paddock becomes a nursery as young joeys take their first steps outside the pouch. Soon they race round in circles on gawky legs, before returning to their mothers for another feed.

  Until now, when I thought of a baby kangaroo, I always envisaged a sweet little face peeping out of a pouch. I didn’t realise how much joeys wriggle around inside. It can’t be easy for their mothers to suddenly have to manage an extra tail or pair of legs.

  I am thrilled to have large wild animals in my backyard. When I was growing up in England, there were only the blue tits and robins which drank from the old church font my mother used as a birdbath. Seeing brilliantly coloured parrots in the garden, I still feel as if I’m at the zoo.

  In a gust of wind five brown-headed honeyeaters flutter down like falling leaves into the tecoma bush beside the bedroom window. They’ve come for the nectar hidden inside its showy orange trumpets. Every morning I hear the piping call of the eastern spinebill, so loud and piercing for such a small bird. He swoops down to the low-growing correa bushes, where he dips his fine curved beak into their pink and cream bells. Then he, too, visits the tecoma flowers, but in a few brief moments he’s gone and won’t return until the same time tomorrow.

  Every few days I find an eggshell in the grass. I know our neighbour keeps chickens and I’m concerned. Reuben regularly patrols our boundary. He may have somehow found his way into the henhouse and helped himself to a few treasures. At other times there’s a golf ball lying in the orchard or on the driveway. Apparently one of our neighbours has been practising his strokes, indifferent to where the ball might land. I feel rather indignant. We shall have broken windows next.

  One bright morning I take José, my chihuahua, for a walk. As usual he’s doing his bizarre steeplechasing thing, galloping crosswise through the orchard and leaping over each mounded row in turn. Just ahead of us a currawong is busily working at some item of food with his powerful beak. Resenting the intrusion, he hops a little distance away as I look to see what he’s been eating. There in the grass is half a golf ball. I suddenly realise I have discovered both a golf ball and an egg thief. Currawongs are wily birds but they obviously aren’t able to differentiate between a ball and a hen’s egg.

  We live in Box Ironbark Forest. The bark of the box trees is pale and flaky, but the tough ironbarks have deep fissures and are so dark you could think they had been through a bushfire. At the highest corner of the orchard stands a huge gum tree, a yellow box. It’s very different from the surrounding red and grey boxes. The leaves of this towering tree are small and held in delicate cloudy fronds against the sky. Deep in a cleft in its trunk lives a swarm of wild bees.

  All around the house, birds are nesting. Right by the back door a pair of silvereyes builds a home in the climbing grape ivy. Soon there are three blue-green eggs in the nest. The birds are indifferent to our presence and even barking dogs don’t seem to bother them.

  The fairy wrens make their nest in the dense centre of the banksia rose by the side gate. Not long after they raise their first family they begin the whole process again, this time among the blue flowers of the plumbago bush at the back of the house. Early one morning three tiny babies fly the nest but don’t know how to escape from the shadecloth-covered verandah. The adult birds call plaintively to them from their perch on a wattle bush in the back garden, but to no avail. Finally I cup my hands around each fluttering baby and carry it up the steps to its waiting parents.

  Just behind the house the white winged choughs work together to build their nest. The birds carry mud from the top dam to a red box tree, where they form a smooth clay bowl in the fork of two horizontal branches. Although only one bird lays the eggs, they all take it in turns to sit on the nest and feed the
young when they hatch. The family continues to use this sturdy bowl for several seasons before it eventually crumbles away. The swallows use mud too, to make their nest under the wooden eaves of the front verandah. They swoop over the orchard catching tiny flies on the wing, and return to feed their nestlings every two or three minutes.

  The spotted pardalotes, tiny and brilliantly coloured, make their nest each year in a tunnel they have dug between the sleepers on the verandah. Completely unafraid, the birds perch on the vine just above our heads while we are eating dinner. They dive down behind our chairs to deliver butterflies and moths to their babies hidden below the garden bed.

