Licence to kill ducks

This is the original text of my article Crikey.com published 2/4/13.

 I am not a 'protester'; I try to rescue ducks.

How I got my gun licence and joined the duck hunters

Wounded Blue-billed Duck

Christmas 2012 and the atmosphere was festive. The suburban church hall had a 3D nativity scene and children's drawings of angels on the walls. Not a place you'd expect to learn about firearm safety.

But last December, plenty of us did. Twenty-four men and three women quietly assembled for the compulsory test of the Victoria Police Firearms Safety Code in order to shoot guns at animals, birds and targets. One of them was me, applying for a gun licence so I could legally enter Victorian wetlands during the duck-hunting season. Part of a new suite of laws aimed at encouraging the young to take  up shooting, and to discourage scrutiny of Victorian wetlands, the new laws prohibit anyone without a gun licence and licence to hunt waterfowl from being within 25 metres of the shore.

The first part of our evening was instruction. An obese man of indeterminate age, with stringy hair and beard, checked shirt and jeans with braces, entered and sat down. With no preamble, he produced a mangled tube of metal. We fondled it and passed it on.  It was a piece of the action of a shotgun, ruined  by someone using the wrong-calibre ammo. It's the closest I've ever been to a gun.

The man from Deliverance went on to take us through parts of a gun, gun types, loading considerations and so on. After that, the local District Firearms Officer lectured on where a gun must be locked up (in a safe place, separate from the ammunition) and the other nine rules of firearm safety.

Then it was time for the 30-question, multiple-choice test. ”We want you to pass,” said the policemen. “It’s designed for 13-year-olds!” He addressed individuals as he wandered around during  the test. “Are you sure about that?”; “What about option (B)?” Questions included:

When shooting companions are known to have been drinking alcohol or using drugs the safe shooter will

(A) Make sure that he walks behind them in the hunting party

(B) refuse to shoot with them

(C) ensure they drink plenty of black coffee before leaving for the hunting area or

(D) check their physical and mental reactions before deciding whether they are likely to be safe in the field.

The arcade game Big Buck Hunter seemed more realistic than this. At least in the game you get to fire a shotgun, albeit a plastic one on a crappy swivel. Are there any other lethal weapons you’re allowed to handle in anger after passing only a written test?

With mine duly passed — a couple of incorrect answers notwithstanding — an eight-page application had to be filled out. A medical letter is required  if you’ve been treated in the last five years for psychiatric, alcohol or drug problems. I’ve had the odd psychiatric issue and have a conviction for drug possession. I got my firearms licence in the mail four weeks later.

If you wish to hunt ducks, you must also obtain a game licence, passing a 22-sequence video test identifying  ”game” and “non-game” species. Here, I lost points for misidentifying a rare, endangered freckled duck. I passed anyway (with an A). The once-only waterfowl identification test was introduced as a precaution against wild, inaccurate firing in 1990, the result of lobbying by anti-duck hunting activists.

Thus equipped with the legal right to do so, on March 16, wearing wetsuit booties, leggings, shorts and a high-visibility vest, I waded into Lake Bael Bael, near Kerang. Minutes before the official opening of the season, the guns exploded. Five or six flocks of birds burst up and wheeled round in circles, scattering across the sky. Fastest were the game species — pink-eared ducks, with spatulate bills and torpedo profiles, while the sharp-winged silhouettes of avocets and stilts were smaller but unmistakable. Black swans flew majestically while tiny sandpipers pecked at the muddy edges. Shooters shot at everything.

As a perfect dawn flooded the sky, the dismal spectacle of birds falling began. With each hit, you tried to follow the body down. Birds killed cleanly tumbled in a vertical line, while wounded ones flew on at diminishing angles, losing height and speed, crash-landing on the water. Shooters urged their dogs to collect still-flapping birds, or waded over slowly and picked them up. Dying ducks were twirled by the head like yo-yos.

Wood Ducks

Pink-eared Ducks

Male Blue-billed Duck

Female Mountain Duck, Pink-eared Ducks

Spent shotgun shells

Freckled Duck

A fellow rescuer scooped up struggling birds with a fishing net. He offered them to shooters; the men refused. Somebody handed me a wounded teal. As a licence-holder, I was permitted to have possession of this native species. I rushed it to the vet, where it was euthanised.

Other rescuers were stopped by wildlife officers and charged with “failing to kill” wounded birds. This charge was tested against rescuer Tony Murphy in court last year and withdrawn. At Lake Bael Bael, the authorities detained a woman with a wounded duck, metres from the vet’s tent. She was aggressively questioned for over an hour; unsurprisingly, the bird died in her arms. None of the shooters was charged with violence, cruelty, or “failing to kill wounded game”. More activists were charged this year than ever before for “harassing and hindering” hunters, “failing to kill” wounded game or breaking the law keeping non-hunters on the sidelines.

