A version of this first appeared in Mimosa in 1988 or 1989, rewritten from an earlier draft that was more widely focused but unfinished. I've always had a soft spot in my heart for it and I've rewritten it here to re-expand the focus, but kept the title.
PittwaterHeaven may be found twenty-five kilometres north of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
In 1986 the YHA (Youth Hostels Association) hostel of “Bensuta Lodge” at Towlers Bay on Pittwater was probably my single most preferred spot on the continent of Australia. Set high on a tree-clad hillside, in a human enclave in Kuring-gai Chase National Park, it had the air of being isolated on an island far from “Civilisation”; but draw a quarter-circle on a map, radius sixty kilometres and with the outer arc curving from south to west, and three million people lived within the area of that wedge.
I came to Pittwater as a refugee from Sydney. I had arrived in Australia just three days before and had found it impossible to organise my mind in Sydney’s bustle. I had just spent fourteen months managing a YHA hostel in New Zealand. Te Aroha, located on a hillside, backed by forest, and with perhaps fifteen thousand people within a 25 kilometre radius, had coaxed me out of love with the big city. Sydney was too much. Pittwater was just enough.
I arrived on a Monday, after the weekend crowd had returned to Sydney. Where twenty people had jostled, we five sprawled. Our conversations were backed and supported by the sough of wind, the rush of trees, and the cries of birds. At intervals there might be a human shout or the distant putter of an outboard boat, but mostly there was just nature.
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For the birds, the Manager of the hostel kept a large jar of special seed. Knowledge of this jar, and where to find it and how to use it, was passed from one generation of hostellers to the next. Everyone I met who had been to Pittwater knew about The Jar, and every one of them learnt it from another hosteller: none from the Manager. Faced with such a tradition as this, how could I do otherwise? Before I left on Friday, I watched the German couple I had initiated into the Mystery of The Jar on Wednesday telling the odd collection of new people who arrived late on Thursday how to Feed The Birds.
There was an art to it. For those with cameras, it was pointless to spread the seed thinly along the verandah. A lorikeet here and a lorikeet there was pretty but not very effective as a tableau. On the other hand, a single large seed pile, while amusing because of the free-for-all that invariably developed, was wasted effort. Forty or fifty lorikeets made a kaleidoscopic carpet in which it was almost impossible to pick out individual birds. The individual was important, for it was the antics of one bird in relation to another which highlighted the lorikeet personality.
Each morning, whoever first felt so inclined fetched The Jar from wherever it went to the night before. Pouring a careful handful from it for each pile, they established from three to six piles of seed at well separated places along the verandah. Then they would go fetch their own breakfast, to eat while watching the melee develop.
Edwin was a Scotsman of middle years, and half-aware that he was growing old. We got on well enough; but then, since we shared a dormitory, we had to. He was full of opinions and willing to share them. I agreed with few of them.
Susan, Sarah, and Anna — it is hard to think of the three individually, as it was rare to find one alone — were English, from London. Susan was the easy-going one, open and disarming but feeling, somehow, artificial. Sarah was cynical and often sarcastic, but she held the group together and was always the first to help someone else. Anna was dark where the others were blonde, legacy of her half-Indian parents, and her reserve was fierce, but she was naturally friendly and was certainly the most intelligent of the three.
We were all seasoned hostellers, well versed in the traditions of that curious subculture. There was an etiquette and a language unique to the hostels. Its lore was in the hostel visitor’s books. (The visitor’s book was a repository of the thoughts, deeds, and findings of generations of hostellers. Some entries were a mere scrawled line, but others took up pages of tiny writing, detailing information that could be used to find interesting things that guide books did not tell you.)
How to introduce the birds? Ah, there’s an image: black wings beating along a green backdrop, and a voice: “Bandits at nine o’clock …”
A wing of magpies came in on a strafing run. “Here they come again,” said Anna. The currawong dropped a raucous cry and took to its tree. The lorikeets, being more interested in pecking indiscriminately at seed and each other, paid no attention; they knew the magpies would not dare bother them.
