Yesterday I went to the Gong to see the olds and have a baked dinner. (In that order). The baked dinner (roast lamb and veggies) was soul food enough but the trip home was just gorgeous. First there was the particularly golden winter late afternoon light and the long shadows across the grass. It is a beautiful light that seems not to happen in Sydney (too blue and brash and in-your-face-beautiful). Then as I climber Mt. Ousley pass (in the car of course) I was in shadow and the rocks and ferns sort of loom out and look all dark and mysterious. Then there is the peculiar glitter of horizontal sun in the eucalpytus leaves (doesn't happen to any other trees - must be the way the leaves hang. At the top of the pass you sort of burst out onto the heathlands. These heathlands are particularly dear to me as I once (many many years ago did a major botany assignment on the plants of the heathland - imagine once I knew the names of over a hundred different natives that grow on that particular stretch of sandstone clifftop. Yesterday they were there in all their glory: glittering in the sun glowing against the sandstone and every now and again the wonderful sight of a magnificent ghost gum trunk. Just magic.
Further on of course I met the traffic of the outer Sydney suburbs and it was all going a bit downhill but then the sun was setting and we had this brilliant sky with salmon clouds and ... (if I had not been driving I probably would have seen it properly ... a silver coin full moon opposite a setting sun. Truly food for the soul.
Ahhhh! Mum's roast lamb!
Posted by: Nick | June 11, 2009 at 01:55 PM