Renewin' Strathewen @ Mooses

Renewin' Strathewen @ Mooses joint
2011
Cutting, tree pruning, digging & bbq.

Up a couple of times, Anniversary & black berries. Place is a bit over-grown but that's being taken care of.

2010
Spring rains meant the rose planting was cold, wet and muddy :)

Autumn: First bit of work this year at Mooses place. Start here: 2010MAR251627 and work you way to here: 2010MAR262223.

2009
The Black Saturday big picture.

Holy Cow
Cadel is riding from Hurstbridge to Arthurs Creek / Strathewan and Kinglake. Wonder if it's into Strathewen itself?

Positive message
It's been six months since Black Saturday. I'm now changing focus. I'm no longer reporting bushfire news. Firstly I'm sick of it. But more importantly what is happening in fire effected areas is positive. Instead I'm going to look at what's being done in the aftermath and how things are improving. In this case it's at Strathewen at Mooses place.

Sure will be some setbacks but good things are happening. Slowly, but they are happening.

Locals have had what will probably be their worst year they will experience. It's going to take time to process what has happened in the last six months. Things they see on the media, people they might talk with or events the experience can bring back the horrors of Black Saturday.

Deal with it now, deal with it later. If you get the stories, the events, the experiences out of your system a little bit at a time the likelyhood of negative consequences will be reduced. I speak from hard earned experience.

Phone Call
Got a phone call from my sister today. Moose is back in town. Got his phone number, rang him up. Turns out he's back in Melbourne and going to be doing some work at home in Strathewen. Suggested I might have to go up there and do some work. Got my grab-bag, packed some grub and headed up to Strathewen. Through Warrandyte, Kangaroo Ground, Mid-Hurst, Hurstbridge then to Strathewen. Took some quick shots as I got to the property. Didn't realise Moose was already there until he popped his head out. It was pouring rain. You can see the drizzle across the valley. Got out the wet weather gear and headed up the hill. Shook hands, had a bit of a yak, went down and moved the car up the hill.

Letter box
The letter box, an old Milk Urn has been there since I can remember. When I was at High School a local artist came to school and did some in-house work. Drew who lived up the road a bit had painted Mooses letter box a couple of years earlier. Pretty much as I remember it here.

Catch up
I hadn't seen Moose since the services. He'd been interstate with work and I only caught up with him for a quick chat at Apteds in Arthurs Creek. I'd read he was going to get in contact with my sister to do some fencing and I'd left a note on his facebook page asking when. So I was pretty keen to get up there and give him a hand. It's been a pretty shitty year for people in this area. But it's only when you get on the ground you fully appreciate it. Moose pointed me back to his Facebook page after I'd pointed out I'd been checking out his Schoolfriends.com.au account. Seems most had abandoned it for facebook. There was simply no reason. While I'd had an Fb account for years I'd never used it. Since then I've run into a few mates from High School. But that's not a place I really wanted to go back too. I sort of can't avoid it though, Moose and I went to the same school. I don't go back there because it's a reminder of the crap time I had there from start to finish. So I can sort of understand what it must be like for Moose. You don't want to go back but in this case he has to. Work has to be done. Things have to move foward. So that's why I'm there to get things done to help out a mate.

Burning off
A few felled trees were thrown in the fire made around old fence posts to burn them out. Lucky I'd bought the fire-starters in the grab-bag. I'd had trouble at Dads (Kinglake West) getting fires going. Took 3 cubes to get 2 fires going. It took a bit of work to get the fires going. The wind moves from the North West then Southerly. Eventually we added enough timber for the wood to catch.

Food
With the fires done we went and checked out the local recovery centre. These buildings are important to the locals. If their home has been burnt down (like Mooses), if they are rebuilding and living in a caravan or in temporary shelter they need a place to sit down, eat, do something else. It's a replacement for the hall that burnt down, a replacement for the local school that burnt down. For moose it was somewhere to get some hot sausage rolls out of the microwave. The topic of converstation walking along the quiet roads was the amount of trees and vegetation along side the road that could pose a hazard. The local shire council Nillumbick (one I've worked for in the past) hasn't yet decided to remove and clear road sides. In areas like this clear access means the differnce between living and dying. While there might not be any large fires like Black Saturday for another 50 years, smaller ones could pose problems. Another problem is water run-off. A few areas need to be fixed to reduce the increased amount of run-off that normally would have been absorbed by trees and vegetation.

Stuff
Got back to the bottom fire, burnt out. It's pretty windy so stoked it again, re-light the thing. The top fire needed re-stoking. Not an easy thing when it gets hot. Went up the hill a bit to check out the fencing that's been done. Triple strand so the smaller Kangaroos don't keep pushing into the fence and trying to get through. I don't know about wombats. They go where they want. From there we cleared the rest of the timber, chopped a few more branches out and walked through the gardens to plan the rest of what needs to be done. A lot but certainly do-able. We'll be back again next week to do some more.