(24.01.2025)
It's Friday the 24 January. This morning, I am leaving Bogong.
The time has passed more quickly than I expected, even the slow days, but the days have been full.
There was a day travelling north into the Kiewa Valley to Bonegilla to visit the ‘Migrant Experience’ the former Migrant Reception and Training Centre where my Czech grandparents, father and uncle were quickly shunted and housed after arriving at Port Melbourne as refugees in July 1949. In those barren surroundings, I was more moved than I had anticipated, accessing my family’s migrant ID cards, and especially seeing my grandmother’s irrepressible smile set against such hardship. It was remarkable that in the ebb and flow of the occupants in those confines my father’s path had so nearly crossed with people of his generation I came to know on such friendly terms in their later lives like community figure and refugee advocate John Zika and artist, the late Jan Senbergs.
Walking across the alpine high plains on another occasion I learnt of the cultural meetings where traditional owners of the Bidawal, Dhuduroa, Gunai//Kurnai, Jaithmathung, Mitambuta, Monero-Ngarigo, Ngarigo and Taungurung peoples met in 2005 to establish The Victorian Alps Traditional Owners Reference Group and enable greater participation in the care of the Victorian Alps and National Parks. The history of the alpine region extends over millennia in the convergence of those peoples who gathered in the summer to eat the Bogong moth and perform ceremonies. The high plains are a place to find a rock in some shade and sit and practice a little quiet, awareness and imagination. Watch the windswept wildflowers in bloom.
Days earlier on the high plains, there was a dramatic hour spent in Wallace’s Hut sheltering as a thunderstorm swept across the peaks casting down lightning, hail, and rain from all directions, fiercely. Filling in the logbook like my life depended on it. Name. Date. Number of persons. Destination. Car Rego. I can’t remember the car rego.
Daily walks around Lake Guy, the Bogong Village and Arboretum have been a revelation in rich birdlife and over the last ten days I have been writing a growing list of inhabitants.
The seen and heard:
Pied Currawong, Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo, Sulphur Crested Cockatoo, Sacred Kingfisher, Silvereyes, Yellowed-Faced Honey Eater, Crimson Rosella, Eastern Rosella, Superb Fairy Wren, Maned Duck, Little Egret, Little Black Cormorant, Australian Magpie, Brown Thornbill, Noisy Friarbird, Striated Thornbill, White-throated treecreeper, Little Wattlebird, King Parrot, Eastern Yellow Robin, Laughing Kookaburra, Red Wattlebird, Red Browed Finch, Spotted Pardalote.
The heard but unseen:
Superb Lyrebird, Gang-Gang Cockatoo, Eastern Whipbird, Eastern Spinebill.
Yesterday in the early evening it rained. The foliage was wet and aromatic. The air cooled and was everything to inhale.
I will be back.