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mccnmatt

Posted on

June 11, 2022

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kayaking, landscape photography, Photography, Time, waterways

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River returning

Eucalypt awakening

It’s been a long while since I’ve posted about the river. It’s not that I haven’t been out. I’ve been up and down the same stretch of Berowra Creek – from my favourite haunts Bujwa Bay to the vine-hung eucalypts at Crosslands – often over the last two years, thankful that this marvellous estuary is at the end of my street.

A cormorant claims Berowra Creek

But paddling the same waters again and again, walking the same trails that loop above and around and down to the river, there’s rarely been something new and remarkable to tell a story about (and in the endless covid work-crunch almost never time to sit down and tell any kind of story to my satisfaction). ‘

The rower

But sometimes, it’s not the new that’s remarkable. Paddling the stretch of river, walking the same firetrails to the same lookouts again and again, sharpens your eyes to small changes in the light or the tide, the movement of mist or ripples or birds in flight.

Spiderweb morning

What do you see when you step into the same river, time after time after time?

The sun advances and retreats with the fog.

Saltmarsh and sun

Fishing boat figures

Sun fishing

Cormorants and their shadows

The big rains come, shifting the sandbars. One day you see kids playing in the shallows, another day, in the same spot, fishermen casting.

Naa badu walkers

Mangrove nurser

Naa badu boaties

Mangrove island

A haunted boat, swaying gently, appears at a mooring

Bundled boat

The silver eyed boat

The blue boat

My pictures from these outings deceive me. Is that the same bay in another season, or perhaps a different line of mangroves in the same early light?

Joe Craft Bay abstract

Shadow trees

The landscape blurs: sandstone into treescape, mist into bird.

Heron on hawkesbury sandstone

Three hills

During lockdowns, borders closed, the still river became our local art gallery.

River Mondrian

Shack on the water

And now lockdown is over, and my pictures of the river are in a real gallery!

They’re on show at The Cottage, a community art space at Brooklyn. It’s all thanks to the wonderful Ana Rubio at Hornsby Council, who remembered my last exhibition at Hornsby’s Wallarobba Art and Cultural Centre in 2020 and asked me to display my photos as part of a six council public consultation process on Dyarubbin/The Hawkesbury. A big part of the consultation is a Celebration of Deerubbin from 10-3 on Saturday June 18, with stalls and kids’ activities right by The Cottage.

High contrast bridge

My exhibition “River Returning” is on throughout June – you can come and see it between 10 and 3 on weekends. I’ll be there much of the time and it would be great to see you!

The prints in this post are all on sale. They’re giclee art printed on Canson rag, and you can find a pricelist below.

River returning pricelist

Eucalypt awakening, 84 x 56.6 cm, $400
Cormorants and their shadows 53.23 x 35.9 cm, $180
Spiderweb morning, 53.23 x 42 cm, $230
Shack on the water 54.24 x 42 cm, $230
River Mondrian 59.4 x 39.6 cm, $250
Sun fishing 28 x 42 cm, $120
Naa Badu walkers 28.94 x 18 cm, $60
Mangrove nursery 28.52 x 18 cm, $60
Naa Badu boaties 27.7 x 18 cm, $60
Mangrove island 28.19 x 18 cm, $60
Fishing boat figures 29.72 x 42 cm, $120
Heron on Hawkesbury sandstone 54 x 42 cm, $230
Three hills 38.82 x 42 cm,$140
Bundled boat 42 x 52.38cm, $230
Silver eyed boat 42 x 63 cm, $250
Blue boat 34.92 x 52.38, $180
Salt marsh and sun 59.4 x 39.04 cm, $230
Joe Crafts Bay abstract 42 x 28 cm, $120
Shadow trees 42 x 28 cm, $120
High contrast bridge 53.23 x 32.67 cm,$180
A cormorant claims Berowra Creek 84 x 56.07 cm, $400
The rower 53.23 x 35.34 cm, $180

If you like a particular image but would prefer it in a different size, do let me know – I can easily get smaller or larger versions printed. Just tell me the size you prefer.

Other prints, from my previous exhibitions on Dangar Island and the Wallarobba Arts and Cultural Centre in Hornsby, are also available. Check out the “Art and the River” link at the bottom of this page. You can also follow me on Insta: my handle is mccnmatt.

To order, please email me on nicole.matthews@mq.edu.au and I can pop your print in the post!

Post about my previous exhibition, Dawn on Deerubbin

Art and the river

Posted by

mccnmatt

Posted on

January 16, 2021

Posted under

egg laying, juveniles, kayaking, mating, national parks, raptors

Cartwheels and company: the young eagles

Fog in Marramarra National Park

It’s hard to keep your eyes on the road sometimes, crossing Dyarubbin – the Hawkesbury. For those not entranced by the scene of early-morning fog spilling down the gullies in Marramarra National Park, there’s the raptor action. If you were heading north on the Peat’s Ferry Bridge about 6.30 on Sunday morning, for instance, you would have seen these two young sea-eagles eagles just a few metres above the freeway.

Two young eagles crossing Dyarubbin

Eagles cartwheeling

I caught sight of them first from afar, tumbling and whirling. The cartwheeling argument was brief but emphatic – a couple of lunges at each others’ talons – one bird upside-down – as they fell from the sky. Then abruptly it was all over. The two flew off companionably through the mist, pulling up in a tall eucalypt on the shores of Spectacle Island.

The young eagles parking up

Needless to say, I did a U turn in my kayak and went to have a better look.

The eagles watching the kayaking photographer

Two youngsters. Siblings, I thought – hanging out together, just like the collared sparrowhawk fledglings we watched grow up in our backyard a few years back. What a wonderful omen for the new year! The plentiful rains of La Nina and their fecundity – an explosion of spring wildflowers, new growth on all the trees, insects everywhere – and also this – two chicks from one raptor nest! Sea-eagle parents is lucky to have one chick make it each year. Two fledgelings defeating death – what a thing to see!

But then I noticed their bellies: the tan-coloured torso of the eagle on the left – much lighter than the brown chest feathers of the other youngster. Fledgelings are a dark brown colour and over three or four years, as they mature, their plumage slowly changes to the eponymous white belly and crisp grey wings of adults. These two were definitely not nest-mates.

