Readers will notice that I have finally got around to getting a more up-to-date photo of myself on this page.
My daughter took the old one on my 68th birthday, and as I am now 78. it was way past time for my author image to catch up with my age!
It’s not easy to accept how one is ageing, nor to find a friend who is patient enough to tolerate my reluctance in ‘posing’.
So thanks Jane, for being so willing!
And to bite another bullet, I am taking ‘Peeping through my fingers’ to Victoria, for the Clunes Booktown Festival on 21st and 22nd March. I’d been wanting to go for years, but as a book-loving spectator, not a participant.
I want my short stories read more widely; these are mostly award-winners, and my biggest wins have been in Victorian competitions (The Alan Marshall and the Boroondara), and my writers’ residencies have been in Victoria too. Plus the Owner Builder Magazine, for which I used to write, was based here, in Dunolly.
So I won’t feel too out of place.
If you are going to it, do come by and say hello! I’m in a Writers’ Tent, stall FE
It would not be recognisable as a Port Macquarie skyline without the ever-present pine trees.
On this particular morning, the skies above them were my focus, as the cloud show was extraordinarily varied, in pictures and patterns, in colours and connotations, in figures and fancies.
I have often shared sunrises or sunsets, and feel obliged to do a little bit of that here, as the seascape sunrise is always a treat, but today what’s above those strips and swirls of colour are more interesting.
If you think blue skies are boring, and prefer the endless mystery of cloud shows, you might like The Cloud Appreciation Society, to which my friend and webmaster Fred Baker introduced me. Check it out.
Blue skies are made interesting by clouds, so a little bit of blue is allowed to peep through for contrast.
I kept almost tripping over as I walked about ‘with my head in the clouds’, looking up and twisting backwards in case I was missing another ephemeral wonder.
Whether the clouds were white or grey or both, they were making so many different images up there that I couldn’t keep up.
The display above Nobbys itself seemed to emanate from it, radiating like a bridal veil into the blue.
But today I think the unlimited shades and shapes of grey clouds have won me over; I almost want to delete that distracting bit of colour on the horizon…
Like here. From pearly grey to almost black, from wisps and lace to ripples and smudges, from haloes to heavy linings… I love these clouds!
I was recently reminded of my wonderful 2010 nature writing residency at Rosebank in Victoria, thanks to the Victorian Writers Centre. It was a world of mists and deciduous trees, of old gardens and evocative rocks.
The lovely old stone cottage was dwarfed by the huge oak tree at its front.
I met my first medlar tree there– a living mediaeval curio.
I saw streets lined with golden autumn leaves, as here in what I think was Lancefield, where they had a great Saturday market-in-the-mist.
I roamed all around the Macedon area, including Cobaw State Forest and its sleeping boulders.
For a fungi-lover like me, the cool high country was full of hitherto unseen treasures.
Of course I went to Hanging Rock, very early before the school hordes arrived. As I heard the pan pipes playing in my head, I can see how Miranda could have disappeared… no path was obvious…
And the Rock does not exactly hang, but is scarily wedged.
When I left, this is what I wrote in the guest book:
‘I came to Rosebank from the bush, not the city, but it has been no less a new experience – a taste of rural civilisation in this quaint cottage of honeycomb-hued stone, with only the roos and the smell of woodsmoke to remind me of home.
I take away a mind full of fresh sensory treasures to colour and flavour stories yet to be written. Many were close at hand: the awesome Oak; the crunch of its acorns underfoot; the strange sci-fi fruit with its pronged antennae that turned out to be the mediaeval Medlar; the bright yellow carpet that the Twisted Willow bestowed, after filling the lap of the last chair of summer with gold; the graceful hot pink and orange drooping of of the European Spindle bush; sunlit morning mist turning the sheep on the hill pink; the cute little mouse that grew bolder each night, and its astonishing capacity for pellet production.
‘Some were further afield and higher up: snow gums and mosses and bright fungi, including my first Fly Agaric, the archetypal white-dotted glossy red toadstool of childhood fairtytales.
