Unwelcome nope ropes

There's been two tiger snakes hanging around the house recently. I throw things at them sometimes, trying to persuade them that this is a terrible place to hang out. Like raw prawns left under the couch cushions, they've become rather unwelcome guests.who will.not.leave.

'It's mating season,' a friend informed me. 'So you've got to get rid of one to lose the other one.'

'Agh!' I squeaked. 'So now they are gonna have lots of tiny tiger babies on my veranda too?'

'That's what your baby kookaburras are for,' he grinned.

A clutch of kookaburra chicks have been hanging around here too. The normal dusk chorus of the laughing birds is instead a series of desperate squawks as these fluffy boofheads try to emulate their millennial ancestors, like preschoolers forced to play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on the recorder. Kookaburras are voracious carnivorous ferals in Western Australia. Just seeing them beat a native fairy wren to death against a log incites a unique kind of sandgroper eco-fascism. But they are really bloody good at killing tiger snake hatchlings. I saw a kookaburra perched on the shed a few years ago, watching the ground intently and ambushing a nest of baby tigers. All day long. Bang.Bang.Bang.

Tonight, Selkie was trotting back from her evening beach visit, grinning, tongue lolling. As she passed the chopping block with its axe handle perched atop like a dancer's leg, she leapt sideways and I saw a black hose streak towards her and then retreat, like one of those slinky toys. 'Selks! Selkie!' I yelled at her and she ran to me, still grinning. She rubbed her head against my jeans and I patted her flank. My heart was racing. It felt hard to breathe. I checked her feet, her legs and couldn't find any bite marks. The snake curled itself back into the wood heap.

I'm watching her closely tonight and she seems okay. But bloody hell, I just want these mum and dad snakes gone, let alone their little hell-babies.

 

Here is a photo I took from the tower on Wednesday. It was the storm that sent me scuttling down the mountain. Lightning was forking all around this system and the steel ladders on the way down were not terribly inviting. Re my previous post 'It was lightning dickhead', it's the same storm that started the bushfire out near my place.

It was lightning, dickhead

Yesterday's tower day began with me driving my new 'tractor' with Southern Cross tattoos to the carpark early. I'd been expecting some drama after a night of lightning strikes in the area. I always take the bush roads in as a short cut that involve crossing the Weld River bridge (more about that later) so I was suitably dusty on arrival.

A kangaroo watched me as I walked up the trail. Can you see her? She has a joey in her pouch.

 

Later in a quiet moment in the tower, I was on the phone to a man from the Shire about the condition of the road I drive every day. 'I'm in tears halfway along the track,' I said. 'The corrugations are so bad now, they are getting dangerous.'

He was one of those people who make you feel like a confidant. An Olympic version of a public servant on the phone to some random woman complaining about roads. His voice was calm and friendly. He promised to have it fixed 'by Wednesday next week.' 

Not long after that, with a trashy thriller audio book thrumming from my phone, I looked over to the west and spotted a tiny white smoke that looked like a cloud on the horizon. Except that it didn't quite look like a cloud. Sometimes clouds over that way stand up like smokes, depending on atmospheric pressure. This one was different. I thought about the lightning strikes, the ones that had sent me scuttling down from the tower the afternoon before, and then I started plotting it on the map.

By 1215, I'd radioed in a Bravo Two One Two (medium density, columnar, white) and given the coordinates. It was kinda freaky, moving around the map table and trying to work out exactly where it was. As the wind increased, the smoke began to change. The wind turned suddenly from a mild north westerly to westerly and quickened. I rang the duty officer. 'Smoke description is now a two three three.' (Medium, billowing, brown) They knew exactly what I was talking about. This fire was taking off.

On the radio channels, I could hear the DO calling all trucks in the area to head out there and summoning the spotter pilot from Manjimup to give us the exact coordinates of the fire. First and Second crews from our district have been away at other fires in the north, so it was a harried response of gathering up returning fire crew and managing fatigue levels to assess who could go to this new fire.

After all the excitement, I rattled home along the corrugated track to see water bombers flying overhead and smoke touching the karri canopies. There were two Coulson water tankers dropping water at the fire, plus the nimble bombers and crew, who I knew were working all night on foot.

