Mr Simon was my English teacher for a few years in high school.

I did not like him and nor did many of my classmates.  He was a single (I think) man of about forty-five with a neatly cropped moustache and a US Marines crew cut (though any military allusions ended there).  He dressed very formally and wore his pants improbably high.  He had a superior, pompous, countenance and a short fuse.  If he was in a shitty mood he didn't make any effort to hide it - even if we'd had nothing to do with whatever was bothering him (though generally we had).

He was, however, someone I somehow respected.  I never looked forward to his classes; but often I enjoyed them.  Mr Simon took his job seriously; he didn't care whether we liked him, but he did care whether we were learning anything.

And he was pretty good at reading people.

He had me nailed.

I was one of the stronger students in the class.  When I did something well, he was generous with praise; but when I did not measure up, he could be vicious.

There was one class when he'd asked us the day before to think overnight about little tricks for remembering how to spell difficult words.

As he went around the class, it was clear that some of the kids had come up with really great ideas - some that I still remember and use 40 years later ('independence is 'e'-zy' (Andrew); 'manoeuvre a canoe' (Derek)).

I had nothing - in fact, I'm pretty sure I'd dozed through the critical juncture of the previous class.  When he got to me, I said something like 'I just look at the word and see if it looks okay' (which was, and is, true; but is not a lot of use to anyone else).

He exploded.

(I interpose here - in case Mr Simon is alive and marking this - that I have since come up with a quite a good way of differentiating 'discreet' and 'discrete': in 'discrete' the 'e's are separate.)

There was another explosion when we'd all been asked the day before to bring in a book we were to read and review.  Once again, I'd missed that bit, but a mate had come to the rescue by slinging me a second book he had in his bag.  When Mr Simon got to me, I confidently produced my 'selection': 'Get Smart: Once Again', a novelisation of the immortal TV show ('there was a TV show?' [a gag for the true aficionados]).

The excoriation that followed - which involved him denigrating my selection by comparing it to the book chosen by another student, Mil ('To Kill a Mockingbird' or something similarly lightweight) - was completely justified; save that it was Mil who'd loaned me the Get Smart book.  I can still picture him smiling at me - half apologetically and half delightedly - from up the row of desks.

Mr Simon liked to write lengthy comments on our homework.  He once wrote that an essay I'd written (about friendship) had started well, only to be be completely spoilt by one paragraph (where - perhaps for the sake of the word count - I'd riffed about friendship between countries, a notion Mr Simon seemed to find offensive).  He concluded his tirade with this: "You must eschew complacency! (Two words for your dictionary.)"

As soon as I'd read this - and somehow completely oblivious to the fact he was making two suggestions - I walked straight up to his desk and asked him what 'eschew' and 'complacency' meant.  (He reacted with the mixed disgust and triumph of a person who has successfully squashed a fly.)

And he was right.

I really must.

 

In October 2021, I started six months long service leave.  I'd been working more than thirty years and had never had such a long break.

Apart from taking lots of photos and visiting my mum and dad in Queensland, I had no firm plans.  Mainly, I just wanted to stop and see what it felt like.

Stopping started slowly.

About a fortnight in, I checked in at a very nice airbnb place not far from mum and dad's.  Having already bought the sort of groceries I'd buy at home, I spent an hour or so unpacking all the gear and establishing all the connections that I'd packed and disconnected a day earlier in Darwin. 

And soon enough I'd settled into the routines that shaped me.  

One of those routines was cycling every few hours through a dozen or so websites - making sure I wasn't missing anything.  (I very rarely was.)

The websites included an online real estate site.  I'd been visiting it on and off for years in the search for the perfect bush block.  Something ticking all the boxes - unspoilt, permanent swimmable water, close-ish to Darwin and affordable - had (somehow!) proven elusive.

About a year earlier, we had narrowly missed out on one contender - which was stunning but lacked permanent water.  It had been on the market for more than a year and we'd inspected it many times.  We umm'd and ahh'd for ages about making an offer - doing our best to come up with new reasons not to buy it.  And when, finally, we bit the bullet, someone else also did (and offered slightly more).