Most of all, I will remember the rocks – on Cobaw and Hanging Rock and the Camel’s Hump – great rounded creatures with mottled hides, like stranded humpback whales; the pockmarked guardian pinnacles at the Rock which does not hang, but straddles; only its freckled bulbous stomach, under which I scurried, can be said to hang. If Patricia Wrightson’s Nargun lives anywhere, it’s there.
‘But this is a home I have been lent, not just a house, and domestic things have entered my head too: the unconscious game of avoiding the broken board under the carpet in the hall floor; the dear little yellow and white enamelled pot, the nest of cast iron pans, the beautifully balanced and weighted vegetable knife, the old scullery sink, the deep, deep bath that retains the water’s heat – and, not least – the BiIlby egg cup from which I ate my Lancefield market free range eggs!’
This male Wallaroo never came close to the cabin, despite all the fences coming down. I never saw more than one couple, and usually only one of the pair. The females are paler and smaller, but still stocky and longhaired.
It rained a lot at the Mountain, as this bedraggled little Roo family could attest.
It was the Eastern Redneck Wallabies who made themselves most at home as the netting gradually was rolled out of their way.
But they were happy to share ‘my’ space with the Eastern Grey Kangaroos. The male Roo by the barbeque is on alert, as always when I appeared, but if I came no closer he would stay. The females and joeys were much more relaxed.
Here they are all lying about drying off in the sunshine after a rainy spell, with me well distanced.
Being the only human there, I was allowed to witness many aspects of macropod behaviour.
Like these young male Wallabies practice-boxing. They balanced on their tails as they ’stood’, clasping each other and cuffing faces.
The bravado often fell as they overbalanced and did the same, which would usually end the ‘fight’.
Or their methods of cleaning themselves, like sitting back with their tail stretched out in front between their legs, and carefully defleaing it.
Sometimes the joey would help its mother deal with awkward places for the process, repaying her usual role as cleaner.
Not that the young were slack about their own cleanliness, like cleaning their dainty black paws.
When I say the Wallabies were the most relaxed, I mean it! I simply didn’t count, and often had to step over one to get past. I put up a toddler-type gate at the top of the verandah steps, for fear those long feet would get them into trouble.
While there were plenty of these Wallabies at my place, I never tired of watching them, of photographing them. I especially loved the mother/joey connections, no matter how old the ‘child’, pouch-fitting or not.
The Glass House Mountains inland from Nambour on the Queensland Sunshine Coast are spectacular volcanic plugs. Captain Cook saw them from the sea and thought they resembled the glass furnaces of his native Yorkshire.
But of course they had long been significant to the local Gubbi Gubbi and Jimbaran peoples, and while each peak has its own name, were known collectively as ‘Daki Comon’ or ‘Standing stones’ .
It rained most days of my brief visit, but I was fortunate to be shown a lovely rainforest creek and waterfalls on the private property where I camped.
Being so lush, everything was growing fast and tall, like this fig about to flower.
I was curious about this forest of tall shrubs/small trees, with unfamiliar deeply lobed leaves and prickly stems, but familiar Solanum white flowers and small round fruit. Sure enough they were, but disastrously rampant introduced members of the family, weeds, either Solanum torvum or Solanum chrisotrichum… or both!
One morning we went to a very special place for breakfast, the unique ‘Secrets on the Lake’. Its cabins and café in the rainforest were overwhelmingly artistic, every piece of timber carved with skiil and whimsy.
The café had great views from its verandah, and great food – at very reasonable prices.
There was not enough time to look at the many carved delights to be spotted, small and large. I’d need to go back; I’d love to stay in one of those cabins.
Secrets indeed!
I found it hard to believe that the owners and creators of this gorgeous place were having trouble selling it, despite the ludicrously low price. At around my age, the couple are in need of a rest; they certainly deserve it!
I’d class ‘Secrets on the Lake’ as a national treasure.
It wasn’t only the gentle wallabies who took over my Mountain house yard once I’d let them in. The bigger Eastern Grey Kangaroos eventually used it too. The families became easy around me, but never the males. When a male stood erect, he was taller than my gate had been.
This one is clearly ready for chasing a female; their penises were always curved like this, although mostly not seen.
