After the Fire 5 – Stickybeaks, Show-ponies and Others

As always, this is personal opinion, and my way of trying to respond to and make sense of recent and current events - I make no claim to be representing the opinions of others in my community at this difficult time.

CAUTION:

 SHOUTING (and a bit of BLUE language ) AHEAD

This is a hard one to write, just over seven weeks into the year and just over seven weeks post-fire (seriously, is that all it is? It feels like forever!) People are flowing into town now that the roads are open. Some of them are caring, kind-hearted people with a genuine desire to help broken town economies try to recover by spending a few dollars here and there in places like Mallacoota. I applaud their efforts. This piece is not about them.  It’s about those who are combining what I will charitably try to believe is a desire to help with an opportunity for self-promotion – and those who are just insensitive fuckwits.

Here’s a tip. People are still raw. Many remain dazed and numb. Many are trying to process the loss of everything they own as they negotiate the bureaucratic minefield that faces people after a catastrophic event: a mountain of bewildering forms, government departments, charitable organisations, insurance companies (or the lack thereof), rules and regulations. Friendships and relationships are put under stress - boundaries shift, tempers flare, tears flow at odd times – nothing is as it was as the entire community tries to find its way again.

It is not the time for out-of-towners to cruise around in their cars taking videos of devastated people picking through the remains of their lives and homes.

It is not the time for out-of-towners (no matter HOW far they drove to get here) to inflict unasked-for hugs on locals. Remember the righteous outrage all over the country when our insensitive clod of a Prime Minister forced those people in Cobargo to shake his hand as the cameras rolled? I'll leave that thought there with no further comment.

It is not the time for thousands of out-of-towners who joined a “community” Facebook page to be whingeing and moaning about their holiday bookings, or pontificating about the way the caravan park ought to be operating (do you know what's involved in running an extremely large caravan park after a major disaster, or how many abandoned but gear-filled campsites there might still be, or how many of the staff there lost their own homes, you insensitive fuckwits?) or accusing locals of being sooks because nobody has responded to an online question they posed about the fishing or the fucking entrance, or about how the town’s recovery ought to be progressing right now. Loudmouthed armchair experts, all of them the centre of their own universes.

It’s not the time for out-of-towners to get themselves on the local radio, drop names and personal details about locals – details that are nobody’s business – and comment expertly that “Mallacoota’s definitely recovering, but it’s a bit slow”. FFS, it’s been SEVEN WEEKS! Over 100 homes were burnt to the ground, you idiot. This is a community in crisis and you waltz in here from Melbourne knowing NOTHING and judging EVERYTHING. HOW DARE YOU!

I also believe it’s not the time for fledgeling reality TV “stars” – 15-minute celebrities - to turn up on our doorstep, ostensibly to “help Mallacoota rebuild” - and stage a highly-publicised media opportunity at Betka beach - the same beach where our not-quite-fledgeling hoodie chicks are trying to survive despite the odds. Our Lions Club is quietly doing a splendid job of rebuilding much-loved infrastructure - with or without media "stars" elbowing their way into the spotlight.

The remains of the stairs at Bastion Beach after the fire. Oops! The Lions Club has since built a set of temporary stairs - thank you Mallacoota Lions!

Those images of people huddling on the foreshore, terrified for their lives; of the HMAS Choules anchored offshore to send in supplies or take out evacuees; of Chinooks at our airport – made picturesque Mallacoota media hot property – but it’s still a community of traumatised people at different points on their own personal paths to recovery, whether they lost their homes or not.

I have a message for every single one of those stickybeaks, show-ponies and others: it’s not about you! IT’S. NOT. ABOUT. YOU!

Am I being over-sensitive? I don't know - but if I am, I doubt that it's "over" enough to dilute the great fucking sea of insensitivity that I feel like I'm drowning in right now. 

God, I can’t write another word. My keyboard may not survive the pounding.

Littering over Summer

LITTER: A PERENNIAL PROBLEM IN A TOURIST TOWN

In the midst of tourist season I’ve a most compelling reason

To put forth a proposition to the people of this town

To avoid the awful bummer that confronts us every summer

We could bring in prohibition just to keep the litter down

Almost every can and bottle scattered freely through the wattle

And the Mallacoota beaches and the Mallacoota streets

Was once full of beer or bourbon and it’s messing up our urban

Grassy verges and the reaches of the natural world so sweet.

