opposites attract

Every kind of waterbird can be found on the Gippsland Lakes. Egrets, terns, swans, ibises, pelicans, ducks and teals. Every kind of waterbird and every kind of boat. Putt-putt and speedboat, cruiser and yacht. And they are all attracted to the same thing.

Mountains of water, from the flanks of the Great Dividing Range, form six great rivers that fill the lakes, straits, inlets and wetlands.

For millennia, the Latrobe, Thomson, Avon, Mitchell, Nicholson and Tambo rivers have pushed the Tasman sea back behind sand dunes that form the Ninety Mile Beach, one of the longest beaches in the world.

Victorians named the rivers and lakes after politicians and explorers but local Aboriginal people named them after waterbirds and elements of nature.

In Gunaikurnai, according to indigenous language worker Doris Paton, the Wirnwirndook (the song of a bird) flows into Durtyowan then lake Murla. The Wah-yung (a spoon-billed duck) flows into Nerran (the moon).

In English that translates as: The Macalister river flows into the Latrobe then Lake Wellington. The Mitchell flows into Lake King.

The Gunaikurnai people believed they were descendants of Borun, an ancestral pelican, and Tuk, the musk duck.

A connection with waterbirds makes sense to anyone who visits the Gippsland Lakes. More than 20,000 waterbirds frequent the waterways, some migrating from Siberia and Alaska.

The lakes cover 340 square kilometres and form the largest navigable network of inland waterways in Australia. But unless you are a waterbird, the Gippsland Lakes are best explored with a boat.

You don’t need a licence to charter a yacht, a catamaran or a motor cruiser and stay a few magical nights on the Gippsland Lakes.

The edges and bottoms of the lakes are sand and silt and very forgiving. You can moor on shore in most places and step off the boat onto your own private beach. There are no reefs or tides. There are sheltered moorings on every wind. It’s a boating playground and a fantastic place for anyone who wants to charter a boat for the first time.

We chose a 34-foot, four-cabin, Seawind catamaran from Riviera Nautic, at Chinamans Creek, Metung, a beautiful natural harbour, nestled between towering gums and hilled banks.

Riviera Nautic staff provide thorough safety briefings, sailing lessons for learners and will even supply a skipper to pilot boats to overnight moorings.

It's hard to describe the joy and freedom we all felt motoring away from the harbour in our out boat.

We familiarised ourselves with motor and sail in Bancroft Bay, then pulled into nearby Box’s Creek, an even prettier inlet, and nosed up onto a sheltered beach for the night. We tied to mooring posts on shore, not far from another yacht, and opened our first bottle of wine as a red-orange sun began to kiss the tops of trees.

Black swans with cygnets in tow sidled up to our boat. Birdsong filled the air - the whistle-whip of bellbirds and the cordial warble of magpies. A pelican landed with a hop, a skip and a susurrous slide. A pair of white-breasted sea eagles kited high in the sky, one of only100 breeding pairs estimated to live in Victoria.

In the morning, three native Burrunan dolphins cut gentle parabolas through the glassy surface. An antique motor boat that looked like a miniature tug boat from a children’s picture book, putt-putted up the creek. Quaint, old painted wooden boats were everywhere we travelled.

We sailed to Rotamah Island and the Lakes national park the following day and stayed the night on a beach in beautiful Duck Arm, a larger inlet lined with trees and paddocks. The sun on the water in the morning was intoxicating. “This is a good place for daydreaming,” one of our group said dreamily, sunbaking above the swimming platform that turned the inlet into our private pool.

The next day we stopped at Paynesville for fresh oysters, extra wine, beer and ice. (It is remarkable how good beer tastes on a boat.) In the afternoon, we sailed, under the lightness of canvas, with nothing but the sound of water, across Lake King to explore the mouth of the Tambo river.

A kilometre upstream we found a sheltered bank and dived overboard for a swim in the sweet water. Before trains and highways, steam boats like the 1877 paddle steamer, the “Tanjil”, ferried animals, produce and passengers down the rivers and across the lakes, sometimes to ships that sailed to Melbourne and Sydney.

We could have motored another 40 minutes up the Tambo and stayed at a jetty near the Swan Reach hotel, one of several pubs accessible by boat on the lakes, but we wanted wilder nature. The luxury of a boat is the ability to change the scenery whenever you want. A boat on the lakes is a room with 1000 views.

We sailed to Bunga Arm, past Steamer Landing, and on to Ocean Grange, an extraordinary enclave of houses nestled in the dunes between the lakes and the ocean, and accessible only by boat.

As we approached Ocean Grange through a maze of channel of markers we rounded a sand island that is home to a pelican rookery and hundreds of pelicans took flight.