Nothing else had come close, so I was a bit surprised when my idle online scrolling turned up this ad:

"Eighty Eight Acres - Pristine* Rain-Forest - Well Located - Permanent Water - Orchard

Thirty five hectares of very old rain forest, close to Litchfield National Park... The bitumen stops outside our main entrance. All but the home paddock is covered in tropical rain forest and other native* trees. The tropical rain forest pre-dates the eucalypts, and is a remnant of an era when the Top End was mainly wetlands. The property is one of the few remaining examples of tropical rain forest in private hands. A tributary of the Little Finnis River runs through the valley, and there is a deep spring fed billabong that has never run dry. The rain forest supports native birds, possums, wallabies, lizards and the occasional fresh* water croc. There is a mango orchard of around sixty trees, which provides a small income. The mangoes are allowed to ripen on the trees, and are sold dehydrated or frozen. Other fruit trees have been planted close to the bush shack built near to the main road. The shack has a bathroom, kitchen, and a bedroom with an air conditioner..."

[* the asterisks denote parts of the ad that could perhaps have been expressed differently.]

The photos with the ad seemed to back up the description.

After a few inspections we offered the asking price.  It turned out this was only half the task; the owner only accepted once she was sure we were the right people.

And so, about 10 weeks into my leave, we became the owners of 730 Miles Road, Eva Valley. 

Here's what it looks like from the sky.  (Our place is to the right of the purple line and I've included the imaginative names we've come up with for the four corners):

The shack we now call our home away from home is right in the middle of the cleared area near corner 1.  The other visible structures are a mixture of sheds and never-finished building projects.  The mango trees are also visible in that area.

The place immediately to the West belongs to Trevor.  Parts of it are very similar to ours, but he's got many more mango trees (and so, less bush).  Trevor's a fascinating bloke, worthy of a separate blog post (or several).  His claims to fame include having been on Grand Designs Australia (for a project at Lake Bennett that didn't end well).  He's also the local snake catcher.  He and his dogs regularly detain feral pigs, which he feeds to his substantial collection of 'pet' saltwater and freshwater crocodiles.  (The main croc pens are beside the two white dots very close to the boundary with our place.)

To our north is a large mango farm.  Its south western and south eastern extremities correspond with our corners 1 and 2.  It is bisected by a very large dammed area.  Miles Road runs across the causeway which forms the dam.  Although it is not a natural water feature, it very much resembles a Top End wetland.  It hold water most of the year and is often teeming with birds.

The purchase of the block was followed by another, even bigger, development.

In our first month or so at Eva Valley we came to realise the scale of the task we'd taken on.

My dream had originally been for a weekend retreat; but it was pretty clear that more than weekends would be needed if we were to give the block the attention it needed.

All of sudden, we had an 80 acre backyard.  Even though most of it was uncleared, there was still the equivalent of many (very bumpy) football fields to mow every few weeks (in the Wet at least).  And there was the 'fleet' of honest, but tired, farm machinery (quad bike, ride-on mowers, brush cutters) to repair and maintain.

And then there were the weeds.  Although we knew there were problems, we had no real idea of the extent.   And the more we explored the block, the more we found.  (I've done a separate post about snake weed, the main culprit.)

We could possibly have paid someone to do the necessary work, but I didn't want that.  The more time I was spending there, the more I loved the place and the more I came to like the feeling that it was our responsibility.  (That feeling is still a huge motivator 18 months down the track.)

So I quit my day job.

It was a very good, very well-paid, job (best I'd ever had); but I was close to my 'best before' date - in fact, when I went in to the office and logged on to write my resignation notice, I was reminded that I'd actually done a draft resignation letter before I decided to take my long service leave.

Had we known - back in November 2021 - everything we came to learn about the block, I think there's a good chance we'd have talked ourselves out of it.

But - in a marked departure from previous form - we'd thrown caution to the wind.

I'm so glad we did.  I have no idea of how this adventure will end; but for the moment, I am happy in a life that has been turned upside-down.

(updated April 2023 - see bottom)

My friend Max came to visit in May 2022. 

Within two hours of my picking him up from the airport, we had set off on a tour of the bush parts of the block.

Our route started at a gloomy shed on the bank of the deepest permanent pool in the rainforest.  The shed houses a pump which we use to draw water up to a tank at the shack (about 300 metres away). The former owners called the shed 'the pump house' and the pool 'the billabong' - both names have stuck.

Immediately, Max and I were greeted with the smell of something (very) dead.  We soon spotted the source: a feral pig carcass snagged in a partly submerged tree branch about 20 metres from the pump house.  

Unfortunately the pig was upstream of the pump intake, so there was the risk it would foul the water supply.

So the block tour was postponed; and instead, Max and I each rigged up contraptions to get the pig out of the water.  His worked better, and we* were able to drag the carcass up into the rainforest, where we then spent another half an hour or so burying it.  (*I use 'we' loosely here - I was nursing a crook shoulder from overdoing it a few days earlier, so I grudgingly allowed Max to do most of the grunt work.)

