Creaturely

Memories of that school trip to Tasmania are few. I remember a triple-arched bridge spanning a river, I remember wandering from the group to stare and stare at the bridge framing the view. I remember the bleak stones of Port Arthur, the thick, sweet smell inside the Cadbury Chocolate Factory, barrels full of foil-wrapped chocolates, uniform-wrapped staff with hairnets above eyes that did not return gaze. I can’t recall a single conversation with a classmate. I remember the constriction of three layers of clothes, and my very cold nose. Most of all, I remember being told it’s time to get back on the bus.

Half a century later, I was back. I stood in the queue for a hire car, and it dawned on me. Everyone else had a partner, children, or both. My luggage was only the size of a companion animal. So I threw it in the back.

The names of towns glittered like constellations, and the car hummed like a bee on a quiet meadow. A destination can feel like you are moving towards a companion. A church. A police station. A few broad-canopied oaks. A parked Ute. A moustache and beard walked a man down the street. That town was more of a glimmer than a shine. Where was that scraggle of unshorn grey sheep? Why did those reeds shiver like that? I hugged the next name on the map.

Finally, Binalong Bay. The walk along the shoreline was more like a dream of an island. The aqua bay was calm. The curve of sand was so white it seemed silver. No. Because metal denies softness. This sand was soft. Softer than sugar. Softer than feathers.

From the verandah, Grant’s Lagoon seemed lapped by the sea, as if its wilder cousin extolled it to join a wider, brighter horizon. A New Holland Honeyeater dived like a cormorant into the depths of a hedge. A pair of Green Rosellas flew side-by-side. One uttered a few brief notes that sounded for all the world like the kind of comment one member of an older couple makes to another.

The first morning was windless. The bay was flat, the shallows glassy, giving way to flat turquoise. Only its edges were wriggling. A wallaby high on his hindlegs looked across from the neighbour’s block as if thinking, this is the animal shift. What are you doing here?

A piece of blue landed on the verandah. He looked sideways with no particular interest in me, knowing, as all alpha males know, he did not need to try. I could not convince myself that this was an accurate portrait of a fairywren even if someone had named him Superb. He was just a gallant little chap wanting to spread his gallant to the max: no point in holding back, there is more gallant to be daubed and splashed. And then, in a flash, disappear.

I walked down towards the blue, crossed a wide granite outcrop towards a swimming hole. One wide boulder flared fire at the waterline. Two smaller boulders almost completed the ring. The water was still: green beads of seaweed, thin ribbons of kelp, small purple corals clustered like amethysts. I might as well have been swimming in air. I sank down to my shoulders. The rock’s fire cast orange onto the water. The water was warm. Patterns of orange and turquoise sifted and shifted; stone-light and sky-light on the water. The tide poured in and out as if the stones were breathing.

BIO

Susan Fealy’s poems appear in Best Australian Poems 2009, 2010, 2013, 2017 and 2025. Her debut collection Flute of Milk  won the 2017 Wesley Michel Wright Prize, and shortlisted for the 2018 Mary Gilmore  Award. The Deer Woman is forthcoming with Upswell Press in 2026.