The branch of the Plane was pruned today

It is the 29th of March 2012, my last post from this window and my view of the God of Green beyond. Today gardeners finally pruned the branches I have watched these last five years, branches bowing to the breezes that catch the sails of their solar selves. There is sacredness in such observations, I am sure of it. Thank you green Plantanus tree for all you have come to be, for the awe you have given me... in all your wisdom bringing, thank you!

Cavan of Breifne, Land of Hollows and Hills

Cavan of Breifne, Land of Hollows and Hills
There are fault lines in Ireland that run between north and south but never once had I thought that fault lines could exist between east and west and lands in between.

Liam Lynch from Dublin lives in Australia, and I play on his generosity of spirit and his quick wit and abundance of laughter. “You’re one of us, Liam O’Lynch!” Your people, your old people were from Cavan.” At this suggestion he throws back his head and convulses in laughter.

See there’s a story about all this, about the differences between us and them, the ones in the east, the ones in the west and the ones in between. My friend Liam is an Irishman. He says tree instead of three and his face goes a shade of crimson when he laughs too much at me telling him he’s a Cavan man and that he shouldn’t be ashamed to admit it.

For between east and west there was once a district, I tell him, a district that has spent the last thousand years or more defending itself from the rest of Ireland. The story is as old as time and goes back to the struggles of the Fir Bolg, and even Queen Medb’s armies and the Tuatha De Danann, including the Holy Dagda himself, they all took refuge in the lands of in between.

Then even my lot, the MacCaba arrived in the 13th century from the Isle of Arran as a clann and branch of MacLeods. They were mercenaries hired by the O’Reilly’s and O’Rourke’s. But when the potato famine hit, many left that land of in between for America, and some of my lot went further to Australia. Liam’s lot however made it only as far as the wharf in Dublin, and knew when they saw the sea, that their legs were the legs of the country people, that they had land legs not made for swimming. So there Liam’s lot remained, until in recent times when the Celtic tiger’s teeth began to rot revealing that the tiger was in fact a liger and not as fierce as all had originally thought.

Now the day I tell Liam Lynch that his name is O’Lynch and that his family was formally associated with Cavan he does not sneer but with questionable recognition he throws back his head and turns red in laughter.

Whenever I connect his name to Cavan he looks at me with an eye of the curious, the way that all Irish must view the tourist in the strangers they meet. But before he opens his mouth I tell him that my name is MacCaba or McCabe and that it is the name I wear. This name embodies me I tell him, it wraps around me like an oversized coat. And with the O's and Macs or McC's of Cavan all are kindred, but before I’ve uttered another word he says in terse reply and resignation, “Culchie”.

“Your lot of McCabes from Cavan, they’re Culchies” he says and I am thinking, as one thinks when not versed in such words, that he is talking through his accent about the ones with culture. I feel a sense of pride for being named a descendant of the Culchies for everyone knows that the ones with all the culture and who speak the most Irish live west of Dublin in the Gaeltacht.

And so I am telling him before he calls me another name that I don’t understand, that “Breifne”… Breifne where Cavan and its land of hollows or little hills reside takes its name from an Irish Goddess, and a woman who died fighting defending her land and people from invaders. Within the borders of Breifne lies Art Cabban or, as it is better known, Cavan. These are names within names. Art Cabban, the place of hollows and small hills is a name for a part of Briefne, and within Briefne a great number of ancient names and places abound.”

He stares at me half-smiling. He seems half-believing but is still holding out waiting to be convinced.

“I’m telling you Liam, Breifne was an Irish beauty Queen!”

He just nods his head. He sits back smiling and seems he has heard it all before, just one more voice defending the Culchies of Cavan.

“Breifne” I tell him, was a beauty queen from Cavan and she was widely known for her enchanting good looks. She wore golden plaits in her hair woven with emerald and amber. Her gem encrusted hilt of her sword hung high on her hip. She was the daughter of Beoan mac Bethaig. Her name speaks of great beauty, of a ring and a journey. The name Breifne, I tell him, evokes an invitation for all who originate from her lands and loins to return, no matter how scattered and separated, to return to Cavan and her inland kingdom”.

