Today, I climbed the mountain to the fire tower and got to the spot where a tiger snake lies basking every morning. It is always lying in the leaves against a massive wall of granite, just powering up with early sunlight. Every. Fucking.Day. Stretched out in the mornings, coiled in the afternoon, it is a resident who eyes me as I pass through ancient lace curtains.
'You can't see me, right? Look again!"
Despite my recent snake handling course, understanding the critters a bit better and a handy compression bandage in my backpack, I still stall at this point of the climb. If I had one of those watches, pretty sure I'd see my heart rate peaking out right about the moment I round the corner on the last bit of pathway before the stairs begin.
This morning, the tiger was nowhere to be seen. This was worrying, because I like to know where it is and not get taken by surprise. But it is St Patrick's Day after all.
Me: Hey, Happy Saint Patrick's Day! Let's get bent on green beer!
My snake mate: Yeah um. Maybe not today.
Me: But it's so great. We'll do Irish dancing and ...
My snake mate: yeah ... nah.
Me: Oh, oh man I'm so sorry. I forgot.
My snake mate: It's alright man. I love you right? But St Pats is never a good day for me.
So today, we cautiously avoided each other, this human and this snake. Tonight I collected some gaiters from my Mum's place. Mum is all for preventative measures (super sensible!) and one of them, when I expressed my worries about this particular tiger snake, was "get some gaiters so you feel better about climbing the mountain."
There's a man we call Johnny Walker because he walks the highway everyday into the little town. He swings his arms as he walks, always dressed the same; dark clothing, a backpack and peaked cap. He lives in the forest some where only he knows, ten kilometres or so from the shops. His living in a tent in an unknown location tends to stress the authorities out a bit but the general consensus is that he is better off here than on the streets of Perth.
It was a weird day in the fire tower yesterday. Smoke from the bushfires stymied any chance of me spotting a new one. Once the southerly came in and cleared some of the smoke, low cloud descended and I could only see for about twenty kilometres. A long, frustrating day!
As the sun slid down, I went into town for supplies and saw John, striding towards me, waving me down. We always stop to have a chat, quick snippets of life, how we are feeling today. John doesn't do eye contact but once that is comfortably established, he is a great conversationalist.
'Hey lovely Sarah!' John said. 'Would you like a sausage roll? Got a heap half price from the servo.' He brandished a few brown paper bags at me.
'It's a long way to the top, John, so yes please,' I said and he handed me a bag with a sausage roll and a bonus cheddar kranski.
On the Broke track, the long gravel road through the karri forests to my home, I was again stymied. (Yes, it's a stymie kinda day and also I like that word. It's almost onomatopoeic.Try saying it slowly, out loud.)
Karri trees drop their enormous limbs without warning, often when warm weather suddenly cools and the resins in their joints contract. This one happened probably only an hour or so before I got there. The scene was a mess, from twigs and leaves to logs half a metre wide. It was six o'clock. Long day and all I wanted to do was get home.
What beekeepers call the 'karri flow' is on at the moment. It's a phenomena that happens every seven or eight years. The trees burst into bloom and the smell is amazing, like the air is laden with honey and memory. Normally you can't see the flowers because they are sixty metres above us but as I started pulling away branches, the source of that scent became obvious. One more leafy and perfumed branch later, I uncovered a crime scene: Three fluffy chicks lay scattered about what was once their roost.
By then, I'd already been on the phone to my boss about the tree. It is a fire road after all and crew are using it every day when heading out to the bush fire. Plus, yeah, I just wanted to get home and I couldn't move those logs myself. The problem was that it was six thirty on a Friday afternoon and all the shire roads mob were going into relaxation or limp mode. It seemed intractable.
'But I have chicks!' I said on the phone and like a movie, the three chicks began to recover from their momentous fall and start chirping and moving about. 'Oh my God, they are alive!'
