I was regaling my co-workers with tales of my adventures along a poisoned canal and through our city's smallest suburb (it was technically a work video conference so they couldn't just walk away) when one of them asked why I hadn't taken my puffin along for the journey. Guilt crushed my mind. I was a neglectful partner who had left my puffin behind (chained to the wall on one occasion) while I went out and enjoyed myself. There and then I resolved to be a better companion and to take a small stuffed imitation seabird on my next journey out into the world.
The next journey out into the world as it so happened was informed by a previous journey out into the world. On my journey out to Englorie Park I had noticed an unexpected smear of green as the train rumbled through an industrialised portion of the city's southwest. A little research (hello wikipedia) informed me that this was Salt Pan Creek so called because despite all the talents possessed by our colonial forebears original and creative naming conventions didn't rate a mention.
Salt Pan Creek is a seven kilometre long stretch of water which rises to the west of some suburb I've never heard of and heads roughly southward. Before it can really come into its own as a waterway it collides with the Georges River and is never heard from again. Said collision happens at Riverwood a suburb formerly known as Herne Bay. The name was changed in the fifties to removed the stigma associated with living in such a poor, wretched, crime riddled location as Herne Bay. Apparently this worked, all people now have to do is overcome the stigma associated with living in Riverwood.
Despite flowing through a heavily urbanised environment Salt Pan Creek has a area of mangrove bedecked wetlands for the usual reasons such things remain in heavily urbanised environments; it was difficult to build on and it gave the locals (both residents and industry) somewhere to dump their rubbish. Efforts have been made in recent times to spruce up the wetlands or at least increase the mangrove to rubbish ratio and it is known to be the home of no fewer than three endangered ecological communities of various plants and stuff. You know; trees, plants, insects the usual things that make up an ecological community. This was the green smear I had seen poking its head shyly from among the factories and motorways on my previous journey.
Since this was our first outing together I went the whole hog. My puffin and I enjoyed a coffee at a local cafe before boarding the first of three trains necessary to transport us the twelve kilometres from Dulwich Hill to Riverwood.
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| Coffee is better with a puffin |
Speaking of trains there was some difficulty with these for various reasons it would take too long to go into although my puffin insists it was simple incompetence on my part. Nevertheless after a certain amount of time consuming back and forth I found myself strolling down a suburban street. There were trees in peoples yards and suddenly there were more trees and no yards, plus rubbish. We had arrived.
A pleasant surprise greeted me on arrival. The "walking path" was actually a raised platform made necessary by the fact that we were walking through (technically, just above) a wetland. Wetlands are vital ecological areas that strongly resemble overgrown slime pits and would be murder to walk through unless you are provided with a convenient walkway. I stepped onto the walkway and away from the city into something that varied between wretchedly overgrown nature strip and genuine (albeit soggy) bushland. The first thing we encountered were a pair of ducks that were risking their lives by disporting themselves in one of the creeklets (storm drains) that ran into Salt Pan Creek. Puffins are of course seabirds but my puffin showed no desire to encounter this particular piece of water.
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| Our adventure begins |
Patiently putting up with my desire for a visual record of our journey my puffin posed obediently looking over the ducks. If the ducks felt threatened by the presence of a North American seabird they didn't show it. They were too busy disturbing the contaminated sediment at the bottom of the creeklet, possibly looking for food and possibly in the hopes of poisoning the surrounding locals.
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| My puffin is keen to stay as far away from this particular water as possible |
The beginning of the journey was rather low key but it rapidly got better as we left civilisation behind (about fifty metres behind but behind nonetheless) and struck out across the wetlands. If one looked to the left one could see backyards, houses and on one occasion some discarded venetian blinds. On the right was an expanse of marsh, grass and mangroves that looked like it had never heard of human habitation. There was a stillness which I've noticed before when wandering through such areas. It wasn't silent, quite apart from the fact that the area is surrounded by houses and industrial estates, a railway line and a major motorway pass over the creek. Silent is not the term to use, very noisy is the term to use but it seemed muffled as though being filtered through (for example) an improbably surviving area of natural wetland.
