July 2011 - Coming home
Ever since I read the book and watched the movie “Storm Boy” I’ve wanted to visit the Coorong.
The appeal was not only the emotion aroused by the boy and the pelicans, but the wildly beautiful scenery that was one of the highlights of the movie.
Years have passed and our travels have never taken us that far south, and then for the last few years the stories of the devastation in the area dulled my desire.
I knew that I didn’t want to see it when it was down and out.
However, this year suddenly everything was working for us.
We were going on another trip on the Murray, this time not that far from Lake Alexandrina, and the rains and floods have brought the Coorong back to life.
So it was with great anticipation that we left the Murray after another week of spectacular scenery and great dining and camaraderie and headed south.
The sunny weather of the previous week had suddenly turned and squalls of rain, quite unlike anything we have here in the Valley, buffeted the car and obscured our vision.
We retreated into the little cottage we had rented on the shores of Lake Albert and snuggled in front of the fire with our friends from Adelaide.
As soon as the sun looked as though it might be around for a while we headed down to the dunes of the Coorong.
The wild weather allowed the estuary to be seen at its most dramatic, with wind-swept waves turning the white sand and bush-covered dunes into shades of grey and purple.
We were hoping to see the famed pelicans and we needn’t have worried.
They were there in their hundreds, completely oblivious to people, unlike those on the Murray and seemingly twice as large.
They looked pretty miserable though as they buried their heads against the cold wind, which blew their feathers almost vertical, giving them a comical, spike-haired appearance.
They couldn’t retreat inside but we could, so we left them to the wild beauty of their home and returned to the warming beauty of our fire. It was not quite the vision of the Coorong I’d been anticipating, but it was one that showed the drama of a truly wild place and I’m pleased I have been able to see it that way.
However the sun shone brilliantly for the short time we visited the mouth of the Murray.
It shone on the swirling waters as they gushed through the sandbanks and out to sea.
Water from the sea would, in turn, run back in; it was this that was needed to keep alive the ecosystem of the Coorong, so at least for the moment that magnificent habitat is safe and the Murray is showing its might again.
Weather also upset our plans to visit Lake Mungo National Park on the way home, as 16mm of rain had closed the roads into the Park.
We embarked on yet another crossing of the Hay Plain, where we unexpectedly found more beauty of a dramatic kind: a 360° sky, hung low to the horizon with heavy black clouds.
The land was just an incidental, a tiny fraction of the total picture, there simply to increase the power of that enormous sky.
We crept our way humbly across the landscape, feeling even smaller than we really were.
We had seen some truly dramatic scenery on this trip; we had seen the power of nature in the force of the Murray bringing life back to the Coorong and in the storm clouds over the Hay Plain, but as we drove kilometre after kilometre across half the breadth of Australia I started reflecting how few places we had seen that shared the beauty of our own Valley.
We have our own drama here in the tortured carving of our escarpments and the mountainous cones that rise up from the valley floor, but it is a drama encased in a curtain of cushioning green that produces a breath-taking gasp of pleasure in those observing it.
As we neared home and passed Fitzroy Falls I found myself waiting eagerly for the first sight of the Valley; whether it would be soft, green pastures or woolly, white mist hardly mattered. When these sights are seen everyday we tend to take them for granted; it is often through the eyes of visitors that we are reminded how truly beautiful the Valley is.
It only takes a relatively short absence to reignite our senses and see the Valley again as though it were a first time experience.
However, our familiarity with it all adds something extra: a sharpness of appreciation together with a feeling of knowing, of belonging. The tree ferns alongside the road grew taller and denser as we wound down the mountain, waving their fronds as we passed in welcome to their domain.
The volcanic mounds stood proud and clear in the crisp autumn air, a constant no matter what atmospheric conditions were thrown at them. Sun warmed the mellow scene; the cattle watched our passing unconcernedly.
The feeling of peace was stronger here than the feeling of drama.
We were pleased to be home.