Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Oh, such a perfect day

The billy needed boiling early this afternoon and what had been planned as a simple overnight trip to scope out stretches of the Howqua, Jamieson and Goulburn very nearly became a weeklong escape from the Big Smoke. If the camp mattress had been stowed and the only tent did not have a hole, well it would have been easy to linger and celebrate this year's trout season, which began on September 6. The batteries in the radio were flat, too, which was another incentive to remain. No chance of catching any more post-election spite and bile from the ABC's apostles of the left.


The sun had that wonderful spring muscle to it, bright for a cloudless hour or two in a sky the colour of kittens' eyes. At the other end of the log that was a Bunyip's sylvan throne a blue-tongue came out to charge its batteries, the leading advocate in our little clearing of sustainable solar power. The bush, which never really goes to sleep, is shaking off the southern winter's lethargy. Further to the east about now, in the hills around the Snowy, Gippsland water dragons will be waking to pursue their brief couplings with an enthusiasm that shames Craig Thomson. Then again, water dragons are far more appealing species than corruptocrats. By October the dragon ladies will have dug their nests and be laying  eggs, and come December, the kookas, snakes and other lizards will have gobbled most of their children. Even the trout will get their share of wiggly morsels.


And then along will come a Bunyip with rod and woolly bear, haul them to the bank and eat them all. But today, it was just a cup of tea, a dekko and a mental note that a big brown bugger has made his home in the slower water beside and below the rocks that squeeze the stream into a tumbling, tiny cataract. With a little luck the foxes will have overlooked the water rat family which were in residence last year.

There is a lot wrong with the bush -- invasive species are now occupiers, not intruders -- and with conservation policies orchestrated by Fitzroy greens and administered by Spring Street bureaucrats things will only get worse. But just for a bit today, in the sun and beneath trickle of wood smoke, you would not have considered being been anywhere else, not for all the tea in China. 

11 comments:

  1. The Old and Unimproved DaveSeptember 25, 2013 at 5:46 AM

    It's said that they also surf who only stand and wait, so the same could probably apply to other water-related past-times.

    I suggest, Professor, that you get the tent out today and heed the Biblical injunction: "Ye shall sew what ye ripped".

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If I am to get biblical within a tent, please make sure that an eager Hagar is installed upon the LiLo before I part the flaps.

      Delete
  2. Good to see you catching those pesky, invasive fish species, trout, Prof. Help save the beautiful water dragon.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Doesn't look like a Sydney blue-tongue, Professor. Do they make them differently down there?

    PeterTB

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's not a blue tongue, it's one of our water dragons, which are found only in the state's extreme east, the southernmost extent of their range.

      Delete
  4. Once FTTB (fibre to the bush) is connected it'll be perfect

    ReplyDelete
  5. Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.September 25, 2013 at 8:06 AM

    Prof, every soul needs its day contemplating nature's ebb and flow, putting aside the idiocies of the left, and eking out the small beer of simply sitting and watching in the moment as other living things live out their own day, in that great and unknown scheme of things, much as we do ours.

    And what a 'brilliantined' trout in that steady hand, Prof.
    Got me all poetic, shades of Dylan Thomas's "Under Milk Wood" with life's sap rising along with all the little egg-laying ladies of your glen: - ""Mrs. Rose Cottage's eldest, Mae, peels off her pink-and-white skin in a furnace in a tower in a cave in a waterfall in a wood and waits there raw as an onion for Mister Right to leap up the burning tall hollow splashes of leaves like a brilliantined trout" .

    ReplyDelete
  6. Professor; you make me wistful for that crystal clear water and the opportunity to spend a morning pottering around with a gold pan followed by an afternoon snoozing in the shade then collecting wood for a fire to heat my shower water before cooking dinner and spending the late evening listing to the night noises of the bush and gazing into the fire whilst sipping a single malt, then into the swag for a night unsullied by the sounds of civilisation. The High (and Low) Country is where my heart lives - we are *so* fortunate in Oz so, yes, let's not have city boys and girls legislating for an area and an a tranquillity they will never know and have no real care for or understanding of.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Professor, I beg you to put aside your fishing rod and instead, tell me why the AFL even make a pretence of having umpires who know what our wonerful game is all about. How is it that Will Minson only received two votes during the whole of the season. Big Will is the most talented ruckman in the AFL. Do something about Prof. He should have at least equalled the Brownlow count.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. BBB compared to flicking a fly or a lure into a trout stream the overpaid adolescents of the AFL are a non-event and after Saturday hopefully forgotten for a luxurious all too few months.

      Delete
  8. Gosh, Bunyip, I am a child of the bush as well, and as soon as I plunged into your prose I came up through the water, young again!
    Still gasping, laughing!

    ReplyDelete