Melbourne in July: A Day With the Animals

The city part of that trip is one entry. This is the other day, and it does not belong inside that one. No lanes, no lanterns, no menu boards. Open grass, long fence lines, low scrub, and animals one after another.

First, the place itself. No animal at all, just the shape of it: one tall tree with a pale trunk standing on its own in a wide green field, a few animals grazing a long way off, and a fence line running along the ridge behind them.

Then the herd, all of them lying down in the grass with dense trees behind them and their long horns back over their shoulders. There is a low wire fence along the left of them and another along the ridge behind, so this is an enclosure, and the photo does not pretend otherwise.

And then the one I would put on a wall. A giraffe standing in among the eucalyptus branches, its head up in the leaves, green grass under it and blue sky behind. If one photo from that day has to stand for all of it, it is this one.

The hippos came in twos and threes. Two walking along a bare earth bank beside water so still it mirrored them back, with eucalyptus beyond. Then three more in a line on the bank, and the water doing the same thing for all three.

There was a timber viewing frame standing in a bed of agaves at the edge of a paddock, and it did the framing for me. Inside: a dead tree, a termite mound beside it, and past those, lions lying down with more lions behind them. I looked twice before I saw them.

A gibbon sitting on a log in a rocky enclosure, one arm out, looking sideways at something I could not see. The quietest photo of the day.

An emu walking across dry woodchip ground, its feathers hanging off it like a coat that does not fit. A fence line and low scrub a long way behind.

Then the kangaroos. This one standing upright on the woodchip in front of the fallen logs, a pond behind it, and more of them lying down off to the left.

Two more stretched out beside a brown pond and the reeds, the nearer one leaning back on its tail. There was a third one lying in the water at the right edge, and I did not spot it until later.

Between the animals I kept looking up. Eucalyptus canopy filling the bottom of the photo, and streaked cloud across that deep blue this city does in the middle of winter.

Two photos from that day have me in them, and this is the first: me at the fence with the rusted wagon wheels behind me, and a kangaroo sitting on the other side of the wire.

And this is the second: me, with kangaroos lying on the woodchip behind me, a duck out on the water past them, and the enclosure fence behind the trees.

That day was grass, woodchip and fences. The day before it was cold stone, red lanterns and a menu board I read twice.