Looking at some old photos with a new friend, I found him reacting delightedly to this image of a pelican in flight. While I was behind the lens, it should properly be attributed to Spike Milligan who saved the mangroves and waterways of Woy Woy, (where this magnificent bird and many of their friends live, breathe, and breed), from the over development threatening them in the 1980s and ’90s. Spike, a famous comedian, (best known for his work with Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe, and Michael Bentine in the seminal radio comedy “The Goons”; and his, sometimes, hilarious anti war tomes), came to nature’s aid with a generous, (and far sighted), grant. Spike’s folks lived in the gem of a location that is Woy Woy, and what a lucky happenstance that was! I was there, giving the occasional online class and walking the sands of Umina, at the end of 2022. It marked the happy beginning of an end to an unnecessarily bitter and difficult enforced 3 year “sojourn” in Sydney.
Environmental problems never just go away. Currently the river is plagued by a virus that is killing local populations of the indigenous Sydney Rock Oyster. From my time as a non-vegetarian, I can testify that rock oysters are tastier than the larger, hardier Tasmanian Rock Oyster they’re, necessarily, being replaced with.
