Oil Light and the Bay of Pigs

I was on the phone to my sister when Brownie and Doogs arrived from the bush camp, their dingo-looking hound Flex in tow. 'So yes, I've found a $1500 shitbox with no windscreen wipers or muffler.' I said to my sister, waving for the men to take a seat, 'It drives great and looks like sin apparently ... and Queen Ben is probably bound for the wreckers. What a fucking day.'

'It's about to get even better,' said Brownie after I'd ended the call. 'Have you heard about the Bay of Pigs?' 

'Drives great, look like sin.' Doogs nodded. 'Sounds like me.'

The oil light in Queen Ben came on yesterday on my way home to the inlet and then flickered out. This morning, with my dog Selkie still not home from her pre-dawn date with Flex, I headed out for another tower day, and the oil light came on again. In the mistaken belief that the oil light works like a fuel light, giving me a few more kilometres, I continued for another two or three hundred metres. (Yes I know, shut up. I've been self flagellating all day okay?) A terrible knocking sound. I stopped. Under the bonnet and off with the oil cap. Smoke curled out of the sump.I poured in some oil and heard it sizzling against the heat.

Queen Ben turned twenty last year. The five years that I've had her have been about replacement and good husbandry. A new head, replacing the turbo, ironing out dented panels, gearbox issues, idler arms and wheel alignments. My philosophy is that a diesel four wheel drive can last forever if you treat her right. 

Yes, I'm a terrible husband.

I walked for a while until I came into range and texted my boss that I couldn't make it to the firetower today, with some brief details of my poor car's demise. Cicadas chanted in the forest and parrots flitted around me, colours of karri leaves and bottle-brush flowers. Then I turned and walked home, patting Queen Ben's bonnet as I passed. It was surreal, walking through the forest that I drive through every day. Walking is when you notice things.

Smoky red dust rose up on the gravel as a car approached and I found a welcome ride home. Selkie was back, soaking wet, smelling of the inlet and limping badly. 'So that was quite the excursion,' I said to her. She looked at me in that way dogs look when they've done some bad things. I turned on the wifi. 'Oh no! Are you okay, do you need a lift?' My boss had replied. I told him I was okay and then I rang my sister.

I managed to borrow a car for the day and make it to the firetower eventually. I'll leave out the bits about the missing firetower key, the long drive to retrieve it, the firetower nerd I met up there today who was really cool, and that snake. But I have to have a car and the Queen Ben is dead. So I got busy on my phone, bought a car ('drives fine, looks like sin'). I live 35 kilometres from the nearest town and the firetower is an 78 kilometre round trip. There's no public transport and getting on a bicycle is a bullshit option, dammit.

I made it home close to dark and asked a mate to help me tow Queen Ben home from her unhappy perch on the gravel shoulder.. My reasoning was that the RAC will be badly stretched over the next few days of New Year's Eve chaos in our little seaside holiday town. 

I was just having a self-congratulatory glass of wine on the back veranda and updating my sister on the phone about the new car I was buying, when Brownie and Doogs turned up. They growled at Flex as he dawdled innocently towards Selkie's food bowl. Selkie looked up and didn't even complain or harry Flex. She was still limping. She looked very, very sore. 'So, the Bay of Pigs,' said Brownie.

Flex and Selkie took off before dawn this morning. They often do this when Brownie and Flex are staying in the bush camp. Selkie and Flex go off for hours and I never know where they go. Sometimes they'll come back streaked with charcoal and I'll know they've been into the firegrounds. Sometimes, while looking for them, I've followed their tracks along the beach for miles. Selkie always comes home exhausted and she's sore for days. There are few roads and no fences around here. It's dog heaven but I always worry about them taking baits.

This morning, Doogs went down to the boat ramp and heard the two dogs barking. It was an early easterly and so he could hear them, their voices calling along the inlet shore. I was mourning the knocking piston death of Queen Ben and beginning my dejected walk home, by the time Brownie and Doogs walked east along the beaches and rocky outcrops to find Selkie and Flex bailing up a huge black boar. Apparently, the pig was standing in the water facing off the two dogs. He was in the inlet, water around his shoulders and nose to nose with Selkie and Flex. 

'This pig was huge, Sarah!' Doogs said. I put my head into my arms. Oh. My God.  'Much bigger than these two,' he motioned to Flex and Selkie. 'They were crying and barking like babies though.'

'What a fucking day.'

'We're calling that place Pig Bay,' Brownie nodded over his beer. 'It's something that's happened here and that place needs a name. Never seen that before. Never. A pig facing down some dogs in the water. Never seen it.'