Hunters tossed casual obscenities at the rescuers, who appeared to be a minor annoyance as they got on with the business of shooting down the birds. In the worst birdwatching site in the world, I kept the requisite 20 metres from the brown-and-green clad men and trained my binoculars on tiny sharp-tailed sandpipers, which fly here from the Arctic. They flew low, turning together in a frenzy.

After the opening weekend, Field and Game Australia’s chief executive said some who had obtained firearm licences and game hunting permits might be “in breach of the genuine reasons they used to obtain a firearm licence”. Indeed — I will never hunt.

In Victoria, no one defends these birds except a ragtag army of self-styled “rescuers”; the media are kept away. If these rescuers weren’t out there, no one would ever hear about the gross acts of cruelty, the protected and threatened species killed and the sheer unaccountability of duck hunters. As a society, we are all implicated, should we let it endure.

Nothing funny about this looming dead parrot sketch

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/nothing-funny-about-this-looming-deadparrot-sketch-20100713-109ic.html

The bond that comes with giving one's time



LAST weekend, I spent time fighting fires. Not real fires, of course. I speak metaphorically, of fires of generosity, conflagrations of kindness. The people of Australia opened their wardrobes and dressers and have given millions of wearable items to the bushfire relief effort. In a dusty warehouse in Clayton (pictured), some of us went to work sorting them.

The Linfox company lent its facilities and workforce to the cause. A company warehouse in the Clayton Business Park was pressed into service on the Tuesday after Black Saturday, receiving the goods that had begun arriving from all over Australia.

Along with a fluorescent yellow vest, a name tag and a bottle of water, we were given our instructions upon arrival at the depot: "If you would not use it, the fire survivors won't — THROW IT!"

Like many city dwellers, I've been feeling divorced from the bushfire tragedy — powerless and guilty.

For me, Black Saturday was extremely unpleasant but I got through it indoors, oblivious to the disaster. The only physical signs of something wrong were the blood-red sunset and the odour of smoke.

I have lost nothing; whole families have lost their lives. How lucky was I in my cosy, city bubble?

So I gave money, though it was laughably little. I gave my nice hiking boots that I had worn only twice. What else could I give? The answer it seemed was plenty.

In Clayton last weekend, I gave my time and my energy, my commitment and my morale. Along with 40 others in the hangar-sized warehouse, I donned a safety vest and name tag and suddenly felt that I could help.

Whatever people needed was here in staggering numbers, from TVs to bicycles, toiletries to toys. There was everything that people with no homes would need; everything you would need if your home was obliterated by fire.

Our task was to sort the clothing into men's and women's, girls', boys' and babies' sizes. There was also underwear, socks, accessories and even hats. The larger the number of items, the more numerous the categories — women's clothing was divided further into half-a-dozen types.

The best and the worst impulses were evident. People gave beautiful garments: an Alannah Hill silk skirt with hand-sewn sequins; a box full of frilly bras.

There were also torn and stained items that were dispatched to the rubbish, raising the puzzle of why some people donate.

Donations were moving, thoughtful and odd: two low-flow shower heads (for bathrooms unbuilt?). A child's vinyl wallet, complete with pretend paper money. Pot holders for people with no pots.

I came upon a child's dressing gown labelled, poignantly, "Low Fire Danger".

It's easy to forget how cold it gets in the mountains, but there were jumpers and coats, woolly scarves and beanies. So much warm clothing going to the scenes of an inferno …

A black, lacy suspender belt appears. "Do you think we should keep this?" asks Caroline and everybody laughs.

A cockroach skitters from a bag and there is hysteria until it is caught.

The work is daunting. We face a Great Pyramid of boxes, an Everest of garbage bags, and the piles never seem to shrink.

Who are we? We're retirees and students; gardeners and office workers. We're here because we've given money but we want to give more.

Strangers when we met, we bonded over boxes of men's socks, kids' pyjamas and women's coats.
Betty, a middle-aged woman, says she's given money and now she's giving her time. Her face is shiny with bubbles of sweat.

Meredith holds back a tear and says: "It's really moving, seeing all this stuff."

At the end of the tables on which we sort clothes, odds and ends accumulate. There's a watch, an earring, a cake of soap, a few coins. Before going home, I count the money. There's $1.90 — the same as at lunchtime and not a cent less.

A lot has been said about this relief effort bringing out the best in people. To me, those coins said it all.