Tan belly, brown belly: immature and juvenile eagles

So what was going on here? Training flights? Teen romance? Territorial aggro?

A cursory read of accounts of sea eagle behaviour suggested that the mid-air argument I saw by the freeway is a characteristic courtship display. But sea eagles are only mate at adulthood – some distance away for this two. Plus there’s some controversy over the received wisdom about romantic cartwheeling flights. Some researchers say raptors are more likely to be aggressive than sexy when they get into these mid-air tumbles. And sometimes – although less often – this kind of in-flight wrestling is simply play (Simmons, 1993, 17). There’s not much aggro going on here – or it doesn’t seem like it to my untutored eye.

The young eagles getting closer

The eagles watching the kayaking photographer

So if they weren’t courting and didn’t seem to be competing over territory, what were these two eagles doing hanging out together?

I wondered at first about co-operative breeding. Quite a few Australian birds have offspring that don’t disperse straight after they’ve left the nest, but stay with their parents and help to raise their siblings in subsequent years. A few species raptors do it too, at least occasionally – including some hawks and eagles – with immature helpers and sometimes even unrelated adult birds helping build nests, defend territory or feed chicks.

There’s some debate about whether young white-bellied sea eagles leave the territory of their parents at around six months old or hang around for a few years before heading off somewhere new. When I say controversy, I mean a mild-mannered, ornithological debate conducted on paper – not a gun fight at ten paces. But regardless it seems a bit unlikely that I saw co-operative breeding in action. . Unlike other co-operative breeders raptors tend to have adult helpers. And teaching younger raptors aerial skills isn’t something I’ve read in the chores of “helper” in cooperative breeding set ups, though maybe it happens!

The older, immature sea eagle

Big mixed groups of adult, immature and juvenile sea eagles have been seen in some places, like Jervis Bay, south of here, particularly in autumn. Researchers have have compared this behaviour to the large congregations of Bald Eagles in the US, which gather to take advantage of an abundance of prey. Jennifer Spencer and her colleagues conclude groups of white-bellied sea-eagles are “unlikely to be permanent associations [but] they may have an important social role as conspecifics were frequently observed engaging in mock attacks and courtship displays (Spencer, 217). Perhaps something like this – though a bit more socially distanced – was going on here on Dyarubbin.

A while back, Steven Debus, who really does know his raptors, observed “for its size, appearance, and abundance on the densely human-populated coasts of south-eastern Australia, the White-bellied Sea-Eagle Haliaeetus leucogaster is remarkably little studied” (2008,166). But I bet someone out there knows these two youngsters were up to. If you’re a sea-eagle watcher and can fill in the gaps – drop me a line! I’d love to know.

And, in the absence of an evidence base of any kind, I’m going to take the cartwheels and the company of eagles as a sign of good things for the year to come.

And looking the other way – the Hawkesbury River Bridge in a moody mode

More about eagles I’ve met on Dyarubbin

The very big fish

An eagle in suburbia

Paper roads, private rivers

Encounters with eagles

The great war and rubbish

References

S J S Debus, (2008) “Biology and Diet of the White-bellied Sea-Eagle Haliaeetus leucogaster Breeding in Northern Inland New South Wales” Australian Field Ornithology 2008, 25, 165–193

T.E. Dennis, G.J. Fitzpatrick and R.W. Brittain (2012) “Phases and duration of the White-bellied Sea-Eagle Haliaeetus leucogaster breeding season in South Australia and the implications for habitat management Corella, 36(3): 63-68

Terry E. Dennis, Rebecca R. Mcintosh & Peter D. Shaughnessy (2011) Effects of human disturbance on productivity of White-bellied Sea-Eagles (Haliaeetus leucogaster), Emu – Austral Ornithology, 111:2, 179-185

Rebecca Kimball, Patricia Parker and Janes Benarz (2003) “Occurrence and evolution of cooperative breeding among the diurnal raptors”
The Auk 120(3):717–729, 2003

R. E. Simmons & J. M. Mendelsohn (1993) “A critical review of cartwheeling flights of raptors”, Ostrich, 64:1, 13-24,

Jennifer A. Spencer & Tim P. Lynch (2005) Patterns in the abundance of White-bellied Sea-Eagles (Haliaeetusleucogaster) in Jervis Bay, south-eastern Australia, Emu – Austral Ornithology, 105:3, 211-216

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Posted on

December 19, 2020

Posted under

estuaries, kayaking, landscape photography, Photography

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Art and the river

It’s been a long year, 2020, what with the apocalyptic fires, the global pandemic and higher education (my industry) going into meltdown. Between the smoke, the worrying, the working twice as hard as usual, the home schooling, the doom-scrolling, the worrying about children worrying, there hasn’t been a lot of time for blogging, although there have still been moments of tranquillity and wonder on the water and and in the garden.

A triangle - the front of a wooden kayak - bisects a very still river, which reflects foggy trees on either side.

But something really good did happen, towards the end of the year, worth getting out of my rut to blog about: my first photography exhibition. I had opportunity to take over Hornsby Council’s Wallarobba Arts and Cultural Centre – closed for much for 2020 during the pandemic – for a couple of weeks. The exhibition was called “Deerubbin at Dawn” and was part of Sydney’s annual Head On photography festival – which normally happens in May each year but was deferred this year, like so many other things. But thanks to Hornsby Council and heaps of curatorial help from my fabulous friend Jane Simon it did end up happening!

Looking down from the landing to the front entrance

Jacaranda blossom out front

The Verandah Room

Beautiful pressed ceilings

Hanging the exhibition

The lift lobby

I was really lucky to have my colleague and friend, Dr Ian Collinson, polymath and environmental humanities guy, write a catalogue essay for the exhibition that we also put on the wall in the grand front entrance:

Deerubbin at dawn: river lives on the Hawkesbury reveals Nicole Matthews’ familiarity with her neighbourhood, a familiarity that is a product of the conscious and frequent ‘looking’ that landscape photography demands of its practitioners. Taking many pictures of the same landscape over a protracted time—in different seasons, from different vantage points—produces images that evince an intimacy and a local knowledge, as well as epic and aesthetic grandeur. These are pictures of home not a remote wilderness, even though some may stir a romantic desire for the distant, the untouched and the awe-inspiring. The exhibition speaks to the interconnectedness of what we unhelpfully label culture and nature as though one could exist without the other.

