Four Fires (65 page)

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'This gum capsule.'

'It's a seed, isn't it?'

'Nah, it's a fireproof container, only it's called a capsule. Your actual seeds are stored in its little fire-resistant chambers. I reckon this one come down in the 1952 fire.' He pointed to several trees not as big as the others, 'Could be those came from one of these. Almost certain; if there'd been a fire through here since '52, then this capsule wouldn't be lying around He hands me the little capsule and I realise that it's hard as cement, which is what Tommy means about them being fireproof.

'That's the amazing part, son, the capsules grow high enough up in the forest canopy so the seeds inside them aren't scorched by the radiant heat from the bushfire passing underneath. The heat generated is sufficient to open them after the fire has passed to allow the seed to rain down onto the newly burnt forest floor. Here's the extra smart bit, the warmth of the soil from the spent fire will stimulate the germination of the seed and seedlings will rapidly push their roots down through the nutrient-rich ash.'

Tommy reaches out and breaks off a eucalyptus leaf and rubs it into a little ball in his hand. I think he's going to ask me to smell it, like we've all done a thousand times, but he doesn't. He makes me touch the wet spot that's left in the centre of his hand. 'Feel that, it's oily, ain't it?' I nod and he says, The eucalyptus species is even designed to attract fire, the highly inflammable oils in the leaves is just one example.' He points to all the dry twigs and things that are nearly always found under a eucalyptus tree. 'See that, that's the tree laying its own fire. It's called litter-fall and it's mostly fibrous bark the tree's been dropping on purpose. Those are the dried twigs and leaves the tree has got rid of so it doesn't need to feed the leaves in a drought. Mate, you couldn't lay a better fire if you tried, it's perfect for quick combustion. When the flame hits, it will create a high-intensity fire that will quickly clear the forest floor and allows the seeds to germinate.'

'You mean it's made its own kindling and is just waiting for someone to come along and light it?'

Tommy grins, 'Well, these days not somebody but something, usually lightning.'

Talk about well thought out! Then there's the way the seedlings store these nutrients for when times get really tough.

'The eucalyptus seedlings have a root system which has these little bulbs called lignotubers, which are tiny storage tanks for nutrients that they don't need right away. When a drought comes along, they stop growing and use only enough nutrients to stay passive.'

'How do they know there's a drought coming?' I ask and then realise what a bloody stupid question that is.

'Because the bloody rains don't come!'Tommy can't believe his ears.

We walk on and he's silent for a while because he expects better from me, I suppose. But he's spent too much time in a prison cell studying up and I know he's not going to let it hang in the air like that. Tommy's got to tell this stuff to someone and the only someone he has is me.

Eventually he says, like there hasn't been nearly twenty minutes of no-speak going on, 'When the drought is over and the rains come and conditions become right for growth again, the tree has enough nutrient reserves in its storage tanks to blast off. The clever thing is that they can acquire far more nutrients than they need for normal growth and store the surplus, if necessary, for years.'

'What about the grown-up tree?'

'Mature-growth eucalyptus! Trees don't grow up, people do! Yeah, well, the mature tree can do the same and also has a rapid recovery system, known as epicormic buds, which are buds waiting to happen on a thin stalk found at the axil of every eucalyptus leaf.' He tears off a small branch and shows me these hard little knobs. 'If the going gets tough, like in a severe drought, the tree drains the nutrients in a percentage of its leaves to store them for use later. At the same time, this tiny little bud just sits tight and hangs on waiting for when times are good again and there's a bit
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of rain. Then they sprout and produce new leaves at a very rapid rate.'

After a drought when the rains came and we'd go into the bush, lommy would say if you watched carefully enough you could actually see the eucalyptus growing. Which is a bit of an exaggeration but they sure can get a new canopy of leaves going in a hurry. One week there's nothing, then a fall of rain, and the next weekend the bush is green as anything and you wouldn't know there'd been a drought.

'Yeah, but that's civilisation for you. Did you know that the weight of the termite population that lives under the Australian soil is greater than the weight of all the creatures that walk upon the surface of our land?'