Tourists spend a lot of money but it isn’t very funny

When the trade-off is a heap of litter halfway to the sun

It seems the summer drinkers are the dirty rotten stinkers

Groups of bottle-dropping creeps with no respect for anyone

Every year when they’ve departed, groups of locals, broken-hearted

Get together to clean up the filthy mess that’s left behind

It’s our home, we want to share it - but we have to then repair it

After boozy litter-droppers of the grubby thoughtless kind

This harsh message I should soften, for the folks that visit often

Love this place for all its wild and pristine loveliness, it’s true

It’s the litter-chucking scum who should feel free not to come

Back to places they’ve defiled – and take your litter back with you!

© Sue Hines 2018

 

The view from the office...

Armed and dangerous, and ready for the best views from whichever 'office'
I happen to be calling home for a couple of hours. So - why so serious??? 

I used to think I had a fabulous view from Level 6 in Infrastructure House in Canberra. I did. The Canberra skyline gave way to a view of the Brindabellas that was quite a restorative when I got into wrist-slashing mode during weekly reporting time. It was pretty damned good, I have to say.As lovely as it was, though, it was the same view every day, even allowing for variations in the time of day/season/weather.

My view from work these days, however, leaves that view  (those views???) for dead. As pictures speak louder than words, this will be a pictorial post. Try not to be too envious!

The view of the back yard at Bruce's 'Fisherman's Cottage'.
This is what I see if I look up from cleaning the dunny.  Noice.

Flat 6, Bruce's Waterside Flats

'Raheen'

'Oli's'

'Coota Views' (downstairs)

'Coota Views' (downstairs)

'Coota Views' (upstairs kitchen) Imagine seeing this every time you put the kettle on!

'Chez Tredgold'

'Chez Tredgold' again

'Tangara'

'Sylvan Waters'

Adobe Mudbrick Holiday Fats

Adobe Mudbrick Flats again

 So anyway - my extremely hard life is probably making you cry into your coffee, so I'll stop now. Sorry folks... Have a good one! 

In which Betty gets out and about in the bush, and finds POO!

Oh, communing with nature – there’s nothing like it. Well, perhaps there is. I suppose the inner-city hipster version is having a killer coffee in a café with a killer barista and great art on the walls. I suppose both of these take you out of your home-world to a degree, but I prefer mine - and it's caffeine-free! Look at this:

I wandered lonely as a cloud…

The sign on the main road said ‘Sandy Point 3km’. I drove my low-slung little Hyundai about 300m along the trail before I got a bit nervous, and found a spot to pull over.

The (at times) steepish trail was pretty ordinary, and after half an hour of trudging along and sweating in the autumnal semi-warmth, I must confess to muttering under my breath: ‘This’d better be worth it!’

Of course it was! This is Croajingalong National Park, after all.

 The view was amazing –and (surprise surprise!) Sandy Point had a gorgeous little sandy beach! It was (mostly) soooo quiet there – would love to take a tent and spend a night or two there in warmer weather. A houseboat across the lake proved to be the source of the incongruous raucous laughter – someone was clearly having a fab time over there.

The walk back is never as long as the walk there, I reckon, because you have a vague idea of how far your destination is. Therefore, I didn’t rush, and enjoyed the flora:

 

Not sure whether fungus counts as flora.... but anyway...

the fauna (I wasn’t quick enough on the draw with the camera, and the wallaby sharing the path hopped away, dammit!) I spent a lot of time scanning the treetops for koalas, but to no avail…

And then there was the poo. Yes, the poo.  I’m no expert on critter poop. Growing up in suburbia I’m all too-familiar with those disgusting doggie leavings on the nature strips of local streets. I’ve been a bird-poop victim on occasions, and I’m all too-familiar with the awful stuff that appears in the kitty litter on a regular basis.

I discovered some interesting poop today though. While I can’t be certain, I think it’s wombat poop. Here, have a look:

The thing is, this poop appeared every few metres along the trail, some of it fairly new, some old, and in various stages of breakdown. Oh, look – here’s another one!

