Caldyanup Diaries #3

The birds, the flies buzzing around inside the tower before the wind came up … and then the sudden bomb blast of a giant dead karri crashing to the ground just west of the tower. That sound … BOOMP … is verging on apocalyptic.

‘I know,’ said Al when I mentioned it. ‘It’s worse when you’ve been out mopping up all night. It’s so quiet and then one of those things goes down.’

Smokes everywhere to the west of the tower today. At midday the sea breeze comes in and the south east is hazed over in blue mist. All of the smokes pop up with the wind. Some really get going. Smokes all around me, columns and drifts. I can smell grass trees burning.

Another dead tree, its foundations weakened by the burn, comes whoomping down, plumes of orange dust and smoke rising in its wake. 

At the same time, I look south to see a massive plume of smoke rising from farmland about ten kilometres away. Oh wow! Maybe it wasn’t a tree going down. Maybe someone’s machinery shed exploded? Excitement! It’s the first time I’ve had to call in a bravo four three four – dense, billowy, black. Later I find out that it was a tractor on fire.

Nankeen kestrels are chasing butterflies, slicing through mobs of brilliant, fluttering wings.