River

My impressions of the river-town of Brooklyn.

 

River

 

The train slows down on approach to the station while away to the left and right the river spills into view. I saw it first through the grimy window glass as it ran a lazy course around a construction site, the wiry limbs of cranes crisscrossing the view. The immobile carcasses of train carriages stuttered past the tracks at intervals, black urban silhouettes against the yellow city-light. The iron rail cut a straight line through space, giving speed to the inanimate objects flickering past like a film-roll, moving, moving, moving. Rows of buildings set close to the tracks. Those dead spaces between the station and the next suburb. Rail workers orange-clad like luminous insects worked along the line. The train tapped out a rhythm as monotonous as my own blood-pulse.

            The uniform angles of the city gave way to loose lines. Valleys began to form, mountains taking shape. Trees pressed close together. Anticipation shifting in my stomach. I knew the next station was where I’d get off. Leave the interior of the carriage with its vinyl peagreen seats and chatter of other passengers. The doors wrenched open with a sticky yawn and the muddy riversmell filled the space.

            The blue and white sign announces Hawkesbury River station. Its rivets are rusting red. The train pulls away. It’s suddenly quiet in Brooklyn.

            Down below on its one main street two dogs are fighting. Their owners, two men in flannel shirts and jeans, are hoarse from shouting at them.

Get out of it!

Bugger off you silly mongrel.

            One dog, a pot-bellied Rottweiler, skulks away and the other loses interest. The owners flash each other apologetic nicotine grins. I don’t know it now, but it’s the loudest decibel of voices, and indeed growls, that I’ll hear all afternoon in this river-quiet town.

Brooklyn occupies the narrow stretch of southern bank and the extensive National Park to the south and Nature Reserve to the west. The river is dissected by the staples of the railway track and the regular trains clatter on and on during the day offsetting the gentle lap lap lap of the water curling its way downstream. The houses, simple wooden affairs, many with private docks onto the water, crowd the shore like the oysters hunkering precious and valuable down below on the rocks. Pushing at their backs the sandstone cliffs and purplegreen scrub, tall trees growing dense. The river is the centre of things, where the fishermen take their dusk vigil to pull silver-flashing fish from the water for the tourists who will later pick the fish meat from the bones.

Brooklyn. The name recalls that American precinct of New York City, but the only thing they share apart from their namesake is a river and a history written down that echoes the other. Brooklyn was named by the Fagan brothers, William and Peter, who bought just over 100 acres in 1881 and in 1884 Joshua Everingham built the Brooklyn Hotel, which still stands. Its few patrons nurse beers, sitting on the verandah beneath the Tooheys New sign warping in the heat and weather.

 Considering it now, it would have been alluring for the Europeans, this virile place of meandering backwaters, one green riverbank shoulder twisting into the next. Birds plunging for gullets of fish and shrimp. Governor Arthur Phillip wrote about his imperial escapades in 1788 and was impressed by the great numbers of wild ducks and some black swans he saw from his whaleboat as he drifted past the mouth of Brisbane Water and entered Broken Bay. On the banks of the Hawkesbury, several decoys made by the natives to catch the quail, he noted, recording the scene. Phillip and his party camped on Danger Island, offshore to Brooklyn, and named it Mullet Island after making a large catch there, although the name did not endure. Philip did however mark indelibly the name of the river after Charles Jenkinson, first Earl of Liverpool, who at that time was titled Baron Hawkesbury. An obelisk, those suggestive symbols of imperial might, was unveiled in 1939 at Brooklyn to commemorate the naming and it still stands across the road from the train station, the grass around it seeming well-trimmed. The aboriginal name for the Hawkesbury River, Deerubbun, is less well-known, at least from the mainstream tourist talk. The river has been silent witness to these events, the sandstone cliffs too which have brooded here for 200 million years. Remnants of indigenous rock art, engraving sites and the tribal names linger still.

            The lady in the sole boutique store in town, which neighbours the post-office and police-station, directs me to the Marina. She points back down the road from where I had just come, her bangles clinking on her wrists. The Marina is rendered in blue and white and gives a wide view of the water. It has a real estate agency, an empty office (For Lease Now!), a fish and chip shop and an ice cream freezer ticking over. Rows of shiny boats line the wharf. Private Berth- Do Not Tie Here plaques warn others of encroaching on limited water-space. Seagulls intermittently announce their presence by squawking and shifting on their wooden poles. The pelicans adopt a more regal air, surveying the tourists lunching on the pier with indifference. The masts of the boats like floating telegraph poles that dip and sway to the lilt of the tide. Even from the wharf the various boats seem like toys floating in a bath tub, the impressive span of the railway bridge on the far left further ruining perspective. It stands as some monument to progress; the ambition to unite the disparate Australian colonies by the steely shunt of tracks and dead-heavy sleepers, which was eventually achieved in 1877. It served as a vital vein to deliver produce and military supplies in subsequent years. But it’s the river that still draws the eye, stretching out and away for hundreds of kilometers, unfolding in estuaries and tributaries like capillary veins.

            Can you walk around the river? I ask the waitress at the Marina.

            Of course. Just walk around, have a wander.

Across the neutral space of the car park, the path around the headland to Parsley Bay starts. I follow the curve of it to where two fishermen sail their lines into the water.

Catch anything?

They stare at me a moment.

Nope. Just started. They turn their gaze back to the water.

I sit on a rock river-side and watch the eddy and tug of the water. The horizon slips into nothingness. The bite of salt on my tongue, on my skin. If I listen, I can hear it. The river, it talks. It warbles and whispers flowing on.

Intermittently Cargo trains thunder by the station, unknown crates marked in red capitals flash by before being swallowed by the valley on the other side.

But silence comes again quickly, apart from the roll of gravel underfoot as I trace the headland. Houses huddle along the cliff as the path leaves the water and heads upwards.

No-one walks the streets of Brooklyn on a Wednesday.

In every yard there’s a water craft of some kind like scattered seed pods. Some upturned and others still drying in the sun. There are houses with bricks on the roof lest the wind picks up and pries the tin off. Surfboards line up one after another forming a fence. The river and salt is rusting things away. Even now, metal curls and splinters in pieces. Things are aging, aging. Returning to the ground.

            The same two men with the fighting dogs are still sitting in the park. One nurses a bottle in a brown paper bag. Their eyes say hello. Their dogs have gone, to find a place to warm their bellies in the sun.

            I return to the city on the train. Licketylack. The river follows until the landscape gives way to highway and factory and noise.

 The smell stays with me for a few days, of Brooklyn and the river, the river.

 

~

 

 

Author's Note

Just let me know what you think.

Reviews

[Brendan Kerestes]

INCREDIBLE!!!
Send it to a magazine!!!
ONCE AGAIN, GREAT!!!