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).  ‘

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

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

A haunted boat, swaying gently, appears at a mooring

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?

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

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

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

The shortest days and how to use them

The chickens let us know when midwinter’s come.  The fortnight after the winter solstice, no matter how bloody cold it is, the girls start serious egg-laying.  So even as you’re trying desperately to stash four different kinds of hot lemon pickle and a hundredweight of lemon marmalade, as you open the fridge, a dozen eggs roll out.

Lemon preserves cool closeup skinny

I went AWOL from the blog for the last six months, as the observant amongst you might have noticed.  The days just got shorter and shorter.  My garden kept growing and the Hawkesbury streamed uninterrupted to the sea, but time to write about these things just seemed impossible to find.  But now the days are lengthening (and I’ve finished my night classes), all that is going to change!

Eagle flyby long crop

White bellied sea eagle doing a fly-by of Gunyah Beach

The shortest day may have passed but it’s still pretty nippy at 5.30 in the morning when I get out of my lovely warm bed and drive off through the nautical twilight to put my kayak in the water.  When it’s 3 degrees and you have wet feet, the exact moment when the sun touches your frozen toes comes to be of critical importance.

I have a nifty little app on my phone, SunCalc, that shows just where the sun will appear over the horizon on any day of the year.  So I check the tide, and the wind, and then, on a winter morning, figure out where I’ll catch the very first light.  Putting in at Brooklyn and heading for open water is not a bad choice.

I’ve had some lovely paddles from Parsley Bay in the last year.  Quiet jaunts into Porto Bay, a shallow backwater frequented mostly by raptors and oyster fishermen…

Juv sea eagle long

Juvenile white bellied sea eagle

And, on a day with hardly any wind, I braved it across to West Head, stopping off at four beaches – Gunyah on the way and Eleanor on the way back; and on the other side of Cowan Creek, Little Pittwater with its tumbling stream and littoral rainforest and Hungry Beach and its a pair of sunbaking sea eagles.

Terns in front of Lion Island cropped closer small

Terns fishing off Gunyah Beach

I was almost bold enough that time to cross the invisible line – “limit of flatwater sailing” – that passes between Juno Point and Flint and Steel Beach, but bottled it in the end, just peeking round the corner towards Pittwater and the open Pacific beyond.

Clouds over the sea long and skinny

And last weekend, coldest it’s been on a Sydney morning in a couple of decades, I set out for Refuge Bay, where the pleasure craft rocked quietly, their skippers sleeping.  But not the kids, slipping away in their dinghies to fish and play under the waterfall on the beach.

And on journey there, what magic scenes!  The open waters of Broken Bay skimmed, concealed, curtained, framed, illuminated, by the fog.

Fishing boat and lion island

Fishermen and Lion Island

If there’s something to be said for the shortest days, it’s the long nights.  You can almost have a sleep-in and still get up before dawn.

Juno head mist dark sky

How to murder your monster shrubbery

The short answer is “slowly and with feeling”.  But let’s not rush into anything.

I’m pretty sure there’s some kind of by-law in Hornsby Shire against putting your kids to bed with a recitation of “The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock”.  Something along the lines of the “Unsafe and age-inappropriate use of modernist poetry act of 1987”.  But when your eight year old requests read T.S.Eliot, what can you do?

 

I don’t think I’m exaggerating when if I say that T.S. seemed to be a teeny bit negative about ageing.  One can only speculate on how different this poem (and indeed his whole oeuvre) would be if Prufrock had focussed less on getting lucky with the sirens of the sea and more on pruning.

Because, let’s face it, gardening is an oldie’s game.  When, yet again, the annual spud harvest fits in a single soup bowl; when your carrots are absurdly abbreviated; when another fruitless year passes for the ungrateful kiwifruit vine, the middle aged gardener shrugs her shoulders and thinks “next year”.  The seasons tumbling past faster and faster just means a shorter delay before you have another go at germinating those ruby brusselsprouts.

Our Fraser Island creeper finally did its gaudy thing – flaunting great big, hot-pink clusters of flowers in the oddest place, not up where the growing fronds reach  towards the light but way, way down in the gloom underneath the rampant Sweetie kiwifruit vine.  It flowers on old wood.  What a fine turn of phrase!

The Tecomanthi hillii not alone in dragging its feet.  Here’s a wall of shame – some other plants that have taken their sweet time to do anything exciting at all.  At least the “Bower of Beauty” has finally decided to flower on our side of the fence, rather than, like it did last year, offering a display exclusively to he neighbours.

It seems fitting, then we’ve taken what might be politely described as a contemplative approach to the execution of the massive weeds that tower over our back garden.

Our broad-leafed privet rivals the great redwoods of North America.  We have a Japanese honeysuckle vine as gnarled and vigorous as a strangler fig, which scrambles through a hibiscus “bush” as tall as a two story building. If only the mystical growth potion that the erstwhile owners  poured on these doughty invasive plants would seep down the hill into my peaky looking zucchini plants.

I like to think incremental approach to weed-murder has some ecological justification.  Some weeds in some places – lantana, for instance – form a critical habitat, particularly for the smaller birds that have been disappearing from cities.  If you clear it without replacing it, the LBBs vanish too.

So over the last couple of years, as well as installing a spiky tangle of hakeas, callistomens, sorbs, grasses and vines in an out of the way corner of the yard, I’ve  been tracking down native fruit-bearing plants to replace the  tainted bounty of the privet and honeysuckle berries.  Purely in the interest of hungry birdlife, you understand.  Nothing to do with fetishistic plant-hoarding.

Daleys up in Maleny and The Good Karma Farmer in Newcastle are my bushtucker dealers.  In my experience, you can tell if it’s bushtucker because the critters get it before you.  Following this logic, I’ve put in lillypillies, native gardenia and Davidson’s plum, koda for the Lewin’s honey eaters and the brown cuckoo doves and blueberry ash for the wonga pigeons.  I’m fairly confident the birds won’t turn their noses up at the mulberries, the persimmons, my grapes, my persimmons and my cherries either, damn their eyes.

I’m still working on substitutes for the honeysuckle and the fine looking but weedy red trumpet vine we inherited from our house’s old occupants.   Along with the hibiscus, they’re a favourite of our regulars, the little wattlebirds, and the gorgeous eastern spinebill, an all too occasional visitor.

I’m slowly sliding the wonga wonga vines, the Bower of Beauty, the dusky coral peas and the guinea vines amongst the potato vines and the honeysuckle.  Lulling the evil invaders into a false sense of security before I strike… there will be time…

“There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.”

You see, Prufrock definitely has the makings of a gardener.  You may well murder and create after your hundred indecisions, visions and revisions, but don’t forget that cuppa tea*.

*Health and safety warning: this is a gardening blog, not a work of literary criticism.  No responsibility is taken for any adverse horticultural outcomes of incorrect readings of the Western literary canon.