Storm's A-coming When Doug Anthony Leaves The Rafters

The Age

Saturday September 1, 2007

Robert Drewe

What with floods and frosts following days of sun, it doesn't take a reptile mind to know the global warming sceptics have got it wrong. Just ask the brush turkeys, writes Robert Drewe.

MY DOWN-THE-ROAD neighbour Eric, the coffee and macadamia-nut grower, doesn't need the latest storm warning from the Bureau of Meteorology. He knows the weather is going to turn wild when Doug Anthony comes down from the rafters and slumps on top of the TV set. Doug Anthony can anticipate by a couple of hours the tremors of a creaking roof, the wind whistling through the eaves, the vibrations of the power lines. Unnerved and cross, he seeks the ground-floor warmth and security of Sunrise and Australia's Next Top Model - at least until the storm breaks and the power blacks out, or he slips off the TV set. (He's a big boy; there's a fair bit of tail and belly overlap.) Then he slopes off disconsolately to the linen cupboard.

"Doug looks exhausted," Eric told me over a cup of his home-grown coffee. "He needs his sleep, but he's not getting enough." Nor is Eric. Until Doug moves back out of sight, out of mind, Eric's partner Desiree has moved out of home. Doug is a two-metre carpet python, named after the former deputy prime minister, who used to be Eric's local member or, as he referred to him, "my lord of the manor". Eric calls all his resident pythons after him as a mark of respect. Eric strongly supports the National Party but he says it's not the same since the old Country Party changed its name. When the real Doug passed the political baton to his son Larry, Eric tried calling the then-resident python Larry for a few weeks, "but it didn't stick". Neither did the real Larry.

Eric explained that the current Doug was supposed to be hibernating now, but what with the weather we've been having, Doug had been up and down the stairs like a mad thing. "When we had that record-breaking cold snap in July he wound himself around the top of the chimney for a month, clinging on for dear life, soaking up the warmth. Then we had that long sunny spell and he was spending every day stretched out on the ping-pong table on the veranda. The unbroken sunny days and the drought confused him, made him think it was summer, and he was shedding skin and looking frisky, and suddenly next-door's cat disappeared. Then we had those cyclonic winds, and all that rain, and the trees coming down, and although it's now actually spring, Doug thinks it's the beginning of winter again."

Global-warming and weather-changing sceptics don't get much support up our way. Forget 1000-year drought-rain cycles and El Nino behaving perfectly normally. Everyone, from Nationals to Greens, is still shaking their head over the minus 9 degrees in sub-tropical Bangalow that froze the stone-fruit on the trees and turned the blueberries soft and pulpy, like jam. Local fruit losses are running at 40 per cent. Orchardists pumped water from the creek to spray their fruit trees overnight and keep them warm.

But the record frost defeated them; next morning they had stalactites hanging off the trees where the water had landed.

"And just look at the wildlife," Eric says. When it turned windy and wet, the cane toads came out of hibernation too soon, the black house-spiders arrived in the bathroom, and the huntsmen began hunting all across the ceilings. In the middle of winter, the water-dragons appeared out of the shrubbery, had a quick glance around and vanished again; the male brush-turkeys had long since built their nesting mounds, only to have them and the unhatched eggs swept away in the latest deluge. Always frenetic, the brush-turkeys are beside themselves.

Everything's happening unseasonably or wrongly. Bull sharks have entered our muddy rivers in untoward numbers, just as early-season fleas have entered our trouser legs, and the region's primary-school scalps are teeming with nits at least one term too soon. Houses reek of flea bombs and LiceBlaster. Meanwhile, Doug Anthony is curled up on top of the Foxtel guide, his skin patterns blurry and sallow, looking sorry for himself.

"Doug is very sensitive. He can taste the changes in the weather," Eric says. "And he's not happy."

Neither is Eric. He's fond of Doug, what with his antecedents and all, but he's missing Desiree. The climate is definitely changeable.

NEXT WEEK KATE HOLDEN