Crimes committed against Youth Hosteling: 1 - movement of the toaster from it's sacred spot on the kitchen bench.
Risks of dying on work placement - about 1,000,001
God sorry, I keep disappearing into the bush don't I? Very unreliable correspondent this time!
I didn't tell you about my injuries did I? Or even what we're doing here conservation-wise. Well ladies and gentlemen hold onto your hats - it's pine tree chopping time again - my favourite!
For everyone who doesn't make a habit of spending their spare time paying to work on a conservation chain gang let me enlighten you about conservation projects. They are NOT as the title may suggest all about saving cute little furry critters whose habitat has been destroyed and nursing them back to health whilst they look at you with big eyes and call you "momma", become part of the family and take up residence on your sofa hogging the remote - or was that just my ex? In fairness there are hairy creatures involved in conservation projects but they tend to be the volunteers. So, saving cute creatures or a bit of light gardening? OH NO, conservation work is actually about killing things; DEATH, DESTRUCTION AND POWER TOOLS (sorry, I was writing that in an action movie voiceover voice). It's sort of like extreme global DIY - "You think putting up a shelf is macho? Well try it in 40 degree heat, with an unskilled workforce whilst avoiding venemous spiders." 'Ave it "Tool Time".
So the Shadow of Death, aka Conservation Volunteers Australia, was falling on the poor Radiata pine tree (That's Rad-iarter, not radiator as I kept saying. I spent a long time - well the time I wasn't spending making sure venemous spiders hadn't got into my pants - wondering why someone had named a pine tree after a household appliance and particularly one as spectacularly non-outdoorsy as a radiator). The location we were working in was the Scamander Reserve in the North East of Tasmania. The reason for the arborial death warrant was not that they had looked at our pint or that they had taken the last shrimp from the barbie, it's about clearing non-indigenous species.
Over the past decades, all over the world, native pines and bushland have been cleared in order to grow the radiata pine on plantations. The pine tree is a quick crop and reaches maturity in a matter of years so farmers see a profit pretty quickly as the world needs pine for paper pulp. Unfortnately the canopy cover of a pine tree plantation is so dense that it lets very little light to the forest floor meaning that no native plants can live around them and no native plants means no native animals and general chaos in the local ecosystem as non-natives become the only animals that can survive in the area.
The good news is that there is what's known as a "seed bank" in the soil - that's where native plants lie dormant beneath the pines in the soil for a number of years waiting for the correct conditions to grow again. This means it can take as little as 2 - 3 years for the area to recover and for the native bush and animals to flourish again. I'll see if I can post a photo so you can see how impressive the difference is between what should be there and what shouldn't. I never saw pine forests as unnatural before but over here they really are, you can drive past kilometers of the stuff and it's all pine needles (which also work as a mulch keeping native seedlings from growing) on the floor and trees - nothing else, nowhere for roos to hide and nothing much for anything to eat. It's just like a brown carpet with pine tree standard lamps in regimented lines for acres and acres of land.
I guess what I'm saying is that THESE TREES DESERVE TO DIE!! Hahaha got to kill to be kind you know, sod that tree hugging malarkey - we want to see them annihilated and then we will rule the world Mr Bond hahahaha! Oops sorry, still reading the spy stories, got a little master criminal there. Well, the upshot is that Tom and Todd, our project leaders, of whom Todd is the boss, have fairly strong Aussie accents which meant that both the Koreans and the two Frenchies who made up the work group had no idea why we were destroying hundreds of perfectly healthy trees and nuking whatever we couldn't get to with hardcore poison - possibly not the furry animal rescue they had signed up to - more like species mass murder and genocide - as I say again, you have to watch those hippies - there's a poison tip to those flower stems they offer you at festivals. This meant that as well as being Team Korea coordinator I was now trying to translate Australian into English for the Koreans and French for the French. In fairness, all it took for the boys was one look at the tools, a quick version of "kill this, don't kill this" and they were off chopping trees with some gusto.
It seems that the attraction of conservation holidays is the same around the world - it's a chance for office-based workers and students to get in some physical labour. The boys were out to get sweaty and build up muscle in an outdoor gym. Except in a gym you tend not to be at risk of death.
I've kind of down-played this so far but that pep talk in the conscription office, sorry CVA offices, wasn't a joke and you realise that when you get out to the work site. Caroline the French girl and I were nonchalantly chatting about nail varnish or something at one point during the week and when we got to the van we wondered why everyone else looked a bit pale and excited - turns out we had walked ahead of the group and had passed by a deadly tiger snake of impressive proportions which was just watching us. It was 2pm and snakes don't just watch people passing at 2pm. I've walked within centimetres of snakes early in the day as they wait for the sun to warm their bodies and there's no problem but at 2pm they are well and truly active and if they aren't making a move away from you if you pass them at that time, they have something else entirely on their little snakey minds. That spooked Caroline and I because we had no idea it was there at all.
To return to our little induction on the first day on site - apart from the "kill this, don't kill this" tip, we were also told to be aware that spiders could kill us, that all the snakes in Tasmania are deadly (look up black tiger snake on the internet if you want a laugh at our working environment - ps. it's not in the cuddly, cute and likes humans section - I found it on the Oz wildlife site with the helpful label 'very dangerous' above it) oh and by the way, could you use this deadly poison after you've chopped down the tree so that it doesn't grow back. Oh yes, and keep it away from your water bottle and sandwiches - I know you only have two hands and one of them will be holding the tools but see how you go. The deadly poison was handed to us in the little bottles with the sponges that you get to clean shoes with - yes, we were going into battle with pine trees and hostile wildlife armed with the SHOE POLISH OF DEATH. (Really got to stop reading those spy novels). Did I mention that the main cause of death in volunteers is sunstroke? This means that as well as keeping an eye on your poison bottle and it's proximity to sandwiches and making sure that the locals don't bite you you also have to stop your perilous occupation for the occasion "slip, slap, slop". You can just hear the spiders as they get together around their webs - it's alright, they're moving now but we'll have them when they have to slather on the sunscreen hahaha!
Trust me, on this job you're only safe when you're moving - now that's a motivator if ever I heard one, perhaps we should try that on HPT? If you don't keep working you may die? Bit hardcore? Ok then.
Catch you later if I live through the next few days.
Oh, hold on, forgot to tell you about my latest injury - you might want to look away now if you're of a squeamish disposition. Deeming the loppers less manly than the saws, the boys run off with the blades first thing and the girls are left lopping and dabbing. Not usually a problem but I may have mentioned that I end up working on my own a lot here - I've become the demarcation of the 'far side' i.e. "Okay everyone we'll work from here, out as far as Elsie, form a line between Todd and Elsie". As a girl, I ended up with a pair of loppers and no sawing partner. This essentially limits the size of the trees you can bring down as you can only take what the loppers will fit around (loppers are kind of like outsized garden shears). You are also limited by how far your arms will stretch. Anyway, I came across a tree which I thought was borderline (about 12cm diameter)but decided to give it a go and stretched my arms to the widest they would go and managed with some effort to snip the trunk. From that point on my bra strap kept snapping against my shoulder when I moved my left arm which I thought was funny as this was a 'work bra' - chosen specifically because everything stays in place no matter what I do. It also didn't feel quite like a bra strap snapping out of place either and happened even when I held onto my bra. Now I'm not sure about the physiology of all this but it turns out that in lopping the oversized tree trunk I had somehow unseated a layer of muscle in my shoulder and it was twanging back as I moved. It wasn't particularly painful but it wasn't exactly pleasant either. That left me with the really girlie task of poison dabbing for the rest of the day and pointing out the trees that the men could saw down. Sigh.
Elsie x