So Pig Bay it is.

This stuff all happened here on New Year's Eve 2023. It's been another mad year yes? Happy New Year Bloggers xxx

 

Tank? Empty

The state premier of Western Australia has just resigned, citing exhaustion. He said his portfolio as premier and treasurer will finish by the end of this week. To paraphrase the words of Aotearoa's  (New Zealand's) former Prime Minister Jacinda Adern, his tank is empty. He's done. He's out.

State Premier Mark McGowan closed off the state from the rest of the country in the early days of the Covid pandemic and it afforded us about 18 months of relative normaility. This sounds weird, I know. But we didn't have to endure many local lockdowns - because the state was also shut off from the world. It was really cool. There was no Covid here. We could move around as much as we wanted to. Nobody got sick from Covid in the early days because it just simply didn't exist here. He did that.

When the federal election happened last year, Labor won on a landslide, mainly on the back of various Labor politicians such as McGowan, who'd fought so hard for public health. His decisions were often unpopular. He'd declared opening borders by a certain date and then abruptly closed the borders again. We in Western Australia were called the 'hermit kingdom' and 'cave dwellers' by right wing pollies and journalists in the Eastern states, merely for being anti Covid. Our geographical advantage was obvs.

So the Premier gave a press conference today, stating his resignation. He didn't cry. His wife looked stoked (Oh boy I can only imagine) and he then bowed out with not a Royal Commission or ICAC review ahead of him.

Good job Mark and I thank you for your service.

Pistols at Noon

There's a hut in the bush close to my place. It's called Old Smoky because the fireplace doesn't work that well. Old Smoky is on the same property as mine. It's clad in blue asbestos and corrugated iron and the floorboards are made of jarrah timbers. The windows are not glass but plastic blinds. There is no toilet and only the remains of a gas shower.

The whole while I've lived here, a man by the name of Wally stays in Old Smoky on occasion. He always comes over to say hi and let me know that he's in the vicinity. After that, we leave each other alone. He walks out a mullet net in the evenings and sometimes brings me some fillets. He'll bring a load of split jarrah for firewood and stash it in the old rainwater tank, set sideways, like another hut or shelter but to keep warmth and cooking fuel dry, not people..

The commercial fishermen came one year and moved into Old Smoky. Chicky and Brownie found Old Smoky a welcome refuge from camping on beaches in tents. The hut is on private property but they just moved in anyway. I go visit them and sometimes partake in their moonshine. It's rough liquor and the air in the hut is always smoky and close. Brownie chainsmokes tailormades and Chicky is the one who makes the liquor. Chicky and Brownie sleep on swags laid across iron bedstands.

Last year, another man came to stay in Old Smoky. He was confused and alone, a dislocated product of divorce, a lack of meds and the pandemic. I know he'll hate me for saying this, but that is what I saw. He gave me some soap and incense which was a nice gist and told me he was moving into the hut.

So while I was used to Wally and his respectful ways around Old smoky and while I was used to the fishermen turning up when the inlet opened for netting seaon, this Bear Grylls character was a new one. He was trying to do a Broke Inlet version of the TV series Alone except that it also involved asking me to charge his mobile phone on my solar system's inverter and lend him twenty bucks when he ran out of wine.

So. That was a bit weird and I expressed as much to Wally next time he turned up. He was kind of incensed. Not about me having an odd neighbour but that someone was moving into his hut. It's not Wally's hut but Wally was still pissed. After three weeks Bear Grylls gave up on his plan of living off the land and moved back to Albany. On my trips to the city I still occasionally see him walking up the main street in his camo gear and DriZaBone..

Then the fishermen moved in again. They burnt all of Wally's split jarrah, that load of wood Wally had so covetously collected and stashed. They burnt it in the dodgey fireplace Old Smoky is famous for, over the whole netting season. Wally came back in the spring to find all his firewood gone. So now was he doubly pissed. Not only have people been using his hut (which he does not own) but they've taken all of his fucking firewood! (Fair call)

Wally fortifies the door and puts a padlock on Old Smoky. He plants some tomatos, chillies and a lemon tree over the mullet frames he's buried. This is a territorial war,verified by vegetables. I know I've gone from past tense to present tense but shit is getting real now folks. Bear with me.

Today, the fishermen returned and Wally was waiting for them. He knew they'd be here on the first of May and he moved his whole famility into Old Smoky for two weeks. Brownie and Chicky came up from the beach to see me, after they'd launched the boat and moored it in the inlet. 'Wally's in Old Smoky?' Chicky asked me.

'Yes,' I said. 'Would you like to borrow my tent?'

