Each time I returned to Lakes Entrance, that long, salt-edged breath of water along the Victorian coast, a familiar silhouette waited for me. The cormorant—dark as ink, slender as a brushstroke—was always there, perched on a weather-beaten post or gliding low over the tidal shimmer. It felt less like a sighting and more like a quiet reunion, as though the lake itself had appointed this sentinel to greet those who remembered its rhythms.
Lakes Entrance, with its winding channels and brackish lagoons, is a realm shaped by water and constantly rewritten by tide and wind. Here, the air trembles with the calls of pelicans wheeling in broad, lazy arcs, and the sandbars are stippled with the quick steps of herons and sandpipers. Swans carve slow crescents across the mirrored surface; egrets stand as pale exclamation marks against the reeds; and in the hush between waves, you can sometimes hear the soft clatter of wings lifting from the shallows.
And amid this congregation of water birds—this feathered parliament of the lake—the cormorant remained my constant. A single, faithful note in the wider music of Lakes Entrance, turning each visit into a small homecoming, as if the lake whispered, You have been here before. You are remembered.
Linking Saturday Critter
