Early Sunday, I went for my first wander to Fairy Bower Falls. The day was steamy, throbbing, almost suffocating: summer had arrived like a squadron of Black Hawks.
I think Samuel Taylor Coleridge, if he was still amongst us, would love Fairy Bower Falls. He wouldn't have felt incarcerated there, as he did in his famous poem incorporating a lime tree bower, for the place speaks only of liberty. Down there, amongst a multiplicity of ferns, you can reinvent or recapture yourself.
The ecstatic static and sound of applause/breaking surf in cascading water, stalactite-like tree roots hanging over and around the Falls, a cliff face plastered with orange lichen, a purplish flower at chest height (which I'm guessing was some sort of orchid), the sharp ticking of Large-billed Scrubwrens (the Falls are my third spot in the Southern Highlands for this irregularly seen species - Ferny Glen at Fitzroy Falls and Robertson Nature Reserve are the other two), a retreating Swamp Wallaby's thud-thwack paw-cadence then fearful stare at you, a Spotted Pardalote's bobbing as it called above a potential nest hole embankment and, of course, that humbling view across the measureless gullies that harbour Bundanoon Creek and Sooty Owls (hopefully the subject of an upcoming post): so many immaculate things for the person who craves otherness.
Snapshots to follow...
LJ, November 15 2010
I'd love to take some photography with you LJ & get them on this site. Around the 4th Jan 2011.
ReplyDeleteI like your musings.. very restful & informative. Thank-you.
MP.