A wonderful bird is the pelican
His bill will hold more than his belican.
He can take in his beak
Enough for a week,
But I'm damned if I see how the helican.
Iread somewhere that some 85 per cent of Australians live less than 50 kilometres from the sea. No wonder they all rush to the coast come Christmas time, like eager lemmings. Conga lines of cars coming down Kings Highway from Canberra, road rage in the Bay, the hoonish summer coastal pox of jet skis on the river ...
It's Monday after Christmas, and the lemmings are returning to their ambulances and police sirens and early-morning trucks in the city, leaving me, free of the need to dash, to my lunch-drugged continental siesta - 'the hour for daydreams', as Graham Greene called it.
To send the last few lingering holidaymakers on their way, it started to drizzle, with everything shimmering in degrees of slate, like a Chinese brush-and-ink painting. The end of yet another peaceful Christmas.
We spent "silent night, holy night" on the jetty, dangling our feet in the water, drinking champers and lighten sparklers. The navigating lights on the river flashed red, green, red, green. It felt lonely but comforting. An equally lonely kayaker silently floated by and stopped for a chat. "Lived here all your life?" he asked. "Not yet", I replied, and winked.
