Full moon, Diggers Rest, Wyndham, Western Australia
Sexual attraction, that indefinable energy, that surfaces silently and generates a force of its own, and much like the moon, has the power to move oceans.
Does one normalize this clinically as a biological instinct?
Or does romanticize this as an unmissable magic carpet ride?
a dawn bird
In response to RDP – Friday – Normal
It’s been a long day today but made easier when a friend sent me texts and pictures of an area I visited for the first time, about two years ago. I felt a pang of nostalgia for that harsh and stunning landscape. Fortunately, I have a colleague who loves this kind of travel as much as I do and when offered work, we are always prepared to go the distance. We both love the nothingness and fullness of the outback experience. She and I were there for just a week but my friend’s swing is longer. Long hours, heat and isolation takes a toll on folks. I know from experience, unless one has experienced this, work and travel of this kind is difficult to explain to others. It is emotionally, physically and psychologically taxing. It brings out a curious dichotomy of vulnerability and strength in people.
I’m behind my work schedule tonight but wanted to reblog my post of that visit. I have fond memories of that trip. We were like excited school girls and it was a long hot drive. I recall we drank litres of water but did not need a comfort break. The heat was intense in November in country that is usually hot at any time of the year.
Oh! how I yearn to be out there again.
Until next time
As always
a dawn bird
In response to YDWord Prompt – Distance– 23 April 2020
I’m not sure whether it is the case what the heart feels, the eye sees or vice versa. Both are applicable to my experience of photography. With camera in hand my world took on new meaning. Solitary in my pursuits, it drew others in. Nothing grounds me as much as the focus on photographing something that catches my eye. When I see something I get a visceral response and photographing it just intensifies the experience of the moment.
West Beach, Esperance, Western Australia
The young fearless surfers at West Beach are a delight to photograph and one of my favourite places to visit in Esperance. I love reflecting how analogous surfing is to life’s journey – the waiting, the patience, the moment of poise when you stand firm on fluid ground and let the wave bring you to shore. And then … you go out to experience the same again.
Grevillea
One of my favourite native shrubs is grevillea. The birds love it too. To my eye they are perfection, each loop, part of the whole.
Pelicans capture my heart as much as sea gulls. Large and ungainly, I love how pelicans descend on water, with the grace of a perfect flight landing.
Town Beach, Exmouth Gulf, Western Australia
When I retire I want just enough money to enable me to travel to this beach on a regular basis. Watching hues tint the sky, at sunrise or sunset, is like watching an artist at work.
Paraburdoo, Pilbara mining region, Western Australia
I love the mining regions of Western Australia. The earth is a rich red, contrasting pale spinifex, ranges and the awesome landscape that demands one is still in it’s presence.
My front garden is laden with roses at certain times of the year and at other times, there are roses. After a rain shower, oh, the perfume!
I use this cape gooseberry encased in the filigree paper like lantern as part of my meditation. When I want to extinguish an undesired behaviour, I envisage new pathways emerging in the delicacy of my brain.
Who can resist the attraction of unconditional love? Not me! This is the day Kovu became part of my son’s family and like a doting grandpawrent, I was there to document family history 🙂
Until next time
As always
a dawn bird
In response to RDP – Wednesday – Visual
Rainbow lorikeet, in my garden
Being home has given me the opportunity to get my house and garden close enough to what I envisaged when I bought the property. I’ve had time to build up my ‘little black book’ and struck gold. I now have a small group of good tradesmen who are able to help me realise my dream.
With most of the internal building renovations done and just painting and window treatments left indoors, I’m enjoying moments in the garden trying to dream up a space that will keep me grounded. I was toying with the idea of getting rid of the big mulberry tree. I get barely a cup of fruit from lower branches and a laden, tall tree is tantalizing to others too, it would seem. Sadly cockroaches love the fruit and when the fruiting season is done, they try and come indoors. I abhor cockroaches enough to contemplate, for a brief moment, to cut down the tree.
Last evening at dusk I heard the rainbow lorikeets outside my study window. They love the mulberry tree. Then I remembered what a serendipitous moment feels like, and it made my heart beat to a new rhythm again.
a dawn bird
In response to RDP – Monday – Flutter
This morning I was up by four am. With autumn chill in the air, I rugged up and enjoyed the silence. I could not have been more at peace nor happier. It took the birds another three hours before their birdsong filled the garden. In the dark I reflected on my numerous trips and found myself smiling at the memories. Although I’ve loved every moment of my work travel, I know the joy will be intensified when I return to these places.
