THE MIST CAME UP THROUGH THE VALLEY
South Coast, NSW, Australia
The mist came up through the valley. He had been harassed, bullied, threatened and intimidated, sleepless and distressed, for so long that he had begun to make poor decisions, or even poorer than before. Now, all this time later, he still paddled in the aftermath, still nomadic, still haunted. Many things would come screaming out of the sky to catch him, as if he was in a latter day version of Avatar. A private hell. "You would be stupid to think corrupt journalists were not involved," said his old friend on the way to Bangkok's international airport. And all could be forgiven, because all had already gone.
He understood things now that he had never understood before. But he was uncomfortable without focus, without a place of residence, without a daily routine. Without established cycles and established friendships. There was no routine. There was an eternal wandering, as if cast out to roam the Earth. All would be well. The crisis would die down. Different doors would open. Having given up smoking, yet again, mental acuity was returning. But the shattered remnants of what had once been, the path less followed, the distinct personalities left to perish on the side of the road, all these things remained unformed, or only partially formed, and he tried once more to move forward.
Whether there would be a landing on the valley floor, in some secret, tucked away village, remained to be seen. He was cursed, most certainly, but perhaps for a purpose. All would be forgiven, perhaps not forgotten. The news flashed a cosy story about British men retiring to Pattaya, there to live out their days and crowd the local hospitals. He took it in because he knew it was there, the old, semi-familiar sign Pattaya spelt out along the hill, a promise of sin and decadence and a wild life. He remained transformed. He remained in hiding. He could act out for the cameras, which of course he did, as would anyone who knew they were under such savage surveillance, and in the end he would do his best to bore them away, to force them to detach, to destroy the commercial or investigative potential of what they were doing.
These things weren't easily achieved. They came at a cost. He remained distant, isolated, uncertain, self esteem battered and cruelled by diminished circumstance, by secrets exposed as myths, by hollow story telling they had concocted around him, by cruel gain andan empty laugh. The road less travelled, a dank and uncomfortable place. He could feel them through, almost to his bones. Could see the shadows marking them all the way to the next doorway. And he took a comfortable gloss and made it into a hard shallac, stopped the tears and regret, lifted up his face and said: "Fuck off. Leave me alone. Not one of you ever put out a hand to help. And you can all die, curdled on your own bastardry." And then he sat back in the cafe chair and laughed again; because none of it made sense, none of it had ever made any sense. He had been pursued for the basest, most trivial, most dishonest of motives. And now, they could leave him alone forever. Because time had moved on and over them; and would destroy exactly who it was meant to destroy.
THE BIGGER STORY:
30 December 2013, 7.12am AEST
Found: world’s most mysterious bird, but why all the secrecy?
AUTHOR
The Night Parrot has been called the “world’s most mysterious bird”. First discovered in 1845, it was rarely seen alive for most of the next hundred and seventy years, but it has been rediscovered in 2013 by Queensland naturalist John Young.
The rediscovery has been shrouded in secrecy; photo and video evidence of the parrot was presented at an invitation-only viewing, and the Queensland government hasn’t been told the location of the parrot. So, why all the secrecy?
The first Night Parrot specimen was collected in 1845 in northern South Australia. After a spate of records in the 1870s, the parrot vanished. The 20th Century yielded almost no reliable reports until a single, road-killed specimen was found in 1990 in western Queensland.In 2006 another was found further to the south-east. This one was headless, presumably having flown into a fence line, decapitating itself.
Western Queensland seemed like the place to be. With colleagues, we have analysed existing records of Night Parrots to learn about where to look for the birds and when in relation to climatic events, and flowering and seeding cycles of plants that the parrots might feed on, such as spinifex. It has been a frustrating exercise, however.
In 2013, Queensland naturalist John Young found what he thinks might be two pairs of Night Parrots, and, to top it off, a nest with three nestlings. Young recently presented a select group of experts with photographic and video evidence of Night Parrots from May 2013, confirming that these were indeed Night Parrots.
Young also made recordings of the parrot’s vocalisations, which he used to draw the birds close enough to photograph.