A Mild Night

A Mild Night

The screech from an owl woke Henry, but not in a frightening way, he knew immediately what it was and imagined it, wide-eyed, grey and small, sitting in a treetop surveying its territory for prey. They’re known as German Owls, but correctly they are inauspiciously titled Little Owl.  It’s unusual to see them except around autumn when they sit on the power wires that thread alongside our country roads. The wire-sitters are likely fledglings, their lack of experience, the reason they dice with death to feed on road kill. So often it’s those young’uns that themselves become roadkill. The screech that woke Henry came from an adult.

A full moon shone brightly through the bedroom window and although, or perhaps because, it was just past 2:00am he slid quietly out of bed to have a look around. It’s not Henry’s habit to wander around during the night, but he’s done his share. As a lad helping his father deliver milk before biking off to school. Or in later life, keeping a watch on fires in and around the forest usually after a controlled burn-off or a breakaway. And of course there were those spotlighting episodes, following the beam, peering for the reflection of the eyeballs of forest-damaging herbivores. And yes, chasing off the looney, illegal spotlighting night hunters, who didn’t only shoot at game – tractors and road signs were too often in their sights!

This night was unusual because it was quite mild. Usually the only time the nights are warm is when there is nor’westerly weather but those times it’s windy. This night the air was still. A huge cheesy disc bathed everything in its pale light, which allowed Henry to spot the four rabbits feeding on the lawn, one of them paused to scratch, before a warning thump of another’s foot sent them scurrying for the shrubbery. He felt them watching him from their haven as he walked towards the Paulownia tree where he expected the owl to be perched.

The owl had long-since flown off, perhaps after some quarry, hopefully a mouse. Mice try to come indoors and into the sheds during autumn, so he made a mental note to put out more bait. There was cooing, a wood pigeon woken by Henry’s footfall wasn’t alarmed but was timidly hoping for a reply. Joining the conversation he cooed in reply, but the bird was having none of his amateur impigeonation and with a flurry of her wings, she sought safety on a higher branch. Even in the moon-shadow Henry could see well and he playfully kicked at the fallen Norway maple leaves, scattering them and hearing their clatter as they settled in the stillness of the night. In a nearby paddock a lamb bleated for its mother and was immediately given a comforting reply as they settled down again to sleep or chew their cuds.

Just a few more steps took him to where he could hear the cackling of the river below, peering over the bank he could plainly see ripples that reflected moonlight. He could see the dark shapes of paradise ducks, the glowing white heads only the males have. They constantly honked, bickering, arguing over the most comfortable stones to lie upon, or perhaps giving reassurance of safety to a mate. The pied stilt woken by some movement or sound, screeched in protest, these are the birds that often fly in at eyelevel warning Henry as he approaches her nest or chicks. This time she was just moving away from those pesky, noisy ducks.

Turning away from the bank, Henry saw that two of the rabbits had left their cover, nervously venturing to munch on the short grass, looking up after each nibble, moving their ears like antennae searching for a signal. Looking skywards, the Southern Cross was clearly visible in the cloudless sky but the moon cast too much light, drowning out most of the smaller stars, while others hung there like little bulbs, hopefully sharing their brightness. Nevertheless as always he scanned the sky for satellites, they say one passes over every seven minutes, but he sees them only occasionally. He dipped out again.

Henry was content with the peace of that still mild night. He could have spent more time out there, but he had plans for the next day and to make them happen, he needed sleep. As he lay in his bed, still euphoric from his stroll in the moonlight, he remembered that the day had been Good Friday. There was always a full moon close to Good Friday. Those craters that make up a mythical face have watched over Earth since time began, a witness to everything, but the moon has no memory, empathy or judgement will, it is just hangs up there guiding the tides and influencing the weather. Spiritual for many.

When you think about it, those unseeing eyes have seen a lot!  

Caught Out!

Their ancestors sailed to Botany Bay, ships full of convicts

Enzed’s Muldoon the PM, hit the nail, when he quipped,

About the brain drain from here to there. He said,

‘There’s a mutual benefit in them leaving here, and going there,

It improves the IQ, of both our nations!’

And he did his, ‘Heh, heh, heh!’

You know, they’ve claimed our very best; the pavlova,

Crowded House, Split Enze – a bloody cheek!

And Kiwis over there who’ve turned crime,

Get chucked out of there to be returned to here!

Yet it’s there that they learned their crooked ways!

‘Cos when they left here, their slate was clear!

And now there’s the cricket, oh blimey the cricket!

It’s not just the sledging, they’re champs at bad-mouthing!

