Buckman's Mill

He had liked it better when it was too far for the week-enders.

‘That’s only taken four hours,’ he says.

The new bridge, the bypass. Progress.

‘Just stop,’ she says.

He pulls in. The car park is atop the hill. The surrounding buildings are tin-roofed, the new block of flats cheaply built.

His arrival mantra follows, a shake of the head. ‘They demolished the pub,’ he says, ‘for a Woolworth’s.’

She rolls her eyes, has heard it all before. ‘We need some things.’

In a parking bay a remnant truck tyre is shredded, a black snake.

In the store, shelf stackers work at country pace. Notably, there are no eggs.

‘Bird flu,’ says the helper. ‘Supply chain issues.’

‘Bloody hell,’ he says.

From the shops, they descend through a small rain-forest. The familiar smell hits them, pungent and cloying. A sweetness of humus and shit, it’s from the fruit bats, the flying foxes. They arrived ten years ago, smoked out of Sydney’s Botanic Gardens.

The resting bats are wing-wrapped and pulsing. Secret black bundles.

‘Just look at them,’ he says.

An eyebrow flutters. ‘They have to live somewhere.'

There was a bloke called John who looked after Pioneer’s Park. There was passion-fruit and orchid. The canopy was blackbutt and blue gum. There had been school trips for the bird-life. Now the blue gum stands are bat-shredded, the place is sick. The lizards and monitors, the stag-horn ferns, all gone.

Federally protected, the bats have thrived. The council has put up a new sign.

‘Keep out. Toxic site. Hendra virus.’

Already the spiders and mould have got at it. An ibis perches there.

‘Bin chicken,’ he says. ‘The scavengers are moving in,’

There is no answer.

They park at the old river wharf. The estuary is flat but, somehow, spectacular. There is an undertow: the tide is turning. Upstream, solitary trees pierce the low sky: an illusion of a spire on the horizon.

He can see sunken logs, fixed in a needled pattern. Each year sees them reduced, these salt-fossils in the sand. The site of nineteenth century timber-getters and shipbuilders, this was Buckman’s Mill. Precious cedar, lush mahogany: all was destined for shipwreck or ruin. Like the tall trees, the tall ships did not survive.

A single pelican ignores them, his bill tucked under his wing.

‘Well, at least he’s still here,’ he says. ‘He holds more in his beak than his belly-can.’

‘Let’s go unpack,’ she replies.

He nods at the opposite river bank. No movement can be seen.

In their early years, a brahminy kite ruled the river. Dawn and dusk, short flights on weak thermals, he survived on top-water mullet, tidal crabs.

‘You have the sculpture,’ she says.

It’s right there, bolted to the concrete. A recent initiative, it’s a darter - that imposing cormorant - captured with wings spread to dry. Iron and rust.

Upstairs, from the apartment deck, the panorama opens, across the seawall. They had wanted to conquer the tide. Now, of course, interference with nature, the harbour is silted up and shallow. Out in the deep-water channel, a green buoy carries the boat speed notice. Dead slow.

‘Here they come’ she says.

It’s an exodus. The fruit bats are mainly soundless, but one misses his take-off. He crashes into a palm frond. His shaggy frame is clumsy now, his eyes close and bulbous.

Myth has given bats power over us. The four foot wing span, the shiver-inducing silhouette.

The creatures stretch their wings, organise themselves, and fly south. There will be tomato farms, orchards, nocturnal dessert. After ten minutes, the stragglers are gone.

Now, the acrid air hits the back of the throat. Time to go in.

Closing the sliding door, he smiles, thinks of the children. Some years back a bird had crashed into this glass, battered by a storm. The girls christened him Jimmy the Pigeon. He had been a shocked mess of sodden feathers. On his leg was a numbered ring: Kempsey Racing Pigeons. Later, they put Jimmy in a cardboard box, drove to Kempsey, and released him. Freed, he headed home to his loft.

A moon has emerged, just a horizontal sliver topped by one unblinking light.

‘One -eyed smile,’ he says.

‘Stars twinkle,’ she says. ‘It’s a planet.’

In the morning the air is clear. Sunlight strikes the windows with a brash warmth. The sky, ocean, and estuary combine to magnify the light.

The tide is running fast, the inlets filling. The river is turquoise, an aqua perfection, the very shallowness uplifting. Perfect dolphin conditions, she says. A group of terns fly low and arrow straight across the seawall. Beyond, the surf rolls in, white after white. Across the water, cormorants take turns ducking below the surface, reappearing at unexpected distances. Oystercatchers, reliable, black and white.

He was wrong, there they are. An armada of pelicans.

The old folk are early birds here. Dog walkers and mobility scooters in familiar patterns; kerbs and tree roots. Fishermen are setting up on the wall. There’s a chop here, deep blue and rapid.

Approaching the mangroves, they see a shopping trolley nose down in the shallows. It’s too easy to curse the kids, for the town is a slump of drugs and petty crime, but look closer. Weaving within the steel cage is a school of translucent young fish. Bream, yellow-fin, an electric blue damsel. Remarkable this far south, but the tropical species are migrating.

‘Aren’t they amazing,’ he says. ‘We should leave it there.’

At the current’s edge a solitary diving bird is posed in an echo of the rusty sculpture.

‘Now that’s a darter,’ he says. ‘She has to dry her wings.’

By some strange evolution, the species feathers are not waterproof.

‘Maybe she’s just mimicking the sculpture,’ she says.

They cross the road at the caravan park, heading up to the dune. On a telegraph line is a mystery bird, head motionless and forked tail bobbing on the wire. Later, he will identify him and keep him as his new favourite. Great name, a spangled drongo.

At the old quarry, there is a red-bellied slither of danger. They allow the snake to move off into the scrub.

A whistle. It’s always difficult identifying the smaller birds. He peers into the branches of the paperbark. There he is, fast moving, cream chest, fine bill.

'Go on, say it,' she says.

‘Honey-eater.'

She laughs. ‘You think they’re all honey eaters.’

They turn towards a much louder sound, just ahead, on the dune. Less birdsong, more raucous clatter.

They circle the plover’s territory but remain intent upon the hub of their path. The bird quietens for a moment. There. In a saucer of scraped dirt and flattened grass is a sheen of speckled earthy-green. A single egg.

The silence is heaven.

She reaches for his hand and they back away. ‘Supply chain fixed,’ he says, and smiles at his own joke.

At the top of the dune, the pink glow of sunrise lingers. All of nature stretches out, beach, banksia and gum. The breeze lifts but the scene stills. A flight of black cockatoos rises from the she-oaks.

The birds bank above them, above the sand. They’re the regulars, the yellow-tails. In a springtime miracle, they have multiplied. The young ones flap desperately, chasing the languid adult birds.

She grabs his arm and points.

‘Look,’ she says.

Out to sea a whale has breached. He catches a disappearing glimpse. Distant white water, a fluke, a splash.

But no, it’s not that. She’s pointing closer, to a brush of colour at his feet.

The flower is wedged in the council footpath. Somehow it has survived the foot traffic, found a scrap of light, soaked up a drop of rain. A velvety pink miracle.

‘You love a kangaroo paw,’ he says.

She looks back at the river. ‘You’re feeling better, then?’