Black Duck, page 12
They enjoyed their travel away from their burnt block and seemed a little revived and, while it is a relief to see them more relaxed, it is also important for Black Duck Foods because their solid commitment and experience has got us through some very trying times.
The next day we had a big yarn with all the people on the farm and Noel’s contribution was invaluable. It is wonderful to see Aboriginal men deep in conversation about cultural matters. When I first came to the farm I found an old plastic Coca-Cola table in the shed. It was my only table for eighteen months and as we sat around it for morning teas we started writing language words on its surface as a memory aid. Noel has a lot of language so, when he’s here, we’re constantly referring to the table and comparing northern Yuin language to the south. We add to and adjust the list and it has helped my ability to remember language.
I don’t find it easy to learn language but seeing it every day has helped a lot and visitors can look from bird or beast to the table to find out its language name, a great way to build relationship with Country.
Thursday was busy with collecting more scoria for the gardens and then a Twofold Aboriginal Corporation board meeting and when I returned saw a big golden dingo zig-zagging across the burnt patch on Lightning Ridge.
The Black Duck meeting was still in process with jokes and laughter but was halted momentarily when an Owlet-nightjar’s call distracted us. We can never take these visitations for granted but we had to get back to Black Duck business, working out our accommodation packages for guests. We are trying to give people a good experience while not making too many demands on our staff members.
The lyrebirds had been really loud and active over the last few weeks as the autumn weather gets hold of the country. Lyn commented that ‘the mornings are uplifted with the ringing calls of lyrebirds.’ Their calls really do take over at this time of year and their increased activity is a delight. They run like grand dames lifting their skirts to bustle off the road as we approach.
Lyrebird feather
The tracksides are constantly scarified by their claws as if tended by constant gardeners. They and the bandicoots turn fallen leaves and branches into soil and are very important contributors to tilth. The absence of bandicoots and the decline of lyrebirds is a result of predation by cats and foxes and the removal of that daily tilling has seriously impacted Australian soils.
The fellas have been preparing food to send to the CSIRO. We are testing for nutritional information and to make sure there are no harmful properties in the prepared food. Foods already tested have shown protein levels three times that of the European equivalent and no harmful compounds. This is time-consuming work but essential if we are to sell our food with confidence.
I got poor old Nadgee to Eden for repairs to some old flood and storm wounds but fortunately the electrical problem that has been plaguing me was found to be faulty battery leads. I got her in the water and she runs as sweet as a bun. Such a relief to be back amongst the riverland’s secret tunnels and bays.
On Saturday 28 we went to the reopening of the Genoa footbridge which had been destroyed in the fires. Wilma Becker opened it in memory of her brother, Freddy. Genoa is still hurting from what they see as CFA neglect during the fires and CFA members like Lyn and I have been getting the silent treatment.
The horror of that fireball and the realisation that lives could have been lost has burnt itself into brains like a brand. None of us can forget it.
On the morning of the fires I was on my way to help Dave Severs, publican and postman, because I knew he would fight but I didn’t get that far because there were already fires at the Becker family houses at Maramingo Creek.
Ronnie Becker’s tank stand was on fire and I put it out with buckets of water from the dam but then I noticed fire was under Ronnie’s house too. As I was working on it, Freddy turned up and we crawled under the house to rake out the fire. Freddy was such a good bloke and we’ve known each other for fifty years so we were tossing news and jokes over our shoulders as we worked.
When we went to check on Freddy’s house, I was touched to hear him call each of the chooks by name as he let them out of the chook house. Ronnie and Freddy took off to check on Wilma’s house, the old family mill cottage and I went across the highway to see what had happened to Ron and Jacqui, the couple who ran the local boarding kennels.
We knew they had built a fire shelter from an old shipping container and Ronnie held out no hope for them. It took hours for me to cut my way in to their place. There were trees down everywhere. I don’t know that I have ever seen the results of a hotter fire.
At last I reached the kennels and listened for the sounds of dogs. It was holiday season, there were usually thirty dogs there. Silence. I walked on in the deepest dread I have ever felt.
The kennels were silent and the front part of the residence had disappeared but in the other part I could see a light on. I stared at it in disbelief. I crept up to the house in real fear of what I expected I would find.
Then I thought I saw someone move in the kitchen. I knocked on the door and Jacqui opened it and I just grabbed her and picked her up. Strangely I was angry that she had given me cause for such a fright.
It was wonderful to see them and their house of dogs. I couldn’t stay, although I was hanging out to drink tea with live humans, because I had so many more houses to check.
Jacqui and Ron call me the ‘coal bringer’ because in Celtic lore the first person you see on New Year’s Day has to give you a lump of coal.
I left them and went back to Becker’s but couldn’t find anyone there. Unbeknown to me they were down at the creek trying to fix a broken pump. I thought they had left to work on their sister’s place at Timbillica. In fact, Freddy died of a heart attack as he walked back to the truck to get a shifting spanner.
I left the Maramingo to work on my own place with the saw Freddy had loaned me. ‘You’ll need this later,’ he said, handing me his brand new saw.