This is why a facebook post from someone who should know better sparked my interest. He is part of a group that thinks we shouldn't mitigate fire, only respond to fire. Apparently, yesterday's response to the fire I've talked about so far was not up to his expectations:

His 'summary' is problematic. The date is wrong for a start. It was the 18th. I called the fire in at 1215 not 1245. The decision of it being a Donnelly fire was a collaborative one, being a border country fire. Frankland district trucks were first responders anyway. Everyone worked together after that and today there are fire fighters from Albany, Manjimup and Walpole.

Old mate's post served his MO of early detection, early suppression. (Yes,that is my job and I did my job well on Thursday.) We are working to contain a wild fire in difficult country and that's why they put so many fire bombers onto it, because it's hard to get trucks in there. That's why we are are back burning. It's a big-ass fire, caused by a lightning strike. It's in country where there are no roads, so they can't just drive up to the fire and put it out.

This afternoon I was ready to leave my other job in the office when an email came through.

'Yep. Always a 4pm on Friday,' The DO sighed. 'Main roads have decided the Weld River bridge on Beardmore road is unsafe to the public. They've told us to shut the road immediately.'

'But that's my bush road short-cut to the tower,' I said, shaking my fingers with anxiety. I always drive this road to work. It goes through jarrah, marri and karri country. This is my track.

Pete looked at me. 'Unless you're planning on river fordings, you're a highway woman now,' he said.

Tourist towers

 So we are now full swing into fire season and up at the fire tower, people are taking selfies. 

It's a thing for some, a compulsion for many. Climb a mountain and it must be documented, at best livestreamed or at least facetimed.Two years ago, the thing was to get naked and take a selfie at the top of a mountain. It was an Insta moment apparently and no I'm not sharing. Thankfully for me, this craze has slowed down, since I spend most of summer at the top of a mountain. I felt like a creep every time I picked up my binoculars to look for smoke.

Today in the tower I could see the Stirling Ranges, which meant I could see clearly for about 150 kilometres. I called in a smoke 60 kilometres away. 'Plus or minus' I said on the radio. 'Maybe dust.' I was calling in dust because a fire that far away ...it could be someone working a paddock, sending plumes of dust into the air. And it turns out that it was just that, a farmer, not a bushfire. The spotter pilot went overhead, let me know and I went back to the tourists taking selfies and my weather recordings.

Southern Cross neck tattoos

 So ... after numerous mechanics I know giving me *that look* about the oil light and the inevitable bang bang bang demise of Queen Ben, I began to feel like I was in the docks for manslaughter. Please see the previous post if you need some context.

Tonight I went to Brownie's bush camp with some corned beef wrapped in alfoil. *That look* has been banished to the dark days of New Years Eve for him because I'm now the proud owner of a Toyota land bruiser and apparently, these old utes excite young nostalgists, old rev heads and pragmatic farmers alike.

And this is where my post takes a sideways lurch. I drove the tractor beast home and was walking around my new car, checking out the decals that previous owners had stuck on the ducco. 

'This one's gotta go,' I said to my sister.

'Oh, just put a swastika in the middle of it and she'll be right,' she said, laughing.

Her words burned. It's something I've been thinking about for years. When did the Southern Cross become an emblem for white nationalists and racism in Australia? It's always been an abstract thing for me until I bought this car, with Southern Cross decals on both sides of the rear pillars like some kind of statement.

The Southern Cross in our southern hemisphere skies makes up the head of the dark emu and further stars outline the body of the emu. Her body is literally delineated by stars. Once you've seen it in the night skies, you can never unsee the dark emu. 

So now, I've bought a car with this emblem stickered all over it, but it is meaning something quite different to a wonder of old knowledge and seasonal change. It's meaning 'Fuck Off We're Full' and 'White Power'. 

Maybe it began with Cronulla, maybe it began with the internet, I have no idea. The appropriation of the Southern Cross by right wing organisations in Australia is something I'm curious about.

In the meantime, I've just murdered Queen Ben and perhaps that is more pressing. She's sitting where I towed her a few days ago, waiting to be resurrected or wrecked, piece by piece.

* And Selkie! She's still on three legs but recovering after her encounter with that boar at Pig Bay.