Well, now I've seen everything: Thunderfoot.

Kinchina is a CP, or Conservation Park, not far from Murray Bridge -- in fact, it's adjacent to the Mobilong facility. Dave and I went there to spot birds (no joy: barely even heard any, and saw just one ... no photos worth sharing). But instead, we saw something we have NEVER seen before. And although I was thrilled and privileged to see this incredible animal, I actually hope not to see another like him. I'll call him Thunderfoot, because --

When he took a STEP -- not hopping, just stepping forward -- the impact of those immense feet sounded like a horse cantering over soft ground. Thudd!!!! 

We heard him before we saw him. We knew something was out there. I wondered if there were some big horses loose in the park -- a whole bunch of deer jumping at the same time could have made a similar thudddd sound. Then Dave spotted what we thought (ha!) was the proverbial Really Big Roo. I said words along the lines or "Wow, look at the size of him!" I popped a couple of frames ... then noticed the body morphology. It was the female. The doe --

And then Dave spotted the male. The one who made that heavy, dense, soft thuddd every time he took a step. When you weigh about 200 kilos, this is what it's going to sound like -- and this weight estimation is based on observation and cold, hard logic. A horse easily weighs more, but it sounds comparatively loud because all that weight is falling on a small area, the hoof: a horse walks on its middle toe, right? Now, consider an animal which is not called a macropod, or big-foot, for no reason. His feet are immense. To hear that same "shire horse cantering" type of thuddd sound, you'll need an utterly enormous weight spread out over that huge foot.

The size of him ... 

Those are trees, not shrubs, around him. That's a boulder, not a little rock, just left of centre of this frame. Now, look at the foliage on the foreground tree: mark the scale of it ... but this animal is standing at least eight meters, probably closer to ten, behind that foliage!!

At left here, Dave is standing beside one of the mock-up ancestral animals at the Womambi Fossil Centre, back in 2009. It's one of the extinct tree-browsing kangaroos. (Imagine the proverbial Really Big Roo with the face of a koala, which evolution designed to reach up and browse tree foliage.) The critter at Kinchina, whom we're calling Thunderfoot, is waaaay bigger than this extinct browser. 

Think of the biggest male roo you've ever seen at Belair NP, or Onkaparinga Gorge, or wherever, and -- literally double it. 

It was like looking at a shire horse, and when he moved, that's what it sounded like, back among the trees. 

I've never before felt that frisson of "Oh, oh ..." when coming across a roo in the wild. Never saw one that concerned me, much less made the breath shorten and the hair rise on the back of the neck.

Very carefully, I doubled back around to get a line-of-sight on him without trees in the foreground...

There's nothing for perspective in that shot, but we can tell you this much: if he were to stand up straight, his head would be around nine feet off the ground. Up on those toes? Standing in your living room, his head would be right through the ceiling. His shoulders ... it was like looking at a bull --

A bull that has seen you, is looking right at you, and you're in his territory, and his female is only twenty meters away. For all we knew, there could have been a joey (his baby) in the area, which makes any wild animal protective. He was intent on me, likely for good reason. No way in any world would this animal be leery of a puny little human, but where his joey is concerned...

I popped a couple of quick frames, then very carefully turned around. To be safe, you walk at right-angles to a big, wild roo: you don't make eye contact, and you do not move like you're slinking or sneaking. Slinky walking, eye contact and walking directly toward them emulates the stalking characteristics of the only predator evolution ever threw at animals this big. There haven't been wild dingoes in this part of South Australia for many years -- I don't even know if they're even still wild up in the state's north. But the programming of evolution isn't going to change, not in another million years.

So we walked on, and heard Thunderfoot and his enormous missus boom off into the bushland. It was thrilling, a little bit scary -- like almost but not quite blundering into a grizzly bear in bush Alaska. I wouldn't trade the experience for anything, yet at the same time, I hope not to repeat it! I honestly did not know that roos grew this big  -- and yes, I know exactly what the official documentation says! But I also know what Dave and I experienced. We're savvy people, and entirely used to Clydesdale horses, wild bull moose in Kincaid Park, camels ... those taxidermed bears in the big glass cases at Anchorage Airport! We know what we saw. 

And I won't be diving through the bush with quite the abandon that I used to! Radar on, wits about you, and make enough noise that wildlife can hear you coming! Because it's bigger that you are. A lot bigger. And it has eight-inch talons! It's very fortunate indeed that roos, even humongous ones, are such peaceable herbivores: they absolutely will not attack you ... unless you give them a justifiable reason, like startling them by running right into them, which would make any animal come up swinging.

 So -- don't given them a reason!

The July Report -- so late!

It's safe to say that spring has sprung, even if it doesn't actually feel like it, much of the time, to humans. The paddocks are full of lambs, birds are nesting ... yep, it's spring. Humans feel the cold -- or is it just me? Grey skies and rain only have so much charm, even if we also deplore the summer heat and our potential for a wildfire. Warmer, brighter days are on my mind now. Every year, we promise ourselves we'll get out more on nice winter days, use that parks pass and spend lovely mornings at Belair NP. Four years ago, Mom was in her final days and I was sooo ill, so it didn't happen. Three years ago, I was hopelessly lame following an accident. Two years ago, we did manage to get there, as I recall ... last winter was a bust, since we spent it mostly in lockdown! This winter, the weather has been so awful, we didn't do much at all, with the result that I'm sure I have an attack of what Alaskans call "cabin fever." You're just sick and tired of being inside, starting to feel claustrophobic about walls, even though it's so cold, wet and windy out, you can't go out for very long! The human condition. Check. But I have been managing to get out now and then, and get mobile and motivated --

A couple of weeks ago, we got up to Laratinga, at Mount Barker ... naturally, I managed to fall down in the muck (it was slithery after rain) and bash up my right knee. That took a week to come good enough to try again, and this time we found ourselves at the Swanport Wetlands, where I got some reasonable birdie pics, including a Personal First ... this, right above, is a Swamp Harrier. Never managed to capture one before, and even though this isn't a closeup (which won't, can't, happen before I get a very much better camera than this one!), it's actually a fairly good picture. It was a day for photographing little birds, but they weren't going to cooperate. I've never had so many images of birds' tails as they run or fly in the other direction! They just wouldn't cooperate! But I did get some good shots...

