Taff Down Under 14
Well I suppose I’d better address the "burning" (ouch, bad pun!) issue from Canberra. The bushfires.
But can I just start with a genuine "thank you" to all of you who wrote and phoned asking after our safety, it was very welcome, and reassuring that we hadn’t been forgotten!
Here’s how it was for us;
On Saturday 18th Jan we were just gearing up for a normal weekend. Bethy had come back from the Mother-in-laws, where she usually spends Friday night, so we can have a night to ourselves. For the previous week, the city had been shrouded in acrid brown smoke from fires in some of the local National parks, but as these are a seasonal occurrence, people weren’t taking a great deal of notice.
We knew they were worse than usual, and that Sydney had had a bad year of it, but we were pretty laid back. That day we had planned to take Bethy to Questacon, to see a new exhibit they had on there.
http://www.questacon.edu.au/index_flash.html
Luckily, Lee-Anne was listening to the local radio station. ( 666 ABC Canberra, pretty ominous frequency that! ) We were almost out the front door when the announcer said; "Bushfires have broken through containment lines, Canberra residents in the following suburbs should return home, and make appropriate preparations. Chapman, Duffy, Rivett, Weetangera, Pearce, Torrens, Kambah, Hawker, Aranda."
Aranda? Hang about, that’s where we live.
Bethy burst into tears, I started running around like a headless chicken, and Lee-Anne started getting organized. We phoned Mary, the mother-in-law, as her suburb wasn’t on the danger list. She dropped around in the car, and took away Bethy, the dog, and several bits and bobs of important stuff. I started filling every bucket we had with water, Lee-Anne nipped down to the local garden centre, and got new hosepipe attachments. They seemed to have a rush on of these for some strange reason.
We filled the bath with water, blocked every gap in the house that we could.
I got up on the roof, and blocked the down pipes, and flooded the guttering with water. We took one hose up there, and soaked the gardens with another.
We put our valuables in our cars ready to fuck off quickly if needed. I put in my paraglider, some rare CD’s and the computer. Lee-Anne got Bethy’s photo’s the house deeds, and several important things.
We both agreed that in the event of the house going up, we’d lie about what was left in there, as we both need to get new clothes in any case!
The weather took a turn for the worse, gale force winds whipped up, and the smoke thickened, the heat was stifling. We saved a fortune on ciggies the next few days, we just went around with a length of drinking straw in our mouths, the smoke was that thick, and gum tree flavoured too.
The around the corner, strolling in as if to say; "What the fuck is all the fuss about?" came our fat diabetic cat, Tiger. We locked him in the house, much to his disgust.
The day by now had turned to night, smoke filled the sky.
Neil, our next-door neighbour popped around, "fancy a beer?" Now that’s my sort of lad. So we had a beer and bucket party. Several of the other neighbours dropped in, and some friends of Neil’s from outside the danger area came around to offer help
We did the good neighbour thing, checked out some empty houses, nothing worth nicking, and called on the elderly lady across the way to make sure she was prepared. She was, she threw a load of stuff in her car and pissed off.
By now the embers were starting to fall, so we had to do the rounds checking nothing had caught, and that no spot fires were burning. I also had to get up on the roof, and hose down everything from up there. As I was by now half pissed, this became slightly dodgy
Then Neil had a brilliant idea; "Let’s get some pizzas in!" So we phoned up a local pizza place, and they delivered. You have to love it, the city is going up in flames, and some poor sod is buggering about on a moped delivering pizza. We gave him a good tip; "fuck off home before your house goes up in flames."
The reports on the radio and TV were getting worse and worse, houses on fire, whole suburbs going up in flames, beer shortages. Then news of the first death came in, very sobering.
We were shitting ourselves to be quite honest, as our house backs onto Aranda Bushland, an inner city bush park. Me, Neil, and his mate took a short drive, it had to be short, as most of the main roads had been cordoned off to stop fast moving cars sparking up more flash fires. We drove to a local high spot, and could see a wall of flame heading our way. "If that gets into Aranada bush, or Black Mountain reserve, we’re fucked," said Neil.