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Taken from a kayak, these photographs alter our normal perspective as we see the River from a different viewpoint: from the inside out, from the River itself rather than a distant look-out. The images are also taken at an unfamiliar time of day. Through the floating eye of the camera we see the River at dawn with its soft, subdued colours and unique misty veils that tease and disappear as daybreak turns into day. Through this double shift of perspective and time the exhibition wants us to look again (and again) at what might be a familiar landscape to those who live in the embrace of the Hawkesbury River.

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Despite their romantic moments, these are pictures of a cultural landscape, landscape as everyday life as it is lived in a place, a life transformed by topography and a topography transformed by life. Deerubbin and its margins is an Indigenous ‘Country’, a national park, a suburb on Sydney’s northern edge, a landscape crafted by generations of human action and activity. The images speak to the labour and leisure that are intertwined and enabled by Deerubbin, of oyster-farming, the daily migration of commuters, and weekends spent sailing, motor-cruising or fishing. Humans are put in their place here; present but not overbearing, integral but not dominant.

Distant picture of a group of yachts and a buoy

A closeup of a decrepit boat with orange flowered weeds growing from its deck

Australasian Darter, wings out, facing a bleached out moon

Sandstone with a reflection and a small tree growing in front of a small cave

The front of a wooden kayak heading into a reflective misty scene

If you’d like to get more of a sense of the atmos of the gallery, here are some little videos with some of the soundtrack I had playing in the space to make it seem a little more… estuarine.

Two weeks of chatting to friends and blow ins, of zoom meetings with real-life mansion background, of selling a surprisingly large number of prints and 2021 Calendars (thank you generous pals and hooray for Christmas) and it was all over.

Four wires dropping against a white wall

The empty gallery

But not completely! Buoyed by how enjoyable I found the whole thing, and cheered that people seemed to like my pics, I have another, much smaller exhibition happening in the front room of the Dangar Island Depot from January 24-March 6 2021. It’s not many islands in a major river in Australia that are accessible by public transport but Dangar Island is one of them – jump off the train at Hawkesbury River Station (with its spanking new lifts, opened only last week) and onto the Brooklyn Ferry Service and you’re there.

And if you’re too far away to come along, you can buy prints of any of the photos on this post. Prices are between $60 and $350, depending on size. Or you can buy a 2021 calendar for $30. Check out the images in the calendar here:

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Posted by

mccnmatt

Posted on

September 28, 2019

Posted under

anthropocene, Climate change, estuaries, Fire, grief, kayaking, landscape photography, national parks, Photography

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5 Comments

Hoarding and hope

Bar Point jetty

Heading straight into the grey emptiness where Bar Island ought to be, out on the river last weekend, I felt grateful that the cloud enfolding me wasn’t bushfire smoke.

Into the emptiness

We live in difficult times. Rainforests on fire, burning not just in the Amazon but up and down the Australian east coast. We knew this was coming, we’ve known for a long time. But it’s hard to believe it’s happening so soon. Too soon, too close, too damn sad. Unbearable to think about for more than a few moments.

A few eucalypts flowering after a dry winter

So I headed back to beautiful Marramarra Creek, to salve that ache. What precisely is that feeling? Not quite solastalgia – the pain of losing a beloved landscape. Not here, not yet – at least not for me, though I guess the traditional owners of this part of the river feel just that. For me it’s a different kind of climate grief. The sadness of knowing the time is coming when this beautiful place will be changed, razed.

Big Bay on a still morning

I find myself returning again and again to the same places, taking very similar pictures of the very same riverscapes.

Yet another oysterfarm

And another

There’s a comfort in doing something over and over again, repetition with infinite small variations. A lower tide, raising the oysterbeds. A jellyfish bloom. A flush of eucalyptus flowers across the hillside or a flock of honeyeaters swirling their way up river. The surprising sight of a juvenile sea eagle, quietly sitting in the dappled light of the mangroves

Juvenile white bellied sea eagle

Up Marramarra Creek

And another oysterfarm

If my instagram feed is a little repetitive, I can console myself that by staying on my home patch at least I’m not spewing out carbon and clocking up the air miles.

Mystery objects in the blue

Of course there’s another reason to return – “fog bathing”. Perhaps I could try to get some kind of wellness movement going. Surely time spent lingering on a misty river is just as healing as walks through the most pristine Japanese forest.

Oysterfarm abstract

And then there’s remembering. Going back to the same scenes, taking photos over and over, to capture a time and place as you see it in front of you right now. The same compulsion to hoard pictures as parents have, knowing their toddler will soon be grown and gone.

Bruce and boat

Up Marramarra Creek

Skies over the Hawkesbury

Of course , the memories you’re harbouring aren’t always good. Two years ago, for instance, the much anticipated multi-family jaunt to the water-access only campsite at Twin Beaches. Fine still mornings and fireside yarns. But also engine failure, unexpected high winds, a swamped coracle and endless bickering over alcohol. Not to mention screaming, blood and an emergency visit to Hornsby Hospital, to have oystershell fragments with their scary bacterial payload scraped from the ten year old’s feet. What can I say but when heading out on the Hawkesbury check the weather, pack light and wear shoes!

On the way to Twin Beaches

Mangrove saplings of Big Bay

Mirror creek

Sunset skies at Twin Beaches

An overloaded coracle

Pelicans in Marramarra Creek

Marramarra Creek has other memories I can only guess at. Every time I pass Friendly Island, I ponder on that name and the violence it hints at but hides.

Friendly Island in Marramarra Creek

But memories, even bad ones, can also guide you. As I put Bar Island behind me I found the fog stretching out in all directions. This line of oysterpoles retreating into white, I knew, would take me where I wanted to go.

Oysterpoles showing the way

Fishermen in front of an invisible Bar Island

On the way to Friendly Bay

On the beach in Bar Island

Cormorants staring out at nothingness

The jetty on Bar Island

If we’re lucky, maybe our stash of memories of beautiful places will tell us how to go forward, and maybe even show us a way back.

