It was hot as Hades amid the bricks and bitumen of Castle Hill and the drive home was awful, the car a mobile sauna. But there's always a wind of some sort whispering through the cul-de-sac, sending the Bali cow bells under our eaves into melodic song and fanning rustling gum leaves.

It's 8.40pm and Pauline possum or one of her many progeny leaves the Verandah Hilton on the second floor. There's a clatter as she scuttles over the lid of the wooden nestbox and scurries along the railing to a giant ornamental tree dominating the courtyard where we sip a cool glass of wine.

There's a low cascading sound and I suddenly smell the sulphur of possum ``rain'' as the animal takes a leak that narrowly misses my chardy. I jump up, curse and Alita laughs.

``There she is,'' I say, pointing to the moving silhouette which leaps from the roof into the drooping, spreading canopy.

The brushtail ducks down a long slope of a branch and dives into the tops of a palm tree laden with orange dates.

From across the yard, the squirrel glider launches itself off my former birdroom, now granny flat, sails over the pool and lands soundlessly on another date palm in the corner.

I lose sight of it in the dead central mass.

The screeching sulphur-crested galahs have flown over in their phalanxes an hour before and settled noisily into the hollows of dead gum branches way above the Darling Mills Creek forest.

The rainbow lorikeets have drunk their share of nectar from the bottlebrush on the lot and are now fighting for the best roosting spots in the boughs.

One, then two, then 10 and more flying-foxes sail overhead until the darkening night sky is flecked with them.

A few peel off and crash-land in our palms. There's a helluva commotion in the nearest one as possum and orange-headed bat eyeball each other without an appointment. Screams and heavy rustling above and Pauline and the new arrival both take off, voicing disapproval.

There's fox chattering from tree to tree and a few others gate-crash the party.

As darkness engulfs the scene, if you listen closely you can hear the seeds of the mostly-eaten succulent fruit bouncing off the ground below the palms.

The frog chorus and the occasional hoot of an owl take over as we go inside to watch a movie.