The Fires; Part One. And the trees that are green turn to brown.

I suck at bonding with people. I like most people quickly and I enjoy meeting new ones. This is maybe because I like new ideas, new stories and new perspectives, or maybe because for a while I can boast new friends……… if a friend is defined as someone who doesn’t know me well enough to find me shallow, a little crude and have so many high-horses, it’s like being at a rodeo in a meth lab.  Also, I have about three stories, which are hilarious the first time a person hears them but are really friggin' dull after the gadzillienth.  Just ask the wife.

This reluctance to bond may also be because I moved around a lot as a kid.  My father was either in a very volatile hotel business, or on the run; I could never really tell. I am sure the rain mac, big hat, and big false ginger beard he wore whenever he went out was just a fashion statement. 

So, after 13 different houses and 5 different schools, perhaps I just couldn’t be arsed making the effort to bond anymore.  I bounced around between the Midlands, the South West, the South East, the Herefordshire side of Welsh border, the North East, The Midlands and The Borders in Scotland.  Invariably the first few months were spent getting used to a new endearing nickname;  ‘Soft Southern Wanker’ (in a school in a pit district of the NE of England during  the miners’ strike), a ‘Northern Monkey’, an ‘English Bastard’ (from a fanatical SNP supporting history teacher in Scotland) and a ‘country bumkin’. Though the last I rather liked, this ‘lifestyle’ became rather tiresome after a while. 

However, after bouncing around for the formative part of my life, I decided to keep the trend going and joined the army at 22, went to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and found things were rather different there.  Whilst I was probably surrounded by Soft Southern Wankers, Northern Monkeys, English Bastards, (some Scots ones) and country bumkins, I couldn’t tell as nearly all of my fellow Officer Cadets had been to good private schools and it seems that after such an education, everybody speaks with the same accent. 
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It was a demanding environment to be in and quickly you realise that the accent is less important than the ability to handle a tough situation, to stick by each other when life was shit, and to maintain a sense of humour when funny stuff is as scares as humbleness at a Donald Trump house party. Perhaps for the first time in years, after going through this shit stuff, I bonded with the people that went through it with me.  This happened first at Sandhurst, then over the next 16 years serving in The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers in various parts of the world I got to spend time in, some of which were great (Germany, Canada, Gibraltar, Whitehall and Warminster, for example), some not so great (Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq  and Swindon for example). Some of the relationships I formed at this time remain the strongest I have........... and as one of the relationships I formed was with my wife, Jodie, I guess this is an important statement.....!

Beers after a difficult operation in Zvecan, Kosovo, Aug 2000
http://kosovo.net/sk/news/kfn00814.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/aug/14/balkans

I have taken the same approach to countries.  I’ve lived in 6 and have been lucky enough to visit heaps more.  I almost invariably like them immediately.  New booze, new food, new accents and new people to expose my three stories to, many of whom don’t understand English, so take longer to find them boring.  What’s not to like? However, when it came time to leave, that’s fine too.  No long farewells or backwards glances.

My latest country is Australia (or ‘Straya’ as it’s known as locally).  I have been lucky enough to spend the last 11 years here, to pass my citizenship test and become a citizen (the answers are: Don Bradman, Far Lap, Cold Chisel, and 11 Seconds; Bob Hawke).  When I first visited Straya in 2003, it was a week or so after I had returned from Iraq where I had the dubious honour of being part of history; I, with thousands of close and heavily armed friends had just invaded the place.   I loved everything about the place (Oz, not Iraq).  The sea, the diverse cities, the BYO in restaurant culture, the funny country towns where people really do say ‘fair dinkum’ and call my wife ‘a real pommy Shella’ and the contrast of landscapes, flora & fauna and attitude from state to state. 

We eventually moved here in 2009 at the start of the GFC, unbelievably got good jobs, have now renovated two houses, got a social life and pretty much have lived the Aussie dream………. But did I really bond with the place……….? Nah, of course not. 

I do love so much about Australia but in everything and everybody you like or love, huge exposure to it or them exposes stuff you are not so keen on.  After 11 years here, for me and Australia, that’s muscle cars, boring straight roads, terrible public transport, that there are more rules than at the OCD Societies' Annual General Meeting, some very, very dubious politicians and bloody RSA (For my non-Aussie friends, that’s the very well enforced Responsible Service of Alcohol laws, aka ‘The fun police’.  I have been refused service more often as a reasonably sober 40 something in Oz than I ever was as a completely drunken arse of a youth in the UK.  In the UK, as long as you can roughly point at what you want to drink, have the money to pay for it, and aren’t about to glass a stranger for calling your pint a twat, all is ok.  Here, I was once ejected from a club for dancing badly……).

I am reasonable sure Australia is now bored of my three stories too.  And my bad dancing……. I now have a ‘disco shed so I can do the dancing in private….
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In 2015, to do something about what was going to be a horrendous Super (pension fund) gap, we bought our second Aussie renovation project as an investment property, in the beautiful Southern Highlands village of Bundanoon.  It’s a lovely place, less than two hours from Sydney with a great community, a pub, a heap of interesting people doing interesting things and best of all, the train we take here serves wine and cheese.

Bundanoon Station

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​We then spent the next couple of years renovating the place (now named Fulford Folly), getting it on to AirBnB to make it affordable, and creating a home for our Mediterranean Miniature Donkeys (Freddie and Mr Percival @minis of Fulford Folly on IG),

Freddie and Mr Percival

​Folly Renos

Fulford Folly

One of the things I really love about the area is how green it is…..normally.  When Sydney is brown, the Highlands stay green.  The grass is green, the trees are green, the pubs beer garden is green. Marvellous.  If there is one thing I learnt after a couple of stints in very yellow deserts, I bloody love green and I really, really miss it when it’s not there.  This, and the lack of booze will prevent me from ever living in the Middle East ……… (and the overt sexism……and calls to prayer in the middle of the night…………).

The beautiful Southern Highlands

The past couple of years has been a little different in the Southern Highlands; due to an extreme lack of rain, by spring 2019 everything green had turned to brown and yellow.  Grass was dead and crunched under foot, all the dams were dry, we had to buy hay for the donks, towns ran out of water and increasingly harsh water restrictions were imposed on us.
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And then, in October 2019, the friggin' fires started, a good month or so before the normal season. ​


Part 2 will actually cover some stuff about the fires!