No Laughing Matter

Almost the first joke I can remember - the very first one was "I never drink, I never smoke, I never swear. Damn, bloody hell, I left my pipe down at the pub", but I'm only telling you that in the interests of openness and honesty - is the one where someone asks you, 'Which would you prefer: to be executed or burnt at the stake?', and you reply, 'Executed' (or, I presume most people do, on the grounds that it's over quickly) and then the joker says, 'What, you'd prefer a cold chop to a hot steak?', (sound of cymbals, drum roll, et cetera).

When I learned earlier in the week that a group of my fellow citizens were taking legal action to stop the culling of kangaroos in Canberra's various bits of pseudo bush, that joke's cymbals and drum rolls echoed once again in my ears. You see, I walk through one of those bits of so-called bush - (while it lacks houses, it does have a reservoir, a power plant and rangers driving through it in utes on a regular basis, not to mention numerous cyclists, dogs and walkers, which, to my way of looking at things, means that it is really a park, but never mind) - on a daily basis. As a result I've observed that, following a couple of really good seasons, the kangaroo numbers in the area have grown enormously. To give you an idea, here are photographs taken in just the last couple of days:

The place is getting kind of overcrowded, kangaroowise. To make things worse, we're having a pretty dry year this year and food for kangaroos is getting so scarce that many are coming further and further down the hill to forage. Many of them will soon be starving. Indeed, I startled one the other day that was clearly too weak to even run away. We stared at each other for an instant, and I've never seen such a movingly human look of fear, shame and utter sadness in an animal's eyes. I know I sound like I'm anthropomorphising, but I don't think that was quite what I was doing. I'm not sure how to explain it, except to say that perhaps when any creature reaches an extreme state of desperation it comes down to its essence as a living creature, rather than as a member of a species - and at that level all living creatures share a lot in common with their fellows whether they be human, kangaroo, bird or fish.

The strange thing was that what I wished for at that moment was a gun and the knowledge of how to use it. It would, in my view, have been kind to shoot that kangaroo. To kill it, quickly and cleanly, would have been violent, but it was less cruel than letting it limp off to die slowly and alone. And that's what the anti-cullers don't get, I reckon. They think they're being kind when what they're actually being is squeamish. They won't admit that many animals will die, one way or another, because there are too many for the food that's available. Our choice is the cold chop or the hot steak, as it turns out. We can kill them humanely, using experienced shooters who can dispatch them instantly, with one shot, or we can leave them to starve, which means a painful, long drawn-out, miserable kind of death.

It Was Round and Pale Green

The bush is very smelly at the moment. At first I thought it might be because of the yellow flowers that are

The Grass is Riz

Well, well. I go away for

Nostalgia Ain't What It Used to Be

As predicted yesterday, I eventually managed to persuade myself that I'd had a lovely time wading about in the rain. Which was why I ventured forth again this morning. No-one else was mad enough to be out, apart from some kangaroos, who had no choice in the matter:

It was worth it though for, at the top of the mountain, I was rewarded with what many people consider the best view of Canberra that anyone could ever ask for:

Wet, Wet, Wet

Finally cabin fever hit this morning and so, in a brief interlude between major downpours, I put on my raincoat - the last vestige of the expensive mound of Outward Bound equipment we had to invest in during the children's schooldays - and headed out into the soggy world.

Before I left the house, I put up the hood of the leftover raincoat. It is such a deep hood that it felt almost like being inside my own portable tent, complete with the ever present sound track to any camping I have misguidedly done - the steady pattering of rain.

No-one else was about except a solitary lycra-clad cyclist turning the corner ahead of me in a spray of mist and water - either a two-wheeling zealot or a frog, I'm guessing.

And, speaking of frogs, reports of their imminent annihilation from environmental catastrophe seem to be exaggerated, judging by the racket coming from the creek I crossed on my stroll. While the noise the local frogs were making lacked the syrupy melodiousness of Macartney's frog composition:

it certainly seemed to be evidence that there are quite a lot of them still surviving and in good voice.