We hated those brothers, for the dirtiest of tricks,

Underarm bowling? Such a low-down disgrace! But wait…

They’ve been caught on telly scratching their ball!

It wasn’t the itching, the Aussies were caught cheating?

And they’re supposed to be playing, a gentleman’s game.

Swallow's

Swallow’s

We were planning to dam a small, insignificant creek to create a water source useful for firefighting, when Bert told me the locals knew it as Swallow’s Creek, so named after one Henry Swallow who long ago had farmed the area. Bert knew that little snippets like that interested me. My job was to oversee the project with Mick pulling the levers on his dozer, pushing up the clay which formed the dam. The catchment is small so we weren’t expecting large volumes of water to ever come down the creek, so we decided to make the overflow by excavating a small trench on the hard natural surface. It was on the ‘other side’ of the dam because ‘this side’ is where the access track was and where we had levelled a logging skid-site. We had originally made the skid-site for the extraction of Larch rails pulled out by Kit, the mare who did the damage to old Cassius the stallion. If you remember.

The next flood that came along caused the dam to burst!  Mind you it was an outrageously big rain! A huge volume of water scoured across Reid Road and the short distance to the river! Oops. Nowadays a house is perched on the very edge of that souring, and I often wonder… Anyway, repairing the dam, Mick managed to bog his dozer, and we buggerised around for the rest of the day trying to extricate him! Sticky mud! We even threw logs under the tracks trying to break the suction, but nothing worked! Another Bert, Sawmill-Bert, came to help with his TD6. A much smaller machine but it had a powerful winch. When a dozer, or anything for that matter – even a boot, is stuck in mud, there’s as much weight caused by suction as there is in the machine, so winch-powerful or not, Bert and his tractor were pulled backwards up the creek! Mick’s machine sat there like a half-wit wallowing sow! So using his TD6, Bert dozed a hole with a steep bank and he backed into it. It worked much like a dead-man and out popped Mick and his dozer! We used good, big culverts for the overflow this time and Mick spent a lot of extra time rolling the dam before adding more fill. He must have done a good job because it hasn’t burst since, and the pond that it formed now enhances a picnic site.

So wearing a different hat: to join with the network of forest walks, I marked out a new track which climbs up Swallow’s Creek, and onto a forest road where there’s a short walk to reach the start/finish of the Glenburnie track. But not everyone wants or is able to walk for between four and seven hours, so we built a return track that follows down the adjacent ridge to return the walker to the starting point.

When the track was first open, the local primary school came down for a school outing, which included a pep-talk from me, and then the kids would be free to walk, or more likely, run around the track. Young Gary, wasn’t listening to my waffle, instead he was risking gravity by poking around, looking for frogs in the pond. He stretched a bit too far and arsed up in the water! Of course the rest of the school kids were with me by seeing the funny side and they ribbed him for smelling like a sulphur-fart! When the laughter had died down the young school teacher who was with us said something very wise to me. ‘If it wasn’t for boys like Gary, nobody would ever have gone to the moon!’ These days, Gary’s a respected helicopter pilot!

The early pioneers had left tough times at home only to endure perhaps different, but equally tough times here down under. Henry Swallow was born in England and orphaned when he was very young. With his brother he was sent to distant family members who ran some posh school for young ladies, which wasn’t a good fit for the two boys, so they were shipped out to New Zealand, to seek their fortune (or not). Henry married Margaret Harrison in 1856, and the few pounds that she had, allowed him to buy the land that has long since been gobbled up and converted into forest. The very same piece of land that Nat Stevens farmed with his daffodil-growing wife. If you recall.

The farm didn’t turn much of a profit, so he used some of his own equipment and his horse to cultivate land and do odd jobs for other settlers around the district. Margaret was a sturdy woman who was a good mother to her thirteen kids, among them a set of twins. They were a Presbyterian family, and she became a Sunday school teacher at the local and first church in Otago, but because of her regular birthing ability, she had to suffer the tut-tuts of a conservative, critical district whenever she became pregnant.

Henry Swallow met his maker in 1906, and Margaret hung on in their cottage for another thirteen years, supported by some of her loyal children who had remained in the district. She died at the ripe old age of eighty one and the devoted couple now lie together in the Otepopo cemetery. Their plot is marked by a marble plaque with an ivy border carved around the inscription, ‘Swallow’.

We named the walking track after those hardy settlers. They have a rightful place in a history, but like so many, not remembered or celebrated. Lost in the mists of time. Walkers and travellers have no idea what Swallow’s stands for as they walk, unknowingly they tread where those hardy souls once trod.