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| The untamed wilderness was so exciting for my puffin I had to grab him to stop him flying away |
I spent the next two and a half hours crossing and crisscrossing Salt Pan Creek, passing wetlands, mangroves, electricity towers and occasionally stumbling on to more disciplined patches of green where people were playing soccer, picnicking and, in the case of one young lady, enthusiastically straddling what I hope was her boyfriend and not a relative. I shielded my puffin's eyes and hurried past.
Salt Pan Creek itself was actually quite an impressive piece of water and I was rather sorry that it got swallowed up by the Georges River before it really got a chance to make a name for itself. Waterbirds carved majestic wakes through the water and in some of the lower rent mangrove areas I was astonished to find ibis stalking through the mud hunting for food in an area completely devoid of rubbish bins. I honestly didn't think they still knew how to do this. I tried to take a photo but the ibis were obviously concerned that if I documented this act of self sufficiency people would be less keen to let them raid garbage bins and they shied away from the camera.
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| Salt Pan Creek (or possibly the Georges River), there are ibis lurking in the background refusing to be photographed |
I wasn't the only person out and about on this day. Quite apart from the various park denizens I passed by a number of others on the walkway not one of whom said anything like, "excuse me, you seem to be carrying a stuffed puffin around." which I thought was very polite of them.
When there is only one path to take it is very difficult to get lost and I suppose I didn't really although once I was a little way into the wetlands I had no idea of where I was. I just had to hope that the path would eventually spit me out somewhere not a million miles from civilisation. As if to reassure me on this point I blundered under a vast expanse of heavily graffitied concrete which was gainfully employed stopping the M5 motorway from sinking into the swamp. The creek, or some variant of it, trickled somewhat reluctantly under it while cars and trucks roared over our heads. Of course my puffin couldn't let the graffiti go past without adding his own contribution.
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| I managed to get him away before anybody caught us |
And on we went sometimes close enough to the outside world to enjoy the sight of lorries and carparks and sometimes surrounded as far as the eye can see by trees and wetlands. Fairness forces me to point out that when you're surrounded by trees the eye can't actually see very far. Incidentally I used the term "some variant of it" when referring to the creek in the previous paragraph. This is the thing about wetlands, they're wet. This makes it a little difficult to tell whether what you're looking at is open ground with a high water table. an overgrown creek or some variant of the two. Suffice it to say that if you tried hard enough you could probably drown in most of it.
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| A puffin and a post to rest him on. What more do I need? |
From time to time there was an explicit stream but for the most part there was grass and trees and a distinct impression that if you got off the walking path you might sink and never be seen again. I did point out one highly specific piece of water to my puffin in case he wanted to go for a swim but he preferred water that looked as though it had a lower urine content.
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| Definitely not going swimming |
After a couple of hours of blundering about the wetlands I blundered out of them into a large park. The council had put up a sign listing all of the things that you couldn't do in the park. They could have saved some money if they had simply put up a sign saying "Would everybody please just piss off!" The park paralleled the wetlands for a while and I wandered along it because according to my keen reading of google maps if I followed it I would return to my starting point. Along the way I took a photo of a galah because my companion is building a highly disturbing website that he won't let me look at and insisted that I take photos of every bird we encountered.
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| No galahs were hurt during the taking of this photo but I did smack the puffin about a bit |
Following the park did not actually return me to my starting point but it got me close enough so that I could hail it as a triumph of navigation. The puffin who had noted how many times I started walking in one direction only to turn around and retrace my steps rolled his eyes and said nothing. Once back at my starting point short of doing it all again there was little to do but go home. Along the way my puffin asked if this was really what I got up to while he wasn't around. I acknowledged that it was. He offered to send me some links to self help sites which he think I might find useful.
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