Newman, Pilbara mining country, Western Australia
I took this picture a few years ago. Although spring, it was hot. It always is, up north. I recall the sheer joy of acres of flowers. The purple mulla mulla was blooming by the thousands. And, those red Sturt Pea flowers, take my breath away every time I find a clump of them roadside. In harsh mining country, the joy of finding fields of flowers, is a moment I know will experience again.
The simplicity of walking in seagull footsteps is something I will follow again in three words, sea, sky, solitary. 
I recall finding the most vivid coloured shells north of Broome in Lombadina, an isolated indigenous coastal community of the Bardi people (‘Salt Water People’).
Although I love collecting shells, somehow I could not bring myself to collect shells at this beach. I had a deep sense they belong to the people that live here.
What was amazing, as my friend and I walked along the shore I thought I heard music, the kind one hears in Bali, not as sharp as the gamelan, but similar tinkling sounds. We stopped and listened, puzzled, there was no one else within sight when we realised, as the tide swept out to sea, the music came from the water swishing through the thousands of shells. It was a sound I have never heard before, or since. Oh! how I wish I had taped it on my phone! I’ve been to this beach a few times but never at a time when the tide is receding, so maybe this, too, will be on my list to do.
The Dinner Tree, Derby, Kimberley region, Western Australia
I have sat by the ‘Dinner Tree’ many times, an iconic historic spot in Derby, far north. This is where the drovers would bring cattle along the flats, stop here for their dinner break before heading to the wharf beyond at Derby Jetty. It is a beautiful boab tree. The flats are expansive and the locals seem to use it to get to their fishing spot at the Jetty at sunset. I’ve enjoyed quiet moments here and wondered how alive it would have been with the sounds of cattle and tired drovers, relieved to be resting after a day in Kimberley heat.
Life could not be more simple these days filled with chores and the trickle of work that comes in steadily. The only travel I do is flicking through photographs. There’s so much more to see and do and the impatient Aries in me has to be calmed, sometimes on an hourly basis.
Going through these photographs I found what I was searching for, my nirvana, that feeling of peace and happiness that comes from being at one with Nature.
It’s back to my reality for now.
As always
a dawn bird
In response to Your Daily Word Prompt – Attain – 19 April 2020
Cattle Station, Wyndham, Kimberley region, Western Australia
I love this quote by Thomas Fuller – “Absence sharpens love, presence strengthens it”
A few years ago I went up north and spent a week at a cattle station in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. I was tired of hotel rooms. I wanted to go back to basics and rough it. I was immediately drawn to the horses. The first time our eyes met, I was mesmerised by the intelligence, sensitivity and awareness of these animals. They had this undefinable presence and I was hooked. I took scores of photographs but this one is a favourite. In these beautiful brown eyes I connected with something deeper within me. It was easy to go there. I was no longer alone.
Everything I saw and experienced was a healing moment in my journey. The 4WD river crossings and climbing rocks, where I had to place my trust in strangers, saltwater crocodiles we saw that scared and delighted me, camping under the stars one night, the sounds of brolgas in the dark, the barramundi fishing, the open camp fire with billy tea for breakfast. What an adventure! And as the full moon shone bright, alone in my tent, something shifted in me. The urge was irrepressible. For the first time in 17 years I started to write and shared my work with others. ‘My voice’ had returned. I had returned.
Until then I felt I was alive but did not breathe. Grief has its own subjective expression. Although I was highly functional and successful in every other way, the core of me, my writing, ceased to exist. Among strangers I found family. No longer did I have to be brave and dry eyed. It somehow felt okay to weep in words and, at last, grieve my profound loss. It felt like those around me understood the unspoken. They were respectful and sensitive in moments of silence when I fought for composure and at times, strangers cried with me. My pain, theirs.
I’ve shared this poem elsewhere in my blog but tonight I feel like I want to share it again. I wrote the poem as a tribute to those who were at the Station with me. If I am at peace and accepting tonight, it is because of them.
Stars
As the moon brightened the night,
I walked along the celestial bitumen
I saw stars there, signposts for travellers lost
I saw stars in other places too, that only I could see
Have I been lost?
Did you leave them there for me?
