Australia Day

Friday last week was Australia Day, a public holiday. Lib worked as normal and I worked too, although mine was more a matter of choice. The wholesaler who comes Friday was having the day off and I'd picked Foxy's Sunday order ahead, camellia and flax that keeps well, making Friday free for my choice.
I worked at Pat and Mal's in the morning, spraying blackberries and cutting out holly trees, painting the cut with straight Roundup. It was a perfect sunny day. I walked down the steep hill to the bush carrying the chainsaw and a full tank in the knapsack sprayer on my back, stopping to look a large sequoia on the way down, admiring it's perfect symmetry, the rough trunk reaching dramatically straight up toward the bright blue sky. I thanked whoever planted it, 50, 60, 70 years ago. It looks about the same age as the two in Gembrook Park, planted in 1934 to commemorate Melbourne's centenary. A ficifolia gum, gnarled and broad, in full orange red flower fifty feet away gave striking contrast. After 50ml of rain at Christmas followed by another 45ml a week ago, the grass tended green and the bush shone. Flowering messmates dotted the blue green forest on the hill to the east with scattered white.
It's a beautiful place, Australia, I thought. How lucky am I to live here and be healthy enough to work in this wonderful environment? Two hundred and twenty years nearly since the first fleet, we have done so much damage, but maybe there's hope.
I only had an hour or so of work to do there, the time it would take to empty the sprayer on the last patch of blackberries and cut the remaining big hollies on my way back. Gord and I had worked here the previous day for a couple of hours and I was finishing off, relaxed, soaking up the fresh air and peace, satisfied at striking some good blows on the weeds.
After lunch I took a box of honey off the big hive in our yard, then went to 'Sunset' and took a box from there. 'Sunset'* is on the main road on the Gembrook hill, from where there's an excellent view to the south across red soil and lush green potato paddocks, backed by eucalypt bush again dotted with the white of flowering messmate trees. The irrigation cannon in the distance pumped great jets of water like a giant rhythmic metronome, the spurts of water slowing and fanning out, before falling to ground like heavy rain. Gembrook in January is idyllic if the weather's kind and there are no bushfires about. It's the rain that makes the difference.
After extracting the boxes of honey I went to Nobelius Park in Emerald and whippy snipped the bank on the northern boundary. This bank, less than twelve months ago, was a horrible mess of weed; blackberries, hollies, cotoneasters, black locusts, privet, impenetrable and a bug for me for many years. As curator of the park and a member of the committee of management, I had a bobcat remove all the weeds and the old fence last autumn. Then in October, because it was so dry and we had the funds (because other factors prevented us doing other work scheduled in the maintenance budget), we had the bobcat man back to spread 10 truckloads of topsoil and create a nice level bank up to the Emerald Lake road. All well and good, but the mowing contractors hadn't picked up the idea yet, and the weed species were growing back with a vengeance. An hour on the whipper got rid of them and hopefully I can coerce the contractors to include it in their program and soon it will be a nice grassy bank with no maintenance problem.
It looked so much better when I'd finished. It was satisfying to see a major improvement to the park, which would't have happened without first thinking it through, talking to people, and then perservering. I felt I'd done my bit on this Australia Day 2007. Better than all the flag waving wanking that goes on.

* 'Sunset' was guest house in the 1920's , the name being retained by a succession of owners since, and is listed as of heritage significance by the Cardinia Shire Heriage Study 1999)