Now, long ago, I begin to tell him, “long ago the King in Dublin wanted the hand of Breifne but she wouldn’t give it. She wouldn’t give it to just anyone. But that lot, your lot from Dublin made war because of the perceived snub, and since that day to this all from Dublin have been jealous and envious of people from Cavan and it all began with that woman named Breifne who wouldn’t accept the hand of the one from Dublin.”

I continue for I am spinning wax lyrical now,

“Briefne died for her inland kingdom, keeping evil from her door. And it is her blood that lies soaked into that earthen floor”

And he grins, and says without hesitation, “What in Cavan!??”

“Yes,” I tell him, “in Cavan!!”


Wearing the Green of Cavan on a Green Bus
Now conversations about the greatness and wonders of Cavan happen in all sorts of places with all sorts of people.

Where I live in Perth, West Australia the seats of our buses are embroided with scenes of the sea shore, scallop shells and sea fish, star fish sewn into the seat and back rest. It’s an attempt to make the passenger distracted, to soothe their journey, and the rush of their mind. For most, if not careful, will imagine themselves aboard a boat and, for some, the motion of imagined swells will rock them to sleep.

One day I am minding my own business on a bus when an old man comes stumbling down the aisle. He wears his shirt like a billboard. In Australia no one wears their identity on their sleeve except for the Irish, or the-would-be-Irish, or those whose ancestors blame their uncomfortable sense of selves on the potato of 1847. But on this bus an expat Irishman jumps aboard and upon his black shirt the words “J.B. O'Reilly and Guinness” are proudly proclaimed. Sure, now there’s no harm in that excepting of course the conflict and civil war of words when these two words are pronounced together. For wearing that word Guinness identifies the wearer with a place and not just any place but a preference and attitude for a certain locality. There’s always the attitude.

T-shirts and the emblems of the Irish are a pet favourite of mine.

Once in a giant supermarket in the Czech Republic I spied one wearing a shirt that read, “Never Surrender UDF… And this man was looking for oil to cook his chips, and I was looking for a conversation in a language other than Czech. And, sensing something of a Scottish accent or was it Irish in this man I open up on him: “Ciamar a tha thu!? Conas atá tú??” I blend two languages of the Celtic tongue into one sentence. His eyes look me up and down and he says in a dark monotone with a dialect that rocks the space between us, “I don’t speak that language” and nearing him I see his T-shirt and read the words printed in black thereon.

Now, back to this man on the bus with the accent that seemed Irish, for before I have picked him to be a Jackeen (a bearer of the Union Jack) from Dublin I am hesitant remembering that man from Derry, but when I see the words “Guinness” and “O’Reillys” I know it is safe to proceed, for while there is no shamrock, no words other than “O’Reilly” and “Guinness” these words alone spell out the man’s social, cultural and economic hearth and home. But I can tell for this Irishman, aboard this bus, these words are every bit his flag of “never surrender,” that bears an uncanny similarity to another's shirt I had seen in the wilds of the Czech.

The Irish when in lands that are not their own wear their hearts on their sleeve and their emblems over their heart. But you’d think he would have known, that the bait of names upon his shirt would be taken, and devoured by the nearest fish! And being a descendant from Cavan it was easy to sense his Dublin exuberance and self-confidence.

"Guinness" I announce, "Guinness that is brewed from the waters of the Liffey?” I ask him.
“We send you our Australian Vegemite in a jar and you mix it with the water from your sacred rivers and streams and export it back to us as beer."
He half sniggers, only half, and the bait is left dangling on the hook.

"And J.B. O'Reilly was born in Drogeda, I tell him. “But,…” and I am working him to the grand fanali, “His family's origins, his roots…” I tell him, “His roots are from Cavan."
"CAVAN!!" he chokes.
"CAVAN!! He says as if the mere word has pierced his shirt and heart with a rust-jagged knife. “They're the bloody Jews of Ireland!!"
Now, indeed having had several Jewish forebears who sold snuff in Grafton Street, his suggestion that they – my forebears - might have been selfish gives me courage to continue.

“Ah” I hear myself saying and I smile, he has taken the bait, and no matter how much he shakes his head there is no getting him off the hook.

"But don't you think…," I add, "Don't you think it’s strange that a Dublin man such as yourself should be wearing one of Cavan's royal names over his heart?"

