Buttabone

The chronology here will jump around a lot.  This little story comes from back in beginning of November.  It goes as follows. 

The first job I had on this harvest crew was to head north in NSW to the little town of Warren. Myself and two other men were dispatched to the Buttabone Station to assist in their wheat harvest.  Buttabone had been hit hard by a drought and there was not a lot of wheat to cut.  At our best we were cutting 450 acres a day with one combine.  The combine was a 2013 7230 with a 40 foot MacDon.  The wheat was beyond bone dry, 6.5-8% moisture.  We couldn't drive fast enough to load that girl.  It was pretty spectacular.  Eventually we cut something around 3700 acres in ten days. We would have cut more if Smithy was anything more than useless.  I offered to trade Smithy to the other crew. I asked for a box of rocks and a single apple in return.  No compromise could be reached.  Eventually I learned that Smithy was but a minor irritation and in hindsight I would happily have him back.  

To call Buttabone rustic would be fair.  In her heyday that property must have been something to behold. The original property owners clearly ran a massive mob of sheep.  The shearing sheds were numerous and massive.  It is impossible to describe an Australian shearing shed but I assure you, in a country with 45 million sheep, they have figured it out.  The accommodations we stayed in were the old station hand, read sheep hand, quarters.  There were provisions for over 50 people.  Complete with a full kitchen and a myriad of showers.  Sadly this grand building had long since fallen from grace.  The ceilings sagged in multiple places, not a single fan worked, lightbulbs were few and far between, trustworthy electrical connections were rare, the carpet was more thistle than wool. It was rough, but for the better part of ten days we made it home.  

Eventually the three of us settled into a shift pattern.  One man worked from 6am-4pm, the other from 12pm-4am, the third man worked from 6-12, then 4-4.  So I didn't really sleep for ten days. Which was fine by me.  Buttabone is wild. Even though the country was beyond dry, it was still crawling with wildlife. The first beasts we encountered were the wedge tailed hawks.  On any given day there were a minimum of 8 flying around the combines.  Any one who has operated a combine in North America is probably familiar with the uncanny precision and fearless nature of our domestic birds. Those red tails back home can learn a thing or two from these beasts. In Buttabone there was not an abundance of mice, there are also no gophers to speak of.  Then what were the hawks chasing?  They were chasing locusts.  Grasshoppers on steroids. I'm talking bugs the size of sparrows, bugs that actually can be easily spotted from the cab of a combine traveling at 13km/h.  The hawks would hover above the cab, at times they would stack like fighter-bombers awaiting the forward observer.  As you scythed down the rows of wheat towards the headland you would see an increasing number of locusts bobbing along just below the heads of wheat.  The closer you drew towards the headland the more you would see.  Then when you were just meters away from the end the locusts would scatter in all directions and the hawks would dive in pursuit.  The larger and clearly older hawks could often catch two in one swoop.  These hawks are no spring chickens, their wing span is easily more than six feet and those locusts would fill their talons.  It was incredible and it happened every day.  

The hawks were not the only birds at Buttabone.  There were also emus.  Emus everywhere.  Hundreds, maybe. Thousands, possibly.  There were so many emus that you became desensitized to them. "Yup, there goes another flock of 20 flightless birds the size of a grown man", "Oh look, yet another emu rooster trying to stare down this combine as I approach his clutch of chicks".  Maybe Im jaded because I remember when Royce tried to use his ostriches to kill me but the emus quickly and effortlessly slid out of my memory.  

What will never slip out of my memory is constant battle for bathroom supremacy.  As I mentioned earlier, Buttabone has fallen into disrepair.  Subsequently, the native flora and fauna has started to take over.  Fauna that includes goannas. (GO-ahn-nah)  What is a goanna? Imagine a komodo dragon, but smaller. The incident occurred on our third day at Buttabone.  I had just returned from my morning shift when I ran into Dan. Dan is a new friend from Queensland, I would affectionately describe him as a bogan.  Which roughly translates into hillbilly.  Dan stopped me as I stepped outside towards the john, 
"Im glad yer here, theres a mighty goanna in there and hes some kind of pissed"  
Now please pardon my language but this story is best served filter free,
"The fuck is a goanna?" was my reply.
Dan swung the bathroom door open. Inside the two toilet bath room, under the pair of sinks, laying on the broken mirrors was a meter long lizard. Now Im not talking total lizard.  Total lizard length was approaching two meters, but at no point did I stop to measure him or have any interest in doing so.  
The lizard hissed and spit flew in our direction.  Now here I stood, it was around 12:30pm, I had three hours to sleep, shit and eat.  I looked at Dan and grabbed the broom.  

The lizard fought valiantly. There was only one door to that bathroom and I still wonder if our approach was appropriate. Maybe we could have simply left the door open and he would have wandered out.  What I suspect is more likely is that he would have stuck around trying to eat the frogs that were living in the broken toilet. Everything was trying to eat those frogs... I claimed that bathroom for my fellow man.  Together Dan and I slayed a dragon, and by slayed I naturally mean we screamed at and hit a dragon with brooms.  

But wait, there is more. A few days later, I really dont know when.  After the second day at Buttabone things start to run together.  I was once again walking towards the toilet. This time I didnt get to open the door before I found something wonderful. As I was walking between the buildings I spied with my little eye, a spider as big as a beer can. Now when you see a spider of that size there are many options available to you. You can run, you can kill it, you can kill it with fire, you can scream, or you can find a beer can for perspective and take a picture.  So I took a picture.  It was a cool spider. Now I immediately wanted to share this picture with my friends and family. It is Australia, Im probably sitting on something venomous right now. Unfortunately Buttabone was also on the edge of the civilized world. So I wandered away from the spider, I knew I wouldnt have to go far. The old tin roof of the shack combined with the lead paint acted as a poor mans faradays cage.  As soon as I cleared the building, and no more than 8 feet away from Mr Spider I began to get a signal. Now I grew up watching people use bag phones, so maybe it is written into my DNA but for some reason when I want to get better service I hold my phone in the air, like a lightning rod. It was while I was holding my phone towards the heavens that I heard something.  What was heard was the unmistakable sound of something moving through tinder dry grass.  That soft cracking and rough sliding sound that broken, brown grass makes under your foot. My ears drew my eyes to the sound.  There, roughly six feet away from me, just clearing the edge of the concrete bathroom wall was a happily fat and impressively long red bellied black snake. Once again, I did not stop to measure, but he or she was easily over one meter long. However, my reflexes overcame my impulses and I did freeze.  The snake also stopped, well within my comfort zone.  It did that thing that snakes do and it tasted the air. I had just worked for six hours in plus 40 heat, so Im certain that it regretted that decision.  Thankfully this snake turned around.  It slid off along the edge of the toilet.  The next moments will forever be etched into my memory. The toilet was clad with corrugated tin. Corrugated tin has small gaps, often these gaps are filled with some sort of putty or silicon. These ones were not. The snake slithered up one of these gaps.  

I left a note on the bathroom door.  That bathroom belonged to the snake now.