In the morning I heard the women singing in the water. They were swimming in the warm brown water and stopped for a song, a fishing song from the Torres Strait. Smoke rested over the still inlet. A bit of north in the wind then.
Along the track smoke idled in the karris where ground crew put some fire in four days ago. It’s a mountain day today, firetower day. I’m up in the tower writing this and have logged the smoke from near my place, first job since clocking on. The radios buzz from other districts, other spotter pilots. I can hear our spotter drone over the mountain, heading for a smoke.
Now the Sou easterly’s in, the air is full of smoke and sea mist and dust. Birak, the season of dust and smoke. It’s real fire weather now; windy, hot and low humidity. Crickets.
First post from my phone! I tried to put pictures in but it’s a bit buggy.
ReplyDeleteOne day I will try to do a long post using the dictation microphone on my phone. I will leave in all the errors and misheard words and hope it reads like a surrealist poem.
ReplyDeleteOoh yes! Like those poems made from cut up text.
DeleteWhen I read this you were in the firetower in a forest in fire weather, windy and hot. I was in a supermarket café on a grey English winter's day surrounded by people eating a full English breakfast. It felt surreal.
ReplyDeleteHow odd. Nice juxtaposition there Rachel.
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