Good, Bad and Ugly

It’s been a Clint Eastwood sort of week with plenty of the good, the bad and the ugly

The Good

Last Friday and I should have known that, as the sea had remained mirrored calm for five straight days, something was afoot. On Saturday clouds moved in slowly like heavy fog and banked up out in Storm Bay. Thunder rolled every now and then. At night, a flash of light.

Sunday, and the sky became increasingly dark and wild with curtains of rain finally sweeping the landscape. That night I awoke in the dark, not because of any noise or out of a bad dream, but because of the smoke. Never before had the wind been so great as to cause a downdraft in the wood heater and it pushed puffs of smoke in reverse to pervade the house.

By Monday morning the property was awash with sheets of water running everywhere. And I mean everywhere. With the ground squishing underfoot and all five dams full to overflowing, it all looked fantastic with a vibrancy in the landscape that only moisture can bring.

The Bad

But then, the more destructive aspects of such intense wind and rain began to reveal themselves. Anything and everything loose in the studio, wood shed or around the house was strewn who knows where.

The three visitor tents, that had stood standing for nearly two years in very sheltered locations admidst trees and thick shrubbery, were flattened, literally ripped from their stakes and domed supporting rods and hammered into the ground. The worse, though, was seeing whole swaths of newly planted areas stripped of their protective plastic bags and seriously damaged. Six weeks of work undone in a night.

Panic set in because these little seedling trees would be very vulnerable to any passing hungry wallaby. A quick calculation estimated around 400, possibly 500 trees were in immediate need of being re-bagged and re-staked, otherwise, they would be nibbled down to nothing or, worse still, pulled out by their roots.

However, the continuing strong winds and rains meant that I couldn’t begin this task until the weather abated. All day Monday and Tuesday I waited. I fretted. I tried to read, but felt like I had abandoned an orphanage and left 400 babies to the marauding wolves. My only consolation was that as long as the weather was this wet, windy and cold, just possibly the wallabies might not venture out too far from their protective habitats.

Wednesday morning arrived clear and I was soon at “the front” working furiously against time knowing that by nightfall there would be no keeping the critters away. It had to be done. I left a telephone message at the local medical clinic cancelling my appointment saying that my health had to take 2nd place to the health of the trees. By four in the afternoon my body, especially the knees and legs, said “let’s quit”. But I had to keep going because, for every tree left exposed to the approaching night, it meant one more facing the chop.

A wedge tailed eagle glided past and, as it took a hovering position at the top of the hill, I pledged to work until the eagle went home. (Damn, if the eagle didn’t stay until nearly dark.) As I began the long hobble back to the house, I looked back in the moonlight at the remaining 200 or so unprotected seedling trees and my heart was touched by their plight. Would they sense the animals approach?

An hour later I lay soaking in the hot bath easing the pain in my muscles, but the pain in my heart still suffered for the trees. They had only just been planted out a few weeks ago and tonight their brief existence in this world as trees might be ending. Even though I had done nearly everything I could, I truly felt bad.

Two days later and the pain has eased because the majority of the seedlings should survive. Most of those “left standing” Wednesday night were chewed to the ground, but enough was left promising growth.  Great. I’ll be having a beer for them tonight.

The Ugly

See the color separation? The brown is top soil washed into Roaring Beach by the storm. It came from land clearfelled for a pulp plantation and left exposed. Such a waste. Every good farmer understands the importance of retaining top soil. To see it all needlessly in the ocean is to see a future farmer short-changed. This is far worse than “bad”. This is ugly.

For three days I have been repairing my trees. I can accept this as part of the cycle of living on the land. But it is really hard to have to look up out over the water between the trees and see years and years of top soil accumulation being senselessly wasted.