When a fire plan depends on a parks plan

I once planned to ride my brand new motorcycle from London to Loch Ness but it got stolen the night before I was due to leave and I spent the next day hitting myself with a frying pan for leaving the keys in the ignition. I went anyway, but on a much smaller borrowed bike which shook my bones and made me look like Peter Fonda on a postie.

I have since planned many things, but they never got off the drawing board. A verandah restoration, a novel, a scotch and coke with Paul McCartney, retirement to a Greek island, a new pair of winklepicker boots with Cuban heels, a hair transplant, a Fender Stratocaster with a maple neck, an Irish wolfhound.

They never happened.

They all remain pipedreams.

But now the time has come for a plan that could save my life.

As the fire season approaches I realise I need to put my guitar down and get real.

First the roof gutter gardens, then the leaf litter and the fallen branches and stacked wood. They all have to go. Then the empty bottles of pinot gris and the broken wine racks and the boxes of draft novels and the stacks of old newspapers and flattened mulch carboard — they all have to go too. On to the flammable outdoor furniture, shrubs next to windows, and gaps in the windows and doors — they all must go.

But on warm spring days as the first shimmer of heat rises and the cicadas begin their electric song, I am reminded the tinderbox of the Lower Goulburn National Park is at my backyard.

This part of the park is an open playground for four-wheel drivers, dirt bike riders and rubbish dumpers desperate to get rid of nappies, soft drink bottles and plastic toys in the dead of night. Anyone who walks one of the park tracks after a decent downpour risks disappearing into the quagmire of a Somme battlefield.

Now, recent rains have resulted in grass taller than a 6 ft man on stilts. Any ground fire that catches through here would run faster than forked lightning through a wet dog.

But the bush tracks are so deeply rutted I can't see the CFA getting into this area unless they have climbing ropes and a fleet of Australian army amphibious Bushmasters.

So it seems all my well-laid plans depend on Parks Victoria coming up with its own plan to keep bush-bashers out and let grass-cutters in.

Now, when your plan depends on someone else's plan, it becomes a plan drawn in the sand.

And when that someone else sits behind a desk on the sixth floor of a fire-proof building somewhere in Melbourne, you might as well sit on your verandah and listen to the cicadas while you place your valuables in a travel box.

That's my latest plan.