A Country Sunday

There’s nothing better than waking up on a crisp country morning to the distant pealing of church bells and a view of green hillsides dotted with newly shorn sheep. This past week we’ve had almost 100mm of rain, just under a sixth of our annual rainfall and the paddocks look as though they’ve been painted in Chrome Green Light. (As an artist who writes - or a writer, who happens to paint - I tend to see the world in terms of paint colours!)

Here’s a picture of my morning view, complete with Monterey pines on the left. A kookaburra sometimes takes up position on one of the dead pine branches, where he scans the ground for movement. Whenever he spots a plump worm emerging from its hole, he swoops on his prey with alarming speed. Then he returns to his perch, awaiting further breakfast treats.

At the bottom of the garden a slow-moving creek is home to our platypus. I use the word ‘our’ loosely because a platypus is the most independent of creatures, living its own life, except, of course, at mating time. In the mornings the platypus will most likely be found in the deepest parts of the creek, diving for yabbies and worms. Because the creature has extremely poor eyesight, it uses its bill to detect movement by way of electric impulses. A kind of platypus’s Morse code. I wonder what delicacies it’s foraged for breakfast today.

Speaking of breakfast ... I’m off to town now to have mushrooms on polenta with shaved parmesan and a cup of Lady Grey tea.

Deborah O’Brien

Sunday, March 3, 2013