'Okay, keep them warm and when you get home, give them some sugar water,' my boss said. So ... how do I get home with a recalcitrant karri limb playing door bitch? Boss pulled some strings and an hour later, headlights threaded through the trees as one of the fire crew on stand by turned up with a chainsaw and towing chain.
It was quite dark by the time we'd finished piling the branches onto the sides of the road. I beckoned the fire fighter over to the tail lights of his truck. 'Check this out,' I said, holding the brown paper bag.
'It's a ... sausage roll?' He asked, peering into the bag. 'What am I looking at? A sausage roll?'
'Look closer, there's three little chicks in there.'
He did and said, 'Wow! Where did you find them?' When I showed him the spot where these fledglings had fallen to earth, he said, 'Good spot! I guess sausage rolls are not part of their normal diet. Mixing it up a bit are you?'
'Boss told me to keep them warm. This *on special and then donated* sausage roll is still sort of warm, so I thought it might be a nice place for them.'
Two of the chicks died overnight. The violent crashing down of their home was just too much. But the third (the one in my hand) cheeped and moved about on the hot water bottle and gave out a tenacious 'I will survive' vibe. I fed it lemon barley cordial from a pipette and my dog hovered about, no doubt anxious about hierarchical matters.
Today, I was rained off the tower which was quite excellent, given the bushfires, and drove seventy kilometres to meet a wild bird carer. We met in the car park of a roadhouse and I handed over the tiny featherless chick to her. 'It's pooing! That's a good sign,' she said. The last I've heard is that the little trauma baby had a good feed and is going well.
So, next time I see Johnny Walker, I'll tell him that he did good by giving me that brown paper bag with the warmish sausage roll inside. It may well have saved a life.
There is a massive bush fire prowling around the forests about 20 kilometres to the west of me. Every day, conditions change according to the wind direction or rain. Large tracts of karri, marri and jarrah country are in the conflagration and occasionally, while on tower, I'll see some black smoke go up, which usually means tea tree or some other kind of melaluca. I can smell the track of the fire in the smoke, as it moves through grass trees, karri forests and peat swamps. Fragrant, warm, dusty, acrid.
All roads into the area have been closed and Fire and Emergency Services have ordered traffic control people to block the roads with their cars.Traffic control do twelve hour shifts from 5 to 5, sitting in their cars all night or all day. The night before last, a traffic control crew were evacuated from the fire ground when the wind changed.
This whole experience has changed my thinking about traffic control: they are pretty much first responders but in a boring sense. Sitting in a car for twelve hours. No internet or phone range. Nothing to do but deter randoms from the fire ground.
This is a photo from one of those guys who saw the moon emerge from the clouds, with the lights from his truck illuminating the foreground.
In the massive old grandmother marri trees who loom over my house, a night heron roosts and feeds. They are shy birds and will often explode from the tree above my head as I walk underneath. The sensation can be alarming - like disturbing a colony of fruit bats in the far north - there is a mad flapping of wings and calls that sound like a child's shriek.
Some years, I don't see them. But it's always weird to see a large water bird roosting in a tree, something surreal in the arboreal. They have feathers a distinct shade of cappuccino froth and a water bird's delicate, long, curved beak and this year there are many night herons.
Today I was wandering about and noticed the white bird droppings in the marri litter near the chopping block. And a flash of bright blue, some masticated shellfish. I looked up (didn't get a shit in the eye) and saw the night heron. The blue was the detritus of her meal. The claws and skulls of yabbies lay on the ground like a grotto graveyard. The leftovers from a day's feed, after spending the night hunting in the waters of the inlet.
It is a fact universally acknowledged that a woman in receipt of tiger snakes will be in need of a quart of petrol to burn down her house just to spite them. These have been my thoughts over the years as every January and February, the tigers laid siege to my house. I'd shut all the doors and windows as two tigers (who were very much in love) roamed around the front and back verandahs, frolicking, deadly, obviously intent on murdering me and my loved ones.
