There we were, casually driving down the western beaches of Moreton Island, enjoying the virginal landscape, when we saw a bird. A cormorant.
Not all that impressive, except that this particular bird had a baby shark hanging from its gullet; a motley, thrashing, Port Jackson shark attempting to wrangle its oversized prey to the ground.
Therein lay the beginning of a horrifically comical sequence of events involving a fish eating bird and a mollusc eating shark.
Ooookay...
I was torn between jumping from the car, Bindi style, to tear the predator away, and getting out the Canon. So instead I sat immobile and watched my friends as they tried to capture the struggling creature. It took flight again and again - exhausted - attempting to outrun our heroic team of vigilantes. It flew lopsided, then dived into the ocean, undecided whether we were of greater concern or the shark still clinging to its throat.
It eventually sank into the water, bobbing in exhaustion. At which point I encouraged Mark to strip off and dive in after it – surely he could catch it in the water. You know, the diving bird. The water bird. The flying bird. Well, he is very athletic and all…
Being the good husband, he dutifully stripped down to his speedos and ran into the autumn ocean in an attempt to placate his distressed wife. The three boys stared open-mouthed as their father dolphined out to sea, out paced by a shark-laden cormorant.
The thing about nature is that it’s violent; capricious; deadly. And yet, un-interfered with, it maintains the most perfect equilibrium and design. Unlike Bigpond on many a day, it actually works.
Civilisation appears to be about expending enormous quantities of energy removing humankind from the hostilities of its environment. Concrete barriers, sewerage systems, and ducted air conditioning allow us to hole up in our manufactured bubbles, pretending we live in a parallel dimension. (Kinda like Spock. But without the teleporter). We then pay millions of dollars (those entirely useless scraps of polymer) to produce fabricated violence and watch it on the plasma from the safety of the lounge chair. With a bag of chips. We call this 'leisure'.
Nature has become a twice-removed aunty that we visit on holidays and take photos of. We don’t really know her. But we have seen Croc Dundee. And Bear Grylls. So what do we do when the ultimate violence of nature catches up and all human contraptions fail? We are surprised because we weren’t expecting it. Death. That unspeakable ending that modernity tries to thwart.
Perhaps the circle of life is more than a catchy song on the Lion King soundtrack. Maybe there will come a day when failing to connect to the internet won’t seem like such a big ordeal. Maybe we dive into the ocean and emerge with a shark biting into our neck.
Whatever the lesson gleaned from the scenario, Mark totally looked like James Bond (and only a tiny bit like Tony Abbott...)
