(And now it’s time for a good moan)
It’s almost the height of summer where we live. That said, we still have the fire lit three nights out of seven. It’s probably only really necessary on one of those nights, but there’s nothing like a real fire in the evening. Things always feel much more Christmassy with a real fire, even if it’s sunny outside.
Last years more ‘modest’ tree
In the manic rush to have ‘things’ appropriately ready for the various family events we held, there were several tasks I had been detailed off to finish before Santa arrived. One of them was to replace the old front fence. I had decided to hire some tradesmen to do this and save myself some time (and protect my back!) and I eventually managed to find a guy who came recommended by the local timber yard – “we always recommend him” they said. OK then, that’s good enough for me. I should have suspected something when I could never get him to answer his phone or return messages, but I thought he was probably busy and I did eventually get an emailed commitment to start on a certain date and time.
I’d spent quite a while selecting the proper timber and on the advice of the company who sold me the traditional ‘sunshine’ gate, I’d scouted around eventually found some large rough sawn posts, that would take the weight and hopefully last a hundred years in position. I finished them with the plane and then gave them several coats of paint in preparation of sinking them well into the ground.
That morning came and I had decided to brief the tradesmen and then clamber in the car and drive six hours up into the mountains to meet #1 son and go deer hunting. Because its a long drive, I was keen to get away at a decent hour and arrive a couple of hours before dark. By 10 am I was getting twitchy and having repeatedly texted and called his phone, I decided to drive down the village and fill the car up with fuel. When doing so, I noticed that my missing tradies were sitting outside the local cafe drinking coffee. I politely pointed out that I’d be waiting back at the house for them and luckily, they took the hint. They arrived a few minutes later and took a look at the job. I had, of course, briefed them in writing, but it seemed that in time honoured fashion, they hadn’t taken too much notice of that. Eventually, I drove away thinking that I’d done a reasonable job of explaining what I wanted and to what standard, but I’ll come back to this saga later…
I had a great time with #1 and his mates in the mountains. Needless to say, they had all filled their esky’s with venison before I got there and Bambi and his mates were well aware what was going on and they were all muttering amongst themselves “nope, we ain’t going out there tonight” and I came home empty handed. Don’t get me wrong, the young fellas did their level best to get me into a position where I could take a shot, but they were too far away for my diminished abilities to ‘humanely’ pay off. I retired in shame and had a leisurely drive down the mountain and just past Hotham heights I pulled over at one of the huts that the high country is famous for.
The Diamantina hut is close to the road and although I had driven by it many times, I had never had a look inside. They were originally built as shelters for cattlemen and adventurous types who wanted to get out and about. Before they were built a number of people had died of exposure after getting lost or over estimating their abilities and they are still life savers today. I remember a having tea break in the Seamans hut (named after an unfortunate young man who died of exposure) on the way to the summit of Mt Kosciuszko on skis over thirty years ago and came across two student doctors and a trainee vicar, who had slept there the night before and had obviously had a bit of a party. There were really amusing guys and an hour or so later, I left them boiling their umpteenth mug of restorative coffee and chuckled my way to the summit and then down again to Charlottes Pass, where I was ‘working’.
Not a bad view
I returned home from the mountains to a strange sight, slightly reminiscent of the wall between East and West Berlin. Three metre long posts poked out of the ground and my huge 2.4 mt long load bearing gate posts looked as if their tips alone were underground. Whilst maintaining social distancing (as I was wearing a mask and they weren’t), I had been at my most politely pedantic self explaining to the tradie what I expected of him and his drooling offsider and he’d clearly gone and done just what would allow him to get away with the minimum of digging, but why he’d chosen posts that were so long, when the finished fence was supposed to be 1.3 metres high was beyond me.
I called the fencer up and asked him what was going on. He claimed that the posts that I had selected and spent a long time priming and painting weren’t long enough and that he’d supplied his own, at a premium of course. When questioned on the subject of the teetering gate posts, he claimed that he was confident that they would “be ok” – I just as confidently stated that they “wouldn’t be ok” and that there were two choices, return and dig them in properly and set the correct posts at the correct height or take away his posts and return the site to its previous state. The smug git sent the drooling one back to pull out ‘his’ posts and leave the rapidly setting mess of concrete in the ground. He didn’t of course, remove the large sentinel gate posts and left them as silent ‘f*** you’ to my efforts to hire someone and not to do the job ‘properly’ myself..
