A Suburban Journey
When the tail end of Cyclone Gabrielle spun away from us in Pauatahanui things became eerily still. I had an intense urge to climb up somewhere, perhaps to try and make sense of the climate tragedy that just happened further north. At the top of Kahu Road the rain and wind departed and the sky started to clear. The only sound was the intense ringing of cicadas, as if shouting out the shock that vibrated through our collective psyche.
Continue reading “After the cyclone”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 