The dry season sauntered into town a few weeks ago and stole the humidity out of the air. It happened quickly, and the effect was as if one day, getting out of bed, I decided shower and drink a cup of coffee and had just lost ten pounds; everything is just so much fresher, more comfortable, when beads of sweat aren't inching down your torso.The cool air and dry weather brought fires almost immediately, to my surprise. And equally quickly, regrowth begins. On a recent overnight to Walker Creek, cycads, their fronds burnt to crispy wires in one area, had tight green fists of new growth resembling upturned sea-urchins farther up the path.
I have yet to fully assimilate the concepts of vastness and risk that makes the Territory so different. Small cloudy waterholes and Darwin's clean beaches are high risk: crocs and stingers. Plumes of smoke rising to the level of the clouds, flames moving across a hill side near where we stopped to fill up gas, fires and coming up to the side of the highway? These are low risk. Let 'em burn - there's no one out there.
Just as the burning season starts, fires have made it onto my NT birding email listserve. Raptors, particularly kites, are well known for hunting creatures pushed ahead of an advancing fire-line. The curiosity is reports of kites carrying burning sticks and dropping them to light new blazes. Could it be that Prometheus shared more widely? Perhaps they are the original kings of Ozzie barbecue!
Photos from around Walker Creek, note the path serving as a fire break.
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