One of the pair of whistling kites on Peat’s Island

Other paddles in Marramarra Creek and thereabouts

The silver river

Of gods and map readers

The river that knew

Two sad islands, three whistling kites

Broken bay at low ebb

A scene from the Sydney climate strike on Sept 20

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Posted on

September 7, 2019

Posted under

kayaking, national parks, Native birds, raptors, Uncategorized, waterways

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An eagle in suburbia

Even by Sydney’s high standards – a city of four and a half million people surrounded by national parks – Berowra is absurdly well supplied with wide open spaces.

Upstream in Cowan Creek from Bobbin Head, in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park

There’s Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park on the eastern side of the railway track. To the west, on the other side of the Berowra creek, Marramarra National Park; to the north Muogamarra, only open to the public on six weekends a year and further, beyond the Hawkesbury, Brisbane Waters, Popran and Dharug National Parks.

Pelican grace at the mouth of Mullet Creek in Brisbane Water National Park

To the south, the second smallest and newest of them, Berowra Valley became a national park in 2012, soon after we moved here. It follows the line of Berowra Creek through the suburbs as far as Cherrybrook.

If you put your kayak in Berowra Creek at the entertainingly named Dusty Hole and paddle upstream, you’re not in the wilderness. On the other side of the park, there’s the horsey country of Berilee and Dural – my go-to place for compost-making – and on this side you’re just a hop skip and a jump from Kuring-gai Industrial Park, featuring Inflatable World, the Steggles chicken factory and a host of timber and roofing suppliers.

But when you’re on the water at dawn, you could be in the middle of nowhere.

White faced heron hunting in Berowra Creek

On a high tide, you can wend your way past the sandstone rock arch quite a way up Sam’s Creek. For all its outsize weeds and murky water, this does not feel like gully just a couple of ks downhill from the freeway.

The mouth of Sam’s Creek

Last weekend, I took a favourite side trip, down an alleyway of mangroves to a waterfall amplified by the rains.

Waterfall into Berowra Creek

Below the footbridge that crosses Calna Creek, by the boardwalk across the saltmarsh, is a good place to pull in and stretch your legs. The Great North Walk and the side tracks up Lyrebird Gully meet there, so there’s always a danger of being being forced to listen to an energetic conversation about property prices from the Sunday morning walkers, but skimming across the shallows up Calna Creek you can almost always outpace them.

Casuarinas and saltmarsh at Berowra Creek

Little pied cormorant drying its wings

Reflections in Still Creek, opposite Crosslands

Rock reflections

More rock reflections

There’s even a place to camp on the way at Crosslands Reserve, absurdly close to the Hornsby shops. There’s a hint of civilisation as you pass the run-down convention centre and catch the smell of breakfast bacon, and then you’re back in the fog and the towering eucalypts.

Shiny trees and blue fog past crosslands

Female water dragon on a summer morning

Near Crosslands Camp

Into another world

It’s 18ks, or thereabouts, from the ferry to the rock garden that’s the navigable limit of the creek, and back again. And in the hours before the scouts stir in their sleepingbags, the creek is ridiculously quiet. Apart from the inevitable lyrebird, busying itself with car alarm impressions in the undergrowth.

The upper reaches of Berowra Creek

Mangrove relections

Above Crosslands

More mangrove reflections

Illuminated trees by the campsite at Crosslands

But on the way back from the headwaters last weekend, something new.

A wedge-tailed eagle in Berowra Creek

A wedge-tailed eagle enjoying the morning sunshine, high above the water.

Of course, there are eagles on the creek every day of the week – on a day out in a boat you’re guaranteed to see the white bellied sea eagles that hunt there, and maybe even hear a few of their embarrassingly duck-like calls. I saw a sea-eagle last Sunday, as usual, waiting above the water for the mist to clear.

White-bellied sea eagle in the mist

And once I saw an osprey by the creek, slightly dishevelled and hungry looking.

Osprey staring at me

Osprey profile

But there’s still something special about seeing the largest raptor in Australia hanging at the end of your street. Maybe the leafy north shore counts as the open forest wedgies favour. There’s certainly plenty of rabbits to keep them going.

Wedge-tailed eagle in flight near Cowan Creek

Rabbit cowering in a decorative context

I’ve been reminded this week that Berowra is more like a country town than suburbia. When there’s a car crash, residents come out to redirect traffic. When your kid falls and grazes their knee walking to school, a passerby scoops them up and drives them home. Lost keys and wallets speed their way to their owners. Maybe the eagles have picked up on the rural atmosphere.

Rural enough for rabbits and roadkill, shall we say, but not so much that we’re not murderously anxious about them carrying off our newborn lambs. With the stories of wedgies poisoned in their hundreds, I’m glad to see them here. And I’m glad to be here too.

Insect head reflection

More raptor stories from around these parts

Encounters with eagles

Death and good fortune: a peregrine hunting in Cowan Creek

Two sad islands, three whistling kites

Sex, nests and dog fighting: our family of sparrowhawks get in the family way

Death and sibling rivalry: our baby sparrowhawks learn to hunt

The very big fish

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Posted on

August 24, 2019

Posted under

Climate change, estuaries, kayaking, national parks, Native birds, natural history, superb lyrebirds, Uncategorized

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The singing and the sea

Bute with shiny landscape tidied When you put your boat in at Cowan Creek, you know you’re paddling in the sea. Yes, there are rocky slopes on every side, and eucalypts and banksias lean over the shoreline. The rows of hot pink bells of epacris longifolia dangle amazingly close to the waves.

Epicris longifolia

Smith Creek reflections

White cheeked honeyeater and banksia

But look over the side of your boat, especially in this big dry, and your gaze falls metres deep into into the crystal clear green water. It might be called a “creek” but there’s no murky river water here. Further downstream, where Cowan Creek meets the Hawkesbury proper at Broken Bay, the Pacific meets the horizon and you really know you are in the ocean.

