Half Moon Over Pandanus

It's cool on the beach, cool edging on cold. Cool carried by a stiff breeze that cuts through the winter sun; the kind of cool we yearn for when the monsoon is burdensome in January.
There's a little cluster of people by the creek here where it washes into the sea. A double-dinking parachute pair lands spot on target on the hard pack sand left by the receding tide.
A patch of sunlit white catches my eye and up there, there is another, whirling and racing to a drop. I just catch them in the viewfinder and click.
Perfect landing, wonderful to watch. The little crowd behind me applauds.

I roll my pants to my knees and wade the creek. Clear tea-tree waters ripple and braid around my feet.
Stumers Creek is a wanderer, going where the currents and tides take it across the hard pack sands, till it finds the sea. It changes course almost daily.
Wild winds have munched the waters so far into the sands that the creek is cutting hard up against its low sandbank.
A half moon hangs in mid-afternoon blue.

Crossing the sand flat, I climb the high dunes to take in the roar, the eternal rolling, the viridian and cobalt, the bounce of whitecaps. The sea issues no invitation to join her today. Her dance with the wind pre-occupies.

Down to the beach now. Coffee-rock lies exposed, naked and vulnerable to the sculptor thrashing about in its hollows and crevices.

The lower dunes are almost gone, spinifex roots left dangling having lost the battle to hold the little hills of cream sand together.
In places where these low dunes have completely surrendered themselves, the high tide is eating right into the base of the high dunes.
There is nothing more than these high dunes between the sea and the multi-million dollar mansions behind. It's like a card game where the sea has the last call and the players are bluffing it out.

Stumers Creek is the local doggie beach. I love it for the sheer doggie exuberance.
I laugh a little as two black labradors are seduced away from their owners by a prancing brindle boxer. They all charge into the waves together and then fly down the wet sands, ignoring the calls of their owners. They'll come back when the game tires.

I'm back at the creek now. It's only four o'clock and already the beach is near empty. The wind has a bite to it.
A girl child in just a tshirt and cotton skirt, obviously not feeling the cold now, is singing to herself as she crosses the creek beside me. Then she calls "Mu-um, I'm back" (as if her mother didn't know) to a dark-haired woman, rugged up in a track suit and sitting on the grassy bank, watching, with her arms wrapped around her knees.

I pick up my shoes and wander to the car. A lowering sun lights the fluff of blown grass seed.

Backlit, pandanus sprawls its footings, and the half moon hangs on an imaginary thread, suspended still.

INVITATION: Click on the Tree Challenge tab above and plant a tree for the dunes, or the forest, or anywhere, for the Earth. More trees, more shade, more cool.

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More Trees, More Shade, More Cool.

Feet padding on a soft sand track. Off the edge, reeds chunk into plate-glass surfaces of tea-tree black water. Swamp spreads out wide, wide. The wallum, we call it, hip-high across the plain behind the seashore dunes.

 
Our little part of Earth is turning once more towards the sun, the winter solstice passed now. Wedding bush is already stark in white, waiting for the burst that will be spring in just a few weeks.
Late afternoon sun, soft, soft, glowing through the whorls of swamp banksia with their fat flowers thrust upwards. Bottlebrush bright with scarlet.

A flurry of feathers. A flash of white, then yellow on the wing as the honeyeater hovers.
Then the sudden wailing cry.
 "Wee-yar, wee-yar".
Black cockies. Where?
"Wee-yar".
Ah, over there. High in the tea-tree that edges the swamp. All trees standing together, straight. Creamy pale bark. Just standing quiet while cockies wail, no breeze to make leaves whisper.

Makes me think about trees now. Trees make shade. Make cool. Make rain. Make good climate. Make more trees.

Then I'm thinking, you know, back in the eighties, trees were what we were on about. More trees. Stop the cutting. Plant more trees.
I'm thinking more about the trees lately, 'cause all we're hearing about are the disagreements, the arguments, what can and can't be done about climate change, it's happening, it isn't, carbon tax, the economy, blah, blah, consuming air and digital space to the endth of nausea.
But what is being DONE?

Worldwide forgetting. Forgetting the trees. Trees that make shade, make rain, make better climate, make oxygen, suck up carbon dioxide, balance water cycle, make mulch, make compost, make soil, hold soil, make more trees.

Ah but there are some who have never forgotten. Keepers of the Earth.

What if we took matters into our own hands? Trees grow fast in good rainy seasons. It's rainy this year, probably next year too. A good time to plant trees.

What if we started something? What if we planted just one tree? Ah yes, I know, you've probably planted thousands.

But what if we planted one tree and then asked three people to each plant one, and then each of those asked three people to each plant one and pass it on?
What if it went viral?
It could.

Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo. Image by Rosalie Hall.

We could do this.

While the politicians and journalists are immersed in their swamp bog, we could be DOING something to bring the agenda back to the trees, right at grass roots where it matters.

"Wee-yar. Wee-yar." Three shining black forms lifting from the paperbarks, yellow tails flashing. Off they go!

More trees, more shade. Mmmm.