The Bush Rustles

Quinn and I are meandering down the main fire trail when the bush rustles. I freeze and tighten the dog’s leash. My eyes follow a fast-moving wave of sound that explodes into a flying black wallaby. The animal’s over-sized feet land gently on the track ahead of us. Two bounds, and it’s once again engulfed by the bush.

Quinn twists and turns, straining, whimpering. Her muscular body is quivering. I hold onto her leash with both hands, planting my feet firmly on the sandstone path, preventing her from giving chase.

And then the rustle dies away. The wallaby has gone. It’s time to move on. I tug on Quinn’s leash, and she reluctantly picks up her feet. She follows me, her eyes looking over her shoulder: if only.

Until last summer, we often saw kangaroos and wallabies whenever we strolled along the tracks near our home. Then the marsupial mobs fled ahead of a fire that consumed our bush. Other animals disappeared too. For weeks after the flames burnt the trees black, the bush was silent. No kangaroos rustling through the undergrowth. No magpies swooping, kookaburras cackling, tiny wrens twittering. No sound but the wind that whooshed unarrested between the bare trees. The only life we saw was a few echidnas burrowing into the exposed soil and a lizard that lives in a clay pipe near the park.

But new leaves now cover the trees; the ground has swallowed the ash; the undergrowth is thickly sprouting. And the animals are crawling, flying, bounding back.

We saw a wallaby. Life is returning to normal. At least in the bush.