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MARTIN EDMOND -
BLOG / 6TH MARCH 2005
Hawthorne Canal
- Today there was that first faint chill in the air
cold climate people wait for. A cool
- wind whipping horse tails in the otherwise clear
sky. A mix of nostalgia for winters
- past, anticipation for the one to come. Benign,
anyway, in the temperate zone. It
- was also Clean-Up Australia Day. Remote from
community affairs, I did not realise
- this until I watched the evening news on TV. Oh
well. Went for a walk in the
- afternoon, seeking the sea in this inland suburb.
North, I thought. The Dog Park
- I'd heard about. There's a canal running through
Summer Hill, it marks the border
- between the Leichhardt and Ashfield
municipalities. Once it would have been a
- stream but that's more than a hundred years ago by
the look of the sandstock
- blocks with which parts of the canal are lined.
Those neglected areas of a metropolis
- which belong to no-one but the graffitists. That
are not real estate. In parts even
- the tree trunks are tagged. Coming out by the
canal I caught the river scent that is
- so much a part of my childhood. There's no cleaner
smell than clear running water,
- even when it's only a trickle in a concrete drain.
Three sacred ibis were investigating
- the riverine wildlife. Schools of tiny transparent
fish. Blue iridescent flash of a
- kingfisher's wing. Then startling green weed at
what I took to be the intermingling
- of the fresh water and the salt. Two black teal
beating up stream. A white-faced
- heron only feet away, pooling in the shallows. I
ended up in a depot of some kind:
- old bricks, sandstone blocks, newly sawn timber,
bark mulch, a disused bridge.
- Had to climb a hurricane wire fence to get into
the Dog Park. Barefoot all the way
- to the bay without once stepping in the shit.
There was the sea smell. Leaning over
- the side of the bridge leading back to the People
Park I saw strange creatures
- moving through the khaki water of that arm of the
Parramatta River which here
- was surely all salt. Medusas. They looked like
uprooted brownish-grey mushrooms
- the size of a fat-headed man's head, with a stem
trailing stumpy limbs and a kind
- of grilled or gridded cauliflower membrane that
expanded and contracted
- rhythmically as they moved upstream. Images from
the Bridget Riley show I saw
- yesterday at the MCA came to mind ... the Rileys
gave me a headache as well as
- a dangerous sense of the instability of my
perceptual world, but these medusas,
- though grotesque, were calm. There were plovers in
the People Park. The tide
- was creeping up the canal. I saw toadfish in the
shallows, more schools of the tiny
- transparents and then, splash! a big fish jumping.
Don't know what they were—mullet
- perhaps. There were lots of them, heading
downstream to greet the incoming tide,
- undulating in slow waves from side to side in the
canal waters, black from above
- but sometimes showing a startling silver flank. At
the vivid green bit where salt
- and fresh mingled, the smaller medusas that had
made it this far were a delicate
- lavender colour. Another flash of kingfisher wing,
then another. I saw it perching
- in the branch of a tree, the dusty ochre colour
they have on their breast. The
- nightsweet, which has nearly finished where I
live, was here still covered with
- tubular yellow flowers. I imagine the heavy scent
on the air now darkness has
- fallen and only the graffitists are out,
inscribing that almost wilderness with
- their arcana.
-
Martin Edmond's blog Luca Antara is
at http://lucaantara.blogspot.com/
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