This is partly an extract from Catching the Crocodile's Tale that I recently re-wrote to be broadcast on an Australian national radio program about rural living.


My other half and I first experienced Bees Creek at the end of the dry when the creek was motes of dust and wilting paperbarks bleached patiently under a blistering sky.

We could visualise our dream flow on from where Old Alex's left off and when he moved back home to Queensland weeks later we couldn't wait to move in and begin.

We suffered during that first never-ending build up. The suffocating humidity and hostile sun were relentless enemies as we tackled major renovations and cursed Alex's ancient rural machinery. We argued over how our instincts about living here could have been so wrong.

Finally when we could bear the pressure no more, a thousand-strike lightning storm tore through the night sky, unleashing monsoonal downpours and dumping metres of freshwater. Storms flashed through night after night until the water table rose and dust from the creek-bed washed into the Elizabeth River and on out to the Arafura Sea.

The wet was here, everything was green and more beautiful than Alex had promised!

The first thing we did was swim the 500 metres or so of cool, bronze creek that meanders generously across our land.

In sheer wonder we breast-stroked along the living watercourse. Down by the smooth-barked ghost gums, swollen paperbarks and spiralling, spiked pandanus; past the billabong with its white lilies and blonde bulrushes; down as far as the deep, dark pool.

Everyone warned us of salties, so we've taken to swimming in crystal clear, sun-dappled upper pools.

Early in the year the mashed potato scent of paperbark blossom draws scores of flying foxes and excitable lorikeets. Bees gather too, humming, busily invisible.

Archer fish swim gracefully below while we float around on our backs, drinking in the scenery and contemplating whether the fat white clouds are low enough to burst.

Our hammock swings gently above the water's surface and king-fishers whiz through the canopy overhead.

Floating in Bees Creek it's possible to believe we are the only humans alive; that freshwater is life and life is love.

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