Cloudcatchers GINKO No. 77

Autumn, Shark Bay, Evans Head

The Cloudcatchers Group met for our autumn ginko on Thursday 29th May
and were blessed with a lovely sunny day. This was spent at a site new to us, at Shark Bay, Evans Head. The gathering comprised Laurel Astle, Robyn Braithewaite, Norma Watts and Quendryth Young, with visitors Richard Watts and Garry Glover.

The occupants of the adjacent picnic table comprised a group of bikers, intrigued that such a lively group as ours was engaged in creating poetry, and offered us a limerick!
Our chatter began with a review of the use of ‘wabi’, ‘sabi’, ‘yugen’, ‘alliteration’, ‘assonance’ and ‘sibilance’. We recalled John Bird writing of ‘one lamp post without a pelican’, and there they were in abundance, especially on a rocky island in the estuary – ‘one rock without a pelican’.
An abundance of bird life, with seagulls, pelicans, an osprey, masses of screeching lorikeets, and a brush turkey running at full speed to investigate what a kookaburra had found for lunch.
Naturally the ocean grabbed out attention, with a paddleboard rider negotiating a heavy swell, seemingly heading for Chile. The huge beach boulders, the ochre-coloured rockface, the casuarinas arching over waves.
All this to capture, and then lunch on the balcony of the RSL Club. The subsequent Round Robin (three haiku from the day contributed
by each participant) has now been completed and circulated.

Cloudcatchers pictured below – Robyn Braithwaite, Norma Watts, Richard Watts, Laurel Astle, Quendryth Young, Garry Glover.