We tied up to the jetty then walked through shady ti-tree over the dunes to the Ninety Mile Beach. Sunset filled the sky with the same pastel mauves and creamy golds found on the inside of cockles that wash up on this beach that stretches to forever. The sky is vast.

The next morning, we met a woman who had taken her children to school by boat every day. “It gets more beautiful the further east you go,” observed another local, and we had to agree.

By Andrew Bock, published Traveller, The Age and SMH. Online at http://www.traveller.com.au/where-all-the-rivers-meet-gnmydf


Where all the rivers meet - the Gippsland Lakes

June is a popular month to make love. So are the months of October, November, December and January, according to birth statistics collated for The Age.

The myth that summer loving leads to more babies in spring is only partly true. We also conceive more in October and November and, as the nights get longer and the doonas get warmer, in June and July. 

Historical birth data collated by the Offices of Births, Deaths and Marriages in Victoria and NSW show around ten per cent more births in July, August, September and October and increasingly higher numbers around February and March.

The figures challenge modern preconceptions about conception and point to  a more traditional mating season that begins in spring.  Adjusted monthly birth rates also challenge astrologers who presume there are equal numbers of people born under each star sign.

“More Victorian babies are born under the star signs of Cancer, Leo, Virgo and Libra,” said the Registrar of the Victorian Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages,  Ms Helen Trihas. She said the data also had implications for workplaces and medical services.

Maternity wards are often busier in Spring. Pam Tytler, associate charge nurse at the Birthing Suite of the Northern Hospital said they often had to hire more staff in September and October.  Last year the unit delivered 183 babies in October compared to 141 in December.

Overall data was collated for the Age from total births in 1958, 1983 and 2008 in Victoria and NSW. Dr Christine Read, medical director of Family Planning NSW said the figures were intriguing and raised questions about whether birth times were planned or  followed more instinctive or seasonal patterns.

Could nature be telling us when to nurture?

Recent studies in Victoria and NSW concluded that more than 50% of pregnancies, especially first pregnancies, were unplanned. Director of the Centre for Women's Studies & Gender Research at Monash University,Dr Jane-Maree Maher, said, “We have a fantasy that we are very careful or organized but our research showed that a lot of conceptions are still not planned.”

Couples that do plan often try to avoid giving birth during busy work seasons. Dr Read said there were other reasons for people to give birth before December. “Hospital and medical services are less accessible in December and January and people might not want to give their children birthdays around Christmas,” she said.

There were around 70,000 births in Victoria last year and up to 600 more births in busier months. The differences and the pattern of births in both states were more pronounced fifty years ago.

Professor Bob Birrell, coordinator of Population and Urban Research at Monash University, said access to  heating and air conditioning means “there is no longer any reason to give birth at certain times of the year.”  

We don’t need to act like animals and give birth in late winter or spring to maximise sunshine, warmth and food for our offspring but according to these statistics, that may be what we still do. 

If births are not planned then sexual chemistry plays a bigger part. Dr Maher said holiday conceptions were not just about alcohol and warm nights (or lapses in contraception) but about having more time and more relaxed time together.

If holidays lead to increased fertility the federal government may not need to extend the $5000 baby bonus but just gazette more public holidays. 

The increase in conceptions in October and November, before summer,  coincides with traditional fertility seasons and fertility festivals like Beltane and the Maypole dance, that were held around the middle of Spring.  Jane Hardwick-Collings, midwife and birth workshop coordinator, said “mid spring is the most fertile time of the year so humans are re-enacting what is happening in nature. We go on heat in the spring time."

Published The Age, general news, p3, Saturday, June 13 2009, "Spring is in the Air in June"


The astrology of lovemaking

Example 5

Example 6

Example 7

Stoop

Walkers file like ants across a barren volcanic plain towards a black hole in the landscape. The dark hole is rimmed with earth like the entrance to an ant colony but it is wide enough to swallow a house.  Beyond the hole and the distant rim of the crater,  a blue ocean reaches out to the sky.

It is a timeless, primal scene but I’m not entirely convinced humans should be here.

The active peak on Reunion Island, La Piton de la Fournaise (The Peak of the Furnace), rises above one of the earth’s “hotspots” and is one of the world’s most active volcanoes.  The last lava flow occurred early last month and there are small eruptions almost every year.  

I am only slightly bemused to find locals revere their volcano like a national symbol. Images of the last big eruption in 2007 are proudly displayed all over the island. 

From the air, Reunion looks like a giant turtle floating in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar. The oval-shaped island, just 65 kilometres long, is backed by 3000-metre, volcanic peaks that shoulder the sky.

On the first day we are driven straight to the active volcano and our guide almost persuades us it is safe.  We are told observatories monitor the volcano’s every mood and eruptions only cause flows in the uninhabited south of the island. But it is a few days later, when we visit the site of the 2007 flow, that my insecurities change to reverence.  

