Day 561 | Ballieu Lagoon Reserve: far from the madding crowd
57 km | zzOz total: 18,276 km
I awoke in my copse of trees, sapling River Red Gums, creaking slightly in the breeze, that’s the vegetation, not me, rubbing together, engaging in some botanical frotage.
There’s some pre-dawn first light from over the river but I’m concentrating on the sounds this morning, a new birdcall, clear chimes that never simply repeat, like a NZ Bellbird, and these only fade away, replaced by Magpie chortling happily when the first direct sun’s rays break over the horizon.
It’s quiet as my wheels rumble along the soft track surface, my chain needing a good wax is creaking on the down stokes, the occasional splash of a rising fish in the nearby river. Along here there’s been plenty of vacant campsites, no traffic, I wonder if summer’s holidays have been cancelled.
At Torrumbarry Weir civilisation descends, number 17 weir on the river, 1629 km from the mouth down near Goolwa although I haven’t biked anywhere near that, the river procrastinates its sinusoidal path towards the sea, I find I’ve only climbed 86 m in the last three weeks. The weir was initially built in 1915 to raise the water level at the Echuca Wharf, not so far now, and provide some fall for irrigation.
There’s a widening of the flowing river into a still lake and this is where the holiday makers are congregating, 20 tents set up in a line along the water’s edge, blue plastic cloth sentry posts are more haphazardly spread out for ablutions, a bit further another 15, there’s breakout of clumps on a regular basis, these campers aren’t interested in solitude.
I’m just about out of the River Track, the State Forests have almost run their course, but there’ll be more on the other side of Echuca.
I double back up to the river, a few k, for an early campsite but rather than make my way back to the river’s edge, plenty of noise of those jet boats, jet skis and the thump of base notes from a car’s stereo turned up to volume 11, I find the lagoon and a spot where I’m unlikely to be disturbed by anything except mossies, not requiring the full river experience tonight.
I crank up my little radio and find I am listening to Poetica, there’s readings from Czesław Miłosz’s collection of epiphanies, the Book of Luminous Things. I’m entranced by the woman’s voice who reads a short verse called Love in the classroom by Al Zolynas about a teacher asking her students to do some exercise and a distant piano’s notes wafting into the classroom, the morning sunlight streaming onto the desks.
… Everything’s
a fragment and everything’s not a fragment.
Listen to the music, how fragmented,
how whole, how we can’t separate the music
from the sun falling on its knees on all the greenness,
from this moment, how this moment
contains all the fragments of yesterday
and everything we’ll ever know of tomorrow!
There’s some Satie in over the top, I haven’t heard that since my copy of Gymnopédies was removed by my ex-girlfriend more than 4 years ago.
The reader’s voice is precise, delicate and filled with wonder.
I’ve fallen in love with her sensitivity.
Her voice, the piano, the late afternoon sunlight hammering into the tent: I guess I experienced my own epiphany.