By Sarah Pritchard · Gawler, South Australia

“A fairy-wren can find a seed in any backyard. When it’s 44 in the shade, it can’t find one clean sip of water.” — Why a 73-year-old South Australian ironworker is selling his last 53 bronze bird baths at a special price, before his final pour on the first of December.

Cast in solid bronze, aged through one South Australian winter. On a 40-degree afternoon, its shallow bowl is often the only water in the yard.

On the twenty-fourth of January 2019, Adelaide hit 46.6 degrees. It was the hottest day the city had ever recorded. Forty kilometres north, in Wal Haddon’s backyard in Gawler, an old magpie was standing in a bird bath at seven in the morning with his beak wide open.

Most people think backyard birds struggle in summer because food runs short. So they put out seed and feel they have done their bit. But in a heatwave, food is not the problem. A small bird cools itself by panting, and every breath costs it water. Without a drink, it cannot keep going through a long, hot afternoon.

You can see it if you know what to look for. A bird sitting still in the shade. Beak open. Wings held out from its body. It is not resting. It is trying to cool down, and it is running out of time to find water.

The Summer the Backyards Ran Dry

A full feeder and a dry bowl. On a heatwave day, this is what most Australian backyards look like.

South Australia is the driest state on the driest inhabited continent on earth. In 2019 it had its driest year on record. Creeks that once ran till Christmas were dry by November. Dams turned to cracked mud.

Backyards have changed too. The dripping garden tap is gone. The old dog bowl by the back door is gone. More and more yards are paving and fake grass. For a fairy-wren or a silvereye, there is simply nowhere left to drink.

And the heat comes every year. Forty degrees is no longer news in Adelaide. Each summer the birds face the same long afternoons, with less water than the summer before.

He Noticed When the Magpies Went Quiet

Wal Haddon in his workshop, an old bluestone stable at the back of his block in Gawler.

Wal Haddon was born in Gawler. His father fixed engines for the railways. The town has always worked with iron: in 1890, the first locomotive ever built in South Australia rolled out of the Phoenix Foundry, a few streets from where Wal grew up. At sixteen, Wal walked onto the moulding floor of a foundry on the edge of town. For thirty-seven years he poured iron there. Pipe fittings. Drain grates. Brake shoes for the grain trains.

When the foundry closed in 2006, Wal did not stop pouring metal. In the old bluestone stable at the back of his block, he built a small casting shop. And he began to make the one thing the foundry never let him make: something for the birds.

He had woken up to the magpies for fifty years. So on that January morning in 2019, when he saw the old magpie in the bowl, ignoring the seed and mince he had put out, he understood straight away. Then the fairy-wrens came, the blue male and five brown ones, taking turns on the rim. Then a pair of Adelaide rosellas.

“They weren’t hungry,” he says, without looking up from the bench. “They were thirsty. A bird can’t eat its way out of a heatwave. That’s the day the dress became a bowl.”

What he casts looks nothing like a plastic bird bath from the hardware store. It is a seated girl in a dress made of bronze leaves. She lifts the hem of her dress into a shallow bowl. It is low enough for a fairy-wren, steady enough for a magpie, and lovely enough to stand in any garden, birds or no birds. But the birds come.

The Pour Takes Ten Seconds. The Sand Takes Years.

No chemicals: the green patina grows on its own through one winter outdoors.

Wal will tell you that a resin bird bath and a bronze one are not the same thing at two prices. They are two different things that happen to look alike. Here is what thirty-seven years at the furnace put into every piece:

• “The Single-Pour Bronze.” Each figure comes out of one pour of solid bronze. No hollow resin. No glued halves. Plastic goes brittle and pale in the Australian sun. Solid metal does not, and it will not blow over in a summer gale.
• “The One-Winter Patina.” Wal does not paint on the green. Every figure stands on his back fence for one full South Australian winter, and rain and frost grow the soft green finish on their own. No two look exactly alike.
• “The Shallow-Sip Bowl.” The bowl is shallow on purpose. Fairy-wrens and silvereyes can drink and bathe safely instead of slipping into deep water. And it is easy to rinse and refill every morning.
• “The Layered-Leaf Canopy.” The dress is made of overlapping leaves that guide rain straight into the bowl. When a summer storm finally breaks, it tops itself up.

