What’s the point
Perpendicular, of course. Since I first came here I’ve made many treks on the trail that wanders through the nature reserve.
This time it was 4.00 a.m., sleep was not my bedfellow, my head filled with a dozen thoughts and demanded I do something so I got up and ate breakfast.
The rumble of the surf bounced through the trees with the crashing of each swell. It drummed on the leaves like a clarion call for me to go and take photos. It was still dark but I knew I wanted to be there before the sunrise.
I put my fisherman’s light on and set out. It seemed hardly any time at all that I reached the cliff where I thought the best vantage point may be but I had been apprehensive en route, expecting at any time to hear a wallaby thump right beside me and crash through the bush. Kattang Nature Reserve can be scary at times.
High as I was on the cliff top above Perpendicular Point the swell smashed into its face, spewed skywards and sent a rain of spray over the top to greet me. Not being able to see it made it scary to say the least. The roar was so frightening when you couldn’t see the ocean, couldn’t see the waves, could hear their power and it was right beside you.
First came the false dawn that dispersed a soft glow over the scene so now I could at least see the foam as it danced upon sea constantly changing its patterns until they disappeared, only to be replaced by another.
The stars were being outdone by their nearest cousin as the outline of the clouds became apparent and the rolling swells could at last be seen, rolling in from the horizon seeking to make their presence felt.
The dawn came and now I could look back to Fisherman’s Bluff and see the ocean explode up the face of the rock and leave behind a dozen salt laden waterfalls of a temporary nature, each one taking a grain or two of the conglomerate with it until one day it will become part of the sea bed.
I find such scenes mesmerising. So much energy being discharged in a dozen directions; the gentle rise and fall of the swell replaced by the erratic spume from the spent waves; all from the same source.
I spent over an hour taking it all in, watching the first of the seabirds rise on the wind as the clouds changed colour in the dawn’s first rays and the insects flexed their gossamer wings, awaiting the sun’s warmth that would soon have them on their way flitting from plant to plant.
I thought perhaps I might photograph some birds on the way back but could only manage a butterfly I’d never seen before and a spider that I ran into while treading the virgin scrub trying to get close to the honeyeaters. Save for a fearless butcherbird I could only hear his feathered friends and was a tad disappointed until I chanced upon a fungus but, no, there were several fungi, all eking out an existence on a newly fallen tree. Such variety I’d never seen before so I had ten minutes of wonder at just how they manage to arrive at such places all at the same time to eke out a fleeting existence until the moisture runs out.
There are always so many things to see on nature trails, it just depends on what your mind can see.