"OH SHITE!!" he says.

And at that he can take no more. With great haste he jumps back down from his seat to the floor and dances and runs his way along the aisle of that bus. And all I see, the last I see of him is his black shirt with that Cavan name O'Reilly waving back at me, and embroided proudly next to it is Ireland’s river Goddess inspired drink Guinness sitting alongside it.


Cavan land of Sparkling Lakes
And now it happens one day that my friend Liam O’Lynch of Dublin smiles with his Cheshire Dublin grin and another conversation about Cavan unfolds.

And he reminds me, is quick to tell me, “Cavan”, where they peel their wallpaper from their walls to stick to the walls whenever and wherever they move” he adds.

“Cavan, yes, Breiffne I tell him, “The land of lakes that feed your sacred rivers and streams.” And the sparkle, I tell him, “Do you see the sparkle in my eyes?” I ask him. And he searches.

“It is the glint that my ancestors have passed on to me from their eyes looking at all the sunshine on all those lakes of Cavan, and all that beauty…”

“Yes” he says.

“Yes, Cavan people might have the glint of sunshine in their eyes but they surely don’t want to share it with anyone else.” He adds. “They walk around all day with dark sunglasses.”

And in his polite Dublin way I can tell he is mocking me only because he is struggling to come free from the hook that is embedded in his mouth.

“Well,” I continue. “You would know about Asterix the Gaul,” I tell him, “…that cartoon figure and his village of Gaulish warriors that held out against the Romans?”

“Yes” he says.

“Well” I tell him, “They got their story from Cavan in much the same way that the English turned Ireland’s story of Finn MacCool into King Arthur and that Lady of the Lake.”

“The English,” I tell him. “They not only took the story of Finn MacCool but renamed Finn, Arthur, after the man who first invented Guinness, Arthur Guinness. And the French, who love all things Irish, stole from the English what they had stolen from the Irish. Arthur’s magical waters of the Liffey enhanced the brew of Guinness, and the French appropriated that story for Asterix of Gaul and that magical druid made potion which gave to them supernatural strength…”

Liam doesn’t know what to make of the story I am spinning him, but I keep on and mention how the Gauls had beaten the Romans, at least in that book…
And that hook is firmly embedded in our man from Dublin’s mouth and the further I spin the yarn the deeper that hook is sliding. Mention the English to most Irish and they’re stuck, mention the English, the French and the Romans in one sentence and they’re spellbound and lost in a cavern or hollow of thought.

“And that story of King Arthur and that Lady of the Lake came from the lakes of Cavan”, I tell him.
“And the story of appropriation and theft from Cavan does not end there,” I say to him earnestly.
“For in that story of Asterix the Gaul there was a Bard named Cacofonix who could not sing. In fact his singing drove people mad and his countrymen would use him as their secret weapon against the Romans.

I see in Liam’s eyes some recognition of this story…

“And in Cavan,” I tell him, “…In Cavan we had a similar Bard named O’Carolan.”
“Yes” he says as my bait and hook slides several centimeters further down his gullet. “But O’Carolan was not a man of fiction, and yet he too was Ireland’s secret weapon against the English…”
“Yes,” he agrees.

“And no more beautiful music could you hear from all of Ireland,” I say.
And he is half-nodding whilst attempting to rattle off a few other ancient bards to steer me off my track.
“And…” I tell him, “And all this beautiful music which came from the man O’Carolan, came from Cavan, all of it learnt from time he spent living by those sparkling lakes. Music developed and mastered from Cavan’s Lakes that feed your sacred rivers and streams, rivers and streams that you bottle with Australian Vegemite, Vegemite and Liffey River water that you use in the magical ingredients of Guinness, and Guinness that they sell at J.B. O’Reilly’s Hotel in Perth, West Australia and all connected with the O’Reilly’s from the hills and hollows of Cavan.

Liam looks at me and says nothing. His eyes seem to sparkle and in his sparkling eyes he leaves few doubts about his O’Lynch Cavan origins. In fact his Cavan cultural heritage is evident for all to see.

