(x)

Pay attention to the hard bits, the angular bits…what the soft stuff hangs on to.

(xi)

That’s not a parrot: it’s orange tape tied to the trunk.

(xii)

Sign at La Perouse: “The snakes will be back in September. No aboriginal market today.”

He sat cross-legged in the dirt fixing my sandal with a latchkey and a bit of suede; I stalked
honeyeaters with the zoom.

(xiii)

Returning from the lightkeeper’s cottage: high in the branches funeral cockatoos—black, unmoving,
soundless. The light, no good, he said. Now we know why they get their name.