  Les, my friend and helper, prunes the plants in the front garden. When he begins work on the purple buddleia bush he narrowly avoids cutting off a pigeon’s tail.

  It’s been raining heavily and the grass is lush and long. Since what I think of as my ‘Great Snake Experience’ I am deathly afraid of stepping into long grass. One afternoon I had taken my elderly mother to the sewage works. That may seem strange, but she’s a nature lover and all kinds of interesting birds congregate there. We walked along a narrow path which gradually became more and more overgrown and I knew it was time to turn around.

  At that moment I felt something move against my leg at the front of my thigh. I glanced down and was horrified to see the body of a large brown snake protruding from the hem of my jeans. By instinct I flicked my leg forward, forcibly ejecting the thick coils into the air. The snake made its escape and disappeared into the undergrowth.

  I could hardly believe what I had seen, but when I turned to my mother in amazement, I saw her face had turned a pasty white and I knew it had really happened. Two thoughts came to me. Firstly, that it’s dangerous to move after being bitten as that hastens the spread of the venom. Second, that nobody knew we were there and my mother wouldn’t be able to go for help alone. Although I felt no pain, I wasn’t sure whether it was possible to be bitten by a snake without feeling it. I ripped down my jeans, searching for a bite mark. There was none. Trembling, I took my mother’s arm and carefully avoiding the patches of long grass, we stumbled back to the car.

  Afterwards I wondered why I had been spared. Perhaps it was nature’s way of repaying me for all the small animals, beetles and spiders I’d rescued over the years. Later I thought of the more prosaic possibility that the snake would have needed to draw back its head before striking and there wasn’t enough space for that inside my jeans.

  Keen to keep the grass short in the orchard, I spend three happy days sitting on the mower enjoying the sweet smell of hay drying in the sun. This is easy work. I delight in the appearance of the neat green avenues being created, as perfect as any retiree’s lovingly attended patch of lawn. I can’t mow close to the trees because of the low hanging branches and the wildflowers growing along the rows. Here the grass is long and is interspersed by tough reeds and the occasional Scotch thistle.

  Once the mowing is completed I spend the next few days down on my knees pulling out great piles of weeds. After a while I realise that if I don’t get some assistance, by the time I reach the last row the grass will have regrown in the first. There’s a man who does garden work who agrees to come and help me. Now I have someone to chat to while I’m weeding, and within a day or so we reach the final rows. Deep in thought, I am tugging at an especially tough reed when I hear a sudden cry. My fellow worker runs towards me, his face ashen. After he regains his breath, he tells me that he pulled out a dense clump of grass only to find a very surprised brown snake in it’s midst. Fortunately neither man nor snake came to any harm.

  I’ve bought a book of Scott Joplin rags. They are difficult to play but I’m determined to master them. It’s a beautiful spring morning and I should be outside thinning the fruit right now, but first I sit down at the piano for another attempt at playing ‘The Entertainer’. Our aging shorthaired pointer, Coby, likes to follow me into the orchard. She lies under the shade of a nearby tree and watches me while I’m working.

  Now she sighs once before coming to sit beside the piano. She’s patient for a while, but when I turn the pages and begin to play another favourite, ‘The Rose Leaf Rag’, she lets out a small plaintive cry, for she wants to be outside. Lost in the music, I don’t notice when she lies down and shuffles under the piano. That is, until I next try to use the pedal. There is the firm pressure of a paw on top of my foot and I know it’s time to go to work.

  Her mouth is highly sensitive. We often eat fried rice with chopped vegetables, and Coby enjoys the leftovers. The only problem is that they contain peas and she hates them. After taking each mouthful she sorts through the rice and drops a few, perfectly cleaned, back into her bowl. In the autumn, when I walk with her up to the far dam, she stops briefly at a small blackberry bush growing there to eat the fruit. It’s covered with ferocious thorns but she delicately nips off each berry without being pricked.