Fallen trees blocked the Wallagaraugh Road at fifty points and it took me hours to get in to the farm. I kept thinking of Dave and Genoa because I knew they wouldn’t let their town burn without a fight.
I also knew they’d get no help. The highway was completely blocked and CFA policy wouldn’t risk a tanker on the Mallacoota-Genoa Road. The brigade has a responsibility to its volunteer force but in the heat of the fires that is not what residents think. They are looking for a big red truck with hoses and water.
Those trucks never came to Genoa and I know how that felt because later in the fires I was begging for trucks to help me with fires at neighbouring properties but there were none who could help. That feeling of abandonment is not easy to forget no matter how many good reasons there are not to send trucks into risky situations.
Dave, Lars, Big Dennis, Rob and others did an incredible job at Genoa. There were houses lost but, apart from Freddy, no lives. Dave told me later that he saw a fireball take off from a hill 3 kilometres north-west of the town and land a further 3 kilometres to the south. It exploded on a granite ridge, which narrowly missed farms and houses. I can still see that bomb site from my place.
It seemed to me that a fire truck located in the centre of the Genoa township with access to the water tank (which, incredibly, was padlocked shut) would have survived the fire’s approach and then been available to help residents after the fire had passed. It’s all academic now but I know that sense of being totally alone and I know the feeling of begging for assistance that doesn’t come.
I reckon I had thirty packs of bottled water, half a ton of sugar lollies, toilet paper and ‘out of use-by’ goods dumped at the farm after the fires, but nobody came to help and later nobody asked what I really needed.
Toward the end of the fires, I remember sitting slumped on my verandah trying to regain the energy to go and monitor a fire in the south valley when I saw a posse of people in serious uniforms approaching from the river. Very polite, very well-equipped and all from the Department of Agriculture and, as I say, uniforms so crisp that March Flies who landed on them were cut in half.
Fire-fighting set-up
‘What do you need?’ they asked. ‘Five hundred kilo of Kangaroo Grass seed,’ was my reply. ‘Oh, we can’t give you that, but we’ve brought you some water and lollies.’ I remembered my mum and dad’s insistence on politeness at all times and it is the only thing that saved me from beginning to bellow like a lunatic.
Over the next few weeks I continued to keep the fires under control with the help of neighbours, and every time I came back there was a new slab of water, packets of lollies and wise instructions on how to fight fires and keep hydrated.
Some of the aid that arrived for the brigade included trousers where the zips were in reverse, out-of-date breakfast spreads that no one would buy. Even the grandkids refused to eat them. I have a peaked cap, fridge magnet, water bottle and a biro from every Victorian government department, biros that last only four days but have cheery instructions to drink water in hot weather, fridge magnets with advice so oblique and in such small print that they look like a canary has walked across them.
I hated seeing brand-new utes coming up my driveway with the trays crammed with trash, the calling cards of the charitable. It took me weeks to get back into town, or more particularly, feel like going into town, and when I did, I had whispered conversations with people relaying their experience of the most traumatic time of their life. And they wanted to talk to me and I was desperate to talk to them because we knew we had been there, we had seen it.
No water thanks, no chocolate bullets if you don’t mind, thanks for the back-to-front trousers that you knew you couldn’t sell, but really, what I want is to talk to someone who was there, someone who I didn’t know was alive or dead. Everybody in town has been changed by the fires but next time I hope government agencies go beyond handing out trinkets.
We had some of Australia’s richest people going on television to offer the world when all the town actually got was the heart thumping benefactor’s thirty second media grab. Not a cracker. Thanks, rich man.
Many Mallacootians were great, but the local church minister, Jude, was unstoppable in the recovery. I have become averse to the sanctimony and patrimony of the church but there is none of that with Jude. She rolled up her sleeves and opened up her big practical heart. She made an enormous difference to how the town rebounded. To me that is Christianity, dirty hands, clean heart.
A lot of people were full of real sorrow for our district and, in the aftermath, we got some free concerts. I dragged myself to one where Kylie Minogue arrived but didn’t sing. The crowd was beyond caring. The mood was not, entertain us, let’s have fun, but rather, this is my town and I’ve come to be with my people. I spent the whole concert sitting on the grass listening to an old mate, an Australian music legend, tell me he was dying of cancer and how disappointed he was. Not complaining, just pissed off.
There was beer there and I’m usually an enthusiast, socially excitable, but I chewed on half a can as if it were ashes.
I went along to another free, ‘cheer Mallacoota up’ gig at the golf club on Sunday 29 May. It was the Australian Youth Orchestra. They had already been to the school to teach the kids and now they were here to play for us. They were incredible. The golf club bar was full of golfers in ‘nearest to the piss mode’ but in the next room we listened enthralled.
I’ve never been closer to an orchestra in my life. I could see their fingers press down strings, surreptitiously wipe the wind instruments and turn the pages of the score for their neighbouring musician. It moved me to tears that they would come and do this in our tiny town. I never expected to see anything so generous. And not one offer of water in a plastic bottle or a crateload of chocolate bullets.