They were slower than the wallabies to venture inside my yard, no doubt concerned that the gates might shut them in. The females and young came first.
The kangaroo joeys were as cute as the wallaby ones, and gradually ceased to bother about me, the only human… and pathetically without a tail.
The next drastic step was taking down the netting fence altogether. As you can see, the kikuyu grass was long inside it. That’s a Wallaroo outside; they remained wary and never did venture in far.
That fence had been a labour to build, and mostly by me, so it was a painful step to dismantle it.
Taking off the netting and rolling it up was a sort of relief and a sort of defeat. I think the roos felt better without it there to possibly hem them in, as even the males seemed more relaxed, preening and cleaning as they usually would.
For me, having an uninterrupted flow down to the small dam allowed better viewing of all the wildlife who came to drink there. Once I saw a female roo even hop in to escape a persistent male! But that was rare.
I felt closer to the wildlife as the man-made barriers came down, while I still regretted the garden dream, the heritage roses…
The price I paid for the overwhelming task and trauma of writing Rich Land, Wasteland was actually incalculable.
On my Substack posts I am going through my archives, so I thought I might do the same here, in between trips elsewhere and posts about them.
I urge you to subscribe so you get an email notification when I post; it’s free.
When choosing my favourite photo, it had to be this one.
The mum (an Eastern Redneck, my most common wallaby there) had decided my western mud brick cabin wall, not far from my steps, was her spot.
I was overwhelmed when her joey and I locked eyes one day, as for it I was its first human, likely to be the only human it would ever see in its life here on my isolated mountain wildlife refuge.
So that meant that my theme was going to be wallabies, especially wallaby joeys. I never got over how small the mothers often were, and how big the joeys got and were still carried about in that cosy pouch. And besides, they are so very cute…
I watched them go from hairless and totally pouch-bound to hairy and venturing their front legs out, having the best of both worlds. They would nibble the grass as Mum levered herself along as she grazed.
Yet even when too big to fit in the pouch, they could still drink her milk. The mothers would tolerate this for a while, then cuff the young away. Final weaning steps, I guess.
I wasn’t so keen on some of the adults’ habits.
After I had to let them all into the yard, due to the pressure of writing ‘Rich Land, Wasteland’, they totally trashed my garden.
I’d foolishly thought they’d mainly eat the grass that I no longer had time to mow. Hah!
They didn’t eat the leaves of bulbs, so the naturalised jonquils and daffodils survived.
But it was unexpected that they’d eat strong-smelling plants like lavender. This was a rosemary bush!
Nor did thorns deter them, as they did the same to roses.
But they were a daily treat to watch. They could ignore me as the only human, and be totally natural. They knew it was their world.
How sweet is this young one? Even as it poses in front of a stripped heritage rose bush…
No wonder I miss the real world of my Mountain and the real wildlife with whom I shared it.
In any home I’ve had, where possible I have cloaked the verandah in vines as living blinds, to give me shade in Summer, fabulous colour in Autumn and sunshine in Winter.
At my Mountain it was a mixture of Ornamental Grape/Glory Vine (Vitus vinifera) and white-flowering Wisteria.
Each verandah was also decorated with a 1904 old-fashioned climbing rose, Crepuscule. Its generous repeat flowering of raggedy apricot blossoms even survived the munching possums and taller wallabies. It has a sweet if subtle fragrance, which you can bring indoors, as its small clusters make good cut flowers.
When I left the Mountain, I couldn’t take the rose, but I took cuttings of the Glory Vine and at my next place there were a lot more verandahs for it to cloak, so it took longer, but continued to give beauty in framing the great views there. That four acre place helped me acclimatise to civilisation, but it was too much work for me, being ex-dairy land, not bush.
In the rural town of Wingham, where I was flooded out in 2021, cuttings of that Glory Vine came with me, were planted in the raised beds below, and loved it. Here the vine gave me privacy as well as shade.
The Crepuscule was harder to source, but eventually took its place and began to grace that verandah.
Now, in my final downsizing (apart from the coffin) I planted more Glory Vine cuttings; these ones were from my daughter, who’d kept the vine continuity going. They took, and rapidly did the same job.