Edwin, Anna, and I were relaxed in a row on the wooden bench, backs against the table, feet propped against the veranda railing. I had just been watching a curl of smoke rise above the hillside across the bay. I had also been thinking what a contrast there was between the three sets of legs I could see: the knobbly, the chubby, and the shapely.
“Poor little bugger,” said Edwin of the currawong.
We watched it jitter from branch to branch of its sanctuary, yellow-whited mad eye watching the magpies descend voraciously upon the seed-pile that the lorikeets had somehow overlooked.
“Throw the poor beast some seed,” said Anna, compassion in her voice.
I tossed a handful of seed in the general direction of the tree. The currawong eyed it greedily, but remained in the branches. It preferred fruit, but would eat seed. However, if it dropped to pick the seed from the ground, the magpies would chase it back into the tree. It had learned.
Suddenly magpies and lorikeets alike deserted the piles, scattering away into the trees. “Oh, see, it’s a kookaburra,” said Anna, and she was right. It landed on the railing a couple of yards from us and turned an expectant eye our way. Behind the kooka the currawong fluttered from its tree and began hastily — and not without many a fearful glance — picking seed out of the grass.
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The pied currawong is a large black bird, slightly related to the crow, looking something like a slim raven. (the currawong photos I use here are of a Tasmanian black currawong; I have no pics of the NSW variety.) The only touch of colour about it is the circle of yellow around the pupil of its eye and some white under the wings and tail. (I used to confuse currawongs and crows, which are smaller and have white whites and a fondness for squatting atop telephone poles and caw-ing raucously at intervals.) The one at Pittwater was a born coward, despite its size, and was often “beat up on” by magpies, which were smaller but more vicious.
The lorikeets mentioned above are Australia’s famous rainbow lorikeet, the technicolor parrot. Electric blue head, brilliant green back, scarlet-and- canary chest, and more blue on the belly. Clownish ragamuffin antics do not stop the observer noticing the respect with which they were treated by the apparently more formidable magpie. The beak is very strong.
Do I need to explain magpies? Black-and-white cousins to rooks and crows. The Australian raven is a distinct genus.
My favourite Australian bird, the kookaburra is the largest member of the kingfisher family. The Australian version is often better known as the ‘laughing’ kookaburra, and I doubt I need to explain why. The kookaburras at Pittwater are very tame; they will not climb onto your hand, but they will feed from your fingers. Scorning seed, they prefer food containing meat. Their skill at removing food from between fingers without touching the fingers is impressive. You approach, morsel dangling between thumb and forefinger. The kookaburra watches you until you are within reach then orients on the food like a gun settling on a target. A blur, a slight tug, and the morsel has been transferred to the kookaburra’s beak. It bangs it on the railing (just to make quite sure it’s dead), tosses back its head, and swallows.
Pittwater boasted more than just birds. Wallabies and the occasional wombat wandered across the lawn beside the currawong’s tree. A goanna lived in the rocks out the back of the hostel. By night, opossums wandered down from the trees to seek out food scraps on the veranda and in the kitchen. The Australian opossum (no relation to the North American ‘possum’) is protected in Australia. When I moved over here and first learned this, it made for a mild case of culture shock as is a pest in New Zealand, where it was introduced many years ago because of its fine pelt. To drive down a road in NZ is to pass by and over a succession of very dead pedestrian opossums, losers in the game of crossing roads. Many people make a living hunting opossums in NZ.
Sarah and Susan came out of their dormitory and joined us on the veranda. A wallaby came by, cropping the lawn and pausing periodically to scratch its flanks furiously against the assault of swarming flies. Wallabies look like small kangaroos, and what this inspired we five watchers to say of AA Milne’s mother and baby characters is best left in the place where it was said. Sarah had always felt that Kanga and Baby Roo were somewhat idealised, and had never been convinced by the scene in which Kanga attempted to bath Piglet. “True,” I said, “But Kanga knew Piglet wasn’t Roo, so it could all have been a big act.” This was mulled over in silence before the subject suffered a sea-change. I can’t understand why; it made perfect sense to me.
