Torrens Lake

It's been raining! Now
the Torrens Lake is filling
up again. Some weeks ago the weir gate
was said to have malfunctioned and the water drained away into the sea.


It was dirty water anyway, with
blue green algae in it. There were rumours
that a council worker may have had
something more to do with it than failing to prevent the great escape.


Anyway. It was a huge
embarrassment. The Film Festival
and the Fringe were due to start
and the confluence of visitors would ridicule us for our stinky mudflats.


The Torrens flowed no more
by Elder Park, the beautified embankment.
Someone offered to donate some water
to refill it from an unused quarry that they owned up in the hills.


That water turned out to be
unsuitable, too high in sulphate. It would
have harmed the water fleas and fish,
so was abandoned as an option and we waited for the rain.


Last weekend I went with Allan to inspect,
thinking it our civic duty. We were
surprised to see the Torrens Lake
filling up a little on its own, drawing water from an aquifer underground.


It looked so natural. The water level
very low, the river banks exposed and tree
roots too, mudflats, now cleared of cars
and wheelie bins and witches hats, bristling with clay-encrusted bottles.


The Popeye barges stranded, at odd angles,
paddleboats lined up along the brink.
The fountain infrastructure looked too fragile,
but the Paper Boats in contrast were supported by huge rusty metal rings.


The stink was not so bad.
There was a smell of creosote
and ducks. The ducks and black swans,
seagulls and one pelican looked as though they'd never liked the Torrens Lake so much.

The Pelicans

It was last Saturday. Pliny and Nostradamus were walking along the Linear Park trail beside the River Torrens. They sat down on a gritty slope under a gum tree overlooking a wooden landing on which two pelicans were preening. Both pelicans had large yellow tags on their backs half hidden under their white and black feathers. The pelicans were talking.

First Pelican: How did we get the name pelican, I wonder? Is it from billycan?

Second Pelican: No! Pelican comes from the Sanskrit word for axe.

First Pelican: Axe! Strike me down! Why?

Second Pelican: Because of the shape of our bills.

First Pelican: But our bills don't look anything like an axe!

Second Pelican: No, they don't. But humans are pretty unobservant. Did you know they used to believe we fed our young by piercing our own breasts with our bills and nourishing them with our blood? They probably just saw us feeding them regurgitated food from our bill pouches. They thought if our babies died we could revive them by bleeding on them as well. Yerk! Humans will swallow anything.

First Pelican: How do you know all this?

Second Pelican: It's in a book called Pelicanthology for Pelicans. Want to borrow it?

First Pelican: ( looking towards the weir ) Look! Our friends are coming!

Second Pelican: Yes, let's go!

And they hitched up their tail feathers and plopped ungracefully into the water. Splash ! Splash!