Misunderstanding

In my defense, it was getting late, into the windswept and interesting hour. On the second day of the party, I slept in my tent and woke up hot and hungover. It was evening again and the birds were calling -  a mirror to the dawn chorus we'd listened to, ecstatic and tired after the all nighter. 

Someone had lit the fire in the drum and they were about to torch the bonfire. Sprat hosed down the surrounding wattles and then kinked the hose, in case of emergency. Sister dolloped diesel over the wood pile and lit a match.

Later, as the sacrificial sofa folded into itself on bonfire coals, partygoers straggled back to the main camp where we sat on chairs and surviving sofas around the fire drum. A DJ played under an Oztrail shelter and blue laser lights shimmered through the peppermint trees. Two young men came to sit beside me by the fire.

"I'll give that a three," said the man in a hat, pointing at a woman slouched in a saggy blue velour couch. 

"Yeah, I reckon, a bit awful," said his friend. "But that one's better," he nodded to another woman sitting upright in a comfy looking camp chair. "Seven?"

I could feel my whole body tighten. I remembered when, as a twelve or thirteen year old on my first visit to Middleton Beach with mates instead of my parents, a row of men held up score cards for every girl or woman who walked past. They were probably only a few years older than me and a roar of laughter went up every time they held up the numbers. It was terrifying. "She's pretty," one would say. "Pretty fucken ugly," another said and held up the number three. More laughter.

So back to 2022 and a very different generation of young men, I turned to them, seething. "How old are you guys?" I asked.

"What do you mean?" The man in the hat said. 

"Are you, like, fourteen or something? What makes you think you can behave in that way? In this era?"

"Um ... what?"

"Who the fuck do you think you are?" I must have looked angry. Apparently when I'm really angry my left eyelid twitches.

He stared at me, looking baffled. "What's your problem?" He got up and he and his friend walked away to join another subsect of the party.

An hour or so later, the man in the hat returned to sit by my side. By then I'd had a bit of time to think about the scenario. I'd begun to doubt not myself but my idea about what they'd been doing, based on looking at my own prejudices after that experience as a kid at Middleton Beach.

"Hey ... you know how I jumped on you a while back -"

"Yeah! What was that about?" He asked.

"Were you rating women? Because that's particularly gross you know."

He stared at me and then started laughing. "No man! Oh wow. If you'd just said that ... we were rating chairs. See that one?" He pointed to the blue sofa, now occupied by a man in an Always Was, Always Will Be hoodie. "It sags in the middle. It's fucking awful. We were rating chairs, Sarah. By the way," he pointed to the plastic primary school chair I was sitting on. "Yours is a five."

"This is a very attractive chair, thank you very much," I replied, squirming on my chair, feeling  an apology coming on.

 

 

Magnet Inlet

  We met on my doorstep, on a day when storms ripped across the south west. I think it even hailed that day. He stood under the gutterless eaves in camo pants and a rather nice khaki jacket, its hood serving as a kind of veranda for his face.

'I've been told to come and see you,' he said.

I asked him in and made him a cup of tea. He said he'd been camping on the island but the weather got too wild, he'd capsized his canoe and now he was looking for shelter on the 'mainland'. He'd decided to move into the hut two hundred metres inland from my place. It's called Old Smokey, he told me. We burned some incense he'd gifted, in a green lacquered bowl. As the smoke drifted against the window, he began to tell me about how he came to be here.

Something fly in fly out something something a divorce that had cost him five mill. Kids who play for Australia as elite athletes. This could all be true. You know when someone looks you in the eye and tells you a lie? 'I'm nervous around you,' he kept saying, and I was not sure whether or not this was a good thing. My dog sat on his feet and fawned all over him.

Old Smokey is a hut used by fishermen during the commercial netting season. It's an old asbestos shack with a defunct toilet and broken hot water system. The corrugated iron roof is covered in marri leaves and it's a horribly damp place in the winter. A note written in crayon beside the door says - meet me at the beach at sunset.

'I'm moving in!' my new neighbour says. 'I'm gonna grow veges and get some chickens! This inlet has been calling to me for years now.'

During the early days of the pandemic, there was an influx of single men where I live. It was like they'd looked up the most remote place on earth and headed here - to grow veges and raise chickens. It was pretty weird, especially when they asked me to charge their mobile phones with my limited power supply. Me saying 'no' was often seen as an affront.

I did have some respect, though, for this man who'd tried to go it alone on the island. If I ever won lotto, I'd buy that island, I told him. I love that place.

'Struth told me to come and see you,' he said. 'He showed me the hut and said, go and see Sarah first.'