Although I'd become accustomed to the block's habit of laughing in the face of my best-laid plans, it was a perfect introduction for Max, who in six hours had gone from sitting in the bland comfort of the departure lounge at Brisbane airport to being covered in mud and smelling of dead pig.

When we'd first spotted the carcass, it had appeared quite small.  I thought it was maybe a piglet that had drowned.  But once we'd landed it, it turned out to be quite big; it was clearly a young adult, albeit one that had parted ways with much of its body.

There was one explanation that was more likely than any other (we'd been told before buying the block that saltwater crocodiles were a possibility); however, in the absence of a sighting, I think I allowed myself to think that maybe a large freshwater croc could have been responsible.

Sonja and I had seen a couple of freshies in the previous months.  One was probably big enough to take on a pig, but it seemed to hang out at the other end of the block.  The other, which I had spotted right beside the pump house, would definitely have have been a suspect, had it not been only 30cm long.

tiny freshie at the pump house, eva valley
A few months later, I was working in the rainforest, about 100 metres upstream from the pump house.  

I was well into digging a large hole in the loamy ground around a shallow spring that feeds into the billabong.  The aim was to expand the spring into a plunge pool that would be safe and deep enough to cool off in on hot days.  The idea seemed to be working - I'd already created a bathtub-sized hole that quickly filled up with nice clear water.

And then the block started laughing again.

Another dead pig turned up in the billabong - this one up against the bank right at the point where water from the 'bathtub spring' trickled into the main pool.

Max-less, I quickly realised what was in store for me; however, it was late afternoon, and I was tired, and the pig was quite a long way from the pump intake, and it didn't seem too smelly just yet... (or, just perhaps, I was looking for any excuse to put off the inevitable).

I went back the next morning (armed with Max's bespoke pig-hooker) only to discover that the carcass was now wedged into the submerged roots of a large clump of pandanus trees, well out of reach on the far side of the billabong.  My disappointment - which, in truth, was half-hearted - gave way to a strong sense that whatever had moved the pig was probably nearby.

Xavier (our elderly and not especially brave pooch) and I went back for another look later that day.  We approached slowly from upstream, well back from the water's edge.  I could see the pandanus clump (which was diagonally across the billabong) but not the pig.  

Then I heard a swoosh and saw the back half of the saltie sliding into the pool from under the pandanus.  Xav and I were maybe 20 metres away.

Although I was (sort of) expecting it, I was not ready for how massive it looked.  I'd seen many crocs in my time in the NT, but never in such a confined space.  And never in the backyard.

I was also struck by how quietly it entered the water and how, despite its bulk, it barely caused a ripple in the surface of the billabong.

In the following days, I returned several times with my camera.  I discovered that the croc was easily spooked and that I needed to creep through the forest to get close enough for a decent look.  Although I could sneak up out of sight behind the many trees and vines, a snapped twig was enough to spoil the mission.

Even when I had a good line of sight to the croc's lair, I could not see the whole animal.  Usually I'd spot the tail first and then try and work out where the rest was likely to be.  The croc's head was not always visible, but whenever I managed to spot it, its eye seemed to be looking straight at me.

golden eye

I haven't seen it for a while, but have no reason to think it's not around.

I can only guess how big it is; but it is big (maybe 3.5 metres).  And it is solid - no doubt well fed by the steady stream of wildlife that comes to drink at the billabong.  It is definitely the sort of animal that could eat a person if given the chance.

Some people are appalled at the idea that we have a potential man-eater living a few hundred metres from the shack.

I see it differently.  

The croc is not in an area where we would ever have considered swimming.   It poses no threat to us if we stay back from the edge of the deeper pools.  And there is pretty compelling evidence that it helps get rid of feral pigs.

And it's exactly where it's meant to be (or was meant to be - see below).

[PS - I'd basically finished this post months ago but had been typically slack about tidying it up and sticking it up on the blog.  As it happens, this is a very good day to publish it. The photo above of the saltie is included in the artwork for the latest album by The Church, The Hypnogogue, which has been released today. (It's brilliant of course.)]

Update - April 2023

Our neighbour to the north (a mango farmer) came over in early March asking if we'd seen his dog.  We hadn't.  He suspected it may have been taken by a croc.  Within a few days a croc trap appeared in his dam (which is actually more like a wetland and is separated from our block by a causeway).  A few weeks later a 3.6 metre saltie was apparently caught (and most likely relocated to a croc farm).

I strongly suspect it was 'ours'.