Secret Directions To Jilliby Farm

Enter beside the hollow log mailbox. Here the road leads through a profusion of leafy damp shadows. Wild ferns are the underbrush where Fairy Wrens flit from the slightest presence. This driveway winds by towering bush gums flanked on the other side by a paddock thick with Kikuyu and other mixed grasses. A dam that reflects the passing clouds is the central focus. Wild ducks veer away whenever cars approach. Way down - as far as the vision stretches is a copse with mysterious shadows that beckon. Walk now, along contours formed by the water rush of many rains. Feel the stress of life melt from every cell. Birdsong has already worked its magic on your being -as well as sunlight on your skin, and earth scents inhald deeply to your lungs. Your heartbeat has fallen into the rhythm of the elements around. You’ve reached the shadows of the copse- you’ll look up to a brilliant sky through the branches of tiny, spiky melaluca leaves. Imagine giant broccoli and you are Alice looking for a Cheshire Cat. Your hands will linger on the tree trunks woven with a plimsol lines of grass left by many years of floods. These melaluca trees are brother-twined, rising from spongy islands, formed by countless accumulations of their own dead leaves. Placid waters reflect them, Narcissus-like, as clouds hang in their branches. Below, water lilies hide black roots in squishy, clay mud. Following along the small islands of land, jumping from bank to bank, you will see tiny wild flowers, trailing vines and wild maidenhair ferns. Suddenly, you will happen upon, a huge, grey Charoloais Bull grazing on a giant clump of grass. He will ignore you as you pass, if you circle wide enough. Look over now to the homestead on high ground. It beckons with a fireplace for frosty mornings and a swimming pool for scorching summers. You’re in the Dooralong Valley and a Golden eagle soars above, so large, it can take an unprotected lamb. Someone saw a huge, red-bellied, deadly, black snake here in a pile of rubble, left by some land clearers. Overnight, humongous spiders will build webs between trees to catch you unaware. But not all is scary here. It only heightens the beauty. In the pink dawn, grey wallabies, with a sun halo along their fur will graze on dew-laden grass. Kookaburras will laugh their kookalaugh and fill the valley with their jollity. Written Summer 2007