Starbright

In the beginning there was The Shire. Not so much deluxe in village green or the well tilled rolling hills of a Middle Earth in neat tapestry pieces. This land was the landscape of wily bush and an irregular undergrowth, as bio-diverse as the unmethodical landscape itself. We lived in a regular house, brown brick, square block, tickety-tock in time to a suburban uniform. But between that block and a Royal National Park there were no fences back then. It was the first home I knew. It’s the first place I remember, the first moments of growing up, the first time to learn about life and love and what it is to fully explore nature. It was our playground. It was everything I could have wanted. 

We wandered about there, my sister and I on occasion, sometimes myself and a pal from up the road but more often than not it was simply just me from the inside to the outside and back again on a wild wooded bush adventure. Amidst a back drop of curious Picasso like strokes to the wide eyed wonder of a Daliesque repertoire, the dazzling diversity rendered boredom unthinkable and possibility winged wide open and ready for take-off. 

Along a narrow path, dancing the two step shuffle and attached to a sword christened twiggy, oh I was brave. I was treacherous. I was honorable. I was defender off the great goddess Starbright (Flannel Flower) and sworn enemy to the heaviest venomous snake King Mulga De Vile. Reinforcements – a vastly elegant and swiftly locomotive troupe of silver cloaked kangaroos. Here I was the architect, as we all are, those of us the dreamers, the believers in a magic made perfectly possible by thinking, by trying, by jumping into an invisible window of real ideas and moving pictures. 

I went to my first rock concert here, literally and not. We were the main attraction. It was a duet with a little girl wearing champagne coloured hair, cropped closely like a sweet bowl hugging a cherub centred oval face. Her name was Leah. I had imagined we would always be friends. In those days, we were left largely unsupervised, roaming til nightfall and on the top of a colossal row of boulders I recall leaping from one to the other crying out to the masses of wildflowers in attendance below, heartfelt and histrionic all at once;

“Til the white rose blooms again” (Nana Mouskouri) 

My mother was a great fan of this, the original hipster and the music of my parents vinyl folk, classical and opera collection was all that I knew in the beginning. I fell in love with the world in that home, in that place, a place without rooms or a roof or a single door, no closets, no gadgets or electrical currents.  To this day I love flowers and especially the flora of a wild Australian landscape. To this day, if a single wiff of eucalypt saunters on by to the delicious sensory experience of an odor reception, I remember that home, I remember breaking a leaf in half and drinking the scent right on in and through to a little set of asthma challenged lungs. 

Around that time, I was given a book, scientific and matter of fact and yet beautifully littered with botanical pictures in hyper color. It came as a present from a dear Aunt, packaged together with a wooden flower press, covered in a labyrinthine of intricate carvings, set like wandering grooves into an octagonal plane of bold orange paint. To this day I love the color orange. That book and that gift was a lovely lesson too. I set about collecting and classifying in quieter moments alone. The beauty of what I found was more than pirate treasure but every pearl of wisdom Mother Nature had on offer. The scarlet Red Grevillea,

Purple Flag, The Grey Spider, tea trees, wax flowers, wattle peas, ferns and the perennial herb known as “The Golden Clustered Everlasting” but known to me as “ Eggs, sunny side up.” 

There was much excitement afoot at the more rare sight of a red or golden Banksia. With flowered spikes, fruited cones, nectar ripe, bright and alight, these giant candles stood as the herald to an unspoken understanding. This was a plant, with a flower head made up of hundreds (sometimes thousands) of tiny individual flowers, grouped together in pairs and we inherently learnt not to pick them. My flower press was full of many specimens, but never the Banksia’s blooms, never the leaves or buds of the Flannel Flower, soft as sunset’s shadow or any piece of the Gymea Lilly, unquestionably the crowning glory of all lilies with her 6 M stems and beacon tops in magenta clusters of budding life. 

It was in this home that I learnt about the preservation and protection of life. I came to know by site a very many variation on the word flower and I came to realize that there was something called a protected species. And thus the flower press was full with the yield of abundant growth where Scarlet Lilly, Starbright and Banksia Light remained sacrosanct. 

The flower press itself became a hobby and a lesson in delayed gratification. “Oshibana” pressed flowers, requires several time consuming stages. What I loved most was those moments of gingerly unfastening a series of tiny bolts to observe the challenges of time. It was a process of unfastening and fastening many times until the arrangements seemed ready enough. It never ceased to amaze me how the effects ranged from softened tones to a greater intensity of vibrant colors. I imagined getting older this way. It was a comforting concept for me. 

The path traveled down, down and down the valley way would eventually have me spat out into Engadine Creek, dressed in a pair of well worn dungarees and a tiny pack filled with supplies for the day. I loved that place. I really did. The bird life was most astounding with a gurgling brook in time to the call of rainbow’s flight. So much color. Those birds even got to know me as any living soul will do if giving space and time enough. A family of sulphur crested cockatoos in particular, literally would sit with me on the muddy banks hoping for a small morsel of bread and butter. Then, the waterways were loaded with taddies, darting like miniature ink blots on an important mission. I collected many jars of them, toddling home to watch and wait again. I released them, the frogs, once fully grown, in a ceremony with minute pieces of cloth trailing into the water and a little song. 

Circumstances had us leave The Shire, eight years old and headed North. Years later I merely watched on, learning from news reports about Cronulla Riots and a television show so unlike the memories I held dear it seemed altogether sad and ironic too. Strange to me because there in that National Park, on sacred land, on stolen land, what is left are the parts that were not carved into pieces and fences and borders and driveways but the most important lesson in what it is to value the differences alive within one harmonious whole. 

Nicla. T. Byrnes