Wild Sovereign Development Site

Tag: Queensland

  • state of sunshone

    Queensland. The Sunshine State. Skin Cancer Capital of the World. Spending as much time in the hammock under the trees as I can possibly afford, trying to absorb enough warmth and light and birdsong to slingshot me over the sudden cliff face of winter. A friend writes from Berlin: it is near zero. And I read this in all kinds of symbolist ways. Meanwhile another friend over there has made a grim art project: photos of Berlin skies and of London, side by side: who has the most sunlight? In Berlin they measure the hours of sunshine, in winter, and announce it as part of the weather report: when I was living there, in January there were 22 hours of sunshine for the month. That’s right, the month. We didn’t crawl into Spring until early May, at which time I spoke to my Mum on the phone. “It’s 20 degrees!” I told her, excitedly. I had had to go buy new, lighter socks and scour the second hand shops for a t-shirt. “Oh, I know,” said Mum, “it’s only been 21 here. We’ve had the heater on.”

    How I pored over the Queensland complaints sprouting all over Facebook. “Ooh it’s chilly!” “Had to wear my cardigan on the bus to work this morning.” How I longed to move back and become one of those Queenslanders who complains when they have to put socks on. How I quail before the bellowing fire in my lungs that comes of walking on the stone streets of an iron nation steeping in ice for three-quarters of the year.

  • tilt a world

    Finally, bodysurfing. It must be a decade since I have surfed, maybe since before moving to South Australia where terror of sharks somewhat put me off. That feeling, you know that feeling? Carried by water, gasping for green. You invite the water to take you. The water picks you up and takes you. Rushing with the thousand million bubbles carrying me along. Making myself lean and long like an arrow, like a board. Glances from the other surfers, that joy at the wet dark head surfacing from the spent wave, way up close to the shore. I can see why dolphins do it, I can see why people learn to ride boards. It’s been so long since I surfed I forgot to take a breath before the first wave and had to pull out of it in order to gasp for air. There is that ineffable serenity when the whole world is tilting and green.

  • daintily, handily

    daintily, handily

    All the noisiness of sun. To a German, the crashing in the bamboo at 3am sounds like a housebreaker festooned with plastic bags. How could a little possum make so much noise? Why must the birds all shriek? When you lift a painting off the wall, exposing a transparent lizard, who exposes his heart lungs and liver to the world but will dart away into hiding when his cover’s lifted, that’s a shock. A person with no fear of local pushers, addicts, drunken punk louts, untethered giant dogs and bad buskers can be remarkably unsettled by the rustling and crashing that midnight brings when it’s hot tagsüber. “During the day,” I say, “everyone’s sleeping. Then at night when it cools down, they all come out to live their lives.” Handily our small grey cat has arranged herself across his extended hand to illustrate this point. She yawns her pink yawn.