Sunday, March 24, 2013

Smell of Rain at Lake Munmorah

"Of course it was cause and effect, but in the necessity with which one follows the other lay all tragedy of life."
W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

Lake Munmorah marks the border between Awabakal and Darkinjung country. The actual Lake, is a very shallow lake that peaks at about 4 or 5 foot. In the summer jellyfish swim in the lakes and so do small fish. Lake Munmorah's Lake is quite large and has three main entrances; Elizabeth Bay, Tom Burke reserve and Colongra bay reserve.

Marlene, Barie and Dr Cope suggested that everything we are as adults is formed in our first ten years. The Big Question: throughout his childhood, the poet Robin Robertson recalls, the smell of rain was always present. Robin's were spent haunting the shore, or the streets, of Aberdeen: turning over scallop shells or the bodies of birds, or testing the washed-up crabs and jellyfish for movement: some kind of peril. I would walk to school past the abattoir with its ferrous whiff of spilt blood, the dull thuck of cleaver into flesh, the great headless bodies turning on their hooks; past the barber’s oils, astringents and lotions, his whetted razors; past the joinery with that lovely sweet scent of wood-shavings and—best of all—past Mitchell and Muill’s, the baker, their steamed-up window stacked full of freshly baked rowies and hot mutton pies. The smell of rain at Lindt ? Vale and Rybnik Vrbov