Not well dug in posts…
Whilst on my travels, we went in and out of various lockdown stages with many a semi ‘karate kid’ moment of ‘mask on, mask off’. Christmas at home, thanks to Covid was going to be quiet in comparison to previous years, but I think it was probably the same for most people, who couldn’t have the normal cast of thousands over to their homes because of the virus. In previous years, I had gone out of my way to source the largest Christmas tree I could find (in defiance of the usual strict instructions to the contrary) and heave it into the front room. I usually break something in the process, which unleashes a myriad of domestic sanctions, so this year, I resolved to be relatively sensible and whilst indulging my guilty pleasure of online shopping for crap, I had read about a Christmas tree farm in nearby Daylesford. I hooked on my mask, hitched up the trailer and headed over to see them.
What a find it was! Dozens of acres of manicured xmas trees of various sizes and somehow, I managed to limit myself to a modest three metre tall beauty. The friendly chap working on the farm (who annoyingly had his mask hanging off his chin, leaving both his mouth and nose completely uncovered) chainsawed our tree down and helped me wrestle it onto the trailer. Muttering under my (non infected) breath about germs and other non politically contentious issues, I thanked him and ever so slightly sarcastically wished him a safe and happy Christmas and got the tree home.
Surprisingly, but probably thanks to the fact that it didn’t have an extra two metres of growth on top of the tree, #2 son and I manhandled it in to place and I noticed that there was a scrape on the ceiling from the previous years tree and mentally thanked my restraint in choosing one of a slightly more modest stature.
It… will…fit…
By this stage in the pandemic, I’d witnessed several instances of paranoid (or just plain ill advised) people getting very upset when confronted by people who in their minds weren’t complying with the Covid guidelines in terms of mask wearing or practicing proper social distancing and I have to say I had a fair bit of sympathy for them, but I also had some sympathy for the folks who are just a bit ‘over’ being shunted around and bullied into compliance. What had really started to piss me off however, was those who were paying lip service to the preventative measures, but not adhering to them properly. By that comment, I mean the previously mentioned fucktards who cannot, or would not wear their mask properly.
By dint of a sinus re-bore and multiple sinus infections, I have sadly become a bit of a mouth breather. I hasten to add, not the slack jawed kind that drops their food all over themselves (ok, sometimes I do) and wears pyjamas to the supermarket and high vis clothing in the house through choice (never, not even once…) but the kind that tries not to sleep on his back and snore the house down. I have therefore stopped looking down on all of the unfortunates who might not be able to help it and instead focused my slightly irrational hatred on the nose breathing bastards (henceforth referred to as NBB’s) who could conceivably be committing mass murder through airborne dispersal of the virus by leaving their snouts uncovered by their mask.
By this stage, I was fairly ropeable and in order to maintain what was was left of my sanity, I decided to take myself off back to the mountains and try to fill the freezer full of venison once again. This time, I went alone, back to the same region as before, but to a different site that #1 son and his mates had visited some weeks ago and found to be ‘infested’ with feral deer. A note here; deer are of course, not native to Australia and in some areas, are considered as real pests, so they do need to be humanely culled. The other benefit here is that they do taste fantastic.
I loaded up the car, confidently purchased a new large esky and set off on the five hour journey towards Jamieson. The forests up there are beautiful and although they have all been logged at some point, there are some lovely big trees and a lot of native wildlife. The birdlife here is amazing and at every turn in the very windy mountain road, pairs of crimson rosellas dashed off the grass by the roadside and suicidally flew across the front of the car.
Looking down to Lake Eildon from the main road
I had my hunt mentally mapped out and as I fuelled up in the small country settlement of Yea, I ducked into the garage kiosk to see what kind of food they had on sale. Sadly, as part of my post Christmas detox, I had forsaken fried food, pies and my favourite boiled sweets in favour of a healthier, lower calorie alternative and so after loading up my cavernous esky with ice to keep Bambi fresh, I ignored the other temptations and resolved to buy something more organic enroute.
