Possum Galore
A life ‘Down Under’!
Kingscliff.
So…a few weeks ago we went away to the coast for a few days. It was the school holidays and Will had some time off work so we wanted to do something different. We stayed in Kingscliff in apartment in a large Spa Hotel. We were there four nights. Will was still working on his soundscapes for the upcoming exhibition in Wagga Wagga so I spent the first day walking on my own. I walked down the beach to Cabarita Beach and out onto the headland and did some whale watching as Humpback Whales are moving up the coast at this time of year to the warmer waters off the north east coast of Australia. The next day Will and I had a day together exploring Hastings Point and Pottsville where we saw a Koala and a colony of bats. After that I ended up with awful food poisoning or some such bug and after a truly awful night I needed a day to recover in bed. It really knocked me for six and spoiled the break a little. I had to take some time off work when we got home but am feeling better now.
Stanthorpe Art Prize 2026.
So…the latest exhibition at the Stanthorpe Art Gallery is the Stanthorpe Art Prize which is held every two years. Here are some of the exhibits this year…
A weekend in the Bunyas.
So…the weekend before last we went on a sour of the moment camping trip to the Bunya Mountains. It is about a four drive from where we live. We set off on the Friday afternoon and got there after dark and set up our tent at Dandabah camping area. It wasn’t our first time here as we had stayed here years before in 2013 during the Christmas holidays.
We woke on the Saturday to a very misty morning. The ranger came to check on us and siad it would probably burn off, which it did. We spent Saturday walking in the rainforest among the great Bunya pines. Aboriginal mobs would travel for miles in years past to gather here, collect the bunya nuts and feast.
We did the Pine Gorge Lookout walk in the morning then the circuit out to Paradise and Barker Creek Lookout in the afternoon. At sunset we climbed Mount Kiangarow but the sun was setting too far north to see it from there so we went to try and catch it at Koondaii lookout but there was too much cloud on the horizon.
We were wakened in the early hours of Sunday morning to the sound of a dingo howling in the forest. It was a very spooky sound as it echoed amongst the trees and we could here another calling further away in reply. Will got up and managed to get a recording of it. That Sunday morning was the midwinter solstice here.
We packed up and headed home but were glad we had made the effort to go. Walking in the forest and hearing the dingo in the night had just been quite magical!
Oh no!
So…I have a favourite walleroo, Skip. Even after being away for 15 months she remembered me when I came back and came up and fed from a bowl of macropod pellets I was holding. In April we could tell that she had a joey in her pouch which eventually started to pop it’s head out. Once it was peeping out we could tell it was a female because of it’s light grey colouring. Most recently we have seen it starting to climb out of the pouch altogether but in the last week Skip has been visiting alone. I had hoped that the baby was hidden nearby but it now appears that Skip has lost it. We have not seen it for nearly a week now. I can only think it could have been taken by a fox during the night. It is just heartbreaking but that’s the way of things in the bush.
We’re going on a swan hunt!
So…last weekend we set off to hunt black swans.
Will has an art exhibition coming up in Wagga Wagga in August and one of his audio pieces is about the ‘swan hoppers’ in that area. The poet and writer Mary Gilmore, who grew up in Wagga Wagga in the 1860’s and 1870’s wrote of the ‘swan hoppers’:
Their work was to hop the swans off the nests in the breeding-season, and smash the eggs. It was filthy work; they reeked of the half-hatched and the addled, and their trousers grew stiffer and stiffer, and filthier and filthier, as the yolks and the whites of the smashed eggs set in the material of which they were made. The old cattle town of Wagga Wagga once had its swan-hoppers on all the stations round about; and the more they stank the prouder they were
They did this because graziers in the area thought the birds were a nuisance, polluting water ways and some of their cattle died from ingesting feathers trapped in the grass. The ‘swan hoppers’ ignored and defied the local indigenous people’s, the Wiradjuri, sanctuary regulations.
We headed off first to Brisbane and then the Gold Coast to find black swans and hopefully to get some recordings from them.
On our first day we explored lakes around Sandgate but saw nothing and spotted our first distant swan at the Kedron Brook Wetlands reserve. After that we found nothing at the Minnippi Parklands so headed on down to the Gold Coast. We stayed near Danger Point in Burleigh and late in the afternoon headed off to Lake Orr at Varsity Lakes to see what we could find there and got lucky! We found a pair of black swans with six cygnets that were used to being surrounded by people and will was able to get some good recordings. We went back again the next morning and found them again for more recordings. We called in at HOTA (Home of the Arts) to look at some exhibitions there and then on our way home stopped off at Pacific Pines Central Park and found another nesting pair of black swans for more recordings. Hopefully Will has all he needs now for his soundscape.