Yes, I know, it's "only" a sparrow ... but he was up among the swallows' nests, with not a swallow in sight. This year's nests seem to be ready for occupancy. They're right on the underside of the road bridge at Swanport Wetland, the bird sanctuary, and I'm amazed these birds can tolerate the noise and vibration. Swanport is nice, but the noise from the road, and bridge, is colossal. It bothered me, walking around there for a couple of hours, but these birds live and breed there. Nature never ceases to astonish. There's nothing to be done about the noise; the bridge is just there...

Otherwise, the last month or six weeks has been about the computer ... the new one, still under warranty, which isn't working properly, and has been in and out of the workshop like a yoyo. New CPU. New PSU. New motherboard. New GPU. Crash, crash, crash. It's under warranty, but there's still a lot we have to pay for, and it's not coming cheaply. Every time it comes home, it comes back upgraded and more powerful, but all you can do is hope. It's under warranty for another four months, and one would imagine its problems will all be sorted by then! In between breakdowns, it's doing fabulous work; the art is better than ever...

I've got a gorgeous fantasy world going here. I love living in it, and having the computer in the workshop is a jolt of reality I don't appreciate, and don't like. I'll survive. There is one more piece of news which is The Big One, so I've saved it for last:

Note: not my picture! Borrowed from the interwebs.

Finally, finally ... "In the Company of Ghosts: is going to appear! It'll be in the October 24 issue of Sylvia Magazine, and I'm thrilled to bits about this. Sylvia is a an eZine, so there'll be no print copy, but the online mag is beautiful, and my little story is a terrific "mesh" with the spirit of the e-publication. This is marvelous news, and I'll blog it again, when the page goes live. Save the best for last? This report is so late, we're almost in the the middle of August, and in fact this news is really August's news; but I wasn't going to wait, to blog it in The August Report! However, I will try to get that one done before September wears away...

Situation hopeless, but not serious (and a ditty for today)

What is the meaning?

Where lies the point --?

Life is merely a game...

Ain't it amazing: you roll the dice,

Play your cards right, it can be very nice!

But,

What is the reason? 

What's it all for?

Nothing's ever the same --

All your great schemes explode into dreams:

It's chaos! But -- no one's to blame!
...Jen Downes

...I've just been having a bit of a rant on facebook. An associate posted that we need to be turning to biodegradables rather than filling the world with plastics, petrochemical derivatives ... very wise, very laudable indeed, and I shall stand up and applaud; though I also have to note that this one is so far off the "duh scale," unless you're preaching to the choir, you're highly likely to score a lot of giggle-face icons. And the next two stories I read, consecutively, effectively cut the foundations out from under any such laudable goals.

So I wrote this, in the comment field:

My brother and I were just having a discussion about how to recycle fiberglass windmill blades ... Might fiberglass fragments be bonded with tarmac, for enduring road surfaces?? Then the first things I see on Facebook ... Our government is going to clearcut more native habitat (after the fires???) and some absolute lunatic just handed out a permit for 200 wombats to be culled to convenience a farmer, who can't figure out how to drive AROUND them! Then, they're going to make the slaughter socially acceptable (!!??!!) by handing it off to the Aboriginal community ... who will STONE the animals to death, which is vile. On one hand, people like us are trying to recycle consumables; on the other hand, droves of other people can't see beyond clearcutting and slaughter! It makes you wonder if humans, en masse, will ever change. Because, if they don't, and soon...

...and therein lies the problem. Nothing people are doing or saying on an individual basis seems to move government; and unless government moves --

Well, it's all just business as usual, isn't it? The world will spin on for decades yet before the time arrives for the Big Crunch. The aged will have departed. Those like myself, who today are not quite young, not quite old, will by then be suspended in the gray "limbo" zone where old(er) folks exist while they become functionally invisible, like the older woman patronizing (or trying to) the stores and cafes of NYC. So at this moment?

No matter what happens, or who says what idiocy (and especially if he or she happens to be in politics!) it's "situation normal," because whacked-out-crazy has become our normality. To put it another way ...

"Situation hopeless, not serious."

That's a brilliant line -- and no, I didn't think of it first! The movie was made in 1965; and for those who're film or lit buffs, I can tell you that Robert Shaw developed early drafts of the screenplay from his novel, The Hiding Place.  Yes, Robert Shaw was an award-wining novelist before he was an award-winning actor --

And yes, this is the Robert Shaw I'm talking about. Quint, in Jaws. Henry VIII in A Man For All Seasons. That Russian who gave 007 a real run for his money. He was also a playwright (in fact, if you're interested, there's a terrific blog post from many years ago, still on line at this time of posting). Novels like The Flag, The Man in the Glass Booth, The Sun Doctor, A Card From Morocco ... they're forgotten now; I wish they weren't! It's hard enough to find his movies these days, much less his books! And yes, in case you still don't believe me, here he is on Goodreads!

I don't know if he came up with the line, but it certainly has his quirky Irish sense of humor, and it's more relevant today than ever. Our global predicament? Yep. Situation hopeless, but not serious. Well not yet. Not for maybe another twenty years. Then ... dang.