EVERYTHING'S ON FIRE

There is a 45 year old man running around our paddocks with a drip lighter in his hand, having the time of his simplistic life.

*sigh*

Charlie-Albert is a pyromaniac, I’m sure of it. 

Not in a bad ‘I’m going to start the next Black Saturday’ kind of way, but in the ‘I’ll make any excuse to burn shit’ kind of way.

When we first moved to Allenbee Fields, our paddocks were littered with dead trees and stumps.  This made controlling the weeds difficult, as the spray dude had to drive around all of these obstacles.

Charlie the Fire Girl (as he has been dubbed by some of my friends) set to chopping them down, piling them up, and burning them.

I would come home at night through the cooler months, to see the back paddock littered with as many as ten fires. 

He was devastated when he finished clearing the block of this debris, because there was nothing left to burn.

Except for tussocks.  He and my father went nuts one day, and burnt a heap of tussocks.  Both as bad as each other.  Lunatics.

Over the past couple of years, with the heavy rains, we’ve seen a lot of native grasses come up in the pastures.  This shit is useless when you have cattle, because  the moo’s are fussy bastards and won’t touch the stuff. 

This native crap takes over and smothers all of the good stuff. Charlie believes that a farm is useless if it can’t feed it’s own livestock, so he set a plan in motion to rejuvenate and re-sow the paddocks.

This involved a controlled burn to quickly eradicate the native/dead stuff.

Naturally, Charlie wanted to do the burning himself.  Now, if I turn the clock back about seven years, I remember when we first moved up here, Charlie set a fire in the house paddock between the house and the shed.  He was just burning some moving boxes and bits of timber, and assured me it would be okay.

We were chatting at the front of the house about our plans for future garden beds, when I noticed the volume of smoke coming from behind the house.

The wind had picked up, and the fire had taken off.  It was part way to the hay shed before we put the fucken thing out.

I’ve never been so frightened in all of my life.  I’ve never seen a fire like that up close before, and admittedly, it was really nothing. It was about six inches high, and only had a front of ten meters, but that fucker flew across the yard like a demon possessed, destroying everything in its wake.

It was frightening. 

So when I reminded Charlie of this little ‘incident’, and reminded him repeatedly, he reluctantly agreed to let the professionals handle the thirty acres of pasture that he wanted to burn.

So on Saturday, three tankers and about fifteen firemen rolled up.

Now, before you get all excited on me ladies; there were no ‘hunky’ firemen that I could see.  Nothing like the firemen’s calendars you buy in the newsagents (or Sexyland).

No gorgeous, strapping, bicep bulging, topless hunks running around, all dirty and sweaty in their suspenders and fire pants, saying ‘Hi there Mrs Buttler…’ whilst holding their hoses.

Nope.

Just a group of local fellas that looked like my damn husband (not that I don’t think he’s hot, but you know what I mean).  Plus a couple of juniors that were barely out of nappies.  Disappointed.

Within about fifteen minutes, the front paddock was ablaze, and poor Charlie was just standing at the fence line watching them, like a sad little puppy who wasn’t allowed out to play.

After a couple of hours, the CFA left, but not without leaving young Charlie-Albert with a temporary parting gift.

You see, as they started burning, the wind died off.  Anyone that knows the Tooborac area, knows it’s the fucken windiest place in the Southern Hemisphere.  Of all days, the wind decides to die on the very day we choose to burn off.  So, the CFA were only able to achieve a partial burn, because there was no wind to fan the fire. 

Charlie was disappointed, but the fire Captain lent Charlie a drip lighter to play with, and he would come and collect it from him the next morning.

As the CFA rolled away down the driveway, Charlie came running into the house like a fat kid with a new, treat filled lunchbox. ‘Look what they lent me! Look!’ he said, waving the drip lighter around.

‘You’ve got to be fucken kidding me?’ I asked.

‘Nope.  They said I can have it over night, and they’ll come back in the morning to collect it.  So I can work on some of the smaller areas that didn’t take.’ He said excitedly.  ‘I need to go up to Heathcote and get some diesel though.’ He said, and took off out the door.

Dear God help me.

Somehow, he managed to burn what he was meant to, and leave everything else untouched.  Well done Charlie.  At one point, I remember hearing his voice in the distance saying ‘Who said this shit wouldn’t burn?’

Sunday morning, when the  captain came back to pick up the drip lighter, Charlie came back into the house with his head hanging low, like a little kid’s who’s favourite toy had broken.  Fun was over.

So, a bit of excitement at our place this weekend.  Hot fireman (well…), flames and smoke, and Charlie running around with a new, albeit temporary, toy.

Mmmm… life on a farm?

Peace out.