I honed the plan over the next couple of hours and decided that after my hunt, I’d dress the meat, put it on ice and drive down into the town of Jamieson and have dinner and a few celebratory beers in the brewery there. I’d probably manage to sweet talk the owner into letting me roll out my swag out the back near the river and so have a restful night before driving back home the next morning. Based on that premise and knowing I had a thermos full of hot water, peppermint tea bags and plenty of cold water in the car, I confidently passed a small roadside store without loading up on snacks and food. A rookie error in retrospect.
Following the GPS instructions provided by #1 son, I headed off the main road and onto the narrow logging tracks in the state forest. A professional beekeeper had decided to use one of the many old overnight logging stops to laager his bees. They were very active in the sunlight and were hopefully, busy making lots of bush honey.
Thousands of happy bees coming and going
The camp site was around 25kms down the track and at its end, there was nothing more than a lightly gravelled turnaround by a fast flowing creek. I scouted around the area and was horrified to see the amount of rubbish that had recently been left there by some NBB feral hunters. I say hunters because that’s the only reason why you’d be all the way out there. Generally speaking, hunters are people who love the outdoors, love being out in nature and above all, respect their surroundings so I was astounded that someone would leave all their crap (literally) around the area. I grabbed a garbage bag and picked up all the non bio hazard waste and chucked it into the truck.
I didn’t hold out much hope for the number of deer in the area after seeing the state of the campsite, as poor campsite discipline usually denotes poor hunting behaviour. Sure enough, I saw no sign of deer in the whole area and instead devoted my stalk to a mini ‘clean up Australia’ session. I wasn’t overly disappointed, as the weather was great, the drive not too onerous and the forests so beautiful. Aside from the trash, of course.
I have learned that there’s a certain type of person who drinks ‘monster’ energy drinks and throws rubbish on the ground and let me state that they are without a doubt, the same high vis pyjama wearing, nose breathing bastards, who I mentioned before. There’s bound to be a special place in NBB hell for them and so I headed up into one of the gullies where the deer usually like to sleep and I sat quietly watching for an hour as the sun slowly slipped beneath the mountain tops, leaving the dappled light rays to just penetrate the forest canopy. Aside from the parrots and the odd Wallaby, nothing stirred and after a very pleasant but wholly unintended doze in the bracken, I empty handedly followed a game trail down to the water and followed the creek back to the campsite arriving just on dusk.
Happily for the deer, who had clearly left the area and steadfastly refused to respond to my ‘come hither’ deer calls, but sadly for me without so much as a Bambi kebab for dinner, I pulled my camp chair out and ruefully made a cup of tea to help me think… much as my English forebears had done for generations whilst contemplating a lost battle, or the unsuccessful wholesale slaughter of wildlife. I decided that to teach myself a lesson, I wouldn’t drive down into town for dinner, but that I’d have an early night and try another stalk just as the sun came up.
I had borrowed #2 sons swag and for those who don’t know what a ‘swag’ is, it’s a canvas sleeping roll that allows a person to comfortably sleep outdoors wrapped up in its embrace, in most weathers. Mine had a substantial mosquito screen built in and it resembled more of a small tent. After some searching, I found a slightly furry boiled sweet in my jacket pocket and took an apple that had been left wrapped up in the swag the last time it was used, to bed with me and idly thought about how much nicer a beer and steak down at the brewery, whilst smugly contemplating my esky full of venison would have been.
Waking just before dawn I enjoyed watching the stars through the mozzie net before I rolled out and laced up my boots. I retraced my steps from the day before and discovered some more litter that I’d missed. I stuffed that into my pockets but there were of course, no deer to be found. I am sure they were watching me from the bush and sniggering to each other at my expense as I packed up and set off for home.
I have come to the conclusion that after returning from the last two hunts empty handed, I will from now on, due to massive piss taking from my family and friends, refer to my trips, not as hunts, but instead as ‘spending time in nature’ Middle age has clearly not cured my overconfidence, but perhaps it just might remind me to take some sandwiches next time.