I have to admit that many Mallacoota residents were very grateful for the lollies, but I’m a curmudgeon and Mum said never to accept lollies from strangers.
The memories of the fire are stubborn and very, very private. They don’t go away and I don’t think my energy has fully returned. I got a whack in the eye from the whippy branch of a burnt tree at some point in the fire and didn’t realise for a few days that my eye was distended and black. Happens when you don’t wash! I’m still getting treatment for the fluid behind the eye. Yes, it’s hard to forget.
After the bridge commemoration day, I had to fly to Sydney to work at a school in Mosman and that night I did a gig with Charlie Arnott on food sovereignty at the local church. Hardly ever been colder than in that old church. Were they Presbyterians? But we raised some money for Black Duck Foods thanks to the enthusiasts at the Fairlight Butcher.
I was completely drained at the end and couldn’t order dinner at the airport hotel for fear of breaking out in a stutter. Back home at the farm it was very cold. I slashed alongside the track out to Wallagaraugh Road to try and constrain the regrowth that has burgeoned since the fires and then Mook took over. He said it was so cold in the paddocks that tears were coursing down his face. Happy days on the farm, eh? But we just have to work if the weather is even tolerable. I love the fellas for never complaining.
Winter
Wattle flower
It’s winter now. The days shorter, the weather more grim, the sunny
mornings more fleeting. It is the time for the spiky white flowering
wattle to bloom and tell us the fish are coming upstream.
Light in the Forest
The forest surrounding the farm has been logged several times, often illegally. The bigger trees are around forty years old but now with masses of younger trees which grew after the 2019 fires.
The old Aboriginal forest, as encountered by the first Europeans, was mostly dominated by massive trees with grassland as the understory. The current Australian forest has smaller trees and a canopy more vulnerable to wildfire.
We are attempting to thin our forest so that we can get back to around seventeen large trees per hectare, basing the density on old photos and colonial drawings of the district.
We began by selecting a section of mixed forest and reducing the canopy by about 25 per cent. The logs were used to construct sheds and fences but some were used to make swales to slow the movement of water across the block. Grasses returned immediately and now that we have observed the change we are about to reduce the number of trees by a further 25 per cent.
After Uncle Max’s passing we joined the stems of a double trunked tree within this forest as a memorial. In seventy years it will begin to resemble the tree near Brogo through which Uncle was invited to pass. Within 300 years it will be roughly the size of Uncle’s Brogo tree.
In 2021, seventy-five Yuin men performed ceremony at Uncle’s old tree and in creating another ceremonial site we hope similar events may happen again at Yumburra. There is already evidence of a dance ground and scar trees on the property and the discovery of the Yumburra axe in 2023 at the site of our new grain-processing shed was proof that we were not the first Yuin people who worked on the site. We know that we’re on the Dangar (damper or bread) storytrack so that axe is part and parcel of the grain cycle.
Since the fires of 2019 the bush is dominated by Black Wattle and Hop Goodenia so thick that if you surprise a lyrebird or wallaby on the track, they have to run in a mad scamper ahead of you because it is simply impossible to penetrate this regrowth. The flammability of this stage of regrowth is of great concern to us. It will generate a fire far hotter and more dangerous than the 2019 fire.
We have to rethink our forest and national park management but it is essential to properly resource the forest authorities if we want to reduce these threats. Every region is different, so the plan needs to be flexible enough to incorporate forest diversity. That will require good science, Aboriginal participation, adequate budgets and boots on the ground. Fewer fridge magnets and water bottles and more Aboriginal employment.
I was visited on June 2 by a lovely bloke from Melbourne University who wanted to talk forest thinning. I took him on a tour and showed him our sites … and never heard from him again. Similarly with an agricultural messiah who was full of grand plans for our farm. Gone without trace.
Tyre kickers visit the farm all the time, enthralled by our efforts, but seemingly unable to gain leverage over their department, move to another job or move on to the next dream.
We are talking forest plans, which need at least thirty years to show their merit while Australia plans within a three-year electoral cycle. We must think further into the future and back the plans produced by thought and research. We know that the fires of 2019 will return with increased frequency, finding ways to make the national forests less dangerous is crucial to the national safety response to global warming.
The season became cooler with quilts of mist at dawn and the currawongs and bowerbirds hungrier, so Bell’s food bowl was watched carefully and subject to lightning raids. Bell is too mild and creaky to object these days.
That night I was sitting around the BBQ fire, contemplating the slow arrival of sunset and a lovely cold, Dark Emu, when I was invaded by hundreds of Fork-tailed Swifts and perhaps Needletails. I find them difficult to distinguish.
They visit only three or four times a year and always precede a weather change. The bird travels between here and Siberia at speeds of around 125 kilometres per hour. When they pass you it is with the sound of a text being sent. Woosh.
I stood up to watch the arrival but then they started coursing the house paddock and flicked past me at knee height, war heads the size of falcons. I was surrounded by these missiles, too scared to move, hoping that their dexterity would preserve both them and me.
