It happens every year, but it’s always a surprise.
The first tiny bud on the grapevine, the first daffodil, the first swoop of the swallow, the first warm kiss of the sun on the back of the neck.
Spring arrives like a fertile meadow after the grey and barren forest.
The first sign arrives with the return of a pair of perfectly named welcome swallows to the carport. Their mud-spattered nest sits in a corner of the ceiling over the woodpile, which is covered in enough droppings to start my own guano farm. I have to keep the mower, the pool cleaner, garden tools and pushbikes covered by a tarpaulin to avoid them being spattered as the swallows flit in and out of the carport. In a few weeks, I’ll see two or three little heads poke out over the top of the mud cup, mouths open and waiting. Their parents roost on a crossbeam, and when they see me coming, they swoop out at head height like little Spitfires calling “sierp sierp” in alarm. Their speed and bravado make me duck my head in shock. I know they live here in spring, but their cheeky dive catches me out every time I go to chop wood or empty the bins.
I could close the carport door and lock them out. But they, and their parents and probably grandparents, have called this place home for years, and who am I to interrupt this wild and eternal cycle of joy?
Out in the bush on my daily walk with the Grand Duke Prince Finski, a similar cycle is starting its annual spin. Dragonflies, tiny nervous ghosts, are hovering and vanishing like bubbles; frogs are bonking and barking their presence — “I’m here! I’m here! Over here!”
Undoubtedly, the snakes are waking up from their dark winter dream. They keep their distance, and so do I.
The first later winter lemon yellows of the wattle are fading, and now it’s the turn of the cheerful bacon and eggplant and the delicate little blue-violet chocolate lilies. They add subtlety and zest to this orchestra in rehearsal for the big performance of life.
Everything is in order, but something is different.
The difference is water. Gullies, billabongs, puddles, bogs, rivulets, all the way up to grand lakes shimmering for hundreds of metres under the trees and the sky.
I have never seen so much water last for so long in this stretch of forest, now called the Lower Goulburn National Park.
Last year’s flood has changed the landscape almost entirely. The old routes I walked for nearly 30 years are now blocked either by fallen trees or swaying rivers of new grass. Where once was a dustbowl is now a new green river. The colours of this river change in the dappled sunlight from deep viridian to bright lime as it flows under the trees and across the banks of the lakes and billabongs. This is where snakes hide, so I try to stick to what remains of the paths. Even in his dotage, Grand Duke Prince Finski knows to follow this rule. Leave the long grass alone.
It’s another sign that as the predicted EI Niño starts to fire up its engine, deep green grass is both beautiful and terrible.
The water has also brought another burst of life — birds. Herons, pardalotes, cormorants, sandpipers, kingfishers, ducks and more ducks. The place is teeming with swoops and flaps and chirps and whistles.
Water is the nectar of life, and this part of our bushland was thirsty. It has given the place a deep, much-need slug of nectar.
This might not be pristine bushland — decades of bruising have left sandpits, barbed wire, exotic plants and the scars of four-wheel drives and motorbikes — but it is our backyard, and flooding has shown it has the potential to be brought back from over-engineering and disrespect to be a place of beauty and abundance once again.
As the water recedes, as it must during the heat of summer, I hope everyone invested in water remembers that we live on the natural floodplain of the Goulburn River — a cradle for life as well as the economy.