The Bush

Weird Creatures and bitumen…

January 23, 2008 / No Comments

One of the fabulous things about living in the bush is “going for a drive” – where the constantly changing “movie guide” of Granite Glen offers better vision that any Jacques Cousteau TV feature. Today I took Dash (5) and Little Woman (3) for a drive in the Prado – both had been driving me quietly insane bickering as I attempted 23 different projects at simultaneously (and consistently failing to complete any).

The drive generally accomplishes a couple of important objectives:

1) To calm my frayed nerves (both hands on a steering wheel and butt in a separate section of the car from the two wee combatants ensures no-one can be successfully throttled!)

2) To calm my wonderful offspring (strapped into their car seats they can no longer attempt to throttle each other)

3) To pick up the mail (a minor but important chore with the said mailbox being over 1km from the homestead)

4) To remind ourselves how gorgeous our chosen home and surrounds really are…

As the house faded from the rear view mirror, and children’s ranting slowly subsided in the back seats, I felt the drug that is the panorama of our property doing its stuff. Fresh green panic grass overflowing from the roadside onto the edge of the red dirt road, huge grey speckled boulders rising from the green pasture like sentries over this age old land, massive white clouds billowing from an eye-squintingly blue sky. Aaahhh…

The bickering in the back had almost faded to silence (and I admit, I hoped towards sleepiness) when there was a grey flash from the corner of the rolling wide screen offering on my windscreen. Flash, flash….

“Mum!!! Look at that!!!” Damn, no afternoon naps on my horizon!

“Mum – its an emu!! Ak–shully its a whole fam–bily“… Little Woman was on the ball…

An entire community of emus were indeed making their way, in their awkward, Jim Carey kind of way, along a fence line. Emus are not normally overly concerned about humans – they seem as cautiously curious about these intruders to their paddocks as my kids were about them.

No-one could accuse these strange ancient-land creatures of being beautiful, but they have a mesmerising appeal with their ponderous stepping, soft brown skirts and darting heads and small, beady black eyes. I grabbed my trusty camera and took a couple of shots…

The place they had chosen to graze/loiter was near a small stretch of bitumen (post to come on this particular phenomenon) and as they goose-stepped across the tar (one by one) the strangeness of the contrast between the ancient-ness of the flightless bird, and the modern-ness of the man-inflicted road engineering occurred to me. An image worth saving perhaps?

Dash was busy demanding his go at the camera (my battered Nikon digital) as I clicked the shutter – I know I shouldn’t let him handle such an expensive bit of equipment but he does LOVE it and even takes some very groovy shots on occasion… Such as:

He can barely lift the heavy camera, but gets a groovy angle, that’s for sure!

After a good half hour of curious interaction, with fights and stress all forgotten, we packed up and headed back home. Full of talk about why emus cannot fly, and did they taste any good! I was unable to answer either earnest question!!!

As I pulled the Prado up at the side gates, I smacked my head on the steering wheel… I had forgotten the mail! Ah well, at least our tempers had been happily salved by our wonderful weird neighbours…

Anyway, must send SSB off to get the mail as I head off and hunt through the fridges for something to offer the emu-spotters.

Cheers

Bush Babe

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