Welcome to Birdland

It’s not an open zoo or an animal sanctuary. It’s not even a place casual visits are welcomed. Nevertheless, travellers with an interest in wildlife should check out an astonishing, natural habitat not 50 kilometres from Melbourne’s CBD – Werribee’s Western Treatment Plant.

“Most birders [birdwatchers] who know about Melbourne know about this place,” says guide, Steve Davidson. Perhaps non-birders would become interested in it, too, if they knew what was in store.

The plant, a modern sewage facility, is also a Ramsar-listed wetlands of international significance, home to tens of thousands of local and migratory birds. It offers world-class bird watching and springtime heralds the return of vast flocks from their winter breeding grounds in Siberia and the Arctic Circle.

Having flown for up to eight weeks, species with names like the Sharp-tailed Sandpiper, Whiskered Tern, Red-necked Stint and Greenshank arrive, emaciated, and begin a feeding frenzy. I went in search of these extraordinary aviators on a wet day in late August.

The plant—big and flat —is an enormous patchwork of filtration ponds and lagoons, converting around 500 million litres of raw sewage a day into non-toxic effluent.

Melbourne Water tries to balance running it with the conservation needs of the birds and birdwatchers’ interests—it will never be a tourist park. It’s not easy to find your way around, with kilometres of tracks, few road signs and maps featuring unenlightening names like “145WB Lagoon”. As a rotten navigator, I take advantage of self-styled “Melbourne Birder” Davidson’s guiding skills and book a half-day tour.

As we speed along Princes Freeway past the local, open range zoo, Davidson explains what’s in it for the birds here. Year-round, the ponds consist of thick, nutritious sludge that supports water plants, microscopic organisms and insects, a reliable avian food source. Despite their ingredients, they don’t smell too bad at all.

Bordering western Port Phillip Bay, the plant has numerous natural wetlands – swamps, tidal mudflats, rivers and saltmarsh – and low, straggly scrub. All harbour an enormous range of birds. The birders love it. “You can come here and see the amazing sight of thousands and thousands of birds, or you can see something that’s incredibly rare,” notes Davidson.

The first birds we see on charmingly named Paradise Road are, naturally, ducks. Even a birder on L-plates can tell apart the various species. There are Teal, Pink-eared, Musk and Blue-billed. Our four-wheel drive proves the perfect bird “hide”; none take flight when we approach.

Davidson suggests we circuit “General access” and “Special access” routes. Both areas require a permit from Melbourne Water, as there are hazards associated with the sewage treatment works.

At a place called Walsh Lagoon, he points out long-legged waders like the Black-winged Stilt and the superb Red-necked Avocet, with its thin, turned-up bill, and vibrant, chestnut head on a snowy white, black-winged body.

It begins raining and soon visibility is poor. Through a soft mist, we watch birds swim, dive and fossick in the shallows. A flock of Black Swans takes off with great wing-beats and unfurled necks.

Lake Borrie, the largest lagoon, is distinctive for its eerie forest of half-submerged, dead trees. Folded-up pelicans squat like Buddhas atop wooden nesting boxes. We scan the water carefully, looking for the first Cape Barren goslings of the season.

Werribee’s landscape is monotonous; the only landmark is the distant You Yangs. Moonah and Tuart trees line a couple of ponds; vegetation is shrubby, low, dull red and green. But if you look hard, in those bushes you’ll see tiny, neon-blue Fairy-wrens and sweet-voiced Brown Thornbills flitting about, or finches – slashes of colour – bouncing right across your path.

As we skirt a lagoon lined with tall, yellow grasses, we surprise a huge raptor, the dun-brown Swamp Harrier. Not three metres away, it takes off in what looks like slow motion.

Davidson spots a couple of White-bellied Sea Eagles lifting off with something in their talons. We watch mesmerised as they land nearby and tear at their meal - a small bird. It’s a David Attenborough moment.

Finally, in mudflats, we see some of the newly arrived waders. Davidson helpfully points out two different species that, initially, blurred into one. Brownish-plumaged and beautiful, I silently salute the Curlew and Sharp-tailed Sandpipers that have come from so far away.

Even if you don’t know much about birds, this place has a special magic. It hosts herons and cormorants as tall as a child, three kinds of ibis, with their umbrella-handle bills, and a dozen majestic birds of prey. And what’s not to like about our spoonbills, with their weird beaks like big, yellow cutlery? Around 270 species have been recorded; on a full day’s tour, you might see one hundred.

A bird guidebook comes in handy, plus a spirit of adventure. If you’re intrepid, this place provides an unforgettable experience.

Birds are as ubiquitous as the air yet, trapped in our cities, we scarcely register them. The Western Treatment Plant reminds us that we can still witness these wild creatures in their natural habitat. BYO binoculars.

