Shadowlines by Stephen Kinnane

Author:Stephen Kinnane
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fremantle Press
Published: 2020-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

III

BORDERLINES

glendower street

Sundown at Hyde Park, North Perth, rings out with the calls of the hundreds of birds that flock to its oasis. The twin lakes of this now central city park are surrounded by English plane trees, date palms, jacarandas and a row of Moreton Bay figs. Once it was a wetland that formed part of the massive freshwater underground and flood valley system upon which the city of Perth now stands. In its original state the wetlands would regularly overflow along ancient watercourses to East Perth and out into the Swan River. The underground watercourses still flow beneath the rows of expensive double-storey town houses that ring the wetlands, but they have been subdued by so much building and overcrowding.

By day the park is a haven and an escape from the nearby city. People come here to power walk, to stroll as a family, to picnic, to sunbathe or to just rest beneath the shade of the trees. There are many regulars; it is not only locals who claim the park as their own and return every day to reacquaint themselves with it, to walk around it, seek out others that they know and unwind within this world away from the world. By night the park is left to the birds who find sanctuary within it, to the men who sometimes use it as a beat, and to the police who patrol the streets around it, moving on any prostitutes who have made their way too far north from the city into what has become a very wealthy and desirable suburb. It is officially within the boundary of North Perth, but only just. Hyde Park sits at the junction of the small enclave of Highgate to the east and the salubrious rise of Mount Lawley to the north. The city, only a few kilometres away, is visible in the mirrored glass of the skyscrapers that rise above the roofs of the houses. But the city is silent against the noise of waterbirds making their way to the islands of the twin lakes.

The wetlands were cleared, drained and replanted at the turn of the twentieth century. Hyde Park seemed a more substantial name to the colonists for the transformation from ‘Third Swamp’ into an English garden. Even so, the clearing, draining and replanting could not completely transform this fertile freshwater haven from its significance as an essential site of human interaction with the natural world. The deep depression in the landscape, the cool earthy smell of the water, the canopy of trees and the islands of reeds still retain a sense of the original Noongar camp site and meeting place, Boodjamooling. Noongars met at the centre of the wetlands.

The overhead tree branches shield the lakes, flowerbeds and walkways from the harsh Western Australian light, and bear witness to all that happens beneath them. Each year the leaves become filled with the stories that they hear winding their way around the tracks that circle the park. They grow until they can

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