It's an emotional and psychological event for me and I find myself in this state at this time of year - rustle-jumpy and only walking where my path is clear. Plus, the trek up to the fire tower every morning is often stalled by a basking tiger or dugite, powering up for the day on the sunny north face. Last year, the hound was trotting back from her jaunt down the beach, when a tiger extended from the wood pile like a slinky toy at her. Selkie just moved around the snake and kept going. For a consumate brawler, she picks her battles. But it was enough for me to ask my boss if I could do a snake handling course - demystify my fear and learn about these creatures.
So today a disparate group of wildlife workers and others (such as one terrified firetower lady) gathered at the Business Centre where we were taught venomous snake handling and relocation skills. It began with power point slides. It always begins with power point slides. Jurassic Park? Snakes on a Plane? Indiana Jones going into that snake pit? It all began with power point slides, I'll bet my bottom dollar on that.
Then we were encouraged to engage some super friendly pythons to crawl all over us. I could see where this was going. Feeling a python's muscles is just amazing, I mean they are all muscle, and their skin is soft like a child's. Pythons are a gateway drug to tiger snakes, I know that right. Then we went outside and played with some fake rubber snakes. Who even has fake rubber snakes. We learned about how to pick up a snake with a crook and put it in a willow bin or a bag or maybe even a bin fire (not really).
Lunch break. I had a smoke out the back of the business centre with a spiritual healer who was doing readings there.
After lunch we were split into two groups, kind of like Squid Game. J let a tiger snake out her box and said, 'Who wants to go first?' She's called Lovely Lady, according to the label on the box, though she's probably a they as sexing snakes is quite difficult. Anyway, I was already shitting myself. As the beautiful animal slithered towards me her black and yellows flaring in the courtyard, the instructor gently 'raked' her away from me with his crook and focused on the catcher. I stepped back. But when it was my turn, the instructor lifted this snake into a bush. He seemed to like challenging me. 'What do I do now?' I asked. 'Drag it out?'
'Just wait,' he said. And so I did. The tiger worked her way down to the ground and I picked her up with the crook and put her into the willow bin where she nestled safely under a towel.
The next test - J let a king brown snake out. Oh my god this snake was the colour of the Pilbara, like pindan dirt, that beautiful mix of red and orange, a sunset. It came out of the box angry and twitchy. A woman in a red shirt walked through the courtyard, looking totally freaked out. She ran into the office, shut the sliding doors and stared at us through the glass.
The king brown was flattening like a cobra. It was probably one and a half metres long, bright orange and I was thinking 'yeah, nah. I'll pass this one'. But when it was my turn to bag this snake, something happened. The instructors' language was getting through to me. This is a timid creature. Sure it's not a wild creature. It's used for snake training after all. I put the tent-shaped bag in front of the snake. 'Trust,' said the instructor. 'Trust it will go in.' First, the king brown went past the bag and headed for my legs. Shelter apparently. And then it did. The snake slid into the bag. I held up the bag and felt the weight of this mighty snake slip to the bottom. Then I kind of froze. I looked at the instructor. 'I'm blanking!' I told him. I was sweating and quite stressed. 'What do I do next again?' and he reminded me how to close off the bag and then release the snake. Shake the bag, step back, shake the bag, step back and repeat.
The woman in the red shirt was still watching us from her office, eyes wide.
When we went indoors and learned how to deal with a snake inside a house, well that changed me. Food, water, shelter - what animal doesn't need that, including ourselves? As we chased the dugite under cupboards and around the room, I began to realise that snakes are vulnerable and they want to survive and they don't want to murder me. So basically, their whole life plan is to eat, live, grow babies and not murder Sarah. As I 'played' with this dugite with my new-found crooks and tong toys, I was feeling quite ashamed of the person I was. That child whose weapon was the snake chain (an axe handle with a long length of chain to kill snakes). That adult who squirts petrol and throws shovels at snakes. That person who says 'the only good snake is a dead one.'
