Western Walkabout: A Beautiful Dream
Richard Harris tells of a great night’s sleep.
What I like about a good night’s sleep is the dreaming.
Last night, for instance, as I lay chucking up the Zs accompanied by my cat’s soprano purrs I dreamt I rinsed my dinner plate in some pristine water.
“How sad,” I thought, as the detergent settled through the floating duck weed and on to the pea gravel.
“What have you done?” this stranger asked.
“You’ve wrecked our medium.”
He explained that the pristine water, from a South West creek, was part of an experiment. He was in the process of setting up an environment that would see the return of pygmy perch and galaxid minnows to the streams in the metropolitan hills
“What can I do to help?” I asked.
The man said the water would have to be replaced.
I mentioned I had a pair of plastic bins and could take him to a creek near Jarrahdale where the water was really clear and beneficial for native fish species.
“It’s more than that,” he said. “I need to restore the habitat of the aquatic surrounds for amphibians and invertebrates.”
I spent the entire night in the hills forest in my dream, scanning rills and waterways and selecting logs and pieces of rock. A great night’s sleep.