In a serendipitous moment, I found a Crepuscule as a solitary bare-rooted cutting, on special in a supermarket. Weird that they even had a heritage rose, weird that I got the last one. It was waiting for me…
Even here on the coast, which is not often rose-friendly, it is happily growing up and along the lattice.
I can’t describe the pleasure I get from seeing my Glory Vine and Crepuscule gracing my latticed verandah externally, and giving me shade, privacy and pleasure when I look from within.
Perhaps I’m a boring gardener, but when you’ve had to move a lot, the continuity of these two plants is a comfort, a nostalgic link that I cherish.
Like my old timber furniture, they have been with me on my life’s journey, through fire and flood.
Port Macquarie has many large and handsome native fig trees, which I think are Port Jackson or Rusty figs (Ficus rubiginosa).
Currently they are laden with fruit, which will turn red when they ripen. Whilst edible by humans, they are not deemed very palatable, but are eaten by flying foxes and many native birds.
In flower right now on this coastal walking strip is another tree, with such pretty pink flowers and deeper pink buds that I wondered if it was indeed native. There are several of them, but growing near such a populous area I could suspect garden-escapees…
I was surprised at the size of the tree on which it blooms, and then spotted an even larger tree covered in the same flowers.
But I was right to be suspicious: this is actually Norfolk Island Hibiscus (Lagunaria patersonia), a native of Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands.
It is also called Itchy Bomb tree, as it can irritate airways and skin, and has proven an invasive weed in mangrove forests. It certainly does well here, and by the size of these trees, has done so for a long time.
The native Swamp or Spider Lilies (Crinum pedunculata) are showy enough to also be garden plants, but they do belong here.
And this native one I know is often used in landscaping: the Blue Flax Lily (Dianella revolutum), here showing its purply-blue berries that follow the bright blue flowers.
All this late Spring lavishness within minutes walking from busy streets… amazing!
Why not enhance the life of someone you know with these award-winning stories set in the stages of life we all must go through, although not often successfully: Growing up, Grown up? and Growing old.
Funny or poignant, but always perceptive, this is the first time my stories, at least those that fit this theme, have been collected in one place. There are plenty more…!
Here’s a taste of what reviewer Michelle Lopert had to say in Inklings:
‘This delightful collection of short stories… engages the reader from the very first page with its lyrical language, recognisable situations, and insights. The author sweeps us from childhood to old age, capturing a snippet of life at each stage in the human journey.
‘…It’s not hard to see why these stories have won prizes and commendations. Munro is not afraid to face all aspects of life, and reveal the true thoughts, fears and motives of ordinary people, be they ever so lofty or mundane.’
Read more and order a copy for just $24.95 (incl.P &P) at ‘Sharyn’s Stories’ here on my website. Each copy is signed, but I can also dedicate it to whomever you want — or to you!
My trip to the outback of New South Wales and South Australia took a month and gave me just a taste of that vast arid flat country, edged by fantastic rocky ranges. So very different from my east coast green and wet landscapes, about which I will now stop complaining.
I mainly chose to keep those ranges in view, and I know it was an atypically ‘good season’, after rain, so I didn’t see it at its worst, but I saw plenty of the rangeless horizon-to-horizon flatnesses on the long straight roads like the Barrier Highway that were necessary to get me over there.
It was a revelation in many aspects, and its lessons will remain indelible, partly why I chose not to venture further south into ‘civilised’ South Australia, not wanting to mar the impressions of the outback.
I needed to make that trip, to lift the veil a little on my own ignorance.
1. The First People: I am overwhelmed with admiration for the indigenous people who had worked out a sustainable system of survival for tens of thousands of years in such harsh environments… until we interfered with our land grants and fences and sheep.
It had to be nomadic to follow the seasonal or ephemeral food and water sources; smart, working with the landscape not against it.
It was full of knowledge and experience, and of a spiritual history, the stories of how it all came to be.
In comparison, the ‘explorers’ and ‘pioneers’ were in reality, and with hindsight, ignorant and arrogant in their foolhardiness; the Gorder Line was a misleading tragedy. Hard to celebrate their achievements, although I know their lives would have been dreadfully hard; all the historic markers I saw related to them.