Fishermen off Flint and Steel Point

Looking out to sea

Lion Island

Fog near America Bay

Speedboat off Juno Point

Cormorant off Juno Point having a snack

But far above the official mouth of the river – the limit of “flat water sailing” drawn between Juno Head and Flint and Steel Bay – the water is briny. The tide rolls up the Hawkesbury as far as the Grose River Valley, 138 kilometres from the sea, taking a wedge of salty water upstream. If Broken Bay, where these pictures were taken, is essentially a marine environment, Cowan Creek is not too much different.

Yachts off Cottage Point

Because of course, the Hawkesbury is a drowned river valley. The river channel that once wound its way twenty five kilometres to the east, across the continent shelf, has long ago disappeared two hundred metres or more beneath the ocean. The late Quaternary Marine Transgression that drowned the Hawkesbury started 18,000 years ago and went on for 10,000 years, with the water level peaking just a metre or two above current sea levels.

Paul Boon, in his fascinating history of the Hawkesbury, reports that during that time, sea level rose at perhaps 8-10 metres every millennium, at some times as 40 metres in a thousand years (Boon, 2017, Chapter 3). It‘s hard to imagine what that must have been like for the first people here, the Guringai and Dharug people, moving again and again ahead of the rising tide, away from the coastal flat lands to the hills of the Hornsby plateau.

On the way to Stingray Bay

Even more mindboggling to think, as Boon quietly points out, that over the last few decades sea level has been creeping up by around three millimetres a year. If the CSIRO scientists are right, and I for one don’t doubt they are, sea levels are changing as worryingly fast, if not as fast as the speediest rises in the Flandrian Transgression. On the bright side if I live long enough, there’ll be far more of the upper reaches of Cowan Creek to explore, in an admittedly sweaty and decrepit manner, in my kayak

Sunrise sky near Cotton Tree Bay

Last weekend’s paddle reminded me of what a special place the Hawkesbury is, a drowned river valley where, after rain, waterfalls tumble off the sandstone straight into the sea. I was coming back from a jaunt to Smith’s Creek when, heading into a bay to avoid a plague of water skiiers, I heard a lyrebird going for broke.

According to Birdlife Australia, superb lyrebirds are inhabitants of moist forests. I’m sure the one I heard scratching around in the undergrowth by the shore, would soon be heading back to the gullies and the treetops. But in its distant melange of calls – of satin bowerbirds, kookaburras, currawongs, red wattlebirds and other things I just can’t recognise – was a sound I’d never heard a lyrebird make before. I’m sure I heard an impression of that paradigmatic bird of the beach – the silver gull.

And that’s the soundtrack of the Hawkesbury estuary, right there,

What are your bird call spotting skills like, dear reader? Can you recognise any other shore birds in this estuarine lyrebird’s song? If you can spot any extra calls, please let me know!

The green water of Cowan Creek

A superb lyrebird I prepared earlier

Other stories from Cowan Creek and thereabouts

A glimpse of a peregrine falcon hunting: death and good fortune in Cowan Creek

Old hands: how Smith’s Creek was nearly Canberra

Stingray Bay – lost and found

The Hawkesbury in winter: the shortest days and how to use them

Broken Bay at low ebb: the troubled history of Hawkesbury oysters

A winter morning in Cowan Creek

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mccnmatt

Posted on

August 10, 2018

Posted under

History, kayaking, landscape photography, national parks, Uncategorized, Waste

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4 Comments

The Great War and rubbish

Hole pattern abstract

There’s nothing I like better than a scene of elegant industrial decay. Place that ruin-porn in the tranquillity of the Hawkesbury at midwinter. What could be finer than a paddle around a rusted out wreck on a still morning, in the company of breakfasting eagles and kites?

The rear of the Parramatta and the slopes below the M1

Rivets and rust

Oystershells of rust

White bellied sea eagle with breakfast

Fisherfolk with fish

What surprised me, back on land, when I dug around to find out more, was the age of this beautiful ruin. The Parramatta was the very first ship commissioned for the newly formed Australian Navy after Federation. It was built in 1910, the first of six torpedo boat destroyers to be constructed by Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering in Glasgow. The destroyer was part of the Australian Fleet in the Pacific during the Great War, hunting enemy ships up the Sepik River in New Guinea, patrolling the waters around the Phillipines, Malayan and the East Indies, and later, battling submarines in the Mediterranean and the Adriatic.

The interior of the wreck of the Parramatta

It’s been a very long time since the Parramatta did what she was designed to do. She was taken off to be dismantled in 1929, when my granddad was a toddler.

Native rock orchids… I think!

A mangrove growing through the hull

But in her post-naval career, she’s certainly been reused a few times. After being decommissioned, she was sold to the NSW Penal Department, along with her sister ship The Swan, and towed to Cowan Creek where each boat was to accommodate 50 convicts. The prisoners were supposed to work on a new road from Bobbin Head to Brooklyn that was to be “the finest marine drive in the whole world”. The stretch from Windybanks to Bobbin Head was declared a detention area, but in the end, with a change of government and not a single vote in favour of the plan from the Kuring-gai Chase Trustees, the idea of building a road was shelved and the boats were sold again. Their purchaser hoped (ultimately fruitlessly) to use them as a floating hotel for fishermen. It’s rumoured they went on to house unemployed men and store water during the Depression, before being towed to the north end of Milson Island and used as a floating sand and gravel pit.

Flowing fog at Milson's Island - the location of the Parramatta is on the right

Looking north past Milson’s Island – the wreck location is near the right of the photo

In the early 1970s, the historical significance of the wreck was began to be appreciated and the bow and stern of the ship were retrieved and preserved for posterity – the stern at Queens Wharf Reserve on the Parramatta River, and the bow at the Garden Island military base in Sydney. Other bits have been less officially repurposed – all its valuable brass portholes, for instance, have been nicked.

The back of the Parramatta

Hypnotic ripples

Mangrove saplings

It’s not really clear how the wreck ended up on a mudbank on a bend of the Hawkesbury. It’s rumoured she and her sister ship The Swan were being towed downriver in a gale in 1934 when they broke away. The Swan filled up with water and sank twenty metres deep in the river near Little Wobby public wharf, while the Parramatta was stranded in the shallow water amongst the oyster farms below Cascade Creek.

