Mountain soap operas

A soggy start to the day and nothing to see. The photo below is pointing south and, being up in the clouds, about fifty metres was the extent of my vision.

But the frogs sang like patriots the whole trek up to the tower in drizzling rain and there were more visible treasures to behold. All of the spider webs lit up with the droplets of rain, spider webs I've never noticed in the sunlit days of the fire season.
 

 The one pictured below was built by some kind of orb weaver. She must be the most elevated spider in the whole district, given that the fire tower is about four hundred and twenty metres above sea level.

 Today, she was my primary source of entertainment while I waited until the skies cleared. I watched her patiently rebuild the spokes on the web after over night damage, then work on the laterals ... spooling out her web. I caught a march fly in my fingers and threw it out to her. She calmly caught it, wrapped it up and was back to the web work within fifteen seconds.

This is what I do when the day is still and quiet. There is drama in watching the spiders and frogs go about their work.

 

Aftermath of the waterstorm

Last weekend the inlet looked like this as the wind created a storm surge that smashed into the bush.

  

 

And this is the inlet today: See that little grove of melaluca trees? It's the same one!

 

For weeks the inlet swelled and I was thinking, one more winter storm will do it, and then after another storm, well the next one should break it. 

"Never seen her so punishing, so angry," an old resident said, when I sent him a video of the water's influx on Saturday. It was hard to go outside into the intense, oxygenated air. It just felt relentless and the waves were throwing white foam everywhere. Chesapeake road became impassable as the inlet crept through the karri forests and all the river systems backed up. Eventually there was just nowhere for the water to go.

Finally, after days of insane wind and rain, the sand bar to the sea broke open. I woke up on Monday morning, looked out the window and realised we had a beach again. It was an eery feeling after all the drama. A Xenotopia, an in-between space where even the ravens breathed out a more measured Faaark!

Today we headed east along the beach, looking for things, beach combing for plastic and treasure. Peacocky tea tree oil from the forest was still leaching across the freshly exposed undersea.

 

 

 

The trees seemed surprised, caught unawares and exposed after months of being under water. The inlet dropped about 6 feet in as many days. Some of the trees displayed the tattered rosettes of their neighbours' papery bark, wearing them like survivor prizes. 

  

In the photo below, you may see something that looks like a bird's nest. It's not. It's flotsam from the water storm. We looked up in wonder and I measured myself against it, I'm tall but not that tall. "It's like a king tide," said H.

 

Paper bark trees hammered by the water are the most obvious signs of how high the inlet went. They have the tide lines etched into their skin.

 

Liz and the Tingles

The generator is whirring outside tonight. I say whirring, maybe it is thumping. Anyway, the generator is a presence, a petrol-induced entity who keeps the lights and internet on. My batteries connected to the solar panels are giving me ambivalent signals right now. Living off grid is a constant mind-state of thinking about power sources.

Last week a young woman contacted me. 'Hi Sarah, I'd like to interview you about your part in the Women's Work project. Could we set up a time for me to film you talking about this project?' 

As always, I was driving between towns. Someone once told me I have a house in Gemini, which means I live in two houses and this is so true. I replied, stuck in road works world between two towns, 'Coming into town. Can we meet at Lawley Park?'

There were several vehicles at Lawley Park when I turned up. It was lunch time, so some council workers stretched by their truck, a stray Winnebago lurched between the big colonial trees and there was that guy in a lime green Holden commodore. The driver of a crimson people mover looked like she just needed to get away from her kids.

Rachel from the television news network got out of her white SUV and started setting up tripods, checking her camera and testing the audio. From my old lady point of view, she looked like she was about 11 but she was actually a pretty competent woman in her 20s. She interviewed me for about fifteen minutes, went back to work, did the editing and production work herself and her story was on the news by 5.30 pm.

