On making

Image of Susan' Lester’s exquisite watercolour portrait of a yellow-tailed black cockatoo recently published in Birds of Tasmania and being exhibited at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.

Bird Facts

Short-tailed Shearwaters (muttonbirds) raft up at sea like great black blankets¹. On land they’re clumsy. Once, on Lord Howe Island, I sat on a cliff as they crashed and clambered their way back to their nesting sites. They need movement under them to take to the air. There was a rock platform polished to glass by the sloop of their bellies across the stone.

The most common prey of the southern boobook (more-pork, mopoke, spotted owl) are trapdoor spiders and brown tree frogs. But they also eat cockchafer beetles. Their feathers are so soft you would never hear the little owl, except for its call on a moonlit night. Such a beautiful bird, it shits out what it cannot digest.

I can’t talk to you about cuckoos, fan-tailed, pallid or shining bronze.

A yellow-rumped thornbill builds a two storey nest.

A grey-shrike thrush will bust itself to exhaustion attacking its image.

Which metaphor do you need?

*

I need them all, tuck them into my pockets. Walk out into the frost.

I plunge. Yes, plunge into the cold morning. The puppies, teenagers really, run across the hard, frozen ground. The morning had promised warmth but the sun is blocked by a great bank of cloud. Everything feels grey. The impossible stretch of winter ahead. I put my head down and trudge. I should have gone to the beach, should have swum and shocked the melancholy off me, instead I walk, my fingers curled into the cuffs of my coat, my nose frozen.

Across the creek flats flit an orchestra of robins, thornbills, pardalotes, flashes of red, black, yellow and white. Into the bush and the trees press, hard thump of wallaby, dogs lost.

I keep walking. The sun finally rises and the air is still cold, but now blessed with blue, I think the winter is not so bad.

The bird facts come from a book I bought, at fabulous expense. It’s called Birds of Tasmania, 200 watercolour portraits, and is easily the most beautiful book I own. It’s filled with exquisite watercolour portraits of Tasmanian birds. The artist, Susan Lester, died not knowing her work would be seen. She was commissioned in the 1980s to paint 200 watercolour portraits for a book to be published in celebration of the Examiner newspaper’s 150th anniversary. She worked with Dr Bob Green (who wrote the text) observing birds in the bush and on the shore. She finished the work. Nothing happened. Worse than nothing, the paintings went missing. She got on with her life, though she didn’t paint professionally again. The works sat in a cupboard, in a safe, on top a fridge (accounts vary) until 1999 when they were chanced upon. Fortunately their beauty stunned the finder and they were donated to the Tasmanian Museum. In 2022 Susan died after a short illness. As a tribute her family fundraised and we now have what feels like something of a miracle of a book. You can read about it here and listen to a gorgeous podcast on the story here.

Ever since it arrived I have turned the pages and wondered at what it is to be an artist, wondered if matters whether a work is seen, or simply matters that it was created. Did Lester know as she collected dead birds, arranged their feathers so she could paint the variations, painted bird after bird, that the work would outlast her, that it would find its audience?

Perhaps the most haunting page is the entry for the Swift Parrot. The space is blank, a simple carefully chosen phrase across the space the portrait should be - the swift parrot is missing.

What you may not know is that the swift parrot is endangered, there are differing accounts, but there are perhaps only 200 breeding pairs left. It is an oddity amongst parrots in that it is migratory, it only breeds down here, must cross Bass Strait, find its way to a place of thick bush, find a tall tree, a quiver of quiet forest.

We have swift parrot habitat here, indeed I have seen the looping, joyous colour of their flight across the paddocks. They love to nest in east coast blue gum, in old trees thick with knots and hollows. A shrinking habitat. We have ridgelines (covered in covenants) devoted to them, but still the missing portrait in this beautiful book feels like a prophecy.

Back at the sheds I stuff armfuls of grass hay into a chaff bag then hoist it over my shoulder and carry it to Frank. I call him and he comes in a great galloping gust that scatters the puppies. He bucks a circle around me and I have to laugh. His whiskers are white with frost and he blows funnels of warm air into my face. I empty the bag onto the ground, he snatches at the scent of summer. The dried grasses, clover and rye, are like a folded promise. I find the hope. The portrait might be found. The covenants over the ridgelines will hold. The art is important enough to make whether it is read or not. I imagine the parrots coming.

MM

Reading

Susan Johnson’s Aphrodite’s Breath, a memoir. A daughter takes her 85 year-old mother to Greece, chaos ensues. If this doesn’t get you in, well how about a story that weaves the history of Greece, of exile, of mothers and daughters, of aging and grace effortlessly. Here’s a review. And just in case you didn’t catch HG in The Monthly on letting go. Loved this essay on mothering and letting in The Yale Review (thanks CC). Three profiles - two writers - Deborah Levy (whose new novel, August Blue, is brilliant) and Lorrie Moore (whose novel, I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home, I haven’t yet read but can’t wait). And this profile on lifeguard winning the biggest surfing comp in the world is just a great story. On the history of swift parrots and Europeans - Rachael Weaver in SRB.

Listening

Slightly Foxed. There will be some of you that are all over the quiet brilliance of Ronald Blythe and others of you that will be like me and scrambling to order a book or two. Audiobook of the week is Niall Williams This is Happiness. I downloaded this book over a year ago and when I went to listen to it I was in the wrong place, so I stopped. Then my book club chose it for next month so I started again and have been searching for jobs to do so I can keep listening. It’s beautiful.

Looking

This week has been all about portraits. I wish I could see this exhibition in the flesh of photographer John Reardon on his career capturing the thoroughbred. Then the people’s choice awards at the National Portrait Gallery (HG by her grandson is amazing, but there are so many here). Then this article about the other National Portrait Gallery reopening. And then this - a portrait of a platypus - watch this doco. Very very hard not to cry.

Doing

Loved speaking at lunch for women of the Derwent Valley with my friend Meg. We took a roomful of women on a rollercoaster - laughter and tears. It was a fabulous day of connection where everyone downed tools and to do lists. This week I’ll be working on not being jealous of everyone swanning around Europe or swimming in tropical waters. Instead I’ll be planting my garlic, diving into the ocean on the dawning of the winter solstice and welcoming home a child on mid semester break.

Events

Tasmanians, there are 3 tickets left for what is going to be the most gorgeous day at The Bowmont. I’ll be in conversation with Fat Pig Farm’s Sadie Chrestman and Michelle Crawford will create a swoony room and afternoon tea. Tickets here.

In August I’m going to be at the Byron Bay Writers Festival and Canberra Writers Fest. Details to come. There’s plans brewing for Adelaide and I’m yet to work out how and when I get to Melbourne, but something will come up.

Enough for now. Have a great week sitters.

mm

1. Dr Bob Green, Birds of Tasmania, 2023.