Time for a big drink

The river is up, billabongs are full and the four-wheel drive tracks make a straight walk along any path just about impossible.

The understorey of the grass and trees is sodden; one slip in the wrong place and it’s boot removal time.

And it’s only just the start of spring.

I get the feeling La Niña is eyeballing us and wagging her finger saying, “You think this is all I’ve got?”

I’m not a meteorologist or a farmer but as we all know: you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

We sit on the confluence of three river systems so we can expect some big water over the next few months. Whether it’s as big as the 1974, 1993 or 2010 floods, who knows?

But one thing is certain: the memory of floods always survives to become a marker in the lives of people who experience them. We have a photograph of our newborn daughter being cuddled in her mother’s arms taken in our backyard in 1995. The sun is low, the sky a soft neon pink and in the background, the river is flowing through the trees. It wasn’t a destructive flood; it was just bringing new life to the bush.

Nevertheless, the power of water on the move is always terrifyingly awesome. On this week’s bush walk there were still reminders of the last time the Goulburn River swept through the river plain at the back of my place on its way to Reedy Swamp and beyond.

Big gum trees pushed over like matchsticks, giant tangled root systems exposed like a Medusa’s head and dams of dirt and logs are still visible along the gullies and feeder streams, which are now filling again as the river and water table rises. As destructive as it looks, the 12-year-old flood damage is a good reminder of the big wheel turning. Each log and root tangle has become a home, a nest and a food source for some critter.

Which brings me to my old friends.

Scarface and Old Jack are two gnarly river gums, which stand either side of the walking track by the river. Scarface has been ringbarked about half a metre up his trunk and there is also a deep saw cut on his skin. So above ground he’s white, limbless, ugly and quite dead apart from a large dark burl.

But his root system must be deep and strong because he’s not going anywhere. He’s solid.

Old Jack has been chopped and knocked around too, but he’s in better shape than his mate. He still has a thin canopy of new growth reaching up about 50m and he provides food and shelter to a whole village of animal and insect life.

Judging by their girth, both trees are more than a hundred years old. They occupy a sturdy space in a stand of relatively new growth and are a testament to survival.

They’re still upright despite the violence of storms and human axes. Whenever I pass them, I stop for a while to stand in their quiet, profound presence as if some of their patience and tolerance might pass to me, or I might at least learn something about endurance in a changing world.

Bring on the rain — Scarface and Old Jack need a cleansing ale.