I'm bringing up this scene because I have spent several months creating a simple audio visual story to contribute to the Women in Media, Wimmin's Work project. The State Library asked me to contribute a story and I was like, 'Of course, yes! I can do audio work.'  (ummm). After months of quite intense sessions on my own with head phones and still learning the lingo, I came up with this:

I mean - it took me months! And Rachel from Channel 7 did much the same thing in about three hours. I'm now in awe of people who can put together a story so fast. Anyway ... enjoy my foray into AV. It's been a trip. If you would like to see other stories from the same project, go here: 

https://slwa.wa.gov.au/wimminswork

Valley of the Giants

This is a poem by Dorothy Hewett, an esteemed Western Australian poet with legendary status in these parts.

THE VALLEY OF THE GIANTS

In the burnt-out trunk
in the karri forest
myself my little sister
hand in hand
one dark one fair
one bonnetted one
with a nimbus
of platinum hair
like lost children
out of a gothic tale
behind us his akubra hatted
head
sprouting unseen antlers
our father the wood demon
growing out of a tree
snapped up by a box brownie
the 60 year old negative
exposed like a parable
the dark father
the dark child
subdued and powerful
the blonde
in her white dress
blazing into the light
transitory
as a cabbage moth
alighting for an instant
in the forest

those judging figures
orchestrate the scene
rising out of the litter
on the forest floor
implacable as horned owls
the giant tree's fallen down
the children grown
the tragic rotting order overthrown. 

Last Day

 I think it was my last day on firetower today and it was kinda boring and long. Low visability, no smokes and the spotter planes returning early because the clouds were covering the south. Fires to the west had died down due to the rains.

At the same time, permit burns had opened to the north east and so we were supposed to look out for them!

On my morning climb, the snake has gone but there is a feral pig that snorts in the bush as I pass it by. It is digging up leaf litter along the pathway. At one stage of my climb, this pig has dug a ditch and rolled around in it. People think that Australian feral pigs are like gigantic razorbacks but they are actually smaller than your average kelpie ... little pigs. They are kinda cute but they can really mess with country.

I hear the pigs snorting in the mornings as I walk up the mountain, the crashes as they run away from me through the forest, and then see their workings on the pathway where they have rooted around the leaf litter for bugs and roots.

 So today, I climbed the mountain sans tiger snake, as the little pig jumped away from me into the forest. The clouds clung to the coast and I knew it was my last day on the tower for the season. The spotter pilot called balese on the weather coming in from the south. "Heading home to the north," she said.

 

We see some pretty amazing things when up in the firetower. Wedge tail eagles hunting, floating around, never flapping their wings, just tipping their wings to catch the updraft, sometimes a notch missing on their wings from a moulted feather, fighting the siblings in spectacular airborne dogfights.  Little brown birds on the summit. Peregrine falcons catching butterflies. An eagle with tree's twigs in its talons. Ink black skinks wriggling up to the tomato leftovers I throw out the window. A vertical rainbow. The light spearing through the clouds to highlight a certain paddock alone in the forest..The strangest insects I've ever seen.
 

 

Green beer and the tiger queen

 Happy St Patrick's Day folks!

 

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."

 

 

Night Shift

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.

Photo by Beer Garden Philosopher

 

 

The Night Heron

 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.

 

Winter Solstice

 

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.’

 

 

 

Winter Solstice Part Four

 

Jayden put his arm around his friend’s shoulders. ‘Mum will really like these shrooms too,’ he said and then remembered that night out on the water poaching, when he felt scared and small and cold and his Mum was ranting about poetry or something and about the end of the world.

‘Parents, man,’ Jayden said, trying to sound understanding but he also knew what he was talking about and he tried to communicate this to Matt through his side hug.

Parents who didn’t think, who were so busy with their own dramas that they forgot to pick him and Matt up from footy training on that low, misty oval late at night. Parents who privileged their ancient vendettas against teachers over the yearly school camp. Parents who fought a landlord’s injustices in court and then ran some poor bastard down outside a BP service station. Fucking parents.

Jayden’s Mum had read him Beowulf, explained the Lady poem about rogue onions 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 and left her kid alone to deal with the shit..

‘The swan roads,’ Jayden said, pointing to the lake. ‘That’s the swan roads, like in the poem..’

‘What, the lake?’ asked Matt.

The two of them stared at the pond and the birds. Jayden saw lights behind them but also lights gathering in the swans who squwarked and gossiped on the water.