As dawn unveiled the granite ridge
I saw a kapok tree, aglow,
with yellow flowers on bare, brown branches
And at my door, emu and wallaby
Child-like I spied on nature
clutching seedpods in my hand
held my breath watching blue dragonflies land
And, while passing travellers warned,
I experienced life at a billabong
I walked down a dusty path, visible to you, not me
to Mother Boab tree
and at my feet I found stars twinkling
where light and shadow meet
I have been on a silent journey
This time, the million steps became one
when I headed out in someone else’s footsteps
and returned in mine
My fellow travellers, you were not to know
long ago, yet, like yesterday
Grief silenced me
But in the barren night, alone,
not alone
I found something glowed in the Kimberley
It was the stars
The ones you left for me.
a dawn bird
In response to Word of the Day Challenge – Sensitive
I watched a surfer as he watched the sea
right at the edge,
where he stopped contemplatively
he waited for the perfect wave,
that set he could ride
he stood still
watched and waited
for the tide to arrive
He watched the sea, as surfers do
with that surfer’s eye for opportunity
the thrill, the spills and falls
the waiting, the patience,
I saw it all
I stood with him
and faced the sea,
recklessly assessed
the turmoil, the torment,
the uncertainty
And like that lone surfer
who faced a churning sea
I waited patiently
for love to arrive
and overwhelm me.
a dawn bird
In response to RDP – Friday – Overwhelmed
Cable Beach, Broome, Western Australia
The moon and the sea conspired
and the tide came in with a rush
with nowhere to hide
I stood still
along with Mother Earth
to take it all in
The force of the water was intense
relentless in its pursuit
stopped me in my tracks
and like the ebb and flow of tides
the force lead me back, to where I had been
In the ivory tower, I let the silence infiltrate
in that space of disquiet
as I watched the scaffolding break away
and crash around me when,
the sledge hammer blows stopped
The clarity of reality is never easy
it takes a brave heart to know this
so I dared to go where angels fear to tread
and I now know
I am braver for having done this
the timing has been impeccable,
breathtaking even
there is no escaping my truth
still standing is not my catchcry
it was never my destiny
but standing still, is
This moment in time may be fleeting
or it may be longer
so experiencing it, as is, a necessity
it gives me clarity to a new reality
My path may be forged in silver
and tactile as silk
but the delicacy of the filigree
lies in the Force
that made me stand still.
a dawn bird
In response to RDP – Monday – Impeccable
Esperance Bay, Esperance, Western Australia
It’s all about pace
each step forward
same as the one before
gets one there
as intended.
a dawn bird
In response to Pic and a Word Challenge – Running – #226
The colour of yellow is sometimes used to welcome loved ones home. The colour has given me a new way of looking at current circumstances.
As a frequent traveller in this large State that covers a third of the continent, the whole of Western Australia has been my home for some years now. Although my work continues with technology, I’m feeling the sudden cessation of being isolated from nature as I knew it.
Pacific gull, Esperance, Western Australia
In Esperance, south east of Perth, I would spend my three mornings a month at the Bay with birds, dolphins and seals.
Miner, Kununurra, Western Australia
In the far north, East Kimberley region, I was alone in Hidden Valley (Mirima National Park), just outside Kununurra one afternoon, enjoying a quiet moment in the car when this miner bird buzzed my car so aggressively I had to move. It taught me to respect territory and space.
In the eastern Wheatbelt town of Merredin, my mornings were among the tall gum trees at a reserve where red tailed cockatoos were raucous enough to silence the usually vocal wattle bird. The lesson here, perhaps, there are times for some to speak and others to listen.
From my Midwest hotel window I enjoyed my coffee with a white plumed honey eater with a delightful yolk yellow head. I think this one was still a young one as it waited patiently for a feed to be brought to it. Patience is key!
What I miss the most is the soft butter yellow spinifex of the Pilbara outback, where in the harshest environment, my heart is receptive and vulnerable. That hasn’t changed. I found I can also experience this in a city, encased in bricks and glass.
Waking to the scent of frangipani outdoors on always warm mornings in the mining towns of the Pilbara, will be a memory. The scent may fade, not the memory.
One of the most rewarding aspects of my work is being with children. This was outside a child care centre in the South West. A Dummy Fairy Tree. Children can always make us smile. It is their gift.
Although I’m not a cat person, I found this street art striking. Not far from my neighbourhood, in the days leading to self-isolation a reminder, for a wanderer like me, the yellow brick does lead to home.
Meal with loved ones, March 2020
Little did I know at my last meal with loved ones, what brought us together would lead to a new tyranny of distance, be it less than six feet or thousands of kms.
I am home. And my wish for those who read this post, is the same. May you feel you are home where ever you may be. The world will still be there. When we emerge we will see and experience it again. We will gain new perspectives. That’s a place to hope for, and anticipate.
Until next time
As always
a dawn bird
In response to Friendly Friday Photo Challenge – Yellow
I moved into my home about six or seven years ago and have not yet unpacked most of my belongings.
