Caldyanup, the Dublin, the Guardian and the Tower

Some days the country is like one of the colonial specimen tables. Irwins Inlet is so still it lies across the land like smoke on a low. My scope lands upon a cave to the north that my mind has somehow slipped past every day for months. The art of seeing. Three upright clouds in a row. The eagles are around again and I let the spotter know, he's heading this way. Two other towers are calling in permit burns and prescribed burns alike. It's the end of the season for me now; once open burning begins there are too many to call in and wildfire risk is minimal. So it's 'Office, this is tower. Tower's closing for the day. Have a good evening. Tower out.'

Unfortunately I didn't make it to the Dublin's shortlist. That's okay, that it was listed at all is really bloody exciting. Yes, really, bigly. And I didn't really want 100,000 dumb Euros anyway, like, the tender wouldn't even be legal in Australia, would it? This weekend I was involved in a feature in the UK Weekend Guardian. It's an article called 'How to be Alone' about people's solitary work. It's here. It's accompanied by the painterly work of my favourite photographer Nic Duncan. The image above is me at the base of the mountain in the karri forest, with that earthy smell of recently burned eucalypts. These closed forest spaces are a different experience entirely to the vastness of the peak, which I reckon would be an agoraphobic's bad dream. I'm a bit the opposite, one with an eye for an horizon. Maybe that's why I was so in love with the job.

                                                       A burn out Rocky Gully way.

                         And this one behind Granite Peak is fifty kilometres away from the tower.

                                                                           Office

                                                                                Perks

And now with the autumn comes the stunning calm days, sudden deluges that clear the air of dust and smoke, and freaky fruity fungi. Whee!

Caldayanup diaries #8

This is the tree that marks Juliet Oscar Niner Niner.

For ages I drove past this tree thinking who was Jo and how did they die in 1999?
But, unlike the Wandjinas, this marker tree has only been freshened up for a short time now. Here is a map to show where that tree is. Can you plot it?

Caldyanup diaries #7 Aquila

There are three Wedgetail eagle siblings, young ones, about a year old, who hang around the tower. Their colours are bright and lustrous. They are a tawny shock at the other end of the scope and I will scramble down the ladder to get out on the rock with them. This one, Aquila I call her, often flies with her landing gear down. Her talons aren't stretched out ready to attack; she just floats on the updraft, hanging her legs. When she spots something her speed and ferocity is thrilling.

Caldyanup Diaries # 6

When I was a kid growing up, they were still whaling in this town. The spotter pilot flew around looking and when he found a pod of whales, he'd radio the coordinates to the chasers. The fleet of old Norwegian ships would take off like a mob of Orcas on the hunt, a 'bone in their teeth' as the water curled away from the bow.

These days the spotter pilots fly around over country, not sea, looking for smoke during the wildfire season. When they see smoke they radio it in to the office and, depending on the situation, someone will send out a fleet of trucks or water bombers. 'Air attack' the bombers are called and useful in areas of impenetrable terrain.

The neighbouring district have been burning this week. The planned burns to reduce fuel loads in case of wildfires also rejuvenate the bush with new growth and smoke-germinated seeds. I was in the tower when three burns went up in quick succession - massive clouds of smoke rising high on the horizon fifty or sixty kilometres away. I listened to the chatter of the spotters from that district and the next one, as they called in smoke descriptions and coordinates. The spotter in my district radioed me to say those last two smokes I called in were private burns and there was No Attention Required.

Something I've noticed and wondered about: The spotters from the northern regions are no longer just calling in smoke. They are also calling in whales. Dead whales. The body of a humpback. A forgotten fin whale's carcass, from the mass stranding last week. Bush smoke and dead whales. There's something that feels apocalyptic about this juxtaposition. There's something in this picture, and I don't know what it is. All I know is that I've been obsessing over it all week.

Caldyanup Diaries #5

Struggling with a sense of relevance today. Which is normal if your job is to look for things and you can't see anything.

 Finally anything past the granite is white and I'm calling in fives all round for visibility. I realise when I go outside that the north facing wall is crawling with bees. They have no pollen on their legs and they are just sort of mopey. Like they have lost their queen or hive and home.

The cloud clears for half an hour and I can call in two smokes from the burn nearest the tower. And then this ... it's not a fire, it's almost it's opposite. A wall of rainbow.

Caldyanup Diaries #4

I learned something yesterday. A snake slowly slid across the granite, sluggish, like it was too cold. It went over to the concrete steps and hid behind them for a while. I'm thinking I'm not gonna let this one go out of my sight, so watched from the tower for a while, ignoring the visibility sched call until an impatient officer radioed me. 'Tower. Two's all round,' and slammed the receiver down and went back to the window.

The snake emerged from behind the stairs and headed for the tower tower, it's tiny head nosing across the lichen and rust stains. I think it was a dugite but I've haven't seen this colouration before. It was striped like a tiger. It seemed quite gentle and a bit doughy as dugites tend to be.

By the time it was a few feet from the door, I had to work out what to do. They do like to get into the tower, I've heard. If I threw something at it I could panic the snake into the wrong direction and I'd still have to head out there and pick up said item. Aghh! The snake ambled closer. I grabbed the squirty bottle of metholated spirits that we used to clean the map table with, and squirted the stuff on the ground next to the snake.

The snake stopped, motionless except for its forked tongue which flickered in and out, tasting the air. Then it quite deliberately turned around and left the area. So there you go. A verifiable anecdote that flammable liquids deter the serpent. The best thing is that you don't have to get too close to a potentially deadly snake and they survive the encounter as well.

The whole time this little drama played out there was a show on the radio about the first man to catch a live taipan to produce an anti venom. Actually, the man died in the process, but not until after he'd hitched a ride back from the rubbish tip where he'd found the snake gorging on a rat. He was holding the taipan by its neck when the seven foot critter spat out the rat and wrapped itself around his body. And yes, a truck driver actually picked him up and drove him to his mate's house. (Who picks up hitch hikers with deadly snakes wrapped around them?) He was bitten there while trying the get the taipan into a bag. Although this odd hero died, the first recipient of the anti venom, a ten year old boy, survived a taipan bite.

After my dugite left, I went outside and a bee became tangled in my hair and stung me.
I guess that's Sarah 1. Nature 1.

Women of a Certain Age

"She was not old, nor young, nor at the years/Which certain people call a certain age,/Which yet the most uncertain age appears." (Byron 1817),
I'm not sure what the phrase 'a certain age' means or what age they are talking about. Something to do with the menopause maybe? A gendered observation anyway, seeing as it is never applied to men. Perhaps it is the age when women cut all their hair off, take to wearing loud saris and have an affair with someone thirty years their junior - ie. a midlife crisis if you were male.

Far out. I don't know. What I do know is that when I was asked to contribute an essay to the anthology Women of a Certain Age, I felt a chill in my ovaries and thought oh no, oh no it's begun oh no. No matter. As usual in these situations where I am asked to participate in an anthology, I used the speccies as a leaping off point and wrote what was really on my mind.

So my story 'Living at Clarkie's Camp' is about pig hunters naturally. Pig hunters! Fugitives! Monster dogs! Love affairs! Gateway guardians! Setting net for sea mullet!

Women of a Certain Age is out on Thursday this week. It's a great book with some brilliant pieces by writers such as Anne Aly, Krissie Kneen, Liz Byrski and Goldie Goldbloom. There is one of my favourites in there and you can read for yourself to find your own faves. From the brilliant Fremantle Press. Very proud, I am.