I've been getting old man cranky lately and I need to wind it back a bit.
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I think it's been triggered by a road they're putting through the suburban bush near my house.
Paving paradise to put up a parking lot, as they say - ooo, bop bop bop bop.
The road's gonna divert traffic running across one hill, and down another through my mulga - that's not really mine.
It's gonna scrape possibly 10 minutes off the drive from Point A to Point B, and I totally accept that's progress.
For progress to happen, I also accept they have to cut a swathe through the forest. Right next to where they've already cut a swathe to put power lines. On top of land that's already been mutilated by mining.
So it's not like the vegetation has been historically untouchable.
But I don't think the birds and echidnas and pedestrians and occasional sex pests who frequent what's regenerated are complaining.
But I am now that they're ripping it up.
Funnily enough, it's not just the bulldozers that have got my goat.
It's the kiddie mountain bike riders who have swarmed in their caterpillar tracks. Along with nerd-burger adult incarnations. Systematically 'pioneering' trails through what scrub remains by flattening it with go-pro enthusiam. Thinning out the undergrowth faster than the hairs on my head or maybe my tolerance for recreation. Just so these bush bandits can have 'a sick run'.
I suppose it gets the varmints off the computer, as my neighbour remarked, but looking at them - naaa, I don't think so.
Clearly, I have the crank bad, complaining about varmints and bandits and goats. Pretty soon I was gonna call someone a bloody rogue.
Curious as to when I became an grade-A nark, I went to the settings in my mind and clicked on history to check the files. Disturbingly, I had to navigate a fair way back to when I was 12. The year I peaked with optimism, apparently. Back then I was very "pro excavation" when they dug up the creek bank behind our house to build a levee.
It totally destroyed whatever habitat was there but in that young boy's eyes, it was win-win. Lots of heavy machinery to stare at wondrously, and endless lumps of raw earth to ride my bike over. Sound familiar?
Not a word about the levee, though because that was progress. Diverting water away from one set of houses, to another set downstream. And first flood after that, the new levee broke. Go progress.
Checking those history files put old man crank in perspective. Bulldozers, BMX varmints, erosion of landscapes familiar and imagined. It's a bittersweet symphony trying to deconstruct things possibly unconnected and probably beyond your control. In the great scheme, so long as those things aren't bodily functions, matters could be worse.
Clearly it was time to clear my cookies before they crumbled and let the crank go. So to those bush bandits I said quietly unto myself, ride on man - until council catches up to you.
Ya bloody rogues.
