The Oysterman's Track

The track near the lake A decade ago, the road did not go all the way down to the lake. Its downward plunge stopped dead against a giant timber buttress. Painted white, the buttress gave space to spread a meal of fish and chips from the local wharf : and time to listen to the bird song. Below it, the Bush grew thickly.

To the right of the buttress, down into the Bush and towards the lake, a narrow dirt track led off into the greenery. This track had been made by the local Oysterman, to reach his oyster leases in the lake and tidal inlet below. From the top of the track you could only glimpse the lake - bright points of silver through the grey-green of the Bush.

Walking down the track took you into the forest. Thickets of Black Wattle between giant Eucalypts a hundred and more feet high, so large that they must have been full trees when Captain Cook sailed by two hundred years before. Though covered with creepers, the Wattle's presence showed the land had been cleared a generation or two ago, perhaps for a farm the forest had since reclaimed.

Down to the lake Other leafy denizens were also well evident along the track. Tree Ferns clustered in the shadier corners, and native Maidenhair and Sickle Ferns were thick as grass in places.

The track rambled downwards, now thickly overgrown with creeper and the damp smell of rotting leaf mulch, at other times allowing views of the lake and the mountains beyond. From one point you could see the ocean, beyond the scrub covered sand spit, beyond the eastern reaches of the lake. Here and there in sunny openings, bright lizards basked.

Deeper into the Bush, soft-eyed Black Wallabies watched quietly as you passed.

And the bush was thick with bird calls : the sharp clear sweep of the Whip-bird, the continual silvery tinkle of the Bell-birds, and multitudes of others to delight the bird-watcher and bewilder the casual listener.

As the track wound further down, the hillside became less steep, the forest thinned and you emerged onto the rocky promontory that leads out into the lake.

The rock here is a mauve-pink shale. It is the sediment left over from the volcanic island arc that first formed this landscape in Silurian times, four hundred million years ago. The colouring is the trace left behind from iron rich run-off from those ancient volcanoes, whose weathered stumps still form the mountains to the west.

Nowadays, the shale has decayed into flakes that make fine skipping stones. At all but low tide when the sand flats are exposed, you can skip these fragments out across the lake.
Each glancing blow spreads ripples that link with previous loops, cluster and disappear where the stone sinks to the sand below.

If you sit quietly you will see other ripples, betraying the presence of fish. Many of them are puffer fish that skim quietly between sand and water surface. At other times, bigger disturbances occur, culminating with the fish - a mullet perhaps - leaping out of the water, chased by some unseen predator.

There are other hunters at work, too. At low tide, the occasional fishermen wades with rod and tackle box out into the lake, to the course of the main channel where the fish are plentiful. Standing motionless against the reflection of the mountains beyond, he is accompanied by herons and cranes. These feathered companions far predate the fisherman. They have been seeking fish here for millions of years, interrupted only by the Ice Ages that drop the water-level and turn the brackish inlet into dry sandy plain.

Today the lake is edged with mangroves; some old and gnarled, here long before white man, others mere shoots, last year's seedlings. Their breathing fingers poke out all along the lake shore, searching for oxygen above the anaerobic mud. Between the mangrove fingers, the tracery of mollusc trails, marking the path of small predators in search of tiny prey.

The molluscs in their turn have been prey. Here and there along the shore, lie dumps of ancient shells, left by the first peoples where they caught and cooked shellfish, over countless generations. Close your eyes and listen to the wind. In fancy you can hear the soft voices of the shellfish gatherers.

White Ibis Out on the sand flats, ibises wander singly. Off-white, with darker heads, they are the ghosts of their scarlet cousins in the Caribbean. Like their cousins, they are hunting crabs beneath the sand.

And crabs there are a-plenty. When the tide falls and the water seeps back from the sand and mud, the surface moves to the scraping of countless tiny claws.

The battalions emerge from their sandy cocoons, responding to the tidal rhythm, the drying flats a parade ground for myriads of tiny blue and ochre soldiers. They meander across the strand in tight formations, ceaselessly sifting tiny morsels from the sand, on the watch for predators or their shadows. If the alarm sounds, the crabs disappear, spiralling downwards into the soft tidal soil. In just a few seconds, only the mottled sand remains for predators to regard.

Farther out, the Oyster Catchers are also on the prowl. With smart black heads and red beak and feet, they favour the strand furthest from the shoreline. Despite their name, they do not steal the oysters laid out on the barnacled wooden frames set up by the Oysterman. He has no quarrel with the Oyster Catchers. Their wistful cries carry across the sand flats, an ancient sound of wild and distant places.

Pelican Out on the water, always far from shore and from the fisherman and oyster frames, black swans drift in idle groups. From time to time, pelicans float low across the water, in breast to breast formation with their reflections. They land near the fisherman like silent flying boats, hoping to profit from his catch.

Throughout the day, the sunlight and clouds sculpt images on the mountains and the lake. In summer, the high sun picks out in white arcs the far sandy edges of the shore. In winter storms, the lake shines bright as steel.

Moonrise on the inlet But now the sun is lowering, the day is fading, the tide is returning, the crabs are a-bed.

It is time to work homewards up the Oysterman's track, from the shoreline, back into the forest, towards the rising moon.

As you climb into the darkness of the forest dusk, a sense of unease grows. Things are not as they were. The track is not the same. The track that weaved up through the Bush is no longer there. Things have changed.

Fifty yards up the old Oysterman's track, you emerge onto concrete guttering and suburbia. The forest has made way for housing. Some of the trees still stand, but many a forest giant is gone. What was a treetop roost for the Ibis or the Sea Eagle is now somebody's patio with scenic views.

The buttress is gone. So too the track through the forest. In its place, the sterile geometry of the engineering plan, storm water drain and streetlights.

But all the while the Bush lingers at the edges, waiting. The lake and the tides remain, and will be there still, when housing and suburbia and roads have vanished into rainforest, like the farm before them.

Then, perhaps, a new Oysterman will cut a track down through the Bush, following, unknowingly, an earlier path.

Copyright © David Nicholls 1997. The tidal inlet and lake of this story is real. The photographs here are of that inlet. The Oysterman is still there, but his track no longer exists. The birds still feed on the sand flats. They must now fly much further to find a roosting tree. The world is not a better place for the development that has taken place. But some developer is richer, and no doubt an accountant sitting behind his mean desk in the city is happy.