The wallaby scratched itself out of sight and Edwin followed, muttering about finding the hostel’s boat and going for a paddle round the headland — did anyone want to come along? (No volunteers.) He vanished down the track and the Trio blurred into action: though their dormitory and out the other door, towels in hand. Down onto the lawn and strip to catch the sun.
As three examples of Young English Womanhood lie topless on the grass, scratching at the bites of buzzing flies, watched by a nervous currawong from its tree, I’ll take this opportunity to move the story along …
The OutbackKu-Ring-Gai Chase National Park offered a number of good aboriginal sites. These were not located close to the hostel, but could be reached in a round trip walk of couple of hours. The Park Authority supplied a map of the Park with some sites located on it. However, these were not the best sites: Ku-Ring-Gai was so close to Sydney that any well-known aboriginal site soon became badly damaged by vandals and souvenir-hunters. But the hostel-manager knew the better sites and happily drew them onto the maps provided by the Park Authority. I did not actually visit any of them, but some of the other hostellers did and reported well of them.
Instead of seeking out ancient artwork, I walked across the top of the Park and along tracks on the other side. The first day I came to a stream. Following the stream downhill, I came to a clifftop. The stream sprayed down the face of the cliff then made its way into a deep, circular bay, location not certain.1 Boats were moored out in the bay, with swimmers around them.
Walking back up the stream, I found a place, well clear of the path, where the configuration of the rock formed several large, shallow pools. One pool had a set of large, round holes in the rock underlying it: perhaps leading to drowned caves? I stayed away from that pool. Stripping off, I spent the afternoon paddling and sunbathing, innocent of clothing and cares.
When the sun got low I dressed and set off to retrace the track I had followed down the stream. I thought that I had found it, but somewhere along the way I got turned around and got lost.
I didn’t panic. I had not left the track except for the swim, so any direction would eventually bring me to a sign or to some landmark shown on the map.
I did have a bad moment while walking along a section deep in the trees. A dark “stick” lying in the trail a few metres ahead suddenly came alive and wriggled off into the grass. We didn’t have snakes in New Zealand, and it was “well known” that all Australian varieties were venomous.
There was a huge grove of bluegums without any undergrowth, Australian counterpoint to the cathedral pines at Opoutere. I left my day pack hanging from a branch and wandered into the grove, despite the risk of losing the track. But I found my way back safely to my pack, so that was OK.
Eventually I came to a familiar junction and followed the new trail back to the hostel.
1 It could have been America Bay and its eponymous track. I’ve used Street View to walk tracks where available (none, alas, near the hostel); this seemed the best fit with my memory, and it has a section that runs alongside pools in the stream. However, it starts at West Head Road and I don’t recall crossing a road, let alone walking a significant distance along one. But after nearly 40 years there are many lacunae in my 1986 memories, and roads are usually boring things, unworthy of memory.
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The next day, or perhaps the day after, I rented a kayak from the hostel and took it out to explore the nearby bays. The water was shallow, waveless and warm. I didn’t go too far, for every metre I paddled from the dock was a metre back beneath the hot sun. The piers sticking out into deep water were a nuisance, as I was forced to paddle out far enough to clear their ends. I did find a deserted beach on a headland (Woody Point), but it was watched from moored boats and did not offer the privacy I sought.
And every day, before I started and when I was done, the birds were waiting.
On Friday I had to return to Sydney to make room for the next weekend crowd. I was sad about going, but I knew I’d be back.
Except I never went back. I don’t know why. I moved to Melbourne at the start of 1987, but before that I had plenty of opportunities while living in Sydney. Somehow it was never the right moment. So my time in Pittwater remains a unique memory, untouched by later visits.
And I never can go back. It seems the modern “YHA Pittwater Eco” doesn’t feed the birds, and indeed, is horrified by the notion. Photos on Google suggest the modern railings have tops too narrow for the seed piles. It does seem to offer water stations, used by sulphur-crested cockatoos and magpies. It still has wallabies, and it still has a goanna out back. But it has lost the magic.
