No more than a bushy bump of some 10,000 hectares, the Tallarook Ranges sit amidst a sweeping rural landscape. Made up entirely of granite, the mountain was formed in the Upper Devonian Period and is not an extinct volcano but a rocky cone that slowly crystallised deep within the earth’s crust. It now stands some 600 metres above the surrounding farm fields because of its hardness: 400 million years has eroded away the surrounding earth. And our owls hang on here precariously.
Last winter, just before nightfall I ventured deep into the forest and sat on a steep slope where I could watch a hollow in an ancient Yellow Box tree. I wanted to see if the owls were nesting. It was bitterly cold and the dew dripped from the thick overhead foliage. Darkness fell and I sat on a damp log, the air eerily silent, the unknown creeping in, enveloping my sense of well-being. In such a strange and timeless space, the city world I come from contrasts like a clap of thunder. I waited an hour, but no owls appeared.
The next day I returned to our inner-city apartment. That night, with the owls still firmly in mind, I took a walk into our local park. I know this green space has plenty of possums as well as a number of owls. Looking for owls by day, I have learned not to look up, but down. Birds of prey excrete characteristic, white splatters of guano on the ground, a sure sign of their presence. Occasionally one can also find their distinctive regurgitated pellets, which may indicate a regular roosting branch.
In the darkness, I walked right through the densely treed areas to the other side of the park. The yellow street lights in the distance cast soft circles on the grass, bicycle lights flickered weakly through the tree trunks, a siren could be heard far over the red rooftops. But I saw no feathered life at all. I decided to march for home, wondering why I had imagined I’d see anything at all, as though the night predators were there expressly to entertain me. But just as I approached the edge of the park, a dark ghost-like form swept soundlessly overhead. I tried to follow its trajectory, but as fast as it appeared, that mysterious bird again melted completely and silently into the night.
Robert Hollingworth’s new novel is The Colour of the Night (Hybrid Publishers, $24.95), and is available in all good bookstores. It tells the story of Shaun Bellamy, an orphaned country boy. We learn of Shaun’s intimate bushland experiences, but now he must go to the city where he meets a host of mixed-up souls and confronts modern life full on. Can his world of benign nature and this new one of frenetic culture, be reconciled?