TheBanyanTree: Answering the unknown demented man

[peter macinnis]

I sometimes work in a cemetery, though not because of the dead, who have 
been there for a century or more. This is a plague cemetery, where 19th 
and early 20th century victims of typhoid, smallpox, bubonic plague and 
Spanish influenza lie, out of harm's way, because people were 
superstitious back then about causes of disease and ways of preventing 
disease. Many of them thought all you needed was bleach, but I draw no 
parallels here. Ignorant idiots are ignorant idiots.

North Head, where the Third Quarantine Cemetery lies, was and is home to 
the Eastern Suburbs Banksia Scrub, a robust ecosystem of 400 plant 
species threatened by development. It was long maintained over many 
millennia by what historians and ecologists now call firestick farming. 
These days, fire is harder to use, but without some controlling hand, 
two dominant species over-run everything. In the first place, the 
cemetery was maintained out of respect to the dead, now it is maintained 
out of respect for the environment. All around it, there is senescent 
scrub that we will one day have to burn.

We hand-prune, cutting back excessive growth, removing the two dominant 
species and a few other invaders. I personally cut logs off-site and 
bury them across the paths that run down the sandy slope. In heavy rain, 
the running water is held and diverted into the undergrowth. Any sand 
washing down the slope is captured by the logs, helping to prevent 
erosion. Others prune the plants, making sunny microclimates where tiny 
orchids and giant (by comparison) flannel flowers grow. At times, we see 
black cockatoos, bird of paradise flies, bluetongue lizards, scrub 
turkeys and even the occasional echidna. All through the year, we can 
always find ten species in flower.

On the first Wednesday of the month, six or so volunteers arrive, and 
spend a couple of hours readjusting the balance, and today was one such. 
One of my colleagues had brought a brush-cutter to take back the long 
grass, and I was laying the cut grass on a track that unauthorised feet 
have worn through the middle of the cemetery. We don't want a track 
there, because it will erode badly. So now it is an untrack, no longer 
visible. We moved the official track away from where it crossed an 
unidentified grave, because that didn't seem right, and dropped more 
grass on the track, to slow down surface water.

After I found and eliminated a plant of the weed grass, /Paspalum/, in 
the cemetery area, I was moving some prunings to the drying area, and I 
saw some more /Paspalum/, growing on the dirt fire trail that runs by. I 
went back, got an old kitchen knife, blunt enough to carry in my pocket, 
cut out the grass, and cut off the seed heads. Returning to the cemetery 
gate, I found two of my colleagues talking with an affable older man and 
a younger woman.

He spoke to me, I joined the conversation, and failed to realise that he 
was from a dementia home which is on the premises. I struggled a bit 
because I had taken off my hearing aids to blunt the noise of the 
brush-cutter, but I sort-of kept up. Then he asked me "How is your road 
(/or rogue?/) manager handling you?" I assumed he knew me from 
somewhere, so I gave him a flippant answer.

"Oh, he always uses tongs," I said. That was perfect, because he got it. 
He giggled, he and his minder left, and we were all happy. That was when 
my friends told me we had been basking in a window of lucidity. I hope 
if I ever get demented, somebody offers me flippant answers.

peter