 Are wombats so incontinent? Or is there perhaps a population explosion of wombats around Mallacoota? Are they just exhibitionists? (What the heck is so attractive about the track as a pooping place???) I noticed lots of potential wombat hideyholes by the sides of the track (although why ANYTHING with a bumhole big enough to produce monster turds like this would need a hideyhole, I’m not sure!) I am now intrigued, and plotting a way to find out who/what is producing these massive piles of poo that make Rottweiler poop look like icky brown tic-tacs.

I’m really loving this bushwalking lark. My feetses, in their fabulous Redback safety boots, were a little tired by the end of it all - and my horrid arthritic bits were whining at me (bloody nuisances!) but my spirit felt renewed and recharged, so *two finger salute to arthritis!* Wheeeeeeeeee!

Of Birds, Bikers and Bats

My garden is becoming more and more of a haven for birds, despite the watchful stalking eye of Basil the Wannabe Big Bad Bird-Gobbler. (Cat Palace erection date: 8-9 April - stay tuned!)

With the perfect amount of spare time at my disposal these days, I recently indulged my inner hippie and made this bird feeder from found/recycled materials. The birds loved it, but anything heavier than a tiny firebrow finch (see Leon Peachey’s great pic below!) kept knocking the top plate over/off, so back to the drawing board I went, scrounged some chook wire from the vegie cage, and a few other bits and bobs, including cat-netting and garden rocks – and I made a scrotumish-looking thingy that has stabilised it beautifully! You can see it in the photo at the top of this post.

Tiny firebrow finches (photo courtesy of Leon Peachey)

The birds were a real treat for the big bad bikers who attended Disorgural 1.0 - the successor to the immensely fabulous Unaugurals that were hosted by BT Humble and Cass for 10 years. A very tiny crowd travelled the vast distances to the remote East Gippsland coast (everyone of them, apart from Tim, in a car!) – and found the wildlife and scenery well worth the trip. (Also the fabulous hosting by moi, ha ha ha.) Despite the size of the non-crowd, we had plenty of laughs and made nearly enough noise to annoy the neighbours! Thanks heaps for coming, folks, and celebrating the Mallacoota lifestyle with me.

Disorg 'campfire' - a far cry from BT Humble's famous conflagrations!

The other very exciting critter to be spending some time in Mallacoota at the moment - apart from birds and bikers - is the flying fox, or fruit bat. This critter, as a carrier of the Hendra virus and the Lyssa virus, gets a bit of a bad rap – but is actually an important part of the ecosystem, helping to keep native forests alive by transporting bazillions of seeds each night. What makes them dangerous is not their batness per se, but our encroachment and destruction of their habitats, so that they gather in places that are often inconvenient to humans - botanical gardens, city parks etc...

The 129,000 strong colony that spends summer in Mallacoota is nestled in the trees of a gully in Karbeethong. Every night these amazing flying mammals flap over my house to head to their feeding ground, then fly home to the gully afterwards. A sensible observer, I treat them with respect and caution. I give them distance, stay in the car when close to the colony, wash my hands after being in the garden etc etc etc. No drama. By day or by night, they’re magnificent – and apparently they’ll stay in Mallacoota for a few weeks yet, before heading to their next stopping-place.

Fruit bats by day - Karbeethong colony. (photo courtesy Geoff Hansford)

 Last night, my mate Kat, her daughter Tash & I went to see them exiting their daytime sleeping place just before nightfall. Oh. My. God. What a sight! The air was THICK with them – one of the most incredible sights I’ve ever seen – and they’re quite BIG! Here's a pic (apologies for the low light, but you can at least get a vague idea of the sheer numbers. This weekend I'll head over again in better light and try for better pics.)

 We also went to Betka Beach late in the afternoon, just to walk around and enjoy the rocks. The light was beautiful – look!

And look at the quirky things people do with the beach rocks - down at the far end of Betka it's almost a 'rock sculpture garden'!

So anyway, with my head chock-full of beautiful images of the natural world, I felt inspired to pen a few lines about the fruit bats, just to try and keep my English teacher skills up to scratch. Here, then, is 

Doggerel for the Fruit Bats: a sonnet

Oh flying fox, oh mega bat, oh Fruity,

Like prehistoric parcels in the trees

You swing and chatter, flap and search for booty

And have a reputation for disease.

