Nature remains strong
WHEN the Sunday Tasmanian and other newspapers around the country published a story about a 3m shark that had washed up on Bondi Beach last week I felt a little embarrassed.
Just days earlier I had found a similar-size mako dead on my local Tassie beach but had not considered it worth a story.
Where was my news judgment? Oops.
The mako on the famous New South Wales beach looked fresher and more impressive than the one I came across, but mine, in a tantalising twist to the story, appeared to have a bite mark at its gills that suggested it had come second to a more aggressive foe.
A victim of a great white attack? Who knows. The shark’s ripped flesh may not even have been a bite or may have been torn by a hungry scavenger after the mako’s passing.
I guess one reason for my failure to recognise the mako on my local beach as a story is that in Tassie we regularly find strange, wonderful and fascinating things on our beaches and in our bush.
Nature remains strong here.
In the past few weeks alone, I have found two large octopuses, one with a head as big as a Sherrin, and an Atlantic salmon with its tail bitten clean off. Hors d’oeuvres for a shark or seal? Maybe.
All this is happening just a short drive from the capital city.
Over the years I have found stingrays and all sorts of birds washed up at the shoreline, from cormorants to gannets to shearwaters and penguins.
Sometimes they are still alive.
On Tuesday, while walking around a headland deep in my own thoughts on the most beautiful sunny afternoon, I came face to face with a seal. It was as shocked to see me as I was to see it.
It bared dog-like fangs. I gave a startled yelp.
As we stared, within reach of each other, my mind raced. Do seals attack humans?
toothy snarl was as intimidating as any german shepherd I have met.
As I weighed my options, it retreated and I clambered to higher, safer ground.
The seal appeared ungainly on the jagged rocks. It posed no threat.
With a more comfortable distance between us, I watched it for about 30 minutes and it seemed to relax and accept me as part of its surrounds. I felt safe too.
The seal was disarmingly pretty, with long whiskers and big, brown eyes framed by dark lashes like those of a fiery Spanish senorita, but with just the hint of an expression of childlike, doleful sadness.
After its growl of fright upon seeing me, it looked gentle, peaceful and unmistakeably intelligent.
As I write these words, there is a kookaburra sitting not 3m away from me in a wattle at my window. Moments ago, it was joined by another and, before the latecomer took wing, they cranked their heads to the sky to holler a chorus of the hilarious cackling and guffaws that have come to represent all that is Australian.
A rainbow-coloured rosella is perched, pecking at bulbous lumps on the leafy higher branches. Striated pardalotes and fantails, as light as air, playfully dart in and out of the green tufts.
A bubble of sap, hanging from under one of the wattle’s dying limbs, glistens a honeysienna sparkle as it reflects the winter sun’s rays.
The remaining kookaburra is transfixed, staring at me accusingly, intently, as I type. There is a hawkish menace to this bird’s glare that is suggestive of a sharp, combative, calculating mind.
Where the seal, once calm after the shock of meeting me at such close quarters, looked as if it would like nothing better than to cuddle and be friends, this kookaburra’s disdainful gaze leaves me in little doubt that any interaction between us will be on its terms, if at all.
It is not trying to connect with me, it is judging me with the haughty derision of a superior.
And there it goes. Decision made, it flies off.
I wasn’t worth the time of day. The kookaburra had better things to do than watch a man who had washed up on its shores and was loudly tapping with his fingers while hunched over a glowing box.