  Spring moves into summer and at the end of a very hot day I need to run the irrigation for a while. Some time later when I go to check, I notice one of the drippers has blown off and water is arcing through the air. Immediately beneath it a grey crested pigeon is lying motionless on its side. One wing is pointing upwards, only moving slightly when it’s caught by the wind. I hurry off to find a replacement dripper, wondering what has killed the bird and why a fox hasn’t taken it away. Upon my return I’m amazed to see that the ‘dead’ pigeon has now been joined by two others. They are all lying closely together in a row. Each one has a wing outstretched, carefully directing the cool water into its ‘armpit’.

  The water has run for long enough and now that it’s almost dark I go down to turn off the irrigation. In the twilight I can dimly make out the shape of a kangaroo in the lower orchard. At the head of each row of pipes I stop to turn off the handle to the valve. I do this efficiently—walk, bend, turn, walk, bend, turn—engrossed in the familiar task. Three rows from the bottom I bend, turn, straighten up, and there in the next row a huge male kangaroo is standing directly in my path. I stop dead and we look into each other’s eyes. We are both in shock.

  His face is beautiful, kindly, but now I look at the enormous black claws held close to his chest, and I’m afraid. I lower my eyes and turn my face from him. One frozen moment later, he slowly turns and quietly lopes away.

  A line is drawn across the upper paddock and although it’s invisible, I know exactly where it runs. Above it the white-winged choughs are free to move as they will in their search for food, but below it is magpie territory. Once the choughs cross over the border they’re in danger of attack.

  For a while the birds spread out and run around like chickens, digging into the soil in their search for bugs or seed. When a bird finds something good to eat, it runs to one of the two waiting fledglings and pops it into its beak. The whole family shares in the care of these youngsters.

  Then they’re spotted by a magpie that swoops down on them aggressively. The choughs, however, don’t seem particularly concerned and the attacker soon flies away. A few minutes later it returns with its partner and together they harass the little clan by repeated dive bombing.

  It seems one magpie is manageable but two magpies are not. Whistling loudly, the birds cluster tightly together in a circle with wings outspread and tails bobbing. The magpies land on the ground beside them. Single file, the red-eyed gang is frog-marched back up the hill with the magpies close at its heels. Once the birds cross over the invisible line the magpies immediately turn back, leaving the choughs in peace, until next time.

  Over summer our young saplings double in size. Then comes autumn and high winds blow away the browning leaves. In another month the trees are dormant. It’s time to prune and to dig in fertiliser for next season.

  Towards the end of winter, Nick fastens a wooden nesting box to a tree at the edge of the orchard. We’re hoping the eastern rosellas will find it. They’re such stunning birds with their red, yellow, green and blue plumage. I check the box regularly but when spring comes, no
birds have taken up residence.

  Then as I walk past the big tree early one morning, I have a feeling of being watched. Glancing up, I see a tiny striped head and two bright eyes peering out at me. It’s a sugar glider. For a few moments he studies me seriously, and then he returns to his sleep in the dark depths of the box. That evening I return just as the last light is fading, and I’m rewarded by the sight of three of the tiny, fairylike, creatures. They’re having a wonderful time chasing each other up and down the trunk of the big yellow box tree.

  PART TWO

  Bramleys, Bees and Button Quail

  One evening, just after the apple blossom has begun to open, Michael the beekeeper arrives with three hives. He comes at dusk, having waited for the bees to return home from their daytime foraging, and places the hives at the top of the orchard near the yellow box tree.

  Some time later he returns in daylight. On his head he wears a veil and he gives each hive a puff of smoke to calm the bees. I stand at a safe distance, watching with interest. Michael lifts out the frames carrying the honeycomb, searches for the queens and checks to see how much honey has been made. He wears a long-sleeved shirt, but soon several bees disappear inside his cuff and proceed to walk up his arm. Periodically he gives a little cry and swats at his sleeve, remarking that the stings are always more painful early in the season.