Looking over to Grace’s Shore in Muogamarra National Park

She’s not the only bit of flotsam and jetsam on that bend of the river, though, by a long shot. I pulled in amongst the mangroves to stretch my legs below the waterfall, to find all manner of rubbish. A discarded shopping bag was filled with drink bottles, polystyrene, coke cans, bait bags and the odd thong in a matter of minutes. I even found a functional tupperware container and matching lid, some thing that I almost never see in my own kitchen cupboards.

Parramatta with hills amended

I have no pictures of any of this trash, needless to say. Unless it’s on the epic scale of Edward Burtynsky’s sublime depictions of industrial landscapes, utterly transformed by excavation and waste, our tide of plastic detritus is nowhere near as photogenic as the rusty bones of our military past. But it will will last hundreds, if not thousands, of years longer.

Rust abstract crop

Other local history posts

The Hawkesbury vs the engineers: some history of the Hawkesbury Railway Bridge

Canberra on Cowan Creek? The strange and beautiful story of Smith’s Creek.

The ghost freeway: the wildlife and history of Mooney Mooney creek

Two sad islands, three whistling kites: stories from Peats and Barr Island

Further references

Boon, Paul (2017) The Hawkesbury River: a social and natural history, CSIRO publishing.

Mangroves through the bones of the Parramatta

The escarpments above the wreck

Metal textures

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mccnmatt

Posted on

July 13, 2018

Posted under

estuaries, fish, kayaking, Native birds, Uncategorized

Shags: here there & everywhere

Symmetrical cormorants and fake owl for crop

A pair of great cormorants not at all threatened by a plastic owl

I think I’m slowly overcoming my prejudice against ducks. My duckism, if you like. There’s a sudden movement on the waterline, I fumble for my camera, then I realise it’s “just a duck”.

Water off a duck’s back

Wood ducklings

A male musk duck

Pacific ducklings?

A chestnut teal in Berowra Creek

A pacific duck… perhaps?

But slowly I’ve been persuaded that ducks are worth the effort. There’s the crazy goitre of the musk duck. The hardhead, gruesomely named after the challenges taxidermists faced stuffing its cranium. The nest-thieving pinkeared eared duck, with its black and white stripes and hints of neon. The good-looking but possibly feckless chestnut teal, said to engage in “dump laying” – dropping eggs in other teals’ nests to be raised. Even shooters participating in the autumnal “kill a duck in a national park” festival aren’t allowed to blow away the increasingly rare blue winged Australasian shoveler. (Field and Game Australia chair was said to be “disappointed” about this).

In the same way, I’m slowly starting to come around to the shag . It’s not that I’ve got a particular prejudice against them. It’s just that they’re always there. Whatever the time of day, season or weather conditions. Familiarity breeds not so much contempt as slight indifference.

But these foggy winter mornings have shown cormorants in a new (filtered) light.

Cormorant raft monochrome flying bird crop square

Post-apocalyptic stillness and deep chill don’t deter them. When there’s nothing moving – maybe just a single sea-eagle enveloped in the mist – the cormorants are the silhouettes that make that gloomy snap worthwhile.

Yacht reflections

Oysterbeds at Bar Island, cloud down

Cormorants in the fog at Collingwood Point

Little black cormorants near at the marina in Dusty Hole

Distant silver gull in the fog

Pied cormorant in Berowra Creek

Great cormorant at Bar Island

Four of the five species of Australasian cormorants can be found on my bit of the Hawkesbury. Only the black-faced cormorant, which only lives on the south coasts – in Tassie, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia – has never made an appearance around here.

My favourite is the biggest, the great cormorant, Phalacrocarax carbo (or the black shag in New Zealand). It’s the world’s most widespread cormorant, found across Europe, India, Africa and South East Asia.

Great cormorants – perching and flying

Great cormorant at Milson’s Point

The little black cormorant is lovely too, with its jade green eyes and black-on-black pattern. I’ll never forget the feathered hush of a huge flock of them passing overhead as I paddled in in Myall Lakes National Park a few years back. Like other cormorants, they usually nest colonially, with lots of other waterbirds. These little black cormorants sometimes combine in flocks of hundreds to feed cooperatively as well, a line of birds trapping fish in inlets as the tide retreats. But I’ve never seen them flying or feeding en masse on the Hawkesbury or its tributaries.

Little black cormorant and its beautiful green eye

Crested tern and little black cormorant in by the promenade in Newcastle

The pied cormorant is a regular sight around here too. I haven’t seen them nesting though, even in the mangroves of Big Bay or Spectacle Island, though flooded forests – along with coastal islands – are apparently the sites they pick to raise their young. In the past, the pied, along with the great cormorant, were suspected by fishermen of raiding nets and at times licences were distributed to cull them. But mostly, along with crustaceans and molluscs, they eat the small fry, too insignificant to interest human fisherfolk.

Pied cormorant portrait

I’m off!

Pied cormorant skewering a fish

I’m not so keen on the little pied cormorants – no glamorous green eye! I see fewer of them, though apparently they do congregate in large flocks in coastal areas. Along with the little blacks, they’re also found right across Australia’s inland waterways and dams, feeding on crustaceans, especially freshwater yabbies, as well as little fish.

Little cormorant drying wings good wave pattern crop

Little pied cormorant drying its wings at Donnybrook Bay

I say cormorants are everywhere – from the turbid shallows at the top of Berowra Creek to the open water where the Hawkesbury meets the sea. But that’s not strictly true. Cormorants prefer fishing over seagrass – there’s a better range of things to eat there. And seagrass beds are under threat all over the place. A study tracking of numbers of coastal birds at a tidal bay in Victoria for over 40 years found that not only migratory birds but the year-round residents, including cormorants, had reduced in numbers:

The marked decline in some (predominantly) fish-eating birds (Australian pelican, great cormorant, little pied cormorant, white-face heron and grey-tailed tattler) around the early 1980s closely matches the beginning of a decline in commercial fish catch… Decreases in fish-eating birds and fish coincide with substantial losses of seagrass in the bay (Hansen et al 2015 524)

Cormorant about to be eaten bigger square

Cormorant avoiding a shark at Dusty Hole in Berowra Creek

And it seems, cormorants tend to steer clear of shallow water, no matter how good the spread, if there’s sharks about. Just another reason for a kayaker to love a shag!