Jackadup, Yaargadup: Jackadder Lake, where the bandits swim

Jackadup, Yaargadup: Jackadder Lake, where the bandits swim
Upon Jackadder Lake the sun sets and shines gold and red till it is replaced by neon night lights from the village shopping centre opposite, bobbing red ripples in the wind wash.
Here on dusk and into the night, the golden bell and banjo frogs sing their night time ballads to the swans navigating and singing overhead. The frogs are their guides to the lake and both sing, when the swan hears the frog, both sing their way to the water.
Without the song of the frog how else might the swan find it?
When I was a child I did as children do. I hunted the edges of that lake for duck eggs. The ducks built their nests above the water line, nests that they dug from the roots of the grass that hung beneath the lakeside turf. And visiting the local delicatessen of Mordini Brothers I collected and fed stale bread to the waiting swans, gulls and coots and stood fearless amidst their frantic feathered fighting and squabbling for scraps.
The extended necks of swans gave the marauding gulls and coots something to fear for tail feathers were often pinched and ripped from extended beaks.
But beyond the squabbling of beaks and flying feathers, hovered half-submerged long-necked hard-shelled yaargeny. The yaargeny are the long-necked tortoise, the namesake of Jackadder Lake (Jackadup, Yaargadup) and below the surface they waited and bided their time.
Once I spied several attacking a seagull. It didn’t stand a chance.
In the shadows cast by the lakeside willows where the long reeds sing with reed warbling songs swam this band of bandits. One attacked, brave from beneath, he attacked the unsuspecting gull unnoticed and another winged that gull and pulled. And then another was biting its now bleeding breast, and that desperate gull trod the water. It struggled in its vain attempts to break free, to find its height before it sank.
I watched the white feather sky dweller’s carcass and fighting form, half-submerged and sinking in the depths as the bandits finished him, until the stillness of water returned to calm him.
In the shallows the white Egret stalks and hunts in silence, scanning the reeds for frogs, tadpoles and gambezi fish. He stands rigid, fixed, and aiming, and like a shot his beak flashes. His spear is thrust and seldom misses.
I too had watched and admired the pinging tail movements of the musk duck. I had once caught some beneath the arching bridge from the stream that fed Herdsman’s Lake. This stream also had openings that fed the east side storm drains from Yaargadup. I wondered if the young musk had been sucked in from that lake and beneath the roads had swum before finding the stream beneath that arching bridge.
All around that lake I found my way.
I once strapped 33 gallon drums together and paddled the raft across one day, and together with friends we trawled and swept the shallows with nets for carp and dragonfly larvae and sucking leech.
But now I am older, I walk with my own children by that lake beneath the willows and teach them the names of ducks and together we watch for the black protruding noses of the black shelled bandits of Yaargadup.
And here that was once a cow paddock was also a horse yard. I find myself thinking of horses, imagining them galloping with tails held aloft, whinnying in their play near the lake. Here in the 1930s my grandfather’s brothers James and Tom acquired a foal from this herd. Its name was Chico and it was here it had received its winning genes.
Here too near this lake white hunters in the 1890s had chased their quarry, a wild kwerr brush kangaroo. Here their hunting dogs had caught her baying and howling along the now unseen fence line and delivered their kill for the men on horseback blowing horns.
But before this time Yaargadup had seen other events, for here bands of wilgied Noongar had wandered in their millennia of coming and going, in skin cloaks and naked in the sun, standing knee deep in the mud hunting yaargeny to cook in the ashes of their smouldering lakeside fires. Others had dug their eggs from the soil, and made their beehive huts where million dollar mansions now stand, where the wealthy watch from their wide glazed windows the silver lines of recreational 4WDrive vehicles, with young families lazing on tartan rugs with prams.
But sometimes I still see the originals. In the trees I still see and hear the wild ones of former days.
The family of magpie still hunt their lands and nest and swoop in spring, and at night I can sometimes hear the mopoke sing.
And recently my daughter and son spied the broken shell of a black baby bandit that some pedestrian’s foot had stepped upon, unseen in their walking. Some other passerby had discovered it, and felt pity for it, the namesake of this lake.
This lake where miniature sails now flap between foam buoys and race and where their owners in rubber suits and wellington boots stand with radio controls for hours.
This lake where red and yellow Ferrari sometimes park and drivers sip coffee, where thousands of feet now tread, and where the lakeside sports equipment sits spaced, idle and waiting.
This lake, the wind still washes from one side to the other the feather down of swans, sea birds and coots, where the musk duck pings in its courtship, with the banjo frog singing: ‘plonk, bonk,’ and guiding the swan.
This lake where I want to cast my shoes aside. Here I want to enter the water once more. I want to hunt duck eggs and fish for the bandits with woollen twine weighted with lumps of meat. No matter how much the yaargeny stink I want my children to know the thrill of their capture and release.
I want my children to fish for carp and wade in the shallows, and to name the birds as I did, but in reality I know they can’t, for nothing is as it once was.
We can’t feed the swans or wade in the water with nets for it is now a nature reserve, nature and bread stuffed ducks are rightly a thing of the past, times have changed, we’ve got to keep the waters calm, except for that lake’s edge frantic in its steps and stepping, with untethered marauding dogs and 4WDrive all terrain vehicles hugging the kerb and ladies with wide-brimmed hats and wide-eyed glasses cramming the shoreline.
But at night as the stampede subsides the peace of Yaargadup returns once more.
When all have left the plonk-bonk song returns to serenade the moon and guide the singing swan. And sometimes I have this Déjà vu that where the bandits swim, I’ve been before and sense I am that child again.