Some love you, many hate and fear your power

And those there are who'd see you all destroyed

Despite all this, each magic twilight hour

Deserves to be respectfully enjoyed.

For, like the spider, you have special talents

You transplant seeds and pollen where they're needed

On Mother Earth you help maintain a balance

By making sure our vegetation's seeded.

But best of all, magnificent in flight

You pour in waves above my house each night.

Till next time, this is Batty Betty signing off. Peace, all! (OMG, I really AM turning into a hippie! Are my 1970's roots showing???)

Moon over Mallacoota - the inlet after dark. Why would I live anywhere else?

The View from the Other Side

Mallacoota in quieter times (July 2012, in fact)

Today - hordes of pleasure craft (the others are parked in the caravan park, by the side of the road etc etc

For the first time, I’m seeing Mallacoota from the inside. I’m watching hordes of Melbourne folk turning the town into a Melbourne traffic jam, and wondering why people think that’s relaxing! This little ghost town has donned its summer persona and is really jumping, in that slightly daggy 1960’s caravanning-holiday-with-mum-and-dad way that attracted me to Mallacoota in the first place.

I've never been here at the height of holiday season before - wow, what a revelation it is!

Tent-city, Mallacoota-style.

The supermarket aisles seem to have narrowed as the larger-than-life holidaymakers bustle about in their thousands. The bakery has shrunk. The main street is a car-park. The car-park is impossible. People behave on the main street the way they behave in the Westfields  Mall car-park in any major city, sitting with blinker on for ages and holding up the traffic as they wait for someone to put their shopping in the car, buckle the kids in, adjust the mirrors so they can fix their hair and make-up, send a quick text to say they’re just leaving the Mall, start their car, make three attempts to get it out of the too-small parking spot – you know how it goes. While that’s pretty annoying in the Westfields Mall car-park, it’s absolute insanity in the main street of Mallacoota. Gridlock, here of all places! And I've never seen quite so many shiny 4WDs, SUVs or whatever they're called, in my entire life!

4WD convention? NO, the street in front of the bakery

Mallacoota has turned into Melbourne, but people are convinced that they’re ‘getting away from it all’. *evil grin*  They’re not getting away from anything except their house and their job – they’re bringing Melbourne to Mallacoota for a few crazy weeks each year, descending en masse, towing caravans and boats, loaded down with bicycle racks so they can continue their daily habits here, cheek by jowl with thousands of other Melbourne people. So the only road into town (my street, as it happens) is heavily trafficked and suddenly reduced to a standstill by a lycra-clad peloton on a training ride, because that’s what they do in Craigieburn or Footscray. Seems a funny way to have a holiday! I guess the only thing that’s different is the fact that the traffic jams aren't commuter traffic jams.

 

 

 And then there are the teens. OMG, it’s hormone city out there, and it takes me back to a holiday at Hawks Nest with my friend Lindy and her family in 1972. Think Grease, and blossoming holiday romances, shy flirty looks from behind long fringes of salted, sun-bleached hair. Think giggles and gaggles of youngsters, huddled together for solidarity as they hunt or are hunted in packs. Think dances in daggy halls, with too-loud local bands and the smell of the sea clinging to everybody. The kids are leaving their laptops and Xboxes behind. They're getting out in the fresh air, riding bicycles, walking on the beach, sashaying down the main street – although they haven’t managed to unglue their mobile phones from their hands, so they can still Facebook their friends back home and make them envious, with selfies by the sea and surreptitious shots of the beach babes or boys that abound at this time of year.
Tourists are the lifeblood of Mallacoota. They’re colourful and noisy and they spend lots when they come here, and we love them. It’s a bustling, bemusing bedlam out there - a people-watcher's paradise - and in a few weeks’ time they will all go home and the sleepy rhythms of life here will resume. So I’m not grumbling. As I walk past cafes that I can’t get into for a few weeks I smile at everyone I pass and whip out my PO Box key, which silently marks me as a permanent resident, and says how lucky am I to live here all the time! Heh heh.