One day early in February, at the beginning of
our second summer, eucalypts began dropping their green leaves. Bright green
sickles mosaiced the concrete steps to the fire tower where I work. I’d never
seen this before. Normally the track is covered with dead brown leaves.
Noticing the green ones was a bit different.
Two days later, I phoned my boss from the tower
at the end of the day. ‘I’ve just spent the whole day with a sense of impending
doom,’ I told her.
‘I don’t even go there,’ the fire officer said.
‘Every morning, the crews are organised, FDIs are finalised and then it’s like,
whatever happens will happen.’
That day was the hottest ever I’ve spent on the
tower. Most of the small schools in the south west shut down due to fire
danger. I wish I’d taken a screenshot of the emergency site that day because
looking at the school shutdowns made me think – this is the future. If this
happens every year from now on, whose parents will be able to go on checkout at
IGA? What happens to medical centres when doctors and nurses have to stay home?
The temperature readings in the tower blew out
because I was sitting on granite, which warms faster than soil, meaning the
little tower room turned into a hothouse. Sweat soaked my clothes. It was an
act of endurance to stay there. I saw a smoke curdle into the sky behind Mount
Lyndsey, mapped it and reported it in.
‘It’s kinda grey blue. I think it must be
around the Hay River area. It’s a weird colour.’
Turns out the smoke came from silage that had spontaneously
combusted in the heat, knocking out a whole season of feed for the dairy family
who worked there for generations. The smoke’s colour was from all the plastics catching
fire. Silage doesn’t normally self-combust, my farmer son told me. Silage is too
wet. Normally.
‘How you going on the granite?’ Marty who also
works on the tower was in contact throughout the day. ‘Do you have enough
water? Use mine if you run out.’
There’s a code between us. We carry our own
stuff up the mountain and we don’t share, especially water at one kilo a litre
per trek up the hill. We may text each other when the clock battery needs
replacing or maybe metho for the Trangia but never the water. Believe me. It’s
a thing. We never share water.
‘I’m afraid I’ve already crossed that line,’ I
messaged him back. By then I’d drunk four litres of water, poached two litres
of Marty’s stash and not even had a wee.
‘Do you want me to bring some more?’ Marty
replied and I thought, bless this man. The only person on Earth thinking of me
today is the other fire tower guy.
Just like prior to a wind storm, the Eucalyptus trees dropped their green leaves in anticipation of the event a few days later. This time, it wasn't a wind storm but an extreme heat event. All of the trees knew this event was coming up.
They knew what was about to happen.