I wanted to shout out that was the biggest heap of bullshit I'd ever heard. I think he must have read that in Ripley's Believe it or Not! I looked to see if he was pulling my leg but he was busy digging away at the termites, exposing them under the bark.

Now, I'm not saying this is true, it could be another story like the fish. You remember the fish that appeared in a ditch they dug in Borneo when it wasn't anywhere near a river. But if it is true, that's a humungous lot of termites living under our feet.

That's why the Australian desert is the richest desert ecosystem in the world,' he suddenly continues. 'It's because the termites are the only things that can eat the tough spinifex grass, which is pure cellulose. They come out of their mounds at night to feed and the small reptiles, like the many varieties of lizards and goannas, are dependent on them for food. They come after the termites and the bigger reptiles and birds eat the little reptiles and so on, which is how the whole desert food chain begins.'

There could be something to this theory, which is a bit more understandable than the fish.

Remember how we couldn't tell anyone at school about the fish from nowhere for fear of them making us Maloneys a laughing stock?

Well, that's enough lecturing. It's just that I thought you'd like to know some of those things, about fire in particular. The way fire is essential to us goes on and on and you begin to understand that fire on our landscape means life, not death, even though we have come to fear it, even more than floods or any other form of natural disaster and always equate it with, you know, destroying things.

This summer is not looking good, the spring rains haven't arrived and here it is early January and temperatures have already risen above one hundred degrees most days and it's getting hotter.

The worst part is that the winds have been coming from the north, which dries out the north-western slopes of the hillsides and that's real bad news if a fire starts in the valley. Tommy says that in the January 1939 fire seventy-one people died in Victoria.

The rural bushfire brigade has two tankers. Ford and Chevrolet ex-army 'Blitz' trucks equipped with four-hundred-gallon tanks and fitted with Grazcos Mk 25 pumps. The only problem with the trucks is that they are ancient, ex-army and petrol-driven so in bushfire conditions suffer severely when the petrol turns to vapour in the fuel lines and stalls the engines.

I reckon this was one of the main reasons John Crowe got to be our fire captain this year. He can get the trucks going again quicker than most of us. He'll use one of the fire hoses to cool down the fuel line and engine manifold and then tinker a bit and away she'd go again. It was always dicey and you don't want a fire truck that you can't trust, but what can you do? The government doesn't spend enough on bushfire prevention and we just have to do the best we can in the volunteer brigade. The urban brigade that looked after the town had these smart Austin tankers that worked a treat, but of course that had nothing to do with us.

Then there is the usual stuff to be maintained, none of which has changed a lot. The thing that worries Tommy a lot is the maintenance, which he reckons isn't as thorough as it could be. He'll go around himself on a Sunday to try to do something and he'll find a battery is flat in one of the trucks or it won't start for some reason or another. He'll get John Crowe in to fix it, but he always says there should be a weekly maintenance roster. Yet no one seems interested and
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nobody ever thanks him for his opinion or his efforts on the occasions that we do meet.

The equipment we have are knapsack tanks, hand pumps and fire brooms, which are beaters made of leather or canvas, you had to know how to use them or they'd spread the fire faster than put it out. Tommy would also check the fuel tanks and rope-start the two BSA motors on the pumps to make sure they were going. Sometimes they'll start with the first pull of the rope and, then again, sometimes you'll pull and pull and the buggers won't start and you can't help thinking how would it be if this happened in an emergency.

We're all volunteers in the rural brigade except for Nick Reed, the CFA regional officer who came in from Wangaratta the second Saturday in November to say that the long-term weather forecast is for

a very hot summer with heatwaves in January and February. He said it has something to do with a thing that happens in South America which raises the temperature of the Pacific Ocean and causes drought and heatwaves in Australia.

None of us could quite understand what he was saying and I don't think Nick could either, because he read a lot of it from a paper he'd been sent by CFA headquarters. Anyway, he warned that the fires might be worse than normal and to have everything in tiptop condition, which is a bit of a laugh when you think of the age of the two trucks.

Like I said, John Crowe has been elected fire captain because of the two old tanker trucks.

