In the morning, the land is refreshed, renewed and almost alive as the clouds hover and lift and hover again over the valley … and when the sun appears the land becomes golden.

The warm sun bakes the earth. The land is pungent and scented and it almost breathes with the heat of the rich earth and the intoxicating scents of the grasses lying beneath the sun. I can almost feel the approach of rain, a fresh humidity in the air. The earth reveals itself in all its hidden sounds: the green leaves of the gum trees rustle tremulously under the wind; a coalescent, muffled soughing comes from the nearby forest

A Cockatoo’s screech mingles weirdly with the joyous singing of the magpie. I listen to the artless laughter of a kookaburra, and to the creak of a tree branch and the rustle of the eucalypt-scrented wind. Almost touching the earth with their double-pointed tails, swallows weave patterns in the air, and far, far off in the sky two eagles sail majestically. Wild ducks forage nearby and a drake calls hoarsely to his mate; far, far off, a cuckoo indistinctly and mournfully counts out its unspent years as small birds forage and chitter in the tree limbs above my head.

This land is filled with a marvellous and myriad-voiced sonority, of elemental life, of scents and perfumes …

Leaden-grey clouds hang in the sky. Two sunbeams stream momentarily through a rift, then the sky is enveloped with clouds and the wind turns colder.
Pallid day-lightening flickers over the ground. A roll of thunder shakes the hanging cloud mass and lashings of rain begin to fall. The wind sends it running in dancing waves over the dry ground, over the roses wilting in the heat, over the dry grass. The rain revives the dusty leaves, and the dry grass gleams and the roses lift their heads again and their cloying scent rises to seep through the garden. The thirsty earth steams as it drinks drunkingly. A dove grey mist hangs over the ground.

Bowed down with rain, the grass is bent to the earth. Frogs croak happily from the dam and nearby a magpie chorals exuberantly and a kookaburra, winging up, calls laughingly in answer.