The picture above shows the Bushland, our suburb starts with those houses bottom right, we’re three streets back from there. The whole lot was one big tinderbox, it hadn’t rained for four months previously, parts of the state hadn’t seen significant rain for two and a half years.
Well we partied on, and carried on ember patrol until the early hours of the morning. Eventually we had to crash, before I fell off the roof.
The next day Mary took Bethy off with her to stay in Melbourne for a week. That took some of the pressure off us, and gave her something positive. She didn’t want to go poor mite, she was scared something may happen to us while she was gone, and that we hadn’t made a will yet.
The next four days passed in a whirl of fire watching, until the wind died down on the Tuesday.
The toll on the city was devastating. Four dead, 513 homes up in flames, whole suburbs decimated. There wasn’t anyone in the city who wasn’t involved, or knew someone badly affected. One of the girls from work lost her house and all her possessions. 95% of the animals in the local wildlife reserve, including two mobs of kangaroos died. The Mount Stromlo international space observatory burned down. One park ranger rescued several historic documents from a rangers hut in a national park, and took them home. Then his house burned down.
The effect on the city psyche was crippling, and is still being felt.
So onto other things, hopefully more cheerful.
We took Bethy ice-skating the other day, great fun. I was wondering how long it had been since I had last skated, and how much it was going to hurt, and then I remembered. The last time I skated on ice, as opposed to roller-skates, was when I went with "Llanelli Young Conservatives" Club. Before you get on your high horses, I only joined them, as there was a girl member I fancied. No, I never did get to screw her.
Anyway, just as an aside. The guy, who ran that club, was the prospective Tory candidate for the town. Of course he had no chance of winning the election, even in the year of Thatcher’s first big win. If you put a red rosette on a donkey, people in Llanelli will vote for it, as Denzil Davies time as MP proves. However, Chris, the Tory guy mentioned didn’t do himself any favours by running down an old lady on a zebra crossing in the week before the election. J
We had a great days fun on the ice rink, it’s like riding a bike. If you haven’t done it for a while, you get hurt when you try to do it again.
But apart from Lee-Anne and Bethy getting major blisters, no great damage done.
We went on the peace march in Canberra, just to add our voices to the protest. Three generations, Mary, me and Lee-Anne, and Bethy.
Fine turnout there was too, the police reckoned 10,000 the organizers 18,000 so if you split the difference there were probably somewhere around 14,000 people.
So some great speeches made, laying waste to Bush’s bullshit, and some great fun and games. The Ozzies with typical directness had made some really good banners, basically telling the Prime Miniscule, and his foreign secretary where they could shove their war. My favourite just read "John Howard you are a twat." Can’t put it more plainly than that?
The nice thing to see though was how many young people had joined the marches. At a time when we are getting apathetic about politics, and saying "why bother voting, the government always gets in?" it was good to see that Bush had brought a new sense of political relevance. The wankstain.
We did get to visit Questacon eventually; they have a great exhibition on there of dinosaurs. This includes several life size, and half-life size animatronics dinosaurs. Brings out the kid in me every time, not that that’s hard to do. Oh and I broke my record on the demon drop slide, I did 24 drops consecutively!
It was Bethy’s birthday the other day; she’s now all grown up at eight years old. For her birthday she had two parties. The first was at "the Big Splash" a waterslide park in Canberra. Her dad, Glenn, went to this, so I didn’t. Apart from the fact that he’s bigger than me, and no fan of mine, the fact that I can’t swim leaves me a bit out of things in a waterslide park. There was a bunch of about ten kids there for this part of the day, and a fine time they must have had. Lee-Anne was knackered by the time they got back.
Four girls stayed for a sleepover, could have been a nightmare for us, we had blown up a hundred balloons and ringed the walls with them, and got in a stack of sweet goodies. Lee-Anne baked a birthday cake and lots of smaller cakes, and we hired a bunch of videos for them. We locked them in the living room with mattresses for sleeping on, and hid in our bedroom. We had sent the dog to Mary’s fearing for his sanity. Fortunately they were so knackered after the day at the pool, we actually got to sleep that night.