The Devil's Gap of Albany or Yokaa-kaany Waaliny

Man on the Cliff Top at the Devil’s Gap, Albany.
(Kalgoorlie Argus 9th December, 1913 p. 18).
I was reading through old newspapers and wondering on their use of words. And I was thinking how minds tend to think similar thoughts through the ages.
And, in reference to the Gap near Albany I had written before of the siren’s song (26-04-10), of the sounds generated in the gap in the surge of wave and the hollowed rocks through which they roar. I had written previously,

This fingering fragmented froth that lingers seeks to touch you; reaches out to connect you with the sea and its mournful melody that holds to its memory of men and women lost who never understood the cost - of wandering too close to the sirens songs - to their tidal surge and singing and all their anguish bringing.

So recently, reading through papers of the past I was interested to read the following description of the “Devil’s Gap.”

The awesome Devil's Gap, the dark frowning walls of which rise up in for bidding majesty to the height of 150ft above water level, make an impressive scene...The view can be taken in only by extending oneself flat upon the earth and drawing up cautiously to the edge. The ocean's swell dashing and swilling into the bides of the Gap, churning itself into fantastic, tongues of water and sending clouds of vapour-like spray into the 'faces of those above, form a picture " the fascination of which holds the lover of Nature for hours in silent admiration. Here Nature is seen in her sternest mood; bold massive piles of granite which have defied the seas for centuries are her materials; grand and impressive have been the manner of their employment: Near-by is the Natural Bridge, which in future years should join with the Gap in attracting thousands of-tourists to view its rugged and peculiar form. A unique geological formation probably many centuries ago left an uncovered cavern near to the rocky shore walled off from the ocean by a high barrier of granite about 60ft. wide. The swirl of countless swells beating against the wall has worn an aperture at water level leaving an irregular arch, through which the waves roll in, dashing themselves against the cavern's sides, producing music such as one would imagine coming from the thundering notes of a colossal organ. (The West Australian 15th Jan, 1914 p. 8).

I like this talk of waves producing music. I like the vivid descriptions of words used, such as, “The ocean's swell dashing and swilling into the bides of the Gap, churning itself into fantastic, tongues of water.” I think the word 'bides' means, in this context, a place that withstands and waits... like, as if it has stood in its making of music from its earliest days...
So that this ancient formation of rock and pounding sea has been singing and booming to the surges of water-mountains for thousands, if not millions of years...Such that the sirens songs I’ve heard are the ancient ones and their waiting has been long.
One wonders if their songs have changed through time?
When the water was far lower due to the last ice age what songs did the sirens sing 5 to 10.000 years ago?
I also like the way the writer of 1914 had described the watery tongues of the Gap... and thus adds a human dimension to its movements and Poseidon’s view to all its description therein...and thus the god of the sea and the songs of the sirens are activated in our imaginations...
And the picture of the man, his silhouette of the brave, or fool, who stands on the lip of the abyss, reminds me, plays with my memory of what I saw as a child. There on the hip of granite sat the living image of youths and all their risk taking. Their image remains branded in my childhood memory, their dangling of legs over the edge and their tempting of fate, and to this vision of them I remember and shudder...and imagine the sirens that bided beneath their feet...
You wonder don't you, did they hear them? Was their songs that drew them near to tempt their fate?
And that man on the roof of that Gap what was he thinking?
Did he hear Poseidon and the sirens singing?
Did he return across the threshold or join the brotherhood or sisterhood biding for the many who have never returned?