But onwards and upwards I went, tramping along the muddy path toward the summit. And, just as I reached the point in the walk that I think of as Bahrain - that is, the exact midway mark on the journey, (in the case of Bahrain, the journey is the one from Australia to Europe) - the point where you realise that, however much you might regret having set out, going backwards or onwards will be equally long and tedious a trip - the deluge really got going again. Simultaneously, I discovered that my shoes were totally unwaterproof, which meant that the during the remainder of the walk I was never without the impression that I had  two cold, wet sponges strapped onto my feet.

But never mind. There were other creatures apparently feeling even worse than me. In the trees ahead, I spotted a bunch of galahs, crouching on a branch and shivering. A couple of them began squawking miserably to each other as I drew nearer. The noise of their conversation was muffled by my hood and I'm not fluent in galah at the best of times. However, I had the impression that one of them was expressing regret at having done quite so much radical moulting while the other was muttering about building a nest with a corrugated iron roof.

Most of the other birds normally present in the bush appeared to have scarpered - into hollow trees or ingenious bower bird nests presumably - except for a couple of crimson rosellas sheltering in the bushes outside my house when I arrived back at the end of my swim - I mean walk. Until I saw them I'd imagined that only London pigeons could mimic that hands in pockets, shoulders hunched posture that Andy Capp perfected:

but these rosellas were doing a pretty good impersonation too.

So was it worth it? Yes, it was - mainly for that wonderful moment when I opened the front door and stepped back into the dry, sheltered world of my house. Now, in the warmth again, I can begin to gild the  experience with nostalgia. Soon I'll even believe I enjoyed it.

It All Depends Where

On my walk each morning, I have to climb a set of steps - 39 of them, incidentally, such an odd number that I am convinced the designer was a fan of John Buchan, although others in my family say it's pure coincidence:

Although I am not keen on step climbing, (unlike the sweaty figures who run up and down these four times, while I am  plodding up them only once), this particular staircase provokes not only dread but joy in me.

My reaction would be different if the staircase was positioned right at the start of my journey. In fact, if it were there, it might serve as a disincentive, looming large in my mind as I lay in bed trying to persuade myself to get up and go out. Similarly, if it were plonked right in the middle of the climb, I might hate it bitterly, regarding it as the worst bit of the whole enterprise.

As it is, because it is positioned at the very end of my walk, while it still represents a steep upward slog, it also signals that the pain is almost over. Therefore, although I still don't exactly leap for joy when I see the thing rising up before me, I do feel happy, because it means I'm almost at the end.

More Bush

When we were in Sydney the other day we took a walk from Manly Beach to the North Head. As we plodded along, I found myself thinking about the late Alan Clark and his highly successful diaries.

This might seem surprising, since Alan Clark was a rather sleazy old snob whose private jottings are principally of use in revealing to any outsider the impossibility of ever being accepted by the upper middle classes in England. Clark's comments on the events of his life and the people he meets are infused with an understanding of - and devotion to - an unspoken and exclusive code that dictates what is correct behaviour in every area of human activity.

The best illustration of the kind of thing I mean is Clark's dismissal of Heseltine as a man who bought his own furniture, (rather than inheriting it, presumably). While I don't think I could ever find it in my heart to feel sorry for Heseltine about anything, I do think being criticised for one's choice of parents is a bit unkind.

Anyway, the reason Alan Clark and his diaries came to mind was that he also noted, disparagingly, of someone or other, (possibly Heseltine again, come to think of it), that, when he visited them, they had no flowers in the house. Looking around at the bush we were passing through, I thought how hard it would be to please Alan Clark in this regard, if he were visiting you in Australia.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, there are plenty of flowers and pretty things in our landscape, but they do not leap out at you - nor (apart from the good old wattle, which, as we all know has basically been put on earth to be shoved into a bottle) would they be easy to gather into a bunch and use to decorate your house.

To demonstrate what I mean, here are some of the blooms I spotted on our route. Some might be chivvied into a tiny posy, but none, I think, would be effective as a genuine, Clark-pleasing 'floral display':