Like all the fishermen do. They all come over to stand on my doorstep and say, 'Hi Sarah, we're camping in Old Smokey. Good to see you. Let us know if you want any fish.' Because they know I live alone and that is exactly what this strange interloper did. But he wasn't there to go fishing. He was moving in.

So that night I walked the bush track over to the village to talk to Struth. I used my head lamp because it was a new moon night. He was sitting in front of the fire, after setting his nets. 'What the fuck Struth?' I asked him. 'This random guy moving into my backyard and you showed him Old Smokey? Is this bloke okay? I don't know him. Do you know him?'

Struth had the dinner his wife had cooked, set on a plate and covered in gladwrap. 'Oh, I dunno Sarah,' he said, 'like I didn't think it would be a problem or anything. He said he'd had a chat to you and it was all good.' He looked really uncomfortable. 'I can talk to him if you like,'

Yesterday I talked to him. He'd got all his gear off the island and now had 'everything he owned' into Old Smokey. I see him walking through the trees on his way to the beach, a flash of camo and khaki, quite often carrying a water container. Tonight as I drove home, I saw a set of footprints either side of a single wheel. For a while, I thought it was someone running beside a bike. No, this was a man pushing a wheelbarrow.

Today was the moment I realised that I've been writing about this man for decades. That man who is tipped off the edge of the world, to heal, to get himself better. In 1929 a man came here. He was under a cloud of legal and social problems and maybe under witness protection. He ran a wheelbarrow out to the highway every month to meet a copper. Then he ran home the wheelbarrow with his supplies.

To tell you the truth, I'm not feeling any better about my new neighbour. But I kind of get him.

October

So nice to see you, inlet.

I feel like I've been driving for months and suddenly it's the equinox again. It took my Mum to remind me last week, and now there's the quickening between day and night that always throws me this time of year. A woman walks down to the seashore at dusk, glass of wine, sunnies and beanie, just like in the month of May - low sun and cool dusk. The sun slips and the darkening is faster but the kids are still yelling from the chilly waters. Orchids are rising their sex from the earth. My dog goes for a wander and returns with the desiccated leg of a kangaroo, crouches on the concrete and growls at any blow flies that get too close. They are new to this season too.

In the winter, right before I left for the big smoke, my car blew its head and this is an expensive exercise for a diesel. Queen Ben (car) is limping through now, avoiding any other medical procedures until the previous bill is paid up. Billowing smoke on a cold morning? C'mon, lovely lady, you can do it, just get out of bed for me one more time. Ignore those cold weather glow plug pains, baby.

Yesterday I taught in the city and then today I drove a long way to do our pre season fire training for the other job I have. I tied up Selkie in the courtyard at work. She'd been in the car for hours but she's long been my Girl Selkie and waited patiently on her makeshift bed, beside her silver bowl of water, accepting pats and copious stroking from all those fire fighters who are away from home and miss their own.

Then home to the inlet. Fisherfolk, returning from setting their nets this evening, their outboards blurp blurped as they headed to shore. The crunch of hull on coarse sand.

So yes, it's nice to see you, inlet. It's good to be home.

 

Djeran skies

 Our season turned on the pin of the equinox. Woke up on the 22nd and the car was coated in dew. Any rain before this was fringing the cyclone systems up north and now soft rain and stilled winds tell us we are coming into the Noongar season of Djeran. The Southern Ocean country is pretty different to Indian Ocean country or inland though, and this season down south is translated by some as Pringren. This comes after the two summers and before we head into the two winters.

The other night I was sky gazing and thought ... 'Mare's tails and mackerel scales, tall ships with shortened sails' ... there would be a weather event in twenty four hours and so there was, although a vestigial thunderstorm of the second summer. The moon was amazing.

 

Tower and Teach

I’m supposed to be up here (points to mountain peak) but the because of the rain over the weekend, there is no fire tower today. It’s my first rostered day for the season.

Mt Frankland, by Elizabeth Edmonds

The teachermen are back in the hollow just down the hill from my place. They convoyed in yesterday. I sit in bed reading Patti Smith and in their camp they play Neil Diamond and Leonard Cohen and shouts go up as one of them wins a hand. The first year they arrived here, all nine of them, Cohen had just died, and as the strands of his Hallelujah’s drifted through the trees, I knew they would be good people. They drink rum and beer and wine and sing a lot. They light a campfire and lay out swags. They are kindly men; these teacher men and they seek seven day’s healing at the inlet after a year full of teenagers and politics. I wonder what the teacherwomen do. Maybe I'll get to go up the mountain tomorrow.