On the Fence

Twenty years ago, my wife and I flew to Australia for a belated honeymoon. We arrived in Sydney and, after a brief visit there, we rented a car and drove up the east side of the continent to northern Queensland. Leaving Sydney behind us, we found our way through New South Wales on the New England Highway, a long, mostly empty, two-lane ribbon of pavement that sweeps through a lovely country of farms and ranches set among rolling hills and woodlands.

Of course, Australia is an absolutely unique place on this planet, with its own character that immediately sets it apart. But I was struck by how much the country we were passing through reminded me of California, especially the inland parts of the Golden State’s coastal ranges. It’s a lot like the American west, I said to my wife.

But then you see kangaroos bounding across the road. And the birds perched on the telephone lines and barbed wire fences are not the Meadowlarks, Barn Swallows, or Red-winged Blackbirds of home. They are parrots and cockatoos and others in a rainbow of variety, and the more you look the more you realize that this is not California, and it’s definitely not Kansas, either.

Australia is home to over fifty species of cockatoos and parrots. They can be seen almost anywhere, from downtown Sydney and its suburban gardens, to the rainforests of the eastern highlands and the dry woodlands of the outback. The Eastern Rosellas in the painting are pictured as I remember seeing them once, on a fence line, reminding the sun what it shines for.