Lost in Oasis

Horticultural Media Association of Victoria essay competition, Shortlisted, 2009


Why would I, a sensible, mature writer enrol in Floristry at TAFE College (Technical and Further Education)? To cop painful, blistered fingers from wiring flowers? To practice tying impressive florists’ bows, over and over? To make exquisite floral arrangements and clean slimy buckets (often in succession)?

I guess it was something to do with the beauty and transience of flowers, those precious, living jewels. I wanted to be around them and people who love them. Frankly, I also wanted to get a job away from my computer screen.

Each time I entered a florist’s, I was struck by the mysterious nature of their craft. Florists seemed to make arrangements and elaborate wrappings with a magician’s sleight of hand. I would watch them intently and still never comprehend how they managed to make a bouquet or box of flowers look so special.

When it came to the course, I thought it would be a matter of learning a few tricks; that floristry would be a doddle. How hard could it be, talking to people all day and wrapping bunches of beautiful blooms? At the Melbourne International Flower & Garden Show (MIFGS) in March this year, I learned otherwise. I was introduced to the brilliance and excess of exhibition floristry and learned how dirty, tiring and repetitive the world of flowers could be.

As it happened, for several weeks beforehand, my class hadn’t arranged any flowers. Instead, we created white, plaster-covered papier-mache balloons. These were to be scattered in a stylised forest, complete with birch branches, grasses and turf.

The exhibit’s quirky nature was matched by our problems coating giant balloons in sticky, glue-dipped newspaper, followed by coats of plaster of Paris that repeatedly flaked off.

They were, um, “eggs”. Perhaps dinosaur or aliens’. Possibly a mutant Easter Bunny’s. Even our teacher wasn’t sure what they were. But once finished, they were transported to the venue together with vast amounts of stuff: tools, florist’s foam, glue guns, wire, branches, buckets, bags of cement and a dozen low, wooden trays, which would contain our woodsy arrangements.

We met outside Melbourne’s Royal Exhibition Buildings, which I have always liked (even though I sat my HSC English exam in it). As befitting its World Heritage listing, it’s big, Victorian and very, very precious.

We gazed in awe at the beautiful fan-shaped façade and the famous gold-topped dome, copied from Florence’s renaissance cathedral. The youngest among us wondered: where’s the front door?

Inside, curved backdrops subdivided the huge space. Each exhibitor had its own, small stage. Along the walls and in side corridors, square, raised areas resembled window displays. It was up to us, and several hundred others, to make something eye-catching, technically correct and florally wonderful. (I think we all succeeded, but there are fashions in floristry and the prizewinners evidently had that extra zhoosh.)

We set to work amid warnings about cleaning up water spills; our preparations included the covering of each surface of our space with two layers of industrial plastic.

Then we had to locate our water tap. It was beneath a trapdoor in the priceless floor. (How much water do you need for an exhibit three metres by two? An awful lot; I hope it was grey water.)

Setting up involved crawling around on wet, newly laid turf, wrapping bits of moss around pots and filling our wooden trays with autumnal accents using ivy, Ming fern, Smokebush (Conospermum sp.), gum, Xavier grass, Echinacea flower heads and fluffy Green Trick, first cousin to Sweet William.

We mixed rapid-set cement to keep our seven birch trees upright in their buckets. We placed our seven, giant plaster eggs artfully within the scene. We constructed a natural-looking chunk of forest wilderness in a 130-year-old building in the heart of Carlton.

Result: a wet bum, dirty knees and one flesh wound from a secateur slip. Our teacher worried that we wouldn’t make it onto TV; I wondered how anything would survive for five days under the hot lights.

Around us, the Great Hall of Floristry was an obsessive, meticulous world. People laboured around the clock, hauling in logs, huge, flower-filled brackets and arranging hundreds of tiny test tubes, each housing a single stem.

Displays were constructed around the themes of weddings, the colour red, winning Tattslotto and having IVF. Outsized table settings ranged from the magnificent (Baroque) to the wacky (the Mad Hatter).

There were mountains of hardware, with as much chicken wire, glue, paint and fabric as flowers. There were endless boxes of Oasis (florists’ foam), trucked in by the pallet on speeding forklifts. Every exhibit’s flowers stood in buckets to one side, ready, like an afterthought, for when the infrastructure was complete.

I wasn’t the only one who cut themselves. But when I sought a Band-Aid in the sick bay, there were only three left. It’s a cut-throat, cut-finger business, floristry.

Nothing could help those in the traffic jams outside either, as nursery staff waited in line for access to their allotted space at the adjoining garden show. Inside and out, the place was like a small town under construction.

