THE SILVER GULL & SYDNEYSCAPE
the manly ferry lurched into the big waves, i was praying to jesus, not to let it tip over, the seagulls flew with the ferry from manly to circular quay, their eyes like focused rock, 'see, they are flying with the ferry guiding them, the storm is so rough that they need the light,' my nan hugged me, the heads of the harbour were so huge, stony gateways to a dark grey ocean, i hoped that my nan would always be with me, she was like a seagull, clean & white, although far more powdery & prone to absorption, gulls were like oil slicks, sky-white with ocean droplets sliding from them, nan thought they were greedy when we fed them & the pigeons in hyde park saying, 'the gulls always eat so fast,' when i asked her what her favourite animal was, she said, 'i like fairy penguins & pelicans,' but when i asked her what animal she would prefer to be, she said 'the seagull, because it is free,' as if the oceans were that way inclined, away from the land, uncharted aquatic wilderness after wilderness, away from the hard extravagance & tall pollution of sydney, where concrete that wound down between the buildings, became cold in the early afternoon, on more carefree days, i felt sydney baking warmly on its sandstone foundations, its humid, glary activities & curves of the hot blue opera house, leaning out over the water, so that white reflected waves around the quay, speckled its long tusk sides with light, as if a forest of gums had been placed in front of it, allowing the light through in stages, loud, fast & breezy sydney crashing in the breakers along the sheltered coves & beaches, as a child i watched a sick rat that drifted across the sand, its eyes protruding from a mean little face, puffy & squirting with sickness, its whiskers turned down, i listened to my father's stories of the beach druggies & murderers, as we both bobbed up & down in the big breakers, to avoid being dunked & taken by the undertow closer to shore, we picked up the little sea animals & brought them home from bundoora in their perfect shells & put them into bedroom tanks to watch them die beneath torrents of tap water, our concerned eyes peeping through the glass into their slow agonies, we were children collecting little sea animals as family substitutes, i listened to the story of dad's first time at bondi beach with all the outback kids, how they went there on a school excursion, how they had never seen a beach before this, they all ran towards the ocean too trusting of it, then they were all swept away in a rip & had to be brought in by the lifeguards, there were low piles of shells along sydney beach when i was a child & now they are all gone, you are lucky on a good day on a beach where syringes don't stick up from the sand, there was this abandoned stray dog sticky & shivering behind a sand dune, when we went to walk away he started this dreadful howling, the sound of it swept right away down the beach after everyone had gone home & it felt like the sand had whipped itself into some kind of long grief & that the ocean was the tears washing up over the shoreline, we took the dog with us but i felt sad as we left, we have abandoned the ocean, i thought of the wilderness at night crying to itself, there is a world under there & all i see is the huge sky & the wind brushing the waves, making patterns along the surface for interpretation by windsurfers & on other days mum's pale golden brown bun loose in strands, the ocean breeze untied her hair & calmed her down, dad was sick from rock oysters picked off the rocks near the heads of sydney harbour, bad bush tucker, i thought of the dreams of the ocean during my breakdown & how i had become frightened of the water touching my toes, soon the big oceans that surround australia had touched all parts of my life in some small way, the dumps of seaweed plundered the wharf at circular key, sucked in & out, slopping up around the pylon, wrapped around it like heavy wet newsprint, as the deep green water of sydney harbour washes up the sandstone, slaps out its foundations, sucking & popping, above the jellyfish drift, cigarette butts & plastic ring tabs float to the top, all the lips that must have pushed against them, fingers pulling & chucking litter to the wind, i'm getting giddy, 'look out, love!,' the wharfie's voice, along the step from the wharf to the ferry, the thin bounce & bend of the gangplank, the old hairy ropes that whine & stretch, 'they sound like they're in pain,' nan said, 'stand back, now don't get your fingers caught in them,' but of course i was gone, the need to run, the slippery deck, the fear of tripping, of plunging down with the anchor ropes, into waves six times higher than my shoulders, by the time nanny finished her warning, my imagination had thrown me overboard, by the time her thought occurred regarding my safety & well-being, i was already floating quietly in the harbour, lapping up against the harbour-eaten pylons, little fish nibbling around my dolly socks, a childhood awash in waves, turning into sydney harbour bridge landscapes, the seagull-rafts of gulls afloat on the sea, brilliant scarlet legs bicycle peddling under water, a red-winged eye & sharp gull cry, alerted for food, my rattling paper, my cinnamon donuts, kwarr kwarr, kwarr kwarr |
