A week in Noojee

A friend from work Graeme Scherger (more commonly and affectionately known as Shonky) was asked to take a task force from the Otways to the fires in Central Gippsland near a place called Noojee, just east of Powelltown if you know that better. I was asked to go along as his scribe. Due to the horrendous fires that started on Sat 7th February we were so short of vehicles that we had to get a ride to Ballarat to pick up a Hi-lux to get there in.

The first three days we were working mostly on private property offsiding bulldozers, pushing still burning stags (dead trees) back into the burnt, back-burning and generally blacking out.

Smoke from backburning

Burning stag on private property

 

A lot of heavy machinery gets used during a fire. Not just for creating firebreaks but also for jobs like putting culverts and temporary creek crossings in.

Tall trees and fire breaks

Creating a creek crossing

 

The terrain was very steep which posed the occasional challenge. The Landcruisers made pretty easy going of even the steepest bulldozed track but other makes of vehicle took about 5 attempts to get up this hill, which was steeper than it looks in the pictures.

Bottom of a steep section

Almost at the top

 

I knew that Frank had visitors while I was away as Red, Yvette and Jem came to collect the camper-trailer for their holidays in March. But even more annoying was the unexpected visitor I missed. Frank almost didn't tell me about it but he did take a picture of sorts.

I think it is a Marbled Gecko, it certainly had very cute gecko-like toes and apparently was a very slick mover. We still don't know how it managed to get into the house but Frank let him out in case we ended up with a desiccated gecko in the back of a cupboard somewhere.