A year or so ago I was on a fireground, 'mopping up' a fire that had run up a hill through a scrubby forest of Box and Stringybark. There were a surprising number of nasty looking trees with hanging branches or burnt out crowns, so we were working slowly and carefully, to stay out of danger. One of the others, an older guy with decades of firefighting experience told me of a day years ago when he was fighting a fire in Ash country up in the Central Highlands. He turned around at one point to find his mate dead on the ground. A branch from an Ash tree (not sure if it was Alpine or Mountain Ash) had hit the man in his neck at the top of his spine and killed him instantly.
We all know that Alpine Ash love to throw small branches that fall almost as spears and end up stuck in the ground. I was thinking of this story as I wandered through an Alpine Ash forest the other day after a big stormy front had come through. All around there were 'spears' sticking up from the ground. I was glad I was safely camped in a clearing near Snow Gums when that front came through.
No comments:
Post a Comment