Wild Man Story 2 Too

Johnny Chester

I too have a story of the wood chip bomber, that man of myth who lived/still lives alone(?) in the forest with his horse and dogs.

My story of this man relates to a time in the mid to late 1990s when I was living periodically in the forests near Nannup. Returning to my old camp one day after some time spent forest blockading, I wandered towards St John Brook at Cambrey for a wash in the stream. I did not get too far before I soon noticed with some mild trepidation, a decapitated head of a recently dispatched grey kangaroo. Its head was fresh and it lay off one the paths leading to the brook.

I had proceeded only a short distance when to my worry, I entered a clearing where a "pack" of large dogs lay lazing in the shade, and suddenly they sat on their haunches and showed their teeth and I could hear their snarling.

I wanted to quickly back step, but was frozen, until a white Irish wolfhound came towards me with its tail swishing rapidly back and forth and its tongue protruding from the side of its mouth.

"Hello!" I said. Any port in a storm is a welcome one. And this dog kept coming. It reached me with an inquisitive eye and a friendly tongue. Maybe it was the scented lolly or chocolate wrappers in my pockets, I don't know. But within a moment a voice was telling the rest of the pack to lie down. And from the shade came a friendly welcome from a bearded man with an Akubra hat.

"Any friend of my wolfhound is a friend of mine" he said.

His white horse stood off to one side, tethered to a branch and from our first introduction it became clear he was the woodchip bomber. I said "You're kidding!?" "You're a legend" I told him. I think he liked my attitude and together we swapped some small talk about our lives. He said he was pig hunting and followed the tracks through the forest where ever they took him. He was something of a wild man, and my memories of him are now magnified remembering that day.

Some years later I also saw him gallop his horse into Northbridge and his horse stood on its hind legs in front of the Alexander Library with police running from all directions. I think he was bare chested and although I knew it was him, I wondered what he was doing there. His forest cover and hidden sanctuary was a long way from where he now sat in his saddle.

He had a free spirit and I suppose he is still out there and so too is that Irish wolfhound of his or its offspring. I wonder what stories he swaps with those he meets, and whether he is as hospitable as he once was with me. I hope so.

August - The Spring Time is Coming

August is coming, days will be longer, bluer, blossums will appear, that cold chill of winter will whisper her end in our ear.
The Magpie will be choralling, the willy wagtail too, songmen in the night you will hear them, that their ballads are for you
That the fertile is rising, that nectar will come, that spring time and the flower will be blessed by the sun
And our fears of old winter, and of the age in our walk, won't seem so bleak or the thoughts of our talk
We know, and we've got to believe, that the clouds will pass by us... That winter is only a station that next stop is spring
and sweet is the memory of the hope that it brings.

Crinia catchers of Ngooraganup: Herdsman's Lake

Crinia frog catchers of Njookenbooroo Ngooraganup: Herdsman's Lake

Their name is crinia, the small frog - and as children, we spied them in their thousands.

The water in which the crinia swam was finger deep.

Overhead, giant paperbark stood silent locked away from the breeze catapulting faerie fluff from the bending lakeside’s reeds beyond.

The water sat at a constant temperature resting, as it did, on a millennium bed of peat. A peat bed fed and feeding from its millennia of fallen branches and rotting trunks and leaves.

In Woodlands, in Perth’s western suburbs, bordering Herdsman’s Lake was a white limestone track that drew alongside the lake’s edge. Stepping over and through the bracken and long grasses of kikuyu one had to take care. Tiger snakes and dugites abounded there, and came with enlarged fangs, foraging in frenzy, hungry and, every bit as mad as a cut snake for every sound we heard, or at least we frog catchers had imagined and believed what others had told us, for we never saw one, not one.