MIFGS is exciting, impressive and prestigious; everything you could want in a major event. I was privileged to spend time behind the scenes. As the venue for Australia’s first Parliament, captured memorably by Tom Roberts, it was a great place for a flower show.

I went back to see how everything looked on the last day: the “Victorian bushfire” pieces, the stunning displays of Ikebana, roses, tropical plants and “fashion” made from flowers.

In scale, variety and ambition, it was overwhelming but our eggs-in-a-forest exhibit held its own. I mingled with the crowd, and every overheard comment was positive.

It was a small triumph for Certificate II in Floristry, and not a bouquet or florist’s bow in sight.

        Better the life in hand than dwelling on lives unlived

A surprise guest provides a new perspective on loss and yearning

CHILDLESSNESS and being Jewish don't go together: it's assumed that you'll marry and procreate. There's even a lofty promise in the Bible that we will become a nation "as numerous as the stars in the sky". It's painful to buck the trend.

The past two weeks - the High Holy Days - began with Jewish New Year, in which a curious piece of scripture was read. The story of Hannah concerns a childless woman. She's assured of her husband's love but Hannah is desolate. She promises that if granted a son, she will commit him to God's service. She weeps and silently mouths oaths, appearing drunk. All ends well when she bears a boy, Samuel.

Is this a story about the power of prayer? The shame of childlessness? I don't know. What I do know is that this year, there was a mini-baby boom in my congregation. Mothers rocking newborns matched rhythms with men and women rocking in prayer. Babies yowled loudly at the service's softest, most inopportune moments.

My attention strays; I am besotted with the tiny babies. I note also the toddlers stomping up and down the aisles, enjoying the sound of their shoes on the floorboards, temporarily clean in their new, holiday clothes.

The tweenies wear clothes just like their mothers', from Pucci-print halter maxi-dresses to mini-Chanel tailored suits. These girls, with their glossy, long hair, and the boys in glowing health and crisp, white shirts, are avowedly what all those gorgeous babies will become.

Before I know it, my eyes fill with tears. I flee before the rabbi makes his usual, intelligent exegesis of the day's text.

Like Hannah, I am inconsolable. Babies, toddlers, teenagers, adult kids: I'll never have any and the pain is deep and bitter. As it turns out, I have left in the middle of the service but at precisely the right time for another baby to enter my life.

Back home, my neighbour visits with something to show me. Cradled in her hands, folded in on itself, fast asleep, is a greyish-brown, roughly furred baby animal. Its nose is as small as a match head, its whiskers fan out like fine silk, and its tightly curled tail ends in creamy white. It's a tiny ringtail possum.

Sara's cat had brought the creature to her in his jaws, popping it down like a trophy. There was bloody fur and minute puncture marks.

My first thought was to get rid of it; impossible to care for something so small, so vulnerable, so cute. On the way to the vet's, I was sure it would be taken from me to a reputable wildlife shelter; somewhere skilled people would care for it and nurse it to health.

The vet suggested putting the possum down. Cat teeth contain enough toxins to kill these creatures outright.

Suddenly, I became as fierce as a whale watcher on the Steve Irwin. "Give it a chance," I begged and the vet syringed a couple of millilitres of milky antibiotic into its delicate skin.

That night, I doted on this ball of fur. No mother spent longer counting the toenails of her infant; no father was more rapturous at the coat's fine gradations of colour, from smoky grey on its back to its rufous belly fur. Its back feet were extraordinary, having no claw on the first toe, and the second and third toes joined together. My little bunyip.

I started a learning curve as steep as a new parent's. There were heat packs to change, drinks of water in a jam-jar lid to give, and tiny chunks of banana and apple to feed, every two hours. As morning arrived, I felt sleep-deprived and ghastly. I wasn't even sure if I was nursing a boy or a girl.

In addition, the wee sprog hadn't done a single bit of, well, wee. Or poo, for that matter. I knew enough to realise this was serious. I also knew I wasn't able nor legally allowed to raise this babe.

As I write, the young, male ringtail is in the capable hands of a registered wildlife foster carer, Anita Woodford. Along with three other orphans, he spends daylight hours in a fleecy pouch, warmed by an electric heater. At night, along with his new siblings, he roams and forages for gum leaves in their oversized birdcage. He's about three months old and has a positive prognosis.

Another famous tot in the Bible is Moses, found in the Nile by Pharoah's daughter. Another baby discovered and nurtured, another baby saved.

Many people hate possums, for their garden-eating and their noise. I feel lucky I cared for one, even if only for 24 hours. This frail animal taught me it is much better to save a life than to dwell on the lives you will never lead.