They did come. The Environmental Tours bird spotters visited in a bus that was a squeeze for our bumpy narrow drive. They identified 26 species before they climbed down the bus steps, just by the calls; clever people. By the time they finished a non-alcoholic lunch it was over 50 added to the list, either seen or heard. They returned to Canberra very happy and our unbuilt on-site motel was booked out for the next five years.
The flower people visited in their campervan from Adelaide. They too were multi-skilled being good on birds as well as flowers. Over breakfast of muesli and toast we were told they had been serenaded at 3:30 am by the low groans of mopokes. These are some sort of bird. The wombats, kangaroos and wallabies had completed the rustling swishing belching sound backdrop for their campervan night.
We set out to go along the river route to her hill. I thought it was going to be a walk. Walking for me was moving the legs fast enough so you get warm and arrive in a minimum time at your destination. My definition turned out to be inappropriate for serious flower people. We got to the other side of the vegie garden in intense conversation about something. We weren’t walking in an efficient single file but in a group. Beth dropped to her knees right under a big manna gum Eucalyptus viminalis and proclaimed she was looking at a vanilla lily Arthropodium milleflorum .
David was soon lying next to her with his nose against a piece of grass, magnifying it cleverly with his binoculars turned around backwards. It was confirmed, we had a vanilla lily. She was really excited with this tiny arching stalk carrying little whitish pendulous bells along its length. It got its name from a supposed vanilla scent. The related chocolate lily has a chocolate scent. None of us could smell the vanilla but then we had all smoked in our youth.
Half an hour had passed. Some sort of Billy Button Craspedia variabilis was found a few paces further. This was nothing more than a yellow ball on a stalk with a few leaves at the bottom. The funeral march continued. Beth and David were a few steps ahead and a concerned Beth signalled us to stop and move away. It had to be one of our fairly harmless copperhead snakes they had seen. Surprisingly, David with his back to us dropped his pants, then his Y-fronts (they really were), exposing his hairy bottom. This was quite unexpected. He had blood on his Y-fronts. Hanging on his testicles were two lovely black leeches and a third very plump one was cradled in the undies.
She and I had long experience of leeches having lived in the subtropics and walked in damp places. A good solution is a salt application which dehydrates the leeches and makes them loop away and die a horrid death. The other is an extinguished but still hot match that you press against the leech to make it let go. David wasn’t interested. He was as white as a sheet and the gentle administering hands of Beth were all that stopped him from fainting. We had forgotten to mention that lying on the ground in that damp place wasn’t a good idea.
The walk was over. We never made her hill so her bragging rights were intact. David had a little lie down with Beth in the safety of the campervan while I had a coffee alone. She now had 12 different plants in her collection. With an estimated 2000 wild species in the Bombala region, she had less than 2000 to go to complete the album.
She seemed to be stabilising and getting better so she went back to being a lawyer, part time.
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