A Colourful Awakening
TULLY GILLAM
I don't exactly know how it happened—actually, yes, I do. It's pretty obvious in hindsight. In 2023, my wife and I hit a crossroads. Like many middle-aged couples, we drifted happily unaware through the routine of our city lives. But sometimes reality slaps you with a scathing epiphany: Is this it?
So what do you do when you realise your life is marching monotonously toward an uninspired grave? You panic. Then you buy a caravan and drive into the middle of nowhere. Well, that's what we did anyway.
We wanted this to be a pilgrimage of self-discovery, an expedition to find a sense of shared purpose, a beginning of something, not an ending. But, although we were expecting the kind of grand existential journey where people say they found their 'true selves' or 'the meaning of life,' that didn't happen for us. No, we transformed into... bird nerds!
Now, I've never been an ornithologist, bird watcher, birder or twitcher—in fact, I barely knew the backyard regulars of Sydney. But it began as we made our first forays into the formidable outback, a desolate place where time slows to a standstill, and you start hearing the troubling sound of your own thoughts. We were rattling along the corrugated Oodnadatta Track, just south of Lake Eyre, when we pulled over briefly to give our bones a chance to realign. A flicker of movement caught my eye, and then black and white stripes came bursting from the scrubby bushes along with a chorus of shrill chirps: Zebra finches!
It was strangely thrilling, but why? Maybe it had something to do with a sense of primal connection with nature, but it was probably because we hadn't seen any other sign of life for days. Still, that first encounter lit something in us, and we found ourselves on the remarkably slippery slope of birdwatching.
As we zigzagged to the top of Western Australia and across to the Northern Territory, it became a competition for us where every new finch encounter was a fist-pumping victory: Double-barred finches, Crimson finches, Star finches, Long-tailed finches, Masked finches and Red-browed finches. You name it, we spotted it.
Along the way, we collected bird-related pamphlets from information centres and learnt to recognise other bird buffs: people maniacally focused on the treetops with binoculars glued to their faces. We started communicating with them through subtle knowing nods, eventually levelling up to chatting and swapping notes. However, a question often arose: 'Have you found a Gouldian Finch?'
No, we hadn't, but a quick internet search revealed why people were so obsessed. The bird's colours were almost too vibrant to believe—bright green, yellow, red, and purple. The Gouldian Finch looks like it has flown out of an enthusiastic child's colouring-in book. Forget self-discovery; we were now hunting Gouldians!
By this stage of our adventure, we had arrived in the Northern Territory, and from what we understood, the tropical savanna around the Top End was the promised land of Gouldian spotting. The wet season, their breeding time, was a few weeks away, and the birds were probably already pairing up. We switched to full-on finch-finder mode. Whole days were spent tramping through Litchfield National Park, Mary River, Keep River, and Kakadu, peering through binoculars like people possessed. A blur of hiking with necks craned and hopes high. But weeks passed. Nothing.
We finally reached Darwin and settled at a caravan park near Lee Point. With the proverbial clock ticking toward bitter disappointment, things took a surprising turn.
A protest group had set up tents nearby; their banners read, Save the Gouldian Finch, with photos of the bird we had been searching for. The small group of protestors told us that a housing development threatened the surrounding bushland, and since the finch hadn't been spotted in the area recently, the land was considered fair game. Suddenly, our adventure wasn't just about seeing a Gouldian Finch anymore; we could help save it.
Start the Mission Impossible theme song with a dramatic montage of us roaming the bush paths, scanning the trees and underbrush for several days. Finally, one evening, my wife's excited shout broke the silence: 'I found one… two!'
There they were, two Gouldian Finches skipping energetically through the scrub. The male hopped from branch to branch with a patchwork of colour: his body was a vivid green, with a bright yellow belly and a striking purple chest. His head was a deep scarlet, contrasting sharply with the black and teal ring around his neck. The female had softer shades with the same rich green and yellow but with a pastel-like quality. Their teeny claws gripped the equally slender stalks of the golden speargrass, where they searched for seeds. Eventually, they took flight, probably back to their nesting hole in an old Eucalypt.
We shared a fist pump, but the victory felt hollow this time. Was it because we sensed our shared interest in finding finches had ended? Or was it that we'd witnessed something so priceless and endangered, and now, we couldn't unsee it.
I'd like to say we saved the finches, but a few days later, while hitching up the caravan, a grey, pungent haze descended. We drove away amidst plumes rising ominously from the bush as sirens wailed and fire trucks sped past. Deliberately lit, the radio informed us. We continued in silence, our home safely towed behind us, but the fate of the finches' sanctuary remained on our minds.
Back in Sydney, a newspaper headline caught my eye: Bulldozers to Begin Clearing Trees at Lee Point for Exciting Beachfront Development. We can't just slide back into our routines and let the Gouldian Finch disappear, so my wife and I are joining the fight.
And that's how our midlife crisis road trip to nowhere turned into an unexpected mission to save the world. Well, at least one small, brightly coloured part of it.
The End. Except for us, it's a beginning.
Tully is a writer with a curious mind. He blends flashes of philosophy with dashes of reality to craft short stories that explore the quirks of human nature and life's big questions. When he's not busy writing, you can find him dreaming about intergalactic space travel and planning his next other-worldly adventure.
