Wombat (April)

My favourite unrhyming limerick: ‘There was a young man from Melbourne/ Who was hit on the head by a wombat./ When asked, “Did it hurt?”/ He said, “Not at all,/ You can do it again if you like.’ What about the wombat? How did Dante Gabriel Rossetti take delivery of wombats? His backyard zoo in Chelsea included the marsupial. Drugged up and otherwhere, DG’s zoological knowledge wasn’t equal to his artistic. The wombats died in London. Everybody loves wombats, it’s universal. They’re muddleheaded. But there’s a disconnect. They’re not muddleheaded. Only April, and we see the planet like a wombat. 

Mrs Morris and the Wombat, by DG Rossetti

Snail (April)

What are snails waiting for? In inordinately warm April? On the cool side of upturned flowerpots? Their calendar is geared for rain. Rain could be in days, or weeks. They cluster together, away from the northern sun. Holidays are few and far between: wet heaven under fallen narcissus. Wait, for what? The magical call on the mobile? They curl up for hours with the message. Their shells are unfashionable ‘camouflage’. They put their big foot in it. They’re not documentary material, waiting and wandering. If there’s a pattern to this it follows no rulebook, leaves only silver trails along footpaths.

Galah (April)

Young men in first dinner suits and untidy bowties, young women in over-the-top gowns – soon Gala Night became Galah Night. Such grey formality pink champagne lightened into teenage tomfoolery. Once I slept under the stars in a paddock in New South Wales. In the morning hundreds of galahs were in the air, on the ground, and along the road where I hitched before breakfast. They only come to Melbourne in those numbers during drought. I watch them in the April parks, hopping about for seed. They’re Wildean in grey frockcoats and rose waistcoats, likely to make galahs of us all.

Rat (April)

Jolimont Station is playground for the rat. Robust bodies romp about in ivy-trailing cuttings, their presence noted at bins. Introduction of deadly rat trap houses near signal-posts has not reduced the population. They wiggle under fences, enjoy how halogen lamps transform new passenger shelters into bright theatres of the mundane. JCDecaux advert-scrolls fail to attract attention like a well turned-out rat on his way to dinner. Sightings of rats at Parliament Station suggest they network tracks of the old Loop; research is intermittent. Lonely passengers halted at April train windows cheer up at visions of the rat rummaging autumnal leaves.  

Turtle (April)

The glass-bottomed boat of television is close as I’ll ever get to the Green Sea Turtle, gliding along coral of the world’s largest living organism, while David Attenborough goes into a highly pressurised ecstasy of perfect English sentences. April is the drooliest month, launching turtles over swaying anemones and kaleidoscopes of fish. Millions of pixels can’t be wrong. But when the tarpaulin is hauled over the glass-bottomed boat I (more turtle than shimmering fish) must go for a snack, jot some perfect English sentences about ecstasy, start planning tomorrow’s paid day in Melbourne, another of the world’s largest living organisms.

Koala (April)

Wye River memories. A koala parks in a she-oak by the Great Ocean Road bridge, bold outline amidst spindle foliage. In another April koalas settle in treeforks behind the house, eyeing the eucalyptus smorgasbord. A crash through scrub is falling koala, about to bounce back into shape. A koala howls on Paddy’s Path above the sea, protecting its young, unseen and unheard. Koalas siesta. In August we can think we hear them lumbering from treetop to treetop. A koala has a sort of cantering hop on ground, steady but too slow for a fast-moving bushfire. Paddy’s Path is blacked out.

Bowerbird (April)

Wye River, where there is the shy green one, with its William Morris thing, feathers layering seamlessly from crown to tail. She is noticed first in a many-flowered bush and shows herself at our April windows when all is silence. Her eye is a sky of aquamarine. She survived the fires. Then there’s the shy blue one, his coat with its Brett Whiteley thing, shifting from black to sapphire depending on sunlight, feathers one shining surface like lakewater. He appears without notice, his single purpose to grab the grape and go, slightest noise and he’s gone. His eye sees us.

Octopus (April)

Wye River, year in year out, pleasure of the tangible, the intensely visible. Sun rises this April to burnt-down hills, stripes of damaged trees. Fire opens up the intangible, reminds us of invisible life, old paths and fossils. Skyline’s no longer treetops but their bases. Air flows where canopy, understorey, and ground cover vied for light. Wye River, waves in and out, measure of tidal force, oversees invisible commonwealths. We know the octopus is out there, not that we’ve never seen them, furling unfurling. Once or twice we’ve seen whales surface, or was it just changing weather and white caps?

Butterfly (April)

Wye River is morning sunlight, open again to the appeal of April warmth after a cold night. Haphazard untended edges of hill garden respond to air networks. Nasturtiums, only a few flowers, stream in ever direction their round leaves, and from their white undersides white butterflies, two three, move about seeking invisible je-ne-sais-quoi. Unwanted blackberry, scourge of the bush, takes their fancy. They flutter toward wandering jew or investigate the je-ne-sais-quoi of some clandestine weed, but return to the green dish-leaves of nasturtiums, a favourite for some indiscernible reason, when a fourth descends, antennae up, to these unlikely landing pads.