The 2007 eruption cut a black swathe through rainforest and disgorged new earth into a smouldering sea. It’s there I realise volcanoes don’t destroy earth – they create earth. Lava eventually becomes soil.  Walking across the top of the lava is like walking on pottery baked with the first patterns on earth.  We are amazed to see young green plants already growing on these ceramic fields.

Reunion is a young island created by recent eruptions two million years ago and its rich soils and flora are studied as present examples of the geological past of many countries on earth.

Not far from the 2007 lava flow, Le Jardin des Parfums et Des Epices is a testament to this fertility.  The garden of perfumes and spices is a botanical rainforest garden green with every species of flower and tree, both ornamental and agricultural, grown on the island.

There are elephant trees with wrinkled trunks and flowering heliconia and orchids throughout.  Our passionate host and plant farmer, Patrick Fontaine, teaches us to respect the intelligence of flora. He points out medicinal plants and shows us indigenous plants that only grow in these six square kilometres on earth.

Plant oils such as geranium used in French perfumes and vanilla are still important exports. The magical orchid, vanilla, perfumes the whole island and came to scent the world after a Reunionnais slave discovered how to manage its pollination.

Slavery is often linked to drugs and exotic substances. Reunion was also farmed to grow sugar cane for rum and the drug which now ironically enslaves western civilisation - coffee.

The French East India company settled the uninhabited island in 1665 but generations of slaves and indentured labourers from Africa, India and China now enrich the blood and culture of the people.

Réunion has remained a remote “departement”, or state, of France. Though 12 hours flight from the mother country, the island is also very French and in true French fashion, very proud of it.  A local trucking company vaunts the logo “La Passion du Transport”. The Reunionnais commonly enjoy Bordeaux with long lunches on vine-shaded patios overlooking the Indian ocean.

Reunion has been kept a French secret for centuries and 80 per cent of visitors still come from France. Only 700 Australians travelled there last year but that number is rising quickly after the launch in April of Air Austral operations in Australia and the first direct flights from Sydney to Reunion and onto France.

The Reunionnais love good wine, barbecues, picnics, seafood, beaches and sports so Australians should fit right in. Restaurants serve Creole and French cuisine. Vanilla duck curries, samosas and rice share menus with delicately herbed swordfish, salad vinaigrettes, French cheeses and wines.  Guava, lemon, goyavier, coconut, pineapple, banana, lychee, and vanilla rum punches festoon restaurant tables and bars even at lunchtime.

In France, life is an aperitif for eating. In Reunion, rum is an aperitif for life.

And just as the rum is infused with tropical spices and fruit, French culture in Reunion is infused with Creole joie de vivre and tropical languor. 

Roses and bougainvilleas flower over white paling faces around cottages painted in bright tropical  pastels. French signs in traditional blue cursive fonts hang over streets alive with Creole children. Strawberry, tomato and garlic roadside stalls are as common as tropical fruit stalls. In cemeteries, the deceased rest beneath Catholic crosses and frangipani copses.

I am charmed and intrigued by the Creole blend of cultures. The Reunionnais live in a tacit racial harmony that is a model for a  racially mixed-up world. The people just accept others to have different racial backgrounds.

There are 24 towns named after Catholic saints, including the capital, St Denis, but the Reunionnais also observe the practices of a range of religions: Muslim, Hindu, African and Catholic. Our guide, Sully Chaffre,  himself part French Brittany, Tamil Nadu, Cantonese and African, says he tries to “inspire [himself] with the positive aspects of each religion and many of the new generation are doing the same thing”.

Like the rainforest on Reunion, syncretism and Creole culture may also be an example of the future of the world. The population of Reunion is also quite literally young with half the 800,000 residents under the age of 25.

Living on the sides of an active volcano also gives the locals a good sense of humour. Michael Asprey, alias Mickey Rat, is a resident Australian surfboard shaper and the official warden for Australian travellers.  “Creole people get together and they just laugh,’’ he says outside his surf shop in St Leu, ‘‘All day they crack jokes. It’s one of the things I really enjoy here.”

The coast is frequented by giant leatherback and loggerhead turtles but the national animal seems to be the gecko. Images of the lizard with a cheeky, youthful spirit appear everywhere: on houses, cars, clothes and jewellery.

This youthful spirit expresses itself in thriving bars and nightclubs and a wide range of sports on offer. With a summer sea temperature around 30 degrees, travellers and locals keep busy big game fishing, diving, paragliding and surfing.  

From a paraglider above St Leu on the west coast, surfers look like coloured reef fish on a dappled coral sea bed.  Soaring at 800 metres, I feel like birds feel and see like birds see. The entire coast. The entire ocean. The entire sky.

writing

opposites attract