Before the Kettle Boils

Every morning starts the same way: the bird bath first, then the kettle.

Every morning, before the kettle boils, Wal walks down the yard and fills the bowl of the first figure he ever cast. It still stands by the back steps, eight springs on. For five years, one old magpie has been waiting for him at first light. First a song from the clothesline, then down to the bowl. Wal never named him. He knows him by a crook toe on his left foot.

“Everyone thinks casting is the pour,” he says, packing sand into a mould with the heel of his hand. “The pour takes ten seconds. The sand takes years.”

That is the part no factory can copy: fifty years of watching one backyard, poured into a bowl the size of your two hands.

“Not One More Bag”

The last of the bronze. Fifty-three figures, and then the furnace goes out.

Every mould Wal pours is packed from fine foundry sand. For thirty-seven years he breathed that sand on the foundry floor, long before anyone there wore a proper mask.

Last autumn, a lung specialist in Adelaide showed him the scans. Silicosis, early stage. The dust from the moulding sand is in his lungs for good, and it does not come out again.

“Doc said, Wal, every mould you pack is another lungful,” he says. “No more sand. Not one more bag.”

He can still pour into the moulds already packed on his shelf. He cannot pack new ones. So he is pouring the last of them. Fifty-three figures. Then, on the first of December, the first day of summer, the furnace goes out for good. There will be no second batch.

He does not complain about it. “I got thirty-seven years out of that floor and eight more out of the stable,” he says. “That’s a fair go.”

“I’d Rather They Hold Water Than Sit in a Cabinet”

Wal could charge far more. He has chosen not to.

Cast bronze like this sells for a great deal at garden shows in Adelaide. Wal charges a fraction of that. When his granddaughter Tayla, a vet nurse up in the Barossa, saw the price, she told him he was giving them away. He poured anyway.

“I’ve got the pension and I’ve got the house,” he says. “What I haven’t got is fifty more summers. If fifty-three backyards have somewhere for a magpie to drink when it’s forty-four in the shade, that’s what I’d swap it for.”

He does not want his bird baths in a display cabinet. He wants water standing in backyards in Mildura, in Toowoomba, in Wagga, in the suburbs of Perth, wherever a bird runs out of a clean place to drink this summer. The low price is not a sale. It is the whole point.

“The Fairy-Wrens Found It the First Hot Day” — What Gardeners Say About Wal’s Bird Baths

Sent in by a reader in Mount Barker: “Three fairy-wrens at once, every hot afternoon.”

• ★★★★★

  “The weight is the first thing you notice. This is real metal, not the plastic one that went brittle in one summer. I put it under the lemon tree in October and the magpies found it the next morning.”

  Margaret T., Bendigo
• ★★★★★

  “I bought it because it’s beautiful. I keep filling it because the fairy-wrens won’t leave it alone. On a 40-degree day I top it up twice and they’re straight back.”

  David R., Toowoomba
• ★★★★★

  “A Christmas present for my mum. She calls it her little lady and sends me a photo of every bird that visits. Best present I’ve given in years.”

  Linda P., Geelong

Before You Order — The Three Things People Ask Wal Most

More From the Backyards They Landed In

• ★★★★★

  “Heavier and finer than the photos suggest. Under the gum tree it looks like it has always been there.”

  Roger G., Mildura
• ★★★★★

  “Our old bird bath was too deep and the little ones never used it. This one has silvereyes in it every morning now.”

  Susan M., Mount Barker
• ★★★★★

  “You can tell a person made this, not a machine. Worth far more than I paid.”

  Tom B., Wagga Wagga