Once on the peat the hottest day was forgotten, and sightings of crinia, golden bell and banjo, and all matter of unknown multi-coloured thumb-sized frogs took over.

Here, and there, the prizes of car thieves or forgotten wrecks sat rusting, brown and disregarded, forgotten by all except we frog catchers.

Temporarily this car yard was ours and oil spots or droplets of leaking aging fuel left rainbows, rainbows that expanded before disappearing in the wash of paperbark shadows. Was that a crinia, a banjo or golden bell? The eye had to be quick to catch their springing, swimming in the half-shadows, with their speckled back, legs and thighs golden, green, brown and sparkling, glinting in the half-light.

Shadows submerged them and, on hind frog legs ever quickening and bounding behind them, the crinia left us for dead darting to their sanctuary in the old Morris or radiator wedged between the corrosive chassis of some aged car gone to rust.

This sanctuary of car wrecks was their hideaway their secret world in the shadowed everglades of Herdsman's Lake. After school in the afternoon hours between 4 and sundown we played in the shadows on the peat, and for an hour or two both the crinia and my band of crinia hunters ruled the crinia kingdom together.

The lake side crinia kingdom whilst ruled by frogs overlapped with the reed beds and occasionally the elongated flexing staggered movement of the spear billed Egret came on reconnaissance seeking the crinia and its cousins, just as we catchers did, but with the desire for feasting, not for spying. The crinia were often no match for him, but his plumage of white might have given the frogs a moments warning. The moorhens were far better camouflaged for shadows and crinia, but their feast was weed. As was the diet of the swan, but we never put it past them, surely a feed was a feed, but crinia were hardly a feast, not that it ever stopped the Bittern or Nankeen Night Heron. These great hunters fished in the shadows. The sharp beaked ones were the best equipped to hunt the crinia and their larger frog cousins, as their plumage was camouflaged for shadow hunting. When the late afternoon lakeside hunters emerged from their reed hideouts, the crinia would not have seen what waited for them and what we crinia catchers knew was sure to hit them as quick as any Egret if given the chance.

Herdsman's Lake was named by the Noongar as the place of the black duck - Ngooraganup, but the duck is hardly black, pied perhaps, and a close relative of the European Mallard. In between its wing feathers, it revealed a plaid of navy blue, a navy commission of duck medals we imagined.

Black ducks, Moorhens, Swans and Herons hunted, preened and fed and out of sight and, although seldom seen, the musk duck was frequently heard and watched for every courtship performance in which it engaged. Its tail feathers bent like a peacock and its wings swept water in unison with its tail movement, before it let out its piercing ping like a submarine hunting Russians.

Bordering the reeds, the peat and paperbark was a field used for the equestrian inclined and some days we crinia catchers watched from our well-hidden sanctuary as riders and their horses competed in their jumping and competition. And beyond the field was a line of factories. On some afternoons, we went to the sanctuary by way of a wide detour, and made straight for a potato chip factory where there stood lines of kindly Italian factory women who handed out free bags of salt and vinegar, barbecue, tomato and plain. All of the chips were salty, such that each mouthful forced and drove us to thirst, but with nothing other than lake water to quench that thirst, we were forced to backtrack on a quickening return journey home.

The sanctuary of giant paperbark and its millennium of peat cooled the fringes of the lake. In the summer heat when the fires roared sending cinders over our nearby suburb of Woodlands, the sanctuary prevented the fires spread. It was a managed spectacle that flared into the night and in the shade and cool of the sanctuary the wading birds sheltered as if boats in their pens riding out a cyclone.

All around the lake's edge the seasons played out as the waders, coots, cormorants, and swans year in, year out, in their breeding cycle of nesting, laying and looking after their young was mimicked by the lakeside’s market gardeners. After one crop the swans would breed, their cygnets would hatch and after the harvest these families of swans and their bundles would forage, before making their perilous journeys over the busy Pearson Street to Jackadder Lake.

The human lake side dwellers knew when to expect them, each year the crinia hunters watched for them even acting as cross-walk attendants guiding, shepherding them to the lake. Too bad the same did not occur for the long-necked tortoise whose grey form matched the bitumen and left them and most car drivers unaware of each other.