Egg blue sky and fog on beach at Twin Beaches

Egg the ancient kayak at Twin Beaches

Additional references:

Dorfman, E.J. and Kingsman, M.J. “Environmental determinants of distribution and foraging behaviour of cormorants (Phalacrocorax spp.) in temperate estuarine habitats” Marine Biology 2001 138 1-10

Hansen, B., Menkhorst, P., Moloney, P and Loyn, R. “Long-term declines in multiple waterbird species in a tidal embayment, south-east Australia” Austral Ecology (2015) 40, 515–527

Heithaus, M.R. “Habitat use and group size of pied cormorants (Phalacrocorax varius) in a seagrass ecosystem: possible effects of food abundance and predation risk” Marine Biology (2005) 147: 27–35

Traylerd, K.M., Brothers, D.J., Woollera, R.D., and Potter, I.C. 1989 “Opportunistic foraging by three species of cormorants in an Australian estuary” Journal of Zoology (1989) 218, 87-98

Cormorants in mist

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mccnmatt

Posted on

September 23, 2017

Posted under

kayaking, national parks, Native birds, Uncategorized, waterways

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The river that knew

Mist and sky above Mooney Mooney Creek better

Looking upriver from the junction with Floods Creek

If I want a quiet morning on the Hawkesbury, my best bet is a paddle up Mooney Mooney Creek. It’s a jet ski free zone, and that’s a very fine thing. In maybe ten jaunts on various reaches of Mooney Mooney, I’ve seen a handful of kayaks, a few fishermen and one very slow moving yacht. Unlike Cowan Creek or Patonga, there’s no sandy beaches for frisking about on, and the oysterfarms can be navigational hazard at low tide. But if you prefer hanging out with eagles and herons to spending time with humans in charge of powerboats, Mooney Mooney Creek’s the go.

An uncharacteristically still azure kingfisher

There are really three Mooney Mooneys, for my purposes anyway. There’s the upper reaches, a pleasant morning’s paddle if you throw in tranquil tributary Flood Creek, lined with casuarinas and decorated with the blue and green streaks of kingfishers hunting (more on the scenes and ecosystems there in a future post). The put-in for that trip is where the switchbacking Pacific Highway crosses the river, though if you paddle upstream you pass under the highest bridge in Australia, a symphony in soaring concrete.

Or you can go downstream, towards Lemon Tree Bay and maybe on a low-ish tide, see, on every bend and mudflat herons feasting, and if you’re lucky, spot a wedge-tailed eagle soaring overhead.

White faced herons hunting at low tide

Up there in the headwaters, you’ll often see other kayakers – there are sometimes guided tours to the area – and occasionally people camping, rather naughtily, by the side of the river. The Great North Walk, that links Sydney and Newcastle, via most of the lovely places along the way including Berowra (of course), flanks the upper reaches of the river and once or twice I’ve heard voices of hikers walking along the track or crossing the suspension bridge that spans the top of Piles Creek.

Snake Island and Brisbane Water National Park

But I’d prefer to be paddling than driving and I’m a little bit lazy, so I usually put in my boat in closer to home, at Deerubbin, where the freeway crosses the Hawkesbury. From there I paddle under the freeway and past Spectacle Island, stopping off to check out the Mooney Mooney spoonbill colony, and then upstream. Once you get past Snake Island and Sailor’s Chest Point, there’s not much sign of human activity, apart from oyster poles.

Royal Spoonbill in breeding plumage

Looking upriver from Deerubbin past Milson’s Island at dawn

A rather pedestrian freeway bridge but looking pretty in the fog at dawn

But there’s plenty going on, even without too many of us humans around. Last week’s outing was particularly rich in feathery encounters. A masked lapwing family enjoying a day out by the water by the Mooney Mooney public wharf.

Plover chicks running awy parents framing square

Comedy silver gulls ducking for crabs in the shallows near Spectacle Island.

Silver gull with crab square amend

A sacred kingfisher in the morning sun near her burrow in an abandoned arborial termite nest. She got so bored with me clicking away she had a nap.

Sacred kingfisher in a tree looking better crop

A striated heron, one of the river side regulars, pretending to be a particularly striking bit of sandstone.

And further up the creek, the predictable but still wonderful sight of a pair of young sea eagles perched amongst the mangroves in the shallow waters of Fox Bay.

The young ones seem to be easier to get close to. A bit curious and a bit clueless, perhaps, about strange legless creatures that float downstream with the tide.

Even in the peace and quiet, there’s a feeling that all the inhabitants of Mooney Mooney Creek know about us. They know we’re there – mostly out of sight, maybe, but not entirely out of mind. The freeway passes just behind the ridge much of the way up the valley. You see it as you pass Snake Island, the trucks and cars appear briefly, lifted above the rocky escarpment. Sometimes, further up the creek, the wind shifts and you can hear the sound of the traffic.

Under the Peat’s Ferry freeway bridge

The freeway runs just behind the skyline

Sandstone sculptures

Looking downstream towards Mooney Mooney marina

I recently found out that the freeway’s original route went right through my tranquil paddling territory – along Pile Creek, to cross the river south of where the Pacific Highway runs. Right through kingfisher country.

But someone in the National Parks and Wildlife Service in the late 60s or 70s stood up to the road builders and just said “No”. No, you can’t build a bloody great big road right through the (then recently established) Brisbane Water National Park. We’re not having it. In the words of the surprisingly fascinating “OzRoads” website

This new route had a more expensive bridge and steeper grades than the preferred route but there was nothing the DMR could do about it.

And it’s not often you hear freeway builders say that. I’d love to know the full story of who in Parks fought the good fight with the Roads folk. Everytime I paddle up Mooney Mooney Creek now, I’ll be thinking about them and saying a little thank you.

Other paddles from Deerubbin Reserve

Up the Hawkesbury to Bar Island

For the ambitious, further in the same direction to Marramarra Creek

Into the heart of Muogamarra National Park up the winding Kimmerikong Creek

Downriver under the gorgeous if structurally challenged Hawkesbury River Bridge

Further references

Boon, Paul (2017) The Hawkesbury River: a social and natural history CSIRO Publishing

Posted by

mccnmatt

Posted on

August 27, 2017

Posted under

estuaries, kayaking, national parks, Native animals, Native birds, waterways

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Stingray Bay: lost and found

After years of denial, I have finally accepted that I’m a map hoarder.