I refuse to give into the blah of changed circumstances and decided this morning to order a bigger skip for next week and start culling. There are suitcases and boxes in the garage to be unpacked, sorted and thrown away. Magazines, recipes books and hundreds of children’s story books have to be sorted. I still have the Tonka Truck I gave my son for his first birthday and can’t bear to part with it 27 years later. Children’s puzzles, old video games, DVD players. Oh! the accumulation of trivia and technology. All will go. Except the Tonka Truck.
I sat on the sofa today and looked around my home. There is so much stuff that can be discarded and I would not miss it.
Willy Wagtail, Bunbury wetlands, Western Australia
I’m hoping during this self-imposed isolation I will catch up on reports and get my home into shape. These are my priorities.
When I moved into this house I promised myself there would be no ‘junk room’. Each room would have a purpose. My home would be a home where I nest. Birds do this well. I plan to do the same.
Until next time
As always
a dawn bird
In response to RDP – Saturday – Habitat
Over Shark Bay, Western Australia
The sea is a sea
nothing more, nothing less
but a glimmer of shore, beyond
a dawn bird
In response to Pic and a Word Challenge #225
Sunset, The Fascine, Carnarvon, Western Australia
Floating between sky and sea
on undulating waves,
this, my reverie
a dawn bird
It is ironic, my last trip (most likely) for the year was to Geraldton where on the outskirts, in the hamlet of Greenough, is the graceful and iconic Leaning Tree. I never fail to stop and take a picture of the tree each time I drive past. It is also ironic that I found a picture that was taken on a gloomy day. It should have dampened my spirit, when the world has changed so drastically. Behind each statistic is a person, a family, a community and the reach of this health and economic crisis, is sobering.
The Leaning Tree, Greenough, Western Australia
Like those who work with people face to face, be it in hospitality or hospital etc, our work lives have changed, at least for the foreseeable future. The news from one agency, midway through my trip, was to cease operations as we know it. On the last day of my work in a new agency, we were advised there would be no work until further notice.
After the initial shock of severe financial restrictions, I did what is promoted as a step to maintaining good well being. In times of crisis return to normalcy as soon as one can. I sat in the quiet of my hotel room and made a list of priorities. I usually make a list at night of tasks that I need to tackle the following day but this list was different. I found I needed to take charge.
The first thing I did was to email the bank and accountant to advise them I would not have my usual income this year. The bank representative did her homework before returning my call. She reassured me all was well on that front and they made some allowances that will be helpful should I need it. It was the biggest relief and allowed me to think more clearly about other matters.
I returned to Perth to empty shops. The mad panic seems to have subsided or perhaps people are staying home, which is a good thing. It felt like I was over-shopping and I had to remind myself I usually shop for a day but now I was shopping for a fortnight.
Like the Leaning Tree growth continues when one is bent, but not broken. I’ve found some positives in going back to basics. It’s all about perspective. 
Hotel room art, Geraldton, Western Australia
Being grounded in reality is one thing, but we can paint and re-paint the picture in broader and brighter strokes. Adults can come up with something more abstract and even when broken and distorted, the picture emerges and one finds meaning in it.
The Rainbow Tree, children’s artwork, school in the Midwest, Western Australia
Children, on the other hand, take from what is familiar and make it their own. I experienced a deep sense of joy when I stood in front of this artwork. All those discarded buttons from old clothing, the vision of a rainbow instead of a bent, old tree. The earth coming up to greet it. To me this is a portrait of a celebration. Oh! the eyes and heart of a child!
So I share three pictures with you today of gloomy reality, abstract thinking and of creativity. I know which one I love best! So I’m channeling my inner child.
I’m going back to where comfort is. I read in posts, most of us are doing this too.
I’m enjoying cooking. I’m stewing fruit. I’m making sauces and pastes. My home smells like a home.
My home is being spring cleaned. All those chores that never find a higher priority are being attended to. I am culling and discarding what I don’t use or need.
There is incense burning and with it, brings a presence. Together, we are one.
My faith has never been stronger as I face an unpredictable financial future.
Take care of yourself and each other. Think of others. Offer a kind word to the elderly who seem so worried and alone. Your smile or gesture may make a world of difference to them. Be the difference.
Anxiety negatively impacts the immune system. Keep calm. Calmness can be contagious too.
Look and read the ‘news headlines’ within. That’s where you’ll find a stronger and resilient you.
As always
a dawn bird
In response to RPD – Saturday – Looking Within
“Paint me a picture!”, she said.
So he did.
He filled the blank canvas with ochre and brown.
They were the only colours his blue eyes knew and loved.
She watched in silence as he painted.
Each stroke flowed, from heart to heart.
a dawn bird
In response to Six Word Saturday
A Shared Space 
You must be logged in to post a comment.