Fremantlebiz - Paul's Letter from Australia

Another Wireless Hill bushfire

It was a busy day on Friday - a trip into Fremantle on some business, a bit of shopping, the primary school swimming carnival and one of our teenage daughters coming home from a three day high school science camp with all her gear.

On top of all that, a firebug set Wireless Hill alight again, this time on the eastern side. I'd been alerted by my appendicitis-recovering son who had seen the smoke as he was driving along Canning Highway.

I've always had a bit of a taste for action photos. Having a 300 mm lens is a distinct advantage in photographing such events. One can be well distant from getting in the way and annoying people. I asked my wife to drop me off at Troy Park on the western side of Alfred Cove while she attended to some of her obligations. I knew that this area offered a good view of Wireless Hill across a narrow stretch of river. The park is named after the late Paddy Troy, a famous Communist union leader on the Fremantle wharves when I was a kid.

The actual fire was on the other side of the hill, just over the ridge. I only saw a brief glimpse of some flames once. However there was plenty of smoke and two water bombing helicopters at work. I had my new 2 gig card in the freshly charged up D80 - enough memory and battery power for several hundred high definition photos if I wished. What a far cry from the olden days when 24 exposure rolls of film were all the go, and day or two to wait and see the often disappointing results.

Even in this luxurious digital age I still manage to take duds, so my attitude is that one can never take too many pictures of any event.

So for an hour or so yesterday I was again a happy snapper as the helicopters showered the parched Wireless Hill with water. At one point a spiral of smoke soared skywards in a vortex which looked like a tornado. It only lasted a few seconds, but I captured an image of it. It's online at my Picasa site in yet another Wireless Hill folder.

There's also some sequential photos of helicopters doing their stuff, including dropping water on a fresh fire which flared up near where the fire the other day had burned. As I watched the fresh smoke I wondered if the firebug was still hanging about? After about ten minutes it was noticed by the pilots and they made short work of it with a couple of moistening dumps.

Not long afterwards, the air cleared over the hill. The worst was over and the two helicopters headed off in a northwesterly direction, presumably to another fire.

Apparently there have been dozens of fires lit by firebugs in the metropolitan area during the past week. It's going to be a warm weekend and more of these urban terrorist attacks are expected. The perpetrators are rarely caught. When they are, they seem to get off lightly.

I took a few more photos of the birdlife feeding on the edge of Alfred Cove and then walked home - a couple of kilometres at least, and mostly up a stiff hill.

© MMVIII Paul R. Weaver.

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!