The revolution will be Telegrammed

 I have lots of interesting conversations with people who climb the mountain. Some climb it and appear disappointed to see me here in their moment of climbed-a-mountain-ness, and others are amazed and often slightly bewildered at my physical evidence that fire tower folk still exist.

Anyway, today I had quite a normal conversation with a family who came up the hill, the kids tousled and barefoot, Mum wearing a black shirt with pink glittery lettering that said THERMOMIX, Dad jovial and friendly. 'Nice office you have here!' He said. 'Do you come up here every day? Really?' 

These comments and questions are very common.

After my 'yes great office, pretty sweet and yes every day,' we chatted about dingoes, the history of 1080 baits and the baiting plane which was doing laps overhead at the time. He asked about good places to swim in the river and I said the Falls was nice and also the Pool, further downstream from the river that wound around the mountain.

'Oh yeah, we're living near the Pool at the moment,' he said. 'We've holed up there to see how the revolution unfolds.'

'Oh. The revolution?'

'Yep. There's a truck convoy heading to Canberra as we speak. When they get there, they'll arrest all members of parliament and charge them with crimes against humanity. It's happening in Canada too. Today. It's on. The revolution is happening.'

Things slipped completely sideways for me at that moment. I mean, we were talking about swimming holes. 'Crimes against humanity? Who will arrest the pollies?'

His daughter chimed in. About four years old, she wore a little broderie anglaise frock and her forehead bore vestiges of green and gold face paint from Australia Day. 'There's a convoy going ALL the way across the country!' She said to me, waving one arm, 'to over frow the government.'

Jesus. 'Why haven't I read about this yet?' I asked her Dad. I looked at my phone. It had just died and I'd forgotten to bring up my charger cable. Visions of Daphne du Maurier's The Birds floated into mind and swiftly immigrated to my amygdala.

'It's the lame stream media,' he told me. 'They won't publish it.'

'So where's the convoy now?'

'Norseman probably. We wanted to jump on with them ... but,' he looked down. 'We were a bit late, so we're staying here now. There's another convoy coming from the Northern Territory. They'll all meet up at Port Augusta and they'll all be in Canberra by Monday, we reckon.'

'To overthrow the government for crimes against humanity?'

'Yep. It's on.'

'Well, I'll look on with interest.'

'Don't go to the lame stream media. They won't report on it.'

'An overthrow of the government? Surely ... um facebook?'

'Nah, stalkerbook are censoring us. Telegram is the way to go.' He waved his phone at me. 'After that, the convoy will return to focus on the Premiers. They're next.'

'Mc Clown!' said Mrs THERMOMIX, while sorting out the kids for the trek down the hill.

'Okay, it was lovely meeting you and seeing what you do up here. Thanks for your work,' said Mr (Oh god what do I even call him in this post) and then the little family went down the steps on their way to watch the revolution via Telegram.