Though my other half has long been known by the moniker “Map Man”, it’s me that whiles my evenings away at the Lands and Property Information’s map shop, and I’m the one who takes our topographic maps on most of their little outings on the water, snug inside their “Hercules” double zip-lock plastic bags. There have been some unfortunate errors – we have a few maps of dull little patches of agricultural wasteland with a bit of barely navigable waterway in one corner. But despite the ridiculously small slices of this wide brown land that can fit on any given 1:25000 map, they really are quite useful things.

Although possibly less useful – without a compass – in a white out.

Setting out from Appletree Bay

Fog and mist are picturesque, right? “In…mist, the picturesque artist can celebrate obscurity, lack of clarity, indistinctness, that which is veiled… the picturesque tourist is prepared to spend days in fog” (Murray, 2004, 874). Or possibly, not so much prepared to spend days there as trapped there for indefinitely unable to find their way out, as you can see from the baroque twists and turns captured on my phone’s GPS on my last jaunt to Stingray Bay. I’m not sure why it didn’t occur to me to fish it out of its dry bag and consult it for directions!

I often laugh at the giant directional signs you see on the waters edge of the Hawkebury – they really look like they belong by a freeway, not a pristine riverside – but if it hadn’t been for a bloody great sign looming up through the fog, I might still have been floating aimlessly around Cowan Creek days later.

Lost

Fishermen?

Egg and Easter sun

Jellyfish in the fog

I was quite keen, back in April, leaving the boat ramp at Appletree Bay on a high and rising tide, to check out Stingray Bay. It’s a decent step – about sixteen ks, slightly more if you decide to do baffled pirouettes mid-stream – but not an epic yomp. A trip up Smith’s Creek is a good one to do when the tide rising steadily rather than on the turn, since you can go with the flow on at least half the journey, and ride the current on last leg home.

I’d had a pit stop there at Stingray Bay before, on my way further up Smith’s Creek. The Hawkesbury in these parts is a steep-sided sandstone gorge, flooded these last six thousand years with bottle green water, so this is a rare spot where you can get out of a canoe to stretch your legs. You will most likely standing in knee deep water but that’s not so bad, unless you happen to step on the eponymous sting rays. We worry more about sharks, but apparently after blue bottles, stingrays – most likely round these parts the common stingaree – cause the most injuries to beachgoers in Sydney.

They’re not aggressive animals. Richard Wylie, a marine biologist from Monash University, described them as “wonderfully inquisitive and gentle marine animals“. Stingrays give birth to live young and in Yolgnu communities in the far north, stingrays – specifically the mangrove whipray or Gawangalkmirri – were seen as devoted parents, the sort we humans should aspire to be. And while I feel might fret about an encounter with a ray, indigenous communities have long seen them not as a threat but as an important and delicious food source.

But if you do happen to frighten stingrays – for instance, stomping on them while they’re hiding in the sand – you can get a sting from the toxin-bearing barb on their tail. Apparently it hurts like hell. Immersing your feet in hot water denatures the toxin and takes the pain away, apparently, although a lot of people need pieces of barb removed from their wound and sometimes stitches and antibiotics too.

Seagrass and sand in Stingray Bay

I’ve never stepped on a ray, though I have seen them, just once, in the shallows of Calabash Bay in Berowra Creek. But just because you can’t see them, doesn’t mean they’re not there. If you walk around in shallow estuarine waters, it’s best to have footwear and shuffle rather than stride. Fortunately, my bum is usually so numb by the time I stumble out of my kayak that shuffling around stirring up the sand with my protective booties is not so much safety measure as a physical necessity.

I paddled straight over the sting-ray shallows, though, back in April, past yachts barely stirring in the morning mist and moody cormorants staring out at the post-apocalyptic blankness.

Yachts moored in Stingray Bay

Cormorant contemplating the end of civilisation

A pied cormorant – I think suffering from a fishing line wound

Ravens being suitable gothic

Jellyfish in the mist

Slightly rumpled sea eagle

Even at half tide, you can skim safely above the seagrass and on up the creek. There’s a deep swimming hole, and above it, two tiny waterfalls tumbling into a bowl of rocks. Despite my morbid fear of breaking my precious and ancient wooden boat, I even managed to clamber out onto the rocks for a comfort break and a look around. It’s a really lovely spot – a great place to come for a picnic and a splash around in warmer weather.

Egg at the rock garden at the top of the creek

Dawn spiderwebs

Rock orchids

And not a bad place to hang out if you’re a baby fish either. There may not have been any stingrays, but there were certainly plenty of little fishlings when I visited again, in very different weather, last weekend. So very many fishies, swirling away from the paddle like living iron filings toyed with by slightly sadistic magnet… yet so surprisingly difficult for a bumbling amateur to photograph.

The creek at Stingray Bay

Mangrove reflections

Stingray Bay reflections

Many many fish

Stingray Bay certainly looks different (if possibly less picturesque) when you can actually see it.

Looking up Smith’s Creek

Reflections in Stingray Bay

Pied cormorants fishing at Cottage Point

Oyster reflections

And the journey there and back again’s not too hard on the eyes either. Except when you’re paddling straight into the morning sun.

Looking past Cottage Point

Boats at Cottage Point

Dawn through the trees

Little pied cormorant

At Peach Trees

Sandstone escarpment

The cormorants, the escarpment and the sun-touched tree tops might have been perfectly visible and, thanks to months with virtually no rain, the clear green water might have offered a vertiginous view of sandstone slabs sliding into the depths, but not all the mysteries of Cowan Creek were revealed to me on my paddle back to Apple Tree Bay.

Was it that persistent dive-bombing tern that plunked so heavily into the water behind me, leaving only a ripple by the time I spun around to see? Did some underwater creature make that line of bubbles I paddled through on the way past Waratah Bay? Could it have been dolphins? Or more worryingly, a bullshark? Maybe it’s better not to know.