Tom M. Wilson

Here I stand, on the beach at Byron Bay, looking out to sea with a smile you can’t see. On Thursday I and my old university friend Reuben caught up in Brisbane where he’s living. Byron drew us on Friday evening, and on Saturday morning we wound up a rugged little road through the tropical plants and trees and greens, and found a beach where waves wrapped lazily around a sandy point. The waves broke for longer than I can remember seeing good surf break, and upon entry the water gave me the thermal shock you’d expect from the tropics – even if we were five hours drive south of the tropic of Capricorn. The Pandanus palms stood sentry back on the edge of the beach, and I had a mental recall to Reunion Island and that epoch of my life. There was no wind, the sun shone from the blue, the waves were superb, and if it hadn’t have been for the sixty or so people out in the line-up, I would have cried halleluya.

This is the view from on top of Cape Byron, looking south.

Below is a fire seen through cuttings in a drum at Woodford, where we were on Saturday night for a small festival. Of course I’m including it here for the meaning of the word cut into the steel.

Saturday night I and my friend slept at his parents house near Maleny. In the morning I found myself wondering around their hill-top property, through their tropical orchard. They were just harvesting their eight avocado trees. Trees only twenty years old groaned with hundreds of avocados, and many other tropical fruits stood alongside for the picking.

I’ve been in Sydney for the past week, staying in Bondi Junction and then in Surry Hills. In the past I’ve dismissed this city as a brash and anonymous pile of high-rises, and not really thought it a high-light in the Australian scene, or bothered to spend much time here. This time I’ve enjoyed tumbling out of bed and onto the well-beaten pavement and into the shifting metropolis of faces and lives. On ANZAC day I was strolling through Hyde Park and noticed this young guy walking in front of me with his brass instrument gleaming.

South of Sydney to Coledale for one day, and I found myself passing through the cabbage palms and dramatic escarpment of that area just north of Wollongong. I noticed these stones shining in the shallows of the Pacific.

I was at Taronga Zoo for one morning. Not being a fan of caged life, I’d just hoped it would be a nice place to just walk around in – like Perth Zoo with its old trees and bamboo groves – but wasn’t overly impressed. If you can say that a crocodile is the warm mangroves as much as the warm mangroves are the crocodile, I don’t really see the attraction in seeing one bit of an ecosystem floating there out of context.

As for wildlife in the city, I saw a seven foot transvestite happily saunter down Flinders St. in bottemless chaps the other night, but was more impressed by the glistening wings of this bat who passed above me.