Behind the Brolgas

 

Tablo reader up chevron

Behind the Brolgas

Kerry Balzarolo

I’m starting to lose track of days. Hours have lost all but their abstract qualities. I wake whenever. No alarm, no clock. I rise when it suits me. My days enjoy a lack of routine and a lack of pressure. Take today, for instance. The shadows have covered all of the front door since the dog barked at the passing school bus and I’ve moved my chair three times to take advantage of the winter sun. I’ve removed my flannelette pyjamas and have changed into jeans, t-shirt and baseball cap. As usual, I’m sitting alone on the front patio with a coffee and my notebook. It’s July which means shorter days and cooler mornings. Last week the cane was harvested and I have a new vista to the East. My gaze lingers on the dry, spiky hills that surround our small town; these gentle hills that are so different from the snow capped mountains that I grew up with in Vancouver. Living quietly amongst these hills, on a farm, is a world away from the city in which I was raised.

I’m listening to an orchestra of birds, each one singing their own part. Brolga, crow and magpie, make up the loudest, and most obvious, sections. But behind their loud, deep tones I can find gentle twitters and trills that remind me of the tiny birds of my homeland.

It’s been nearly 15 years since I last called Canada my home and five since my last visit. During that last stay in Vancouver I took a short walk from my father’s house to the sea swept park known as Garry Point. As I walked, the brisk wind zipped in off the Pacific Ocean and the sunlight made sharp shadows from trees and houses. On that day in late autumn, I was a stranger in a place that was once familiar to me. Garry Point is bound by the ocean to the West and the Fraser River to the South. The land is a flat and mostly barren few acres that has been groomed and gardened and tamed during the years of my absence. I walked and remembered what it had been. In winter the saturated soil created huge puddles that could freeze and host impromptu hockey games. In summer the huge driftwood logs that washed ashore were ideal for sitting on while roasting hot dogs or marshmallows. And during my teenage years the park was a popular meeting place for cars full of beer-filled boys and giggling girls.

As I strolled the newly laid out path of sharp, grey pebbles, I relived those bonfires, those hockey games, those high school parties. Were those really my memories? Did this tanned skin once feel at home in such chilly surroundings? I walked off the pebbled path down towards an old dock. There were maybe a half dozen small fishing boats, probably family-owned vessels, from at least a generation ago. The paint was faded and peeling. As I stood and absorbed the raw elegance of these working boats and the marshland reeds covering the distance I began to tune in to the soft, high-pitched trills of the small birds who had always inhabited Garry Point. I listened to their phrases and was transported back to my childhood. I stood, smiled, listened and was happy. I realised that I loved that place. I didn’t just belong there, it is part of who I am. The land of my childhood created me.

I left that land and chose a different one for my adulthood.

As I sit now in the crisp winter sun of my tropical home I can still hear those delicate chirrups of my youth, just hidden in the distance, nearly inaudible behind the loud bellows of the brolgas.

Comment Log in or Join Tablo to comment on this chapter...
~

You might like Kerry Balzarolo's other books...