2.Ferals: I am also overwhelmed by the unfortunately highly successful feral invasions that were in such great evidence: the millions of heedless and happily breeding feral goats, too smart to become road kill, too many to ever be eliminated; the hectares of Onion Weed, and the Patersons Curse, replacing what ‘wildflowers’ may have been there before the sheep and goats ate them out.
Introduced plants like Ward’s Weed, beloved by sheep, have adapted only too well to suit. Even in national parks, they were all there, and on the more fertile edges I could see flashes of yellow from the canola crops gone rogue!
Archie Roach sang it: ’The Australian bush is losing its identity’.
I could no longer tell what was once tree-covered, albeit low trees and shrubs, and had been cleared, and what was naturally treeless.
I no longer asked what widespread plants were, as they kept turning out to be introduced weeds.
The impact of we human ferals is everywhere.
3. ROCKS: I had said that the Western Tiers in Tasmania were extremely rocky, as they were, but I can now say that the Ikara/Flinders and Vulkathanha-Gammon Ranges are ROCKY. Of every shape and size and colour and geological history, in their uncountable trillions, rocks rule here. Native plants do grow in such conditions, seemingly not needing actual soil, happy to put down a root between two rocks. Amazing.
I kept being surprised that these places had been left to their rocky wildness, kept expecting a politician to suggest a business to market these rocks; there are so many, who’d miss a few million?! I did see many abandoned, roofless fettlers’ huts built of rocks and in the towns many stone or rock buildings still stood, often empty, as the old narrow gauge railway line had ceased and so had the mines.
4.Emus: Weird and wonderful, graceful and awkward, proudly erect and hopelessly floppy. I am surprised but glad that we still have them wandering wild in our drier lands, unlike the extinct Tassie one. I will miss seeing them about.
5. River Red Gums (Eucalyptus camaldulensis) are absolutely astonishing. I had no idea of the extraordinary ways in which they survive floods and fires, struggling on with a fraction of their roots or trunks, burnt out or washed out, yet hugging the creek lines over the landscape, holding the banks, supporting a living branch or two still, providing hollows and homes still.
And they are beautiful as well as admirable! In ever-varying shapes and patterns and colours. Love them.
I read that they were cut down to be slowly burnt for charcoal to fire the smelters for the copper mines… until their true value was realised.
I have inadvertently passed through many narrow gorges that were part of Mount Remarkable National Park on the road to get to Mambray Creek
Because I didn’t stop, I realise I am a bit over gorges.
Where I will camp for a few nights is near a small one, beside the partly dry Mambray Creek.
There are only a few walks short enough for me. They are mostly through native pine forests, with plenty of the amazing Wira or River Red Gums, in all stages of survival. No wonder the Nukuna people revere them so much.
This one was forming a useful bridge as an alternative to the rocks in the creek crossing.
So many of these magnificent trees had been almost split in two or burnt out, and yet they still supported a living section of tree, and all the myriads of lives that this entailed.
Much in demand by everyone, but only over-cut and over-used by settlers, the mighty gums were not appreciated and protected in the past, as they are now.
The Mount Remarkable Range is the southern Flinders Range, of 800 million year-old sandstone.
You can even see the fossilised ripples of beach sand from its time as an ocean bed.
This is the last and most gentle part of my Flinders odyssey.
Like all of the Flinders it is very rocky, and the patterns and colours of the rocks and their lichens could absorb me forever.
Along the track I passed two kangaroos, quite dark Western Greys, too involved in courtship to bother about me. From my time at the Mountain with Eastern Greys, I recognised the ritual…
On another walk, I had good views back over the range, and was delighted to see that one of the millions of bush flies here had strayed into frame at just the right time.
At the campground, almost everyone, including children, wears a black net fly hood under their hat, so groups of unidentifiable people wander about looking like aliens.
I am wearing one now, even in my van, but hatless. It makes walking awkward, as you proceed with dozens of small black flies bobbing about within an inch of your face.
From that same hill, looking west I could see the blue of Spencer Gulf across the plain.
