Here

        I think I will do nothing for a long time but listen . . .                                                                               Walt Whitman We drink the beginnings of cider and perry – H has pressed fruit from trees all around the valley, including pears from the old orchard in the paddock here, and he gives us juice – complex earthy sour-sweet, with the zingy edge of new fermentation. I’ve also juiced a few kilos of nashi pears before the currawongs clean them all up – it tastes good, though the fruit is insipid.  Even as autumn deepens here, a tropical cyclone forms in the Timor Sea and travels south off the western coast of the mainland. It gathers strength till sensors on offshore islands record gusts of 290 kilometres per hour before the equipment breaks. The storm makes landfall in the Kimberley region, crossing the coast with sustained wind speeds of 218 km/hr. Both readings are the highest ever measured in Australia. The sound must be astonishing – from subson