NORTH TO THE SUN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 779, 25 June 1954, Page 30

NORTH TO THE SUN

by

SUNDOWNER

JUNE 8

ROM Sydney to Rockhampton a wild shout greeted our train as often as we passed groups of workmen. In some cases it was a demand for newspapers. Sometimes it was mere ribaldrya half-contemptuous challenge to change places. Usually, however, ‘itiwas exuber-

ance and ‘fiftle else-a happy bellow from unin-

hibited men living -and working "in the sun. Australians ~don’t | subject themselves to the stresses and strains we impose on ourselves in New Zealand. They . are " looser-tongued, Socially less self-conscious. If they run to latrikinism more rapidly than we do, they know better,than. we: do how. to rest half At this poihty if P2were preaching a sermon, I would give a back-handed slap at the boisterousness that is merely impertinence and vulgarity. But this is a sentimental jéurney, and I have not found it all unpleasant to be jeered as well as cheered on my way for a thousand Snner. *: O far 5 have not seen so many birds as I expected to find in Capricornia, nor have many of them been exciting to look at. The most arresting, both to eye

JUNE 15

and ear, have been the crows, which, because their call is so ridiculously unlike any sound you expect a bird to

make, I find endlessly fascinating. But only their feathers are beautiful.

Their flight is clumsy, afd they seem to belas happy searching for, carrion among the mangroves as for ‘fruit in gardens and orchards. When they appear, and perform, there is, of course, nothing more fascinating than a pair of kookaburras, but most of those I have seen so far were in the dead timber we passed in the train, and I have only once heard a performance at close range. It was by a solitary bird, sitting on a power pole above a railway station where it had to compete with the steam escaping from the engine. _ I suppose the wrens and wagtails come next on my list, the first because of their beautiful colour, and both because of their captivating movements. But I have spent a good deal of time watching the swallows, not only in flight, but clinging to the eaves of houses and the verandah ceilings of city shops: Though it is now technically winter here, the weather is so warm that the migration of the swallows has not yet taken place

-if it ever does take place in this latitude. To see the parrots and the cockatoos, the honey-eaters, the whip-birds, the eagles, brush turkeys and lyre birds, I shall have to move farther inland; farther in some cases than I shall ever get; but I am disappointed that I have not yet seen any of the larger water birds, though I am living at present

above a tidal creek, with a view across miles of mangrove swamps. I have, however, seen a flight of big bats (flying foxes) emerging from one of these swamps, but the-light was not good enough to show them clearly, There is one bird that has not disappointed me. I heard him in the night (continued on next page)

JUNE 17

from the train, listened to him every night in Brisbane, and here in Gladstone he wakes me long before daylight. Sometimes his voice is shrill, and I know then that he is from Leghorn or Minorca or Hamburg. Sometimes it is rumbling and low, and I don’t have to wait | for the light to show me an Australorp or a Rhode Island Red. But it is often short, broken, cheeky and breathless, and I know then that I am listening to | a bantam and a gawky cockerel, and feel | very much at home. a * * WAS not long in Australia before I | found myself looking at the post-and-rail fences and wondering how much longer they would stand. Already many of them must be a hundred years old, or older, since they date roughly from the | discovery of gold and the desertion of

the stockmen and shepherds. It is a long stretch ef time in the country of

white ants, since even hardwood does not last forever. Some of these fences are, of course, derelict, few are quite sound; and some are mere ruins buried in scrub. But I would give a good deal to have one of the better preserved Stretches running round by own boundary. The history of fencing is everywhere | obscure. When we consider what enclosures have done in the new world as well as in the old, the social upheavals they have precipitated and the blood they have often started flowing, it is sur-_ prising that we have so easily forgotten their origins. I have only to look back 60 years to see farmers turning out at daybreak to cut a fence and coming to blows with other farmers assembled on | the line to prevent them. It has happened a hundred times in New Zealand, and must have happened a thousand times on these post-and-rail barriers in Australia. But the records have been lost and forgotten. It was a student of the Middle Ages who put life for me into the stone fences of Yorkshire. I would like to meet an Australian who could throw as much light on posts and rails, (To be continued)