April 15th, 2023Your say…

Barringo Reserve
I am in Barringo Reserve, and in the waning sunlight, there is no path to organise
my footsteps or show me a clear, linear way of moving.
Instead, I am guided by the rise and fall of the land’s contours and the pull of the
plants which catch my eye. In this way, I break past the wall of long-leaved box trees
(Eucalyptus goniocalyx) and move from the grassy paddock into the reserve’s wooded
interior.
From above, my course of movement would look erratic and inefficient. I zigzag
between violet chocolate lilies (arthropodium strictum) and carnivorous sundews
(drosera hookeri). My eyes struggle to comprehend the latter, as the sundews have the
bronze of the evening light trapped brightly within each green stamen, making me
suddenly bent down and eye level with a small solar system.
With a field of these tiny suns blazing all around me, I follow a spur to the
back of the reserve. Here, in secrecy, lives a community of grass trees (xanthorrhoea
australis). Most are adorned in a brown skirt of expired leaves while some wear a
crooked black spire upon their head, a reminder of a season’s flowering.
The grass trees are here every day, slowly rising in the blindspot of our rushing
lives and hurried tasks. I contemplate their spindly leaves stretching for sunlight every
morning as I eat my breakfast and reaching for eternity in the evening as I brush my
teeth. This thought walks with me as I continue through the reserve.
I find my foot midway down a depression in the soil. Water has pooled at the
bottom making a dark puddle. Fallen gum leaves, in various states of decay, swim in
circles and the tannins steep like eucalyptus tea. All around me as I walk, I can see
life leaving the reserve. There is an abandonment in the browning kangaroo grasses
(themeda triandra) at this time of year. A goodbye in every ribbon of peeling bark.
I sit with my back sloped against a horse jump, legs straight out in front of me. I
tilt my head back and my gaze settles on the canopy of peppermint gums (eucalyptus
dives). Their dark, defined leaves fracture the blue dome of sky like a mosaic.
At present I’m inseparable from the droning of flies, the warm and drowsy sun.
I feel calm, and my body dissolves like a teaspoon of sugar on my tongue.
From: Joanna Beard, Macedon Ranges