It may not surprise you to learn I'm really not much of rural type. But last night I was staying at Ms LE's ancestral German -Australian farm just outside Brisbane, where her Prussian antecedents settled in the 1860s. Her sister and brother still live there; though they don't farm or anything earthy like that.
Anyway, the more genuinely rustic neighbours were burning their cane crop. I watched for an hour, and it was magnificent. Fire licking the sky, cane bark flying high over bulging smoke clouds, big bursts of flame followed by low crackling subsidence, then another rush of hot flame leaping skyward.
In the morning I could see why the method was once favoured (I'm told its used less now, for reasons I don't get). The cane was so clean, black and straight, ready for easy harvest. Awesome!
4 comments:
Did you get that wave of frantic snakes seeking shelter that often comes hand-in-hand with cane burning? Magnificent, but scary.
It was about 75 metres off, Ampersand, but I was told there would be an exodus of snakes, rates, Pterodactyls and other weird shit! Happily, I didn't encounter any.
Its a seriously cool experience, a cane burning. I recommend it! Sounds like you do too
Yes, indeed-y do. I was 13 and living in Townsville when I saw a cane burning. It was awesome. But I also saw snakes. Awesome in a different way :)
I recall,
a schoolboy coming home,
thru fields of cane,
to a house of tin and timber,
and in the sky,
a rain of falling cinders,
from time to time the waste,
memory wastes.
...
Vale, Grant McLennan, and do they still call the train the Sunlander?
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