Today has changed me. I'm still not really into tiger snakes around my house but I don't feel under siege anymore. Also, today I learned that tigers have facial recognition, much the same as magpies and ravens. So my crimes against the local tigers are probably on their Australia's Most Wanted database and I'm working to rectify that through earnest conversation with them.
Bicentennial Celebrations Paused Until
Further Notice
HALCYON SPIT, Australia. The Office of Arts and
Culture wishes to advise that provincial organisation underway for the ‘First
Peoples First’ Bicentenary Celebration of Colonisation is to be paused.
Negotiations are currently being held with historians, community groups, artist
collectives, private contractors and first nations people to decide the future
of the Bicentennial.
“It’s been revealed that a small group of radical
dissenters are influencing vulnerable communities to deny the fact that
Colonisation of our beautiful province deserves any celebration or a public holiday
to recognise the hard-working pioneers,” a spokesperson for Sir Wilton
Smee-Brough (OAM) said.
The newly anointed Mayor of Halcyon Spit, the honourable
Geoffory Strokes, added “This is why Mums and Dads can’t have nice things like
a day off in our busy working lives. Our ancestors came here from over the
seas, cleared land and worked hard. The Bicentennial is a time for celebration of
these people. I hope that those woke lefties will somehow see some sense and
recognise that our story is more relevant than their mid morning latte
discussions.”
Lifelong Halcyon Spit resident and Rotary
President Alan Spittles said, “Isn’t this all about the Referendum? Some folks
are just feeling bitter about the outcome and they’re using it against us now.
It’s just sad. It’s a real shame. I can’t have day off for the Bicentennial now.”
The Office of Arts and Culture has advised that
Australians will not be entitled to a Public Holiday.
“So, the historians are revolting,” Sage said with
a sideways twist of her head and a smirk when she read the press release.
“Yeah, they do that,” said Ben, understanding
the subtext. “Difficult to contain that mob. Am I good to go ahead?”
Ben was the sub editor of the Halcyon Herald
but he was also twenty years junior to Sage, a veteran local journalist and
Alan Spittles’ niece. A newbie from the city, Ben’s job was to invent clever headlines
and make sure the ipso factum text was replaced with actual news. He was
supposed to report directly to Jason Edwards, the Herald’s editor. But he always
consulted Sage first. Sage found this touching, a man the same age as her son
coming to her for advice but there was also a strategic edge to him that spiked
her gut. He wouldn’t be stuck in Halcyon Spit for long. Not with that face, the
Da Vinci perfection of his proportions, and a nose for culture wars. Heading straight
to the national broadsheet was Ben.
“Uncle Al’s retired.” Sage said. “He doesn’t even
need a day off. Run it as is,” she instructed him. “Then watch this one play
out. Whatever comes next will write itself.” She pointed her index finger at
Ben. “This is gonna be a doozy.”
Jayden’s Mum had read him Beowulf, that Lady
poem about shallots and the Narnia Chronicles and she knew what happened to the
children of those men who’d abdicated responsibility and still she got arrested
and locked up.
‘The swan roads,’ Jayden said, pointing to the
lake. ‘That’s the swan roads.’
‘What, the lake?’ asked Matt.
‘Yes, that’s their roads to winter. They’ll go
inland now, to the flooded paddocks. That’s where the swans will go to have
their babies.’
They listened to the swans’ calls as the birds
gossiped together on the lake, getting ready to leave for the winter. The reservoir
began to glow bright with the moon. And there it was, there she was, this
horned critter, like a moon but female, a Venus reflected in the lake. No, she
was like Kali. Angry and beautiful.
‘Oh my god did you see that, Jay?’ Matt grabbed
Jayden’s arm. He began to cry, again. He was trembling. Matt was weeping now
and then lifting his face to the moon. Jayden remembered when Ratty and Mole
had encountered The Piper. She’d read it to him, his mum. She’d said, ‘I’m
quite sure Kenneth Graeme was off his nut when he wrote that chapter. But Damn!
What a good yarn.’