Tommy, who knows the most, could never be our fire captain because of his drinking and his record. John Crowe is pretty good at it anyway and has lots of experience and everyone's confidence, especially since he's gone into transport and become a bit of a businessman. A mechanic at the shire-council depot is one thing, the owner of a trucking company is quite another, even if it's only two trucks. Out on the location of a bushfire, him and Tommy will work together. They always have and together they'll get the best results with our volunteer firefighters.

Being a volunteer firefighter is the one thing in Yankalillee that sort of evens things up for everyone. Sure there's still quarrels but there are whole families who dedicate all their spare time to the needs of the brigade and raise money in raffles and bush dances and fetes and some have been doing it for generations. Without the women helping, not just catering, but manning phones and directing fire information from one place to another, I reckon we could never exist.

Mrs Barrington-Stone says it's yet another example of how country women just shut up and get on with it. If you're in the volunteer brigade, people reckon you're fair dinkum because it takes a fair bit of dedication but I reckon they don't give the women the respect they deserve. Even Tommy, as the real maloney, is respected in bushfire circles for his knowledge and because he's a third-generation firefighter.

It's weird how that happens. He's highly respected at a Saturday morning meeting and when out fighting a fire, but come Monday or the day after the fire, he's a dero and crim for the rest of the week. I must say it hasn't rubbed off on me, though. People have always been real nice and point out to visitors that I'm a fourth-generation firefighter and haven't missed a fire call since the first one I went on with Tommy, John Crowe and Ian McTavish for my so-called rescue of Mrs Rika Ray. When you're out fighting a fire, religion doesn't come into it, you're just a bloke doing his best for his community.

Because it's the school holidays and the fire danger is so high, I'm helping the Forestry Commission to man the fire towers, the one I told you about earlier on Mt Pilot. It's a ten-hour shift and I'll come straight from collecting garbage and a quick plate of porridge. I make myself four cheese sandwiches and hope there's a couple of apples around and take two big bottles of water. I'm doing my matriculation this year so I probably won't do fire-tower duty later in the summer so this will probably be my last bit of fire-watching for the year. Of course, if there's a fire that threatens your town, even in the middle of the exams, you wouldn't worry too much about your matriculation, would you?

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Bozo's put together another bicycle and made this kind of basket on the back where you can put your things. The tower overlooks a large stand of Scribbly Gum, Eucalyptus haemastonia, on the slopes of Mt Pilot.

It's called Scribbly Gum because it's got this yellowish, whitish and sometimes grey bark and has what looks like a little kid's scribbling all over it. Bozo's bicycle is fairly hard pedalling, but Mt Pilot isn't a huge mountain or anything, just the highest hill around with good sighting north, south and to the west. Hard pedalling or not, it's better than walking in this heat, I can tell ya.

I take a book along. I don't know if that's allowed, I've never asked, but it gets pretty boring in a tower for ten hours at a stretch and I've become a bit of a reader over the years. The one I'm reading at the moment is by Alan Moorehead and it's about fighting in Egypt. I'm very interested in military stuff, wouldn't mind being in the army, though Tommy says I've got to be fucking crazy, over his dead body!

When I ask him why, he says, 'F'chrissakes, look at me, will ya, Mole!'

My hope is that some day Tommy will tell me about what happened to him in Borneo.

I've searched the library and nobody has written a book about being a prisoner of war in Borneo. Maybe they have but it's not in the

Yankalillee library and Mrs Botherington isn't going to ask Melbourne, not for the sake of a kid.

I thought of asking John Crowe to pretend it was for him but she knows he only reads books about nature and she'd be suspicious.

I haven't stopped trying to question Tommy about the war, though every time I bring it up, he says, 'Let it go, Mole.' He's not cranky or anything, just won't talk about it. Once he said, That's another life I want to forget.' It was like he was saying he didn't want to live through it again by telling me about it, but you can sense that he hasn't forgotten and that most of what's happened to him and why he is how he is may be because of the past. I mean with his shoulder and jaw, and one eye missing, how'd that happen? He's never said, was it a bullet or what?