Red mounds of broken brown-shell, sinew, guts, offal and intestine marked the previous night's rush to lay their eggs and rush to return to the lake, and many became a roadway road-kill. But one somewhere had always gotten through, had made it across the killing field, past the grey kerbed butchery that saw so many die, not just tortoises but birds, frogs and even cats. Someone's moggy that no one claimed would lie for days until rigor mortis had left him flat like cardboard, stiff and stinking.

But between these lakes lay arteries, networks of cement aqueducts that carried roadside run off in subterranean drains. All of them fed and led back to Herdsman's Lake. All of the underground drains carried oil leaks and road wash and all matter of fish joined in their swim to the lake. Periodically, great schools of golden carp fingerlings swam in the shallows, while much larger three-pound monsters swam in the depths. Goldfish also found their way into the lake and grew into Koei as large and as prolific as the carp. One stream, more a tributary connected distant swamps to the lake, and there in deep pools, we crinia catchers baited our hooks with bread. The fish, large hungry carp were caught, released and re-caught. The same fish being caught four times or more, and the same fish, we thought, appearing day after day.

From time to time the local council’s drainage team came through removing waterweed and teams of southern Europeans speaking in an unknown tongue moved slowly along the bank, removing weed and the gilgie - the small freshwater crayfish that lay waiting in the mud. We crinia catchers saw this and learnt fast.

On any day one could locate duck eggs, young ducklings, gilgie, and frogs and, with some help from the village butcher, we learnt how to lure the tortoise sometimes two or three at a time. Although whilst fun, this was not our favoured catch for the putrid scent of the yaargeny left their stench on our hands that proved difficult to remove.

The streams and drains all led to the lake, all a vast underworld network of waterways that entered the lake from one-side and fed another steam that meandered between the old police stables, Churchlands High School, Edith Cowan University before touring the flanks of Newman Sienna and disappearing. We crinia catchers went to these schools, and each day viewed the stream and its journey to the grate. The movement and rush of the streams to the grate entranced and reminded us of where the waters originated, and sadly where the sanctuary ceased. For we knew what perhaps the tortoise, gilgie, carp and fingerlings did not, that beyond the grated underworld a giant outlet pipe fed the waiting salt water schools of sharp-toothed Tailor, Skipjack and Trevally. This was the final destination of the subterranean drains of Woodlands, Innaloo, Osborne Park and beyond. All matter of fresh water things were fed through the Swanbourne drain till they reached their final destination and the unceasing appetite of the Indian Ocean. Unsuspecting, they went with the flow. If only they had known what lay in wait for them.

In time we crinia catchers grew up and our glimpses of the sanctuary were periodic single spied moments from windscreens, side windows, and rear-vision mirrors of what was quickly becoming another's sanctuary of progress. How unreal it seemed to see giant mechanical arms lifting bucket loads of peat as the sanctuary was up-ended and drained.
The offerings of the fresh water fish into Swanbourne's drainage pipe had obviously not been enough. With the peat removed the giant age old paperbark were cut down, all to make way for new roads that fed the factories and technology parks. Where the sanctuary once rested a four lane road was built and named 'John Sander's Drive' in memory of a lone round the world yachtsman. How ironic that the memory of salt water had come to occupy that which was once fresh water, in celebration of a roadway of progress built through what had once been a frog sanctuary.

Beneath the bitumen the peat swamp lives on. The bumpy road that rises high and low now forces each driver to remember what went before it. And where once the market gardens had sown seedlings and provided for the life cycle of the swans, an ever increasing population and its suburban sprawl has moved in and almost, very nearly taken their place. The peat and paperbark have gone now and only memories of the days we spent with the crinia and their cousins remain. But sometimes these old memories return to me. When I hear the plonk-bonk song of the banjo frog and that golden bell singing and guiding the swans in the darkness to Ngooraganup Herdsman's Lake and its near neighbour Yaargadup Jackadder Lake, I become that child again.
With the songs of the frogs singing in the darkness I eagerly remember our band of crinia catchers, and hope they are still out there in some sanctuary somewhere, watching with eyes and experiences anew, the magical world of frogs and water birds and the places they call home.