As a treat we went to see "Circus Oz" a few weeks back. They had hit Canberra and everyone was raving about them. Go here for a look at what they do.
As it was as cheap for us to get a family ticket as to pay for three, we took young Tom, Bethy’s boyfriend with us. It got off to a bad start when one of the kids noticed the ticket seller was a thalidomide chap, no arms, and made a loud and stupid comment. Severe repercussions and many tears ensued. Luckily we didn’t cart them off home; the show was too good to miss.
The bad start the day had got off to continued. We got in early, with about fifteen minutes before the show started. In the row in front of us two women with about half a dozen kids sat down. One kid screamed for the first ten minutes, "I don’t wanna be struck by lightening!" "I don’t wanna be struck by lightening!" "I don’t wanna be struck by lightening!" "I don’t wanna be struck by lightening!" Until I hit him.
Well I didn’t really it was just the music started and drowned him out, so then he ran up and down the isles for the rest of the show.
The show was just about to start when an enormously fat couple wobbled their way up towards where we were sat. They were clutching a selection of fizzy drinks and a bucket of popcorn each, as well as various other "treats." They checked their tickets, and sat down next to us.
The woman sat on Lee-Anne. On her, on top of her. Lee-Anne had a quarter of her seat left, and had this woman’s sweaty body enveloping her whole right side; she was pinned to her seat.
Luckily there were a few spare seats next to Tom, so I got him to shuffle along, and pulled Lee-Anne out from under the fat woman. When we moved she took over the whole of Lee-Anne’s seat, with one buttock to each chair.
After that we could lay back and enjoy the show, and it was great. Daring, funny, high-risk stuff and very, very sexy. I fell in love with one performer, until she did a lesbian routine on the high swing. Or maybe it was because of that?
I spent Saturday in the park painting kids faces. I’ll just say that again, in case you aint laughing loudly enough. I spent Saturday in the park painting kids faces. Oh yes very fucking funny, Taff the ubber anti-hippy, doing the most hippy thing on the planet, apart from learning to play the didgeeridoo, or wearing patchouli oil
. Well fuck it; it beats working in an iron foundry.
It was part of our mental health promotion work, we were offering free face painting, and pushing our mental health leaflets and shit onto unsuspecting kids. It took place in Canberra’s ‘Taste festival," so we were surrounded by the best food and wine Oz has to offer.
Taste 03- Celebrating Food, Wine, Beer and the Arts
Date: Sat 8 March 2003
Taste 03, Celebrating Food, Wine, Beer The Arts, is a one-day event held in Commonwealth Park Canberra. There will be food, wine beer and arts in abundance as some of Canberra and the regions' best artists, food and wine producers show their wares for the community to sample as well as something for the beer connoisseur. Canberra's large arts community will emerge from their theatres, studios and galleries to demonstrate their activities.
At one point I asked one of the girls I worked with if she’d seen a chip van, as I was starving. She slapped me.
We were taught how to do face painting, (you didn’t think they’d just unleashed me in there with face paints did you?) by a pro make-up artist, who works for the local TV studios. His name was Terry, an ex-pat cockney, and boy was hoot, and surprisingly not gay. Told us all the dirt on local celebs. He got us painting these kids up a treat, my specialty was "Spiderman," slap a load of red on, and do a dodgy web over it.
In the evening there was a huge fireworks display, "Skyfire," every bit as good as the one we’d seen on Sydney Harbour Bridge at New years. I love fireworks; they bring out the kid in me. Didn’t know I’d eaten one actually.
Oh remember the giant spiders I was rattling on about in my last letter? The other night me and Lee-Anne were watching a bit of the idiot tube, when one climbed up the wall between our chairs. We just sat still, and hoped it wouldn’t attack us. Then a ball of fur rushed over me, pinned the spider to the wall, and ate it. Tiger. He walked off with what looked like a very animated set of new whiskers growing out of his mouth.
We’ll have to feed the bugger a bit more, if he’s going to carry on like that, I like spiders.
Ah well, enough of my jollity, keep sending the mails, or at least send money!
Love
Taff, Lee-Anne & Bethany.
Follow