Today the weather turned cold, with strong westerly winds blowing away the last of the leaves off our deciduous trees. Mount Warning and the ranges were blue today, darker shades of blue in the morning and lightening in colour as the day progressed.
I took photos of the mountain, ranges and valley from the front of my house today. Our land slopes down from the road, so the closer to the front boundary I walk, the wider the view of the valley I can see. From the top of the hill, I took a wide photo of the view before me. Once I had cropped out the roof of our house, the photo shows more of the expanse of the ranges to the south.
And a photo shoot of Mount Warning isn’t complete without a close up!
Just over twenty-six years ago when we built the home where we live, one of the main attractions was the imposing views we would have across the Tweed Valley and specifically the view of Mount Warning. Over the years I must have taken hundreds, perhaps thousands, of photos of the mountain and I never tire of my view, even after all these years.
Some people said we would forget about our view eventually. According to some, water views are far more impressive than views across inland scenery. Water views are constantly changing and are therefore far more interesting, we were told. Views across the land, they said, never change. We would become bored of our view. How wrong those people were.
Close up taken 1:15 pm today
I’ve always spent a lot of time at home. I love spending my days here, working from home, studying from home, and working in my garden. During the COVID-19 restrictions when we were all urged to stay at home as much as possible, I have been the typical example of one of the memes seen on Facebook. I’m the quintessential person who hasn’t noticed much change in my life as I stay close to home regardless. And while I’ve been at home, I have been noticing and photographing Mount Warning more than ever before.
Every day, the mountain looks different than it did the day before. Every hour of the day, the light cast across the mountain changes its appearance. Cloud formations over the mountain present a different appearance yet again. The sun changes the mountain; the rain changes its appearance even more. As the sun rises each morning, the top of Mount Warning is the first place that the sun hits Australian earth. If I catch the sun rising at just the right time, the top of the mountain glows.
Sugar cane fields in the valley provide a beautiful background for a lone kookaburra. Photo taken today.
The mountain is to the south-west of where I live, and some afternoons the sun sets without incident. Other days, however, the sky about the mountain lights up. I have possibly seen every colour imaginable lighting up the sky above our magnificent mountain over the years. Recently, I have taken photos of the mountain at sunset more than ever before, and seeing a multitude of different images from day to day has got me thinking, maybe I should take a photo of Mount Warning every day for a year. How great would it be to have a journal of photos of the mountain taken every day, throughout the seasons, to show how versatile and magnificent a view across land can be?
Sun setting over the mountain yesterday at 5:15 pm
The obvious place to add a photo of Mount Warning each day is here, on my blog. Today though, I begin a new semester of university study, online of course so I can study at home. I took a break from uni earlier this year to help my husband get his elderly parents settled into aged care, so now that’s sorted I can begin working on the final five units of my Bachelor of Arts. There have been times in the past during semester, particularly when assignments are due, I have become chained to my computer and I’m not looking forward to that situation again now I’m back at uni. The trouble is, I know it will happen. How can I commit to adding a photo a day, when some days I hardly have time for anything other than reading and assignments?
Mount Warning from Tumbulgum, a small village beside the Tweed River. Photo taken Wednesday last week.
I think I’ve worked out a solution. Even if all I do is take a photo of Mount Warning while I’m eating breakfast, it will only take five minutes to add it to my blog page. If I have time, I can add a few words to my post. If I’m too busy, I can just add a “wordless” or “silent” image. As it is, most days I hand write a few words in my journal while I eat, with each entry beginning with a description of the morning view across the valley, and specifically a description of Mount Warning. I’m sure I can manage to find a minute to take a photo each day as well.
Lets see how my plan goes. Hopefully by mid-July next year I will have a year long blog-journal-record of my ever changing view across the picturesque Tweed Valley and magnificent Mount Warning.
Where I live on the coast we’ve been lucky. Our maximum temperatures have remained, on average, around the low thirties (or the high eighties if you go by the Fahrenheit scale). It’s the high humidity of our sub-tropical climate that has really knocked us about though.
A bad hair day.
Right through summer I’ve been refreshing the water bowls every morning that I leave strategically placed where my beautiful feathered visitors will find them. I worry about the birds constantly, wondering whether I’d lose any of my regulars, but most of them continue to show up every day.
It’s a relief knowing the worst of the heat is behind us. Last night we had quite a bit of rain and this morning the air felt cool, fresh and still. My resident kookaburras came to visit, singing their raucous territorial song in my front garden, and in the distance I could hear another flock of kookies staking a claim on their territory in reply.
Learning to trust.
It’s been a few weeks now since my original, Larry, visited and I miss seeing him. His lady friend, Shilo, who would once hide behind Larry, peeking out to see if I’d noticed her, visits still with the rest of the flock. But I’ve noticed a change in her manner. She flies down to sit close to me when I feed the others. And when I pass her food, her super-timidness has been replaced by a confident gesture – by Shilo’s standards at least – she now grabs food from my hand before joining the others.
Larry. Photo taken December 2018.
She’s not as gentle as Larry. Larry had a confident air, a steadiness of eye that I’ve never noticed in any other bird. I could pass the tiniest morsel to him and he’d peck it gently from between my fingers. But Shilo wouldn’t dream of allowing me to hand-feed her when Larry was around.
I wish Shilo could tell me what has become of Larry. My fearless friend has been visiting for over ten years, and given the lifespan of a kookaburra is around 11-15 years, maybe Larry didn’t make it through the heat of the summer. I prefer not to think about that possibility though. Kookaburras mate for life, so what is Shilo to do now?
A new addition to the clan.
Thankfully, Larry and Shilo’s clan has grown in numbers over the years. Now, every afternoon when they visit, I do a head-count. I have seven regulars visiting. Hopefully some of the younger birds are noticing the trust Shilo has in me. Perhaps in her timid way, Shilo is doing the same as Larry, by setting an example of trust.
Maybe over time, the youngsters will learn to trust me too.
Postscript:I have to wonder, are birds psychic? Three hours after writing this post I went outside to feed the kookaburras, just as I do every afternoon. Today, as I approached a kookaburra waiting in Shilo’s usual place, another bird flew down … the waiting bird was Larry, and Shilo sat beside him. As usual, she took her food, then joined the others. Larry stayed, gently taking each small piece of meat from my hand as I passed it to him.
I wonder where he’s been? He looked fantastic! Clean, bright eyed, and as calm as ever. 🙂
In My World 