The weather has turned. A low-pressure bomb travelled up from Antarctica and into the Tasman Sea, lashing thunder, rain, hail and tornadoes onto our coast.
Walking down to Pauatahanui Inlet, my nose and eyes stream in the wind, tips of fingers icy. I notice a white-faced heron, hunched in ruffled grey coat, observing the brown waters that race into the inlet from Whitby’s streams and drains-turned-torrents, flipping storm water lids. Seagulls turn steeply, their undersides flashing white under pink clouds. The sound of traffic as evening commuters head home to warmth, children and dinners. A driver yawns. Back up at Postgate Park a huge gum tree has crashed down, perhaps overnight. Its remains lie in butchered lumps and splinters, after someone has been in with a chainsaw. Old yellow toadstools lie in the grass nearby, rotting like sloughed skin. On the news I hear that hundreds of kororā/little blue penguins have washed ashore up North at Ninety Mile Beach. A DOC spokesperson believes they are starving to death as climate change is creating waters too hot